By
Gertie Lacey’s own description, she is a “tough ol’ bird” who grew up in a family
of 15 kids, endured the rough days of the East
Texas oil boom, picked cotton, endured crop failures during the Great Depression,
and broke her neck in seven places during an automobile accident.
Today,
at age 95, Gertie is the Chappell family's favorite storyteller with a memory
that reaches back to the turn of the century.
Gertie’s grandfather William
Thomas Chappell Sr. served in the Civil War and saw his hat pierced by a Union
bullet. Her father, William T. Chappell Jr. a farmer, married Indiana King, raised
seven girls and six boys and lost two others.
Coming from Georgia, the
family landed at Overton in
Rusk County. A man named Florence allowed the family to use a house, land, a mule
and cows in return for farming 80 acres. When a crop failed, the family loaded
their possessions in a covered wagon pulled by the mule and headed for West Texas
to pick cotton.
When the cotton
crop was exhausted, they returned to Overton
and Florence sold them the 80 acres without a down payment. By now, they had 15
kids, all living under the same roof and going to school at Leverett’s Chapel.
When oil was discovered in East
Texas, Gertie walked from her home to see the Della Crim well, one of the
oilfield’s first wells, spew out oil at 3 a.m. one morning. Luckily, oil was also
discovered on the Chappell property. Soon, the family had thirteen oil wells and
thirteen kids.
Gertie saw her first automobile, driven by Clarence Christian,
in the 1920s. She also saw her first airplane. “It came over our house, and I
almost blistered my mouth looking up at it,” she said.
“Then I'll never
forget the time my brother Joe had a terrible accident while driving a wagon pulled
by mules.” The mules were frightened by a car, and the wagon turned over on Joe.
He had to be taken to a Palestine hospital by train.
Gertie--short for
Gertrude--survived two husbands, Lonnie McGinty, an oil field worker, who died
in 1964, and Lester Lacy, a consultant, who died in 1995.
Gertie has lived
most of her latter years in Kilgore,
where she owned her own beauty shop for many years.
Looking back on her
95 years, she comments "They’ve been wonderful years, but a little sad, too,”
Bob Bowman's East Texas
February 8, 2010 Column
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers
Copyright
Bob Bowman |
