My Father and Mother Become Sharecroppers
in Lynn County, Texas
Dad was a roving gambler who would work at
odd jobs. Most of his life prior to settling
down is a complete mystery. His sister, Addye,
said he would be gone for years and then
one day he would show up at her door. He
never told anyone where he had been or what
he was doing. George said Dad once told him
that he spent time in Mexico before World
War I. About the only thing known for sure
was that he liked to gamble, drink whiskey,
and had a short temper. He was working in
Jones County, Texas for James Jackson DeBusk
when he started courting his daughter Sarah
May DeBusk. My parents were married 23 Feb
1921 in Anson, Jones County, Texas. Initially,
he worked for Robert Daniel “Bob” Jones and
Martha Jane DeBusk, my mother’s aunt and
uncle, in Jones County, Texas. My brother
was born near Tuxedo, Jones County, Texas
in 1921.
My father moved the family from Jones County
to Lynn County in 1924. His second cousin,
James “Dad” Vaughn Dyer, had moved to Lynn
County in 1904 and was an established farmer.
Arrangements were made for Dad to get a farm
as a share cropper. During this time Dad
was doing fairly well for a sharecropper.
He farmed the land using a team of mules
prior to the Depression. By the time I made
my graceful entrance his age was catching
up with him making it difficult to obtain
a good farm. The fact that he only had a
3rd grade education and a hot temper didn’t
help matters much. His method of choice for
solving problems usually involved violence.
Beating a person about the head and shoulders
with a blunt instrument was his solution
for resolving conflicts with his fellow man.
He was arrested for his display of temper
on a few occasions. George tells me that
Dad took a hammer to one of the land owners
over a dispute concerning who owed what to
whom. Sam Redwine, the Sheriff hauled him
off to jail leaving George to go home and
get Mothers help bailing him out of the jail.
As a consequence of a lot of things, providing
for his family was getting to be a huge problem.
The John Deere, Farmall, AC, MM, tractors
were starting to push the mule farmers off
their land. Most people were investing in
tractors, but it was likely that he didn’t
have the money for this type improvement.
My dad never tried using a tractor, as he
always said "they were just a flash in
the pan and would not catch on". This all
combined to force him from sharecropping
into doing odd job for other farmers. While
dad had short comings, working hard was
not one of them.
I will try to explain the Mexican situation
in Texas around the time I was born,
so that
our life can be put into the proper
perspective,
as my father was now competing for
work with
the Mexicans. The Mexican problem in
Texas
was like a sinusoidal curve. In Texas
the
Mexican has always been considered
to be
the bottom of the economic and social
scale.
In early Texas history Mexicans were
treated
much like the black slaves of the south.
They had few rights and the law was
not designed
to protect them. The Texas Rangers
were also
known to brutally repress the Mexican-American
population in Texas. Historians estimate
that hundreds, perhaps even thousands
of
Mexicans and Mexican Americans were
killed
by the Texas Rangers. President Eisenhower
continued the policy of ridding the
States
of Mexican when he starter Operation
Wetback
in the 1954.
As the economy of the United States grew
after the turn of the century, it became
necessary to find a cheap source of labor.
Around this time Mexico was racked with revolution
and strife causing the standard of living
of the average Mexican to drop below subsistence
level. As a result of this huge labor force
just across the border willing to work for
minimal wage, the Mexican worker was highly
encouraged to come to the United States.
When the Great Depression hit massive unemployment
developed in the United States. This made
the Mexican something that was not helping
with the problem. An attitude of “blame them
for my problems” quickly evolved. The Great
Depression of the 1930s actually hit the
Mexican immigrants much harder than it did
to the American worker. Along with the job
crisis and food shortages that affected all
U.S. workers, Mexicans and Mexican Americans
had to face an additional threat: deportation.
As unemployment swept the United States,
hostility grew toward immigrant workers,
causing the government to initiate a program
of repatriation of Mexican immigrants to
Mexico. Immigrants were offered free train
rides to Mexico, and some went voluntarily,
but many were either tricked or coerced into
repatriation. Some Mexican Americans, which
had been in the States for generations, were
deported simply on suspicion of being Mexican.
All in all, hundreds of thousands of Mexican
immigrants, especially farm workers, were
expelled from the country during the 1930s—many
of them the same workers who had been eagerly
recruited a decade before. This program just
about cleared the Mexican out of the farming
economy. The remaining Mexicans migrated
to larger cities seeking employment in other
industries. This moved the problem from the
farm to cities where riots in towns like
Los Angeles grew to epic proportions. The
1940s saw yet another reversal of U.S. policies—and
attitudes—toward Mexican immigration. December
7, 1941 change the direction of the sinusoidal
curve.
As wartime industries absorbed U.S. workers,
farmers became desperate for low-cost labor
and urged the government to take action.
In 1942, the U.S. and Mexico jointly created
the bracero, or laborer, programs, which encouraged
Mexicans to come to the U.S. as contract
workers. Braceros were generally paid very
low wages, and often worked under conditions
that most U.S. citizens were unwilling to
accept. Braceros were treated so poorly in
Texas, for example, that for a period the
Mexican government refused to send any workers
to that state. The program was very popular
with U.S. farmers, and was extended well
past the end of World War II, not ending
until 1964. More than 5 million Mexicans
came to the U.S. as braceros, and hundreds
of thousands stayed.
Ironically, just as one government program
was pulling Mexican immigrants into the U.S.,
another was pushing them out. After the war,
the U.S. began a new campaign of deportation,
on a much larger scale than during the Depression.
The expulsions lasted well into the 1950s,
and sent more than 4 million immigrants,
as well as many Mexican Americans, to Mexico.
Just because the Mexican was needed didn’t
make them acceptable to the “white” community.
The inbred hatred during the 1930’s would
not go away and the Mexican was considered
to be sub-human. At this time my father had
to compete with the Mexican for the money
paid by the farmers to harvest crops. There
is not much doubt that all of this influenced
my racial beliefs. This brings me to our
housing situation.
Some of the farmers would let us live in
“cotton pickers shacks” until the harvest.
At that time it was necessary to vacate
or
share the houses with itinerant labors
from
Mexico. One vivid memory of these houses
was the disinfecting process. Mother
would
soak the wood with cresol to kill the
lice,
fleas and bed bug before we moved into
a
new house. Every time I go past a telephone
post and smell the cresol I remember
those
houses. If this process worked so well on bugs,
wonder
if hurt people? The floors were then
scrubbed
with lye soap. In this day and time
the inside
walls were made of wood as sheetrock
was
not in wide spread use. Wind would blow through the
outside
wall and creating a pressure against
the
wallpaper until with a sharp crack
the paper
would split creating a constant fluttering
sound. In the better homes cheese cloth
was
nailed to the wood before hanging the
wallpaper
and the walls were caulked. At night
you
heard snap, crack, pop, creak, and
flutter.
With this and the animals it was never
quiet
in the country.
Frances would take care of me when
she arrived
home from school. While she was gone,
I would
be left with the Mexicans or in some
cases
taken to the field with Mother. The
Mexican
mamacita in charge of the children
would
set up a big black pot in the yard
and fill
it with beans on Monday, adding beans
each
day until Saturday. All the kid would
get
in a queue and the mamacita would give
us
a tortilla, a scoop of beans, and a
jalapeno
for lunch. Wasn’t a bad meal considering.
By Friday the beans had the consistency
of
what we now know as refried beans and
the
jalapeņos were well aged. Saturday
everyone
would go to town and the pot would
be cleaned
so the process could be started again
on
Monday. This was another experience
that
caused me concern when I tried to understand
my racial feelings. I really liked
most of
the mamacitas and enjoyed playing with
the
Mexican children, but the peer pressure
of
the white community was also contributing
to my racial feelings. Throughout my
life
I have wrestled with my racial feeling
because
of these influences. My racial belief
toward
Mexican and even blacks has been wishy-washey
at best. I had a problem my whole life
when
it came to dealing with people; I could
see
both sides of the issue. This made
it rather
difficult to decide which side to adamantly
support. Other people seemed to form
strong
opinion, so I felt that I should also
be
able to take a strong stand for or
against
issues, but I always had doubts because
they
also had good points. I could see that
most
of the problem with the Mexican was
economic
and had nothing to do with his belief,
creed,
background or place of origin. At times
I
would forget because everyone around
me had
a different view on this subject.
George tells me that he remembers Dad
picking
him up from school and driving up to
the
north part of Lynn County where Grandfather
James Jackson DeBusk had a farm. Actually,
the farm was in the southern part of
Lubbock
County. Dad’s T-Model Ford can be seen
in
the background of the pictures below.
At
this time all of the married children
of my grandfather had moved
to Lubbock or Lynn County. This was
about
the time Dessie Ann DeBusk married
Moses
Thomas Jones. I am not real sure whether
they ever lived in this area. It seems
that
when James Jackson DeBusk moved his
family
to the Llano Estacado in the 1920’s
the married
children chose to follow him. This
was a
long time before I was born. By the
time
I was born all of the DeBusks had moved
from
Lubbock area. Joseph Cleveland Warf
and Leeoline
DeBusk moved to Corona, Lincoln County,
New
Mexico, but kept their farm in Draw.
Latter
Julia Malissie DeBusk and her husband
Kenneth
Lenora “Preacher” Hill would move to
Slaton,
Texas. I remember that they lived in
an old
filling station. We didn’t visit with
them
because of lack of transportation.
I basically
grew up without knowing my cousins.
We ultimately
moved from the southeast to the north
part
of Lynn County sometime around 1938.
Needless
to say none of this information is
stored
in my organic “hard drive”. George
wrote
a nice synopsis of what he could remember
about our life during the early years.
My
Aunt and Uncle Leeoline and Joe Warf
had
an 80 acres farm that we lived on around
1938-39. An altercation developed between
Joe and Dad over a can of kerosene.
Joe told
people in Slaton that Dad stole the
kerosene
and Dad said he paid $1.96 for it.
I don’t
know which of them were right, but
it was
a known fact that both of them would
“take
advantage” of things. On several occasions
Dad was known to lie about how many
bales
of cotton he grew so he would not have
to
share as much with the farm owner.
As George
says the worst beating he ever got
from dad
was when he corrected the number of
bales
grown in front of the farm owner. Regardless,
after the fight Dad and Joe never spoke
again.
When Joe and Leeoline would visit,
dad would
go out the back door until Joe left.
Joe
and Leeoline were the only kin that
visited
us on a regular basis.
Aunt Leeoline DeBusk and Joseph Cleveland
Warf along with my grandfather James Jackson
DeBusk and Uncle Charlie Gabriel DeBusk all
left West Texas around 1929 to homestead
land in Lincoln County, New Mexico. They
lived in Corona, New Mexico, where Joe had
several sections of land. Joe spent more
time drinking than working, but was able
to amass quiet a bit of money from two farms
in Lynn County, Texas and this ranch. It
is said that he screwed Grandpa and Uncle
Charlie out of their land. Not sure how true
this is, but there was not much doubt that
he would “take advantage of a situation”.
Because of his farms, Joe and Linnie would
visit us a lot. Each year Joe would load
his pickup truck with Christmas trees to
sell and come for a visit. This is how we
got our tree each year. Other wise we would
have to decorate a tumble weed. Decorating
a tumble weed with crepe paper and strings
of corn was a common practice in this area
since there were no trees. He would pay me
to go door to door selling Christmas trees.
As I recall this was not one of my most profitable
undertakings. .
|