Shankleville Oral History Project
TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEWEE: Larutha Clay
INTERVIEWER: Dan K. Utley
DATE: June 16, 2002
PLACE: Odom family home, Shankleville, Newton County, Texas
TRANSCRIBER: Justin Snider
Edited by interviewee

(TAPE 1 OF 1, SIDE A BEGINS)

Dan K. Utley: This is Dan Utley, oral historian from Austin, Texas. Today is June 16, 2002. It’s Father’s Day -- it’s Sunday. I am interviewing for the first time Mrs. Larutha Clay of -- where do you live?

Larutha Clay: Beaumont, Texas.

Utley: Beaumont, Texas. Okay. But, we are in the Shankleville Community in Newton County. This is a series, hopefully, that will continue to record the history of the Shankleville Community. Let’s start off with, first of all, where you got the name Larutha. Where did that come from? That’s an unusual name.

Clay: Yes. My mother had three daughters, and we were all Oletha, Arzela, and Larutha, and symmetrically speaking poetry. I don’t know how she got them all symmetrically right. And I found out later when we started gathering names that Pate Shankle had an aunt —- or somebody that was named ‘Laruth.’ The ‘a’ was not on there, ‘Laruth.’ I guess that came from French.

Utley: Okay.

Clay: You know, that Laruth.

Utley: It sounds French.

Clay: Yes, and that’s why I think a lot of people write my name, they want to use the capital ‘r’ and just end it with ‘Laruth.’ But I don’t know how she decided to put the ‘Larutha’ on there.

Utley: Now your maiden name was --

Clay: Odom.

Utley: Odom. Okay.

Clay: Right, yes.

Utley: And one of the reasons we are here today is the Odom family reunion.

Clay: Right.

Utley: So, tell me who your parents were.

Clay: Addie and Alvah Odom.

Utley: Okay. And that’s Big Mama and Big Papa?

Clay: Big Mama and Big Papa.

Utley: All right. Let’s start with Big Papa. And tell me, when I ask you about what he looked liked, what do you remember? How do you remember him?

Clay: He was not too tall —- solid, stout, and reddish. Light skin, but sort of reddish with it. He had a bald head all the time I knew him. Jovial, he just was a sweetie pie. Just find jokes about anything. There was something last night on the tape all about how he (my soon-to-be husband) had to corner him down to ask him to let him marry me. He just found some place to go day long. (Utley laughs) And that was, I guess Christmas Day, and he finally had to go to bed. He slept in the same room as the fireplace where we all sat there and visited and that’s how he caught him. So, he was happy--

Utley: What did he say when he asked him?

Clay: Happy-go-lucky. He stuttered, and he could stutter to his advantage when he wanted to.

Utley: Your father?

Clay: My father. He started off saying, like he wanted to say she and he switched over to her (both laugh). But he still was reluctant about it, and my mother just cried because he was asking me to marry him. But he was just a happy-go-lucky person. He had a nickname for everybody, teased everybody, made everybody feel so special.

Utley: Give some examples of his nicknames for people.

Clay: Well I was “Baby Ruth.” I was always Baby Ruth to the older generation. Lareatha walked in here one day and said, “Oh, I’m so sick of these two. I don’t know what the next generation is going to do.” And they laughed and told her, “Your generation is what we’re worried about.” (Utley laughs) He called her “Generation”. He called Oletha ‘Klank’ -- I don’t how he got ‘Klank’ from Oletha. He used to have a nickname for everybody, even those people in the community. He was just a happy-go-lucky person, and just willing to give -- like he made a joke about his name. “My name is ‘Odom’ but I don’t ‘owe them (owe’m) -- I pay them.’ (Utley laughs) My name doesn’t suggest that I
owe a lot of people.” He was just a sweetie pie. And I was always so inclined to “over love” him and not love my mother as much. And I got paid back when Lareatha was born, because she loves her daddy. (both laugh) But I had to accept it.

Utley: How many children were in the family?

Clay: Eight.

Utley: Okay. There were three boys, three girls, and then two boys, is that right?

Clay: Right.

Utley: So how did the girls get along with him? Did he treat each of them differently? Was he closer to some than others?

Clay: I was his special. Oh, I was his special. We were talking about it last night abou -- I knew I was his special too, and my second sister was lazy. She didn’t want to do anything.

Utley: Give me her name. You’ve got to give her name.

Clay: Arzela. (both laugh) And she just could always find a way to get out of work. Each person had to take a row to hoe -- where you chop weeds out --

Utley: Just in the garden?

Clay: It was a field. We had fields all around, any place you could find them.
Utley: What would you be raising in these fields?

Clay: Corn, peas, and cotton -- I remember cotton. We were talking about it last night. We had a government project where you raise string beans and cucumbers and take them to a certain place to market them.

Utley: So you’re out there, and she’s not doing her work with the hoe?

Clay: Right. And see, I was the youngest, so the other two were out there playing. I was supposed to help her keep up her row -- She and I were supposed to hoe this one row -- and she knew I was coming so she would just talk -- just pick up a hoe and keep up with the crowd and talk and talk. So one day, I just decided I just wouldn’t hoe the row. He threshed me with a switch -- he pulled the switches down. Oh that hurt -- she made up a song. You know we were talking about it last night. Every time someone would come to play with us, she’d say, “Let’s have a program.” And the first thing on the program was
her solo. And it was about, “When we were down in the bottom, we had to hoe some corn.” And she would go on step—by—step about that with me. (both laugh) I think my feelings were hurt. I don’t remember him hurting anything. It was sibling rivalry.

Utley: Did you ever feel like you did anything that disappointed him?

Clay: No.

Utley: You were always the apple of his eye?

Clay: He thought I liked to talk, and I he said I would argue with the signboard. I just liked to be argumentative.

Utley: Well, that explains some things that I -- that explains a lot of things. (both laugh)

Clay: Yeah, I did my side of it. Mama didn’t want you to express yourself. She wanted you to accept without complaints. Whatever she said you just had to do it, and you couldn’t even hum or sing for an hour, because then that was just brushing off what she said under the rug. (both laugh)

Utley: Your dad, how did he work with other people? Tell me about some of the stories you remember about how he worked with other folks.

Clay: Okay.

Utley: Maybe through the store or -—

Clay: Yes, he had a carpentry crew. Wiergate is a little sawmill that was close by, and he got a job working with maintenance people, I suppose. They owned those little houses, all of the houses.

Utley: They owned the whole town.

Clay: And back in those days they had the white quarters, and the Mexican quarters, and the black quarters, and Daddy worked with -- I think this man was named Mr. Nolan -- who was in charge of maintenance, and he taught Daddy how to flush a flue. I don’t know if you know what that is? Just put that tin and stuff around the pipe, just to get into the top of the house to let the smoke out of a heater. And there is a certain way you can put that tin around there to block out a fire because that pipe is hot. And so he learned
how to do that with this man named Mr. Nolan, and he just started doing other repair jobs, then he got his own carpentry crew. I’ve got some pictures standing by the truck -—he got a truck -- with A. T. Odom name on it. That is the truck we had to get on the back and ride to go to these other communities to singing conventions and church activities.
The other children enjoyed it, but I resented getting my hair all fixed and my clothes all clean and sitting on the back of that truck going to church (Utley laughs) with the wind blowing. But, he had a successful carpentry crew. But he had fun with those guys.

Utley: Who were his best friends?

Clay: I guess the people in the community, those people who worked with him, these young boys that he brought up like Monroe Knighton that ended up owning a funeral home in Beaumont, he taught him. Well he taught in a CCC camp, too.

Utley: Your father did?

Clay: Yes, he taught.

Utley: Oh, tell me about that.

Clay: He had a sixth grade education, but he ended up to be an expert in his carpentry. He’d build houses -- we could just pass by a house in Jasper and -- he couldn’t read a blueprint. He was a contractor who could build the image in his mind. If he ever understood what you wanted, then he could do it. My husband was an architect and he was a mechanical engineer and sort of smattered in all of it, and he would draw blueprints for people, the churches and so on. He drew a blueprint for our house, and my daddy couldn’t read the blueprint, but I knew how he wanted it. So I just took him in the car and
showed him the Gaidry’s house with that roof -- the way we wanted it. He went back to the house under construction and did it, but he couldn’t read the blueprint, but he just was an expert.

Utley: Tell me about the CCC. I didn’t know about the CCC here. That’s the Civilian Conservation Corp.

Clay: Yes, it came out during World War II when Roosevelt was trying to put some young men to work. CCC Camps were in areas that needed roads so that fire trucks could get through back up in the country.

Utley: Okay.

Clay: So they would give these boys some other things to equip them for life, and one of the things they wanted was to teach them carpentry. Men were just expected to use a saw and the hammer, and that is what he taught.

Utley: Where was the camp?

Clay: The camp was out from Newton, between Newton and Kirbyville. Right out of
Newton on the Kirbyville highway. What is that highway?

Utley: Texas Highway 87.

Clay: 87. That’s 87. I think it’s a Baptist encampment there now. People down in the Beaumont area come up there.

Utley: Now was your father in the CCC or did he --

Clay: No, he was here living in the community. They just employed him -- it was so unusual that they would employ him to go out there, because he had no formal education even though he had taught carpentry in a public school. Enterprise School was a school right here, right here where this graveyard is extended down here now, and Daddy taught those guys up here. I saw a little minister at a reception at my sister’s church, and he said all he knows about up keep at his house he learned it from my father.

Utley: Now he taught carpentry at the school?

Clay: Yes — with his sixth grade education -- just one period in the evening. Just like they have agriculture one period, then they would have wood-working one period in the evening. I don’t know how much theory he could teach them, but he could really teach the manual part of it.

Utley: Tell me about his relationship with the church, how he worked in the church.

Clay: He was just beautiful. He led songs, and we were talking about that at our Friday night session about how he taught oral singing with shaped notes -- that’s what they should have said -- oral singing with shaped notes where we didn’t have any musical
instruments, and you had to recognize --

Utley: Is that because the musical instruments weren’t allowed in the church?

Clay: Just didn’t have any.

Utley: Because some churches don’t have musical instruments.

Clay: Right, I know that. But no, we just didn’t have any musical instruments. We would just sing the notes, “do, ra, me, fa, so, la, ti, do.” Those make you run the scales, then you could recognize those and what lines they’re on, and you were supposed to be able to do that -- what is it ‘sightseeing’? ‘Sightsinging’?

Utley: Some people call it ‘sacred harp.’

Clay: Is that right? Well he taught that, and that was one of the questions, “What two things did he teach?” He taught the singing, and he taught woodworking.

Utley: Well talking about teaching, what did he teach you in life? What did you learn from him? Tell me some of the lessons he taught you.

Clay: Nobody else has given you all of that. He just taught me to tell the truth, and to be myself. I started teaching living in this house with them -— I was teaching in that community over there in Liberty.

Utley: Liberty?

Clay: Liberty Community.

Utley: Okay.

Clay: Right after you get on 87, you go like two and a half miles and there’s a little community over here. And by my living here with him, he just taught me how to get along with those people because the principal was my uncle (Utley laughs) and it was just a new experience for me to be in this area where educated blacks were not accepted. And it was just a new experience for me, and he tried to bridge the gap because he knew all of my cousins and kinfolk that I was teaching, and they were trying to -- I was trying to be a
professional at the same time deal with my kin. And he taught me how to deal with that, and then my mother’s brother was the principal --

Utley: Well, would you sit down and talk to him about this?

Clay: Oh yes, sit out there in that swing, and sometimes I’d look up to the 87 and say if I could drive up here and sit in this swing, I’d talk to him about this problem I had. (Utley laughs) He was just “a hands-on man”, and he just knew the answer to all your problems.

Utley: Did you ever see him mad?

Clay: No, I don’t think he ever got angry. I don’t know if anyone has told you that his mother died when he was like twelve; his father died when he was fourteen. He took over the family at fourteen. He took over the family -- at the time there were seven of them. He and the older sister raised those other five under him. He took on the job at fourteen.

Utley: You said he got a sixth grade education because he had to help the family. Did any of your family, though, try to drop out of school?

Clay: No.

Utley: Would he have allowed that?

Clay: No, it was never thought of. His way of thinking was we were going to get it because he didn’t. There were other people in the community just didn’t make their kids get it. In later years, I would interrogate the former principal of the school, and he could tell me the children whose fathers would keep them at home to plow. If it was rainy day, they could go to school, but if the sun came out in the middle of the day, they’d come and get them from school. They had to go home and do their work. I compared the way we came up -- and I don’t see how those children liked us -- because we had more advantages than they did. And now since they are adults, they don’t resent us. They don’t resent the Odom children. We had the store, and Daddy had some means of traveling. We had the radio, and everybody would gather so we could listen to Joe Louis fights. Children now days resent those who have. Today, the children resent the haves, but not then. The reason I question, the skin color. They didn’t let us know about skin color. Somebody was saying in church that skin color made a difference in racial attitudes. Shankleville did not teach that. (Utley laughs) We hadn’t found out there was such a thing as light skin and dark skin until we got out of this community. They just taught us
that people were just people.

Utley: When were you confronted with the differences of people -- the gaps people put between themselves?

Clay: I don’t know because I went to an all black college. I don’t know, after the schools were integrated I guess, because we were brainwashed into thinking everybody in white schools came on time, had the materials to work with, was dedicated and energetic -- we were just brainwashed to feel that way -- and then when we found out that people are just people.

Utley: How did your dad and mother meet? Do you remember how they met? (laughter) Have I asked you something I shouldn’t have? (Utley laughs)

Clay: No, no I don’t think she’s [Lareatha] heard this story. They played at the school, and the boys on one side and the girls on the other side. And so they had a game riding horse, where one boy would get on his all fours and the other would get up on his back, and he said “Get up horse! Get up horse!” And they’d ride around, and play little chit chat games with the girls that the boy on the horse admired. So, this boy on the horse went up to my mother and tried to flirt with her and so on, and she said, “Well you know what? I think I’d rather have the horse.” (Utley laughs) And Daddy got up and said, “Her-
her-here’s your horse.” (both laugh)

Utley: How old was he at that time?

Clay: I guess he must have been eleven, because he quit school at fourteen. Around eleven or twelve -- I don’t know, but it was before he was fourteen because the courtship did not develop until he started working to take care of his family. I believe he was a brakeman on the train -- the job at fourteen, and he got his leg broke. And when he got his leg broke --

Utley: Where was he a brakeman? Up here at Wiergate?

Clay: Wiergate, yes. And when he got his leg broke, then -- What was that lady’s name? The lady in Beaumont? Was married to Elzie -- that’s how Elzie got his name from that lady’s son, and she took him to her house in Liberty and'took care of him until the train -— the train didn’t run every day, from up here to Beaumont -- he had to go down there to
get his leg set.

Utley: How did he break his leg?

Clay: On the train -- something about that train -- I’ve forgotten what they said happened when that train -- he was going to put those logs up on the train. I guess he mishandled that, and it broke eight, fourteen -- anything could have happened, you know. But he got his leg broke, and while --

Utley: But there was no doctor out here that could help him?

Clay: No, no.

Utley: Even the sawmill doctor wouldn’t?

Clay: No, I guess he couldn’t set the leg. So they sent him to Beaumont to get the leg set, and that was when my mother was able to show him some attention. She started fixing him some boxes of delicacies how we used to have boxed suppers, where the girl would fix the boxes and take them to a program or general assembly, and the girl would try to pick the guy she wanted to buy her box. They would sit down and eat this lunch together. Well she was able -- her daddy would let her send him boxes through -- I don’t know how she sent them. I guess by -- I can’t think of their name now -- but, Mrs. Eugene White’s mother’s sister, Simon Lewis’s daughter. And that’s how Mama started sending
him -- Eddie. Eddie figured in some kind of way. They’d put the stuff in the box and decorate it up with trinkets and little sweeties and stuff like that, and that’s how this courtship really developed.

Utley: How long did they court before they got married? Years?

Clay: No, no, no. No, because he inherited all of these sisters and brothers to take care of. He needed a wife (both laugh). My mother, yes she was a worker, oh she was a worker. Loved to work, and thought everybody else should love to work. And so, she got out of her mother and daddy’s house and came over and took over his house with sisters and brothers.

Utley: How old was she when they married?

Clay: She was twenty-two -- that’s right he was twenty-two. That’s right, they were twenty-two, so this did not happen right after his father died -- his father must have died when he was twelve, and his mother at fourteen -- so this was twenty-two when they got married. So maybe it was to closer to 1908 when he got his leg broke, but -—

Utley: Did he serve in the military?

Clay: No, he didn’t serve in the military. That was during the time of World War I, wasn’t it? No he didn’t serve in the military because he got married —- no, he got married in ’15 -- so that was really before World War I. 1921, right?

Utley: Well, ‘18.

Clay: Well, he got married in 1915. Harold was born in 1917. Some people want to say he got married in ’16, but see that was one month after the wedding in 1916, so Harold was born in 1917, and ST. in ’18, so he had children every year, so I guess they wouldn’t have taken him in the military.

Utley: Yeah. How did he and your mother get along? How did they work together?

Clay: He was so submissive. I wouldn’t say he was henpecked, but she just had her way. She was just was a dominate, (laughs) and I’m not talking about in a negative way, but I guess I’m just saying she was a “take-charge” person.

Utley: What was her maiden name?

Clay: Lewis. Addie Lewis.

Utley: Addie Lewis Odom.

Clay: And when he asked my grandfather to marry, he said, “You are getting the best hoe hand.” (both laugh). Hoe hand, that’s all he thought about. Children were made to work.

Utley: Describe her. Tell me what she looked like physically.

Clay: I look like her, except she was browner. She was brown. I don’t think she ever got as stout as I am now. But she was browner, and not too much taller -- maybe a little taller-- but she just had a commanding eye. When she told you something, you knew she meant to it.

Utley: Give me an example of how she could work you.

Clay: She could sit up here in church, and if you were doing something you knew you shouldn’t do, she’d just turn around and give you the eye. You just can’t describe it. It wasn’t a mean eye, but it was a determined eye. (Utley laughs) You knew you weren’t supposed to do that. And she would do that same way when she was soliciting funds for homecoming. We laugh about that -- quiver in her eye would make people give her more money. You talk about people don’t give you money, when you solicit with her, Mama would just -- she just had a commanding eye.

Utley: What gave her that authority? Where did she get that?

Clay: Now Mr. Simmons the former principal at Enterprise School told me she bossed her daddy. The question came up about where my grandfather sold his mineral rights to his property, to the land over there. And Mr. Simmons said, ‘Well, I guess Mrs. Odom told him because she just had a way of dealing with her father.’ She’d talk him into doing it. She’d brag about it; let me take care of Daddy, as if to say the other three can deal with Mama.

Utley: Well you kind of were the special one for your dad, who was the special one for you mom?

Clay: Lee, my baby brother Lee -- the apple of her eye. Yes, special, very special.

Utley: He couldn’t do anything wrong?

Clay: Not then. Never, never. He’s the one that passed away when -- My oldest brother passed first in ’77, and Lee passed away -- I believe ’97 come to think of it -- but he had Alzheimer’s. Smart -- he was smart -- he just lost his IQ. His IQ just got lower and lower. But yes, he could do no wrong.

Utley: But, your mother was the disciplinarian? How would she discipline you?

Clay: With a or stick or switch -- that’s what they called it, switch. You could go out there to one of these of bushes and pull one off, and if you got one too small for her, then she’d go get it. (Utley laughs)

Utley: If she had to go get it, she was even madder.

Clay: Oh yes. She got a bigger one than you could imagine. I tell my husband all of the time, he needed my mother in his life because his mother would tell him to do it fifty times, and maybe he would put it off and delay it and not do it at all. My grandson does that too -- he just can connive, but not with my mother. She meant do it now, not after a while.

Utley: What did she expect of you? How did she control you?

Clay: She really didn’t have to control me. I had two sisters who were older. I was the third girl, and they were partners. They were a few months -- ten or eleven months apart -- they did everything together, dressed alike and everything. I was just sort of a loner, so she just didn’t have to control me. I guess I was “Miss Goody Two Shoes.”

END OF SIDE A, TAPE 1 OF 1