Growing up in Iago

Well, I’ve done it again. I’ve waited way too long to record my life experiences. A lady at church gave me a book that she recently wrote about her life and it reminded me that I need to get back on this project. It also made me think that I should put this in book form and I plan to do that, too.

This time I want to tell you about growing up in Iago, Texas, a small community in Wharton County. I’ve mentioned it in some of my previous posts, but I want to tell you more.

I lived in the same house from the time I was born until I went to college. It was a big white two-story frame house on 37 acres located on Barker Road one mile NE of Iago. It seemed like a really big house when I was a kid, but now when I go back and see it (just from the outside) it doesn’t look so big. My parent’s bedroom and my bedroom were both downstairs and my brothers’ bedrooms were upstairs. Nothing much, if at all, was ever done to the upstairs while I lived there. It had the old wooden floors and wooden walls. It seemed so dreary up there. After my brothers left, I always wanted to decorate that part of the house, but never did. My bedroom had wallpaper with a white background and big pink roses. When I was a teenager, I got new bedroom furniture, including a double bed with a bookcase headboard, a dresser and a desk and chair. I was so proud of all of that. Art and I used that furniture for many years after we married. To get to the bathroom from by bedroom (or any room in the house), you had to walk through an enclosed porch. In the winter, it was so cold in that house. It was heated with space heaters that were seldom left on during the night. Summers were hot and terribly humid. We lived about 30 or 40 miles from the coast. We had no air conditioning. I would wake up some summer mornings just drenched with sweat. My hair would be as wet as if I had just washed it.

It was probably a quarter of mile to the next house on each side of us. Our nearest neighbors were the O’Quinns and the Kuceras. We didn’t have much to do with the O’Quinns. Mrs. O’Quinn was said to be “crazy” and she did do some very odd things…like walk up and down the road talking loudly to her self and walk into church during a service, down the aisle, saying some really strange things and disrupting the church service. That really made me very uncomfortable and I knew it made everybody uncomfortable, sometimes even fearful. Now I look back on that and think how we should have ministered to that family…those children…and try to help them more. Instead, we ignored them. That’s sad

On the other side of us, “down the road”, was the Kucera family, one of the many Czech families in our area. Back then, we called them Bohemians. They had boys, I think 3 or 4. I remember the man’s name was Vit and one of the boy’s, my age, was Ronnie. Vit cussed and used profanity a lot…..said hell and damn about every other word (and worse), but it was just how he talked and we didn’t think much of it….just kind of got used to it. Mrs. Kucera was a little bitty woman who worked hard and moved around quickly. I remember that she was a really good cook, as were most of the Bohemian women. My first experience eating kolaches was probably in her kitchen. I remember watching her cook and do laundry and work in her vegetable and flower gardens. I spent lots of time with her. I don’t recall her first name, but back then, kids didn’t always know grown up’s first names…..we called them Mr. and Mrs. She was a really sweet, caring, busy lady. I especially liked and remember her sweet peas that grew on the hog wire fence. They were beautiful little flowers that were pastel colored and smelled wonderful. I have always wished I had a place to grow sweet peas. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any other than hers. I guess I spent more time at the Kucera’s house than any other besides ours. I just had brothers and the Kuceras just had boys, so I grew up around boys. I think that’s why I’m more comfortable around boys, and men, even now!

Our house, like all the others around us, was very simple. No air conditioning. Just one bathroom. A very busy kitchen. A vegetable garden. No clothes dryer. Clotheslines in the backyard. Oh, the smell of clean sheets…..stiff, but smelled so good. Hollyhocks straight and tall with gigantic pink blooms. Castor beans. A huge yard with big pecan trees. Screen doors. Dogs that never came in the house and ate only table scraps and what they could find on their own. Hens and roosters running freely in the backyard. I was deathly afraid of that mean rooster who seemed to sense that and loved to intimidate me. Watching Daddy ring the heads off chickens and then watching those dying chickens flop around the back yard. Then there was that awful smell of burning feathers and then picking off all those pin feathers until the chickens were clean enough to cook and eat. An oyster shell driveway. Shelling peas on the back porch with Daddy. There was a hole in one of the boards and when we got tired of shelling, Daddy showed me how to drop the unshelled peas in the hole, a few at a time, so we could get through quicker and Momma would never know! Well water. A cistern in the backyard where the grass was always a lot greener. The cistern had to be cleaned out sometimes and oh my goodness…that smell. The story goes that Johnny was carrying me when I was a baby and dropped me on my head over that cistern. A wood fenced “cow lot” in the back with a hay barn and calf pens and calf barns. I loved to play in the hay barn…climbing around all those bales of hay sometimes stacked up all the way to the rafters. And looking for the eggs that had been laid in the hay. We usually had one milk cow. I wasn’t very good at milking, but I did love helping mom make butter from the cream skimmed off the top. We made the butter in a big crock churn that had a long wooden paddle that we pushed up and down until the cream turned into butter. We did that right in the middle of the kitchen and little spatters of cream would fly all over the room and on us. I spent lots of time in the kitchen helping my mom cook, especially in the summer when we cooked and canned and froze lots of fresh vegetables.

I spent lots of time outside, alone, but keeping myself occupied and interested in everything going on around me. I can picture that backyard and hay barn like it was just yesterday. Running through the corn fields, when the stalks were way over my head and wondering if I would find my way out. Almost always bare footed. I remember catching lightning bugs at night and putting them in a jar. Playing jacks and getting really good at it. Playing hopscotch, not on a sidewalk with chalk, but just drawing it out in the dirt with my finger. I think about how our grandchildren don’t have these experiences and it makes me sad.
Our entire 37 acres (except for the house and yard) was barb wire fenced (we said bob wire, and still do) open pasture with pecan trees scattered along most of the side and back fence lines. Oh how I loved to pick up pecans in the fall, and still do! In the spring, the pasture was sprinkled with butter cups and dandelions and clover. I loved to sit in that soft, bright green clover and look for 4-leaf clovers. There were “woods” behind our fence line on the back that were daunting to me. I seldom went into those “woods” alone. I imagined “booger bears” in there….scarey things that would “get me”.

We had a two car detached garage. When we pulled into the garage after dark, I would run to the house as fast as I could….even after I started driving myself. I’ve always been scared of the dark. Speaking of driving…….my daddy taught me to drive his stick shift pick-up in the pasture when I was 9 years old. Then when I was 12, he let me drive to church in the car (always a Ford)…just a mile straight up the road to Iago. By the time I was 15, I was an experienced driver. When I was 15, my mom fell and broke her knee, so soon after that I drove to Wharton and got my hardship driver’s license. My sister-in-law, Vivian, went with me. I remember that I drove to Wharton and after we got to town, she said that she should probably be driving when we got to the courthouse. We were afraid that the man giving the driving test might see me driving and I would get in trouble. We stopped about a block or so from the courthouse and let her drive. I passed the test and then I drove home. I feel like I’ve been driving all my life!

Our telephone number was 17F11. We were on a “party line”…. a far cry from cell phones today. If you wanted to use the phone, you had to pick up the receiver and make sure none of the neighbors were talking on the phone. If they were, and you were bored or just nosey, you could just listen in on their conversation. When the line was “clear”, you would wait for the telephone operator (in the telephone office in Boling) to ask “number please?” Then you would tell her the telephone number you wanted to call. Or you could just tell her the name of the person you wanted to talk to. When I was in college, I would call my parents and the Boling operator and I would have a conversation. It would go something like this. “Lylabeth, I don’t think your parents are at home tonight. They’re not answering. Do you want me to try Johnny’s house and see if they are over there?” Johnny was my brother and of course she knew his number, too. This seemed very normal to me, but my college friends thought I was from “the sticks”. Apparently in Houston and Dallas their phone systems were a little more sophisticated.

Most of the females I was around were my mom’s friends. Mrs.Tabor (down the road) made the very best coffee cake I ever ate. I can still remember how it tasted! It was a square yeast bread with raisins, unlike any coffee cake I had ever eaten or have eaten since. Yum! She, too, had a huge vegetable garden and they grew unusual things like asparagus and broccoli. We didn’t grow things like that. I was so fascinated by those strange vegetables. I had only seen asparagus in a can and not very often at that! We visited her quite often. Mrs. Dawson lived just past her on our side of the road. They made tamales every year, using their big black pot to boil the hog heads. They came to our house sometimes and helped us make tamales out in our pasture near the house. Mrs. Dawson was Grandpa Barnhill’s sister, Art’s great aunt Myrtle. Art says he doesn’t recall getting any of those tamales. Guess you had to be a neighbor to get in on that.


I went to the Iago School from first grade through 7th grade. I rode the school bus that stopped in front of my house. My first grade teacher was Miss Haney. She later married Mrs. Tabor’s son. Mrs. Donaldson was my music teacher at the Iago School. She was Art’s great aunt Wilma, Grandma Barnhill’s sister-in-law. She really stirred my interest in music and bragged on my singing. She allowed me to be the “star” singer in a school music program and even compared me to Jaye P. Morgan, a popular young female vocalist at the time. She had me sing “Silver Bells” in a Christmas program. My daddy realized that I needed a piano and bought me one when I was 6. I still have that piano today. I started taking piano lessons when I was in first grade and always wished I could play like Mrs. Donaldson. She was a very outgoing woman, a dynamic personality, who loved to sing and play the piano with passion. She had no children of her own, but it was so obvious that she loved children and loved music, loved life and loved the Lord. She didn’t just teach us songs, but music theory. And she didn’t just teach us music, but patriotism and life and God and so much more. I had been so very, very shy and she was responsible for bringing me out of that. I remember the mimeographed sheets (I still remember how they smelled) she gave us in music class. The bottom half had a song with the words and the music notes and the top half had a picture that we could color that tied in with that song. My favorite things….music and coloring. Since Mrs. Donaldson was a part of my family after Art and I married, I was privileged to see her once in a while and when I did, we always had a joyous reunion and I was able to tell her how much she meant to me. She would tell me that I was one of her favorite students and she always wanted to know what I was doing “musically”. She was so excited when I told her that I played the piano at church. She would be so proud to know that we have a “musical son”. I also remember that right outside our class rooms, we could see hummingbirds flying around all the flowers. Oh how I loved to watch those hummingbirds. I was fascinated by them. I have nothing but good memories of the Iago School.

There wasn’t much in Iago when I was growing up.…the Iago Federated Church, the Iago Elementary School, Pickett’s Feed Store, Mick’s Grocery and some houses. That’s about all we needed. .The Iago Post Office was inside Mick’s Grocery. Mick’s was like something you see in an old movie….an old brick building, very worn wooden floors, kind of dark, wooden display cases with glass tops and sides, big glass candy jars, a big red coca-cola box that you lifted the lid and slid the bottle down by it’s top until it lifted out, an old time cash register, and we charged things there. We just said “put it on our ticket”. They also had a couple of gas pumps outside. We had a post office box there. Our box number was 45, so our address was P.O. Box 45, Iago, Texas.. We went there every day (except Sunday) to get the mail and buy a few groceries. My mom never bought a lot at one time. We just bought things as we needed them. Sometime in 1964 or 1965 a lot of smaller post offices were closed and Iago was one of them. I remember that happened when I was in college and my friends made fun of me for that. They couldn’t imagine being from such a small town that they closed the post office. After that, our mail was delivered to a mail box on the road by our house and our address changed to Rt. 1, Box 80, Boling, Texas.

Boling was just a mile or so down the road. That’s where I went to eighth grade and high school. We were the Boling Bulldogs. Our colors were green and white. I was very active in school activities. I played basketball and played alto sax in the band….first chair alto sax when I was a senior. I tried out for twirler at the end of eighth grade and made it! I was twirler in 9th and 10th grades, head twirler my junior year and drum major my senior year. I participated in band and twirling contests and won medals in those. Leading the Boling High School band out onto the field at halftime, is one of those special times that I’ll never forget. I can almost hear the announcer saying “now forming at the north end of Kyle Field”. Oops, wait a minute. It was more like “the Boling High School Band, under the direction of Drum Major Lylabeth Joyce”. I would do my little fanfare and off we would go. Pretty cool. I was active in FHA (Future Homemakers of America) and won honors in that organization, achieving the state homemaker award and others. I was on the staff of the school newspaper.

Boling had a few churches, a grocery store (Ashmore’s), and a couple of places to eat. Johnson’s Café was known for their good hamburgers. Art and I still talk about Johnson’s good greasy hamburgers. The Savoy Café had great plate lunches. I ate there lots of times at lunch when I was in high school. I remember the food being really good….just like home cooked. There were several gas stations and the Dairy Treat. In my early years, Boling even had a movie theater. We would take 10 cents and buy a movie ticket for 9 cents and have a penny left for the gum ball machine. Also in my early years, there was Greathouse Drug Store with board sidewalks outside of it. I loved to go there and get tutti frutti ice cream. Just a few doors down from that was Mrs. Beck’s 5 & 10 Store. It was just a tiny white frame building, but packed with things I loved to look at.

Then if you couldn’t find what you needed in Boling, you had to drive 8 or 10 miles up the road to Wharton, the county seat, a small town on the Colorado River. We would go there to go to the movies after the movie theater closed in Boling. Wharton had two theaters, the Rio and the Plaza. When I needed to buy clothes (that I couldn’t make) we shopped at Joe Schwartz and charged our purchases there, too. Wharton was where we banked and went to the doctor. There were two newspapers, the Wharton Spectator and the Wharton Journal. Wharton had three drugstores, Vineyards, Outlars and Rugleys. My daddy sometimes took me to Vineyards or Outlars to get a malt. That was a real treat!

Growing up in Iago, Texas was great. I never dreamed of living anywhere else. I wouldn’t change it for anything. One of the biggest influences in my life there was the Iago Federated Church. It deserves its own chapter, so I’ll save that for later. Also, 4-H played a huge part in my life and who I am today. More on that later, too.