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 B CONTINUES)


Utley: Let’s go back to the nickel thing. I don’t know about this.

Clay: Well last night we were talking -- the six of us that are left were reminiscing about what happened -- and my sister remembered that we had a little store out there, and she said my mother sent the mayor (Elzie Odom) -- that you just talked to -- out there to get the change box, and Elzie hid a nickel under the steps and brought the change box to Mama and said, “I believe I’ll go look for some money.” And he went out there and found the nickel. I think Elzie was too intelligent to do that at four years old. I just don’t
remember it. It may have happened, but I don’t remember it. S. T. would take more money than that. He would just take money to buy his drinks. And then when he came

back, we found out that he was buying the bootleg liquor. And somebody in the
community, the upstanding people didn’t know it was bootlegging, except for him, and tried to collect the debt. (laughs).

Utley: Somebody in Shankleville was bootlegging?

Clay: Yes. (both laugh)

Utley: Your brother S. T. left in the thirties to go to California.

Clay: Right.

Utley: How old was he at that time? You think he was born in 1918, so --

Clay: S. T. was born in 1918, so he left in the thirties he’d be --

Utley: So, he was about twenty years old.

Clay: Okay.

Utley: Did he leave mainly because of that because he was under a lot of pressure here?

Clay: Right, yes. I don’t know if he left with their blessing -- I don’t think he sneaked off because he went out there to stay with my uncle for a while in Arizona. Then he left there and went on to California. I think that’s where he was, but he didn’t come to here until ’47. Somebody said he left in the thirties? He didn’t come back until ’47 when he married Ivey. When he married his second wife, she started bringing him home, and that’s how we started family reunions in 1947.

Utley: ’49 is what I heard. Tell me more about your mother. Could she sing? Did she like music?

Clay: She couldn’t sing as well as Dad. She sort of had that hoarseness in her voice like I have, and she couldn’t make the notes real well, but he could really sing. She would sing congregational songs, but I don’t remember her being in the choir at all. She could speak well, she could express herself well in teaching Sunday school lessons, mission lesson, and so on.

Utley: By the way, you taught a wonderful lesson. That was very interesting. Do you do that a lot?

Clay: Thank you. I do it every family reunion. I teach Sunday school every Sunday. It is a challenge for me say something to these young folks because they look all clean and dressed up there today, but we have some rascals in the family. (Utley laughs) That’s my chance to tell them. And I meet them out there on the yard, they kiss me good-bye, I reiterate and try to keep them straight because they want it now.

Utley: Yeah.

Clay: They don’t want to work their way in. It is a challenge for me to try to saysomething that would meet all of those different personalities that we have. I work hard on it.

Utley: When you are teaching the young people, do you feel like you can hear your mother in you sometimes?

Clay: Yes.

Utley: How does that work?

Clay: It works fine because I know I’m pleasing her. In the end, she started calling me her “beloved daughter,” because I took care of her. I just retired early -- she had cancer of the uterus —— and I was with her to take the treatments and everything, and yes I hear her when I start talking to my children. I hear her when I try not to push them, because that is the way she knew how to do. And it’s not that she wanted to push, but that’s the way she
was pushed. So now we’ve come along, we’ve learned some psychology, we try to wait for them to want to do it, try to motivate them.

Utley: Was she more like her father or her mother?

Clay: Like her father.

Utley: Her father was a strong-willed man?

Clay: Right. Her mother was submissive to the strong husband. She took more like her father.

Utley: Did you ever make your mother mad?

Clay: Yes.

Utley: What did you do?

Clay: It was easy to make her mad. I just would say it. I just would tell her I didn’t think that was fair -- what she did or what she said or the way she treated other children. Now, my sister was saying today, “She let you play basketball -- she didn’t let us play basketball.” I just had to negotiate. I just had to convince her that I didn’t want to play basketball to go out there and get into drinking and smoking and sexual activity. She just learned to trust me, so I just didn’t have to. But they didn’t put forth that effort.

Utley: Well, somebody said today that if she were still around there wouldn’t be all of these ladies out there with shorts or pants on, and she didn’t believe in --

Clay: No. And as soon as the preacher left, they changed the music from religious music to bebop. She wouldn’t have let that get through. I started watching for her to come across that field for the radio. (both laugh) [She is buried in the cemetery in front of the Odom residence].

Utley: When did she get to be Big Mama?

Clay: When the grandchildren started coming -- in 1940 I believe it was -- that’s a term used in the black community --

Utley: Well, there is always somebody -- in any community, there is somebody that kind of sets the tone for everything. I don’t think there is a woman around here that rivaled her.

Clay: No.

Utley: She was it for the whole community.

Clay: Most of the other women were was in a different age bracket.

Utley: There’s a term “high toned” woman. You know somebody who knows what’s
right and what’s wrong and they’re going to be the example for the community. That’s what she was. So, she would reprimand somebody that wasn’t her kid?

Clay: Right. Oh yes. I’d like for him to see some of those -- that thing the lady did on the radio. She did that series of her. You’ve seen those? Okay. And Joan McBride will be writing a book about Big Mama. She stayed with her to do her research report. Well, she’s supposed to be writing a book about that. Somebody put out a book The Teacake Lady; she was known for making teacakes.

Utley: Tell about the teacakes. First of all, since the people listening to this may not know what a teacake is, tell me first what that is.

Clay: It’s a cake you serve with tea, that’s the way we use it. And it’s just nothing but a cookie that’s --

Utley: It has pretty simple ingredients doesn’t it?

Clay: Yes, simple ingredients.

Utley: What are the ingredients? Put you on the spot.

Clay: I have a little book with that, too. We’ll send you that, with all the ingredients and the procedures to use it. Now the men in the family did a videotape of her doing it before she passed away. And a lot of the men in the family can make it better than we can. I can’t because of my carpel tunnel syndrome -- I just don’t have the dexterity to manipulate the dough, and it’s skill more than the ingredients. It’s skill working in these ingredients one by one and ending up with that ball of dough. And I think the thing that makes it different from a cookie -- well I guess a cookie can roll it out and then shape it with those --

Lareatha Clay: He makes the teacakes.

Clay: Yeah he is the teacake man. (laughs)

Utley: Say your name for the tape.

Harold Odom: I am Harold Odom Jr.

Utley: Harold Odom Jr., and you are the keeper of the teacake recipe?
Odom: It appears that way. (all laugh)

Utley: How did that happen?

Odom: Well, my grandmother Big Mama came down to Houston -- what year was that, Aunt Larutha, when you came down for evaluation and treatment there?

Clay: About in ’86.

Odom: ’86?

Clay: October of ’86.

Odom: I convinced her to stay out with me to take treatments, and we took her back and forth to the treatment center. One day we were talking about teacakes, and I said ‘Big Mama when was last time you baked them teacakes?’ And she said, ‘Well, it’s been a while. But I would like to make some if you got the stuff.’ I said, ‘All right, we’ll get it.’ So, I had her tell me what she thought she needed, and I wrote down a shopping list and looked through the cabinet and got all of the stuff she needed. I grabbed my video camera
and set up in the kitchen. I said, ‘I want to just videotape you making these teacakes.’ She started making teacakes, and I said, ‘What you doing? Tell me what you’re doing.’ She said, ‘Well, I’m putting in a cup of this, two eggs and beat this and put this in.’ She was telling me stuff and reaching for more than she was actually saying. So she made the teacakes, and we rolled them out and baked them, and they were Big Mama’s teacakes. And then so, I tried to interpret the recipe from what she said the recipe was and tried them, and they didn’t work quite that way. So, I took the videotape and sat down and
analyzed what she did. Every time she reached and said you put a cup, she would reach back and put a little more than a cup (Clay laughs) I added that to it. And when she said put this in and the texture of the dough and how you roll it out, and then I finally got it down to like Big Mama’s teacake recipe. And most people who eat them, and have eaten them over the years, think it’s not quite Big Mama’s, but it’s a reasonable interpretation of Big Mama’s.

Utley: What are you guys missing?

Odom: I don’t know, probably something in her hands, her skin texture. Who knows? (all laugh) But for what I remember them being, it’s pretty doggone close. And folks in Houston trying to tell me I ought to sell them commercially. Sell Big Mama’s East Texas teacakes.

Utley: What do you remember about Big Mama?

Odom: You don’t got enough tapes. (all laugh)

Utley: I’ve got about fifteen minutes. You got a good long story to tell?

Odom: Oh man.

Utley: What are some of the stories you remember about her?

Odom: I just remember coming down spending the summers with Big Mama, and the
fact -- teaching work ethic and how to work. And she would trick us into working. She’d tell you about how smart, ‘Oh, you’re so smart.’ And, that would just get your ego going, and you would work harder. You would just be picking peas faster and chopping harder, and she would just say, ‘Oh, look at those boys work! They’re sure smart.’ We stayed the summer. I remember laying in the bed in there and black dark outside, and you’d hear feet to the floor -- baboom, baboom, baboom -- Big Mama walking through the house into the kitchen. We’d pop out of bed.

Utley: It would be total dark?

Odom: It didn’t make no difference because we had to by the time its
dark in the afternoon we’re in the best seat. (all laugh) Because when it got dark there wasn’t no neighborhood theater and multi-screen cinemas and stuff like that. It was an old brown -- I guess it was an Emerson radio -- with a big old dial, and we sat there and listened to radio show Fibber McGee and Molly and all of those mysteries and sit in that room in there listening. After bathing in the tin #2 washtub. (all laugh) You didn’t change the water. We were down here, we would go everywhere with her. She was able to coral us. We were probably some of the baddest grandkids she had. But she was able --

Utley: What did you do?

Odom: One day when they killed cows -- cows, we came to learn, mourn when a little cow died; they’d smell the blood. They’d come around, paw the ground, act crazy, and carry on. And they killed a beef down there one year, and they hauled off the pine needles that caught the blood, but they dripped some out front. Next thing we knew all the cows in the neighborhood showed up. This was open range territory back then with the little highway that had cattle guards at all the entrances so all of the people’s cows ranged open. And out there showed up, it seemed like twenty or thirty or forty cows and bulls just running around out there and acting crazy. Well I grab my red shirt -- I’m going to be a bullfighter. I run out there, jumping around, and it ran me up a tree. Big Mama came out with her broom, hit those cows, ‘Get out of the way,’ and all the bulls part, she just beat them out left, and she got me out of the tree, got me inside and just wore my butt out. Well for going out there! She was glad she saved me, I wasn’t hurt, but she wore me out. (Utley laughs) Then one time, me and my brothers were wrestling and jumping around in the room, and Big Mama in the kitchen said, ‘Look out in there!’ So we ran to the window and we said, ‘We don’t see nothing.’ She heard us. The next thing I knew, she was on top of us with that switch, ‘I’ll teach you to smart me off.’ We remember that about Big Mama. She was a loving, caring --

Utley: Tell me about the humorous side of her.

Odom: The humorous side is that she would discipline us. She would see the humor, but she wouldn’t let it slide. Even when she’d think it was funny, she would have to spank us. She’d have that little ‘I’m spanking you, but I’m laughing’ type technique. It wasn’t an angry type of spank. It was discipline, and she said, ‘I’ve seen everything these crazy boys do.’ But she was humorous, but she was a serious person. She was very real.

Utley: It sounds likes she had real strong convictions about what was right and what was wrong.

Odom: That’s putting it mildly. (all laugh) It wasn’t that she knew, she wrote was right and wrong. It was amazing to us how the people in the community looked at her. You could just look at looks on their eyes when they would come by, and the respect they would give her when they were talking to her. She didn’t -- they grew up right out here, so this was no palace and fancy place, but everybody just seemed to respect her and her opinion and her leadership. I never heard anyone cross with her. Never heard her cross with anybody. She would get upset about something. We remember her talking about it down at church with the people, but never an argument --

Utley: Did anybody ever cross her? Or were there people she didn’t like?

Odom: I can’t think of anybody.

Clay: I can’t think of anybody. She found out later that there was one lady in the community she didn’t invite to the wedding, and she quickly explained how she missed that lady and this was said to somebody. And she sent an apology to Miss Lucinda because she missed her. That was a big deal to miss somebody like that. No, she wasn’t challenged at all. (all laugh)

Odom: She taught us so many things, but how to “make do” with stuff.

Clay: That’s it.

Odom: You look down here, and I can look back at the things that happened --
wheelbarrows, how they were put together. What they were made out of. The fact that what came out of the kitchen -- wasn’t no garbage, no garbage disposal. It was eaten, went to slop trough, went into the chicken pen, went into the fertilizer deal. They would kill chickens and plant the entrails under stuff they were planting in the garden to make them grow. Her expression that I always remember was, ‘A willful waste makes a woeful want.’ That’s something I always thought in my life. I’ve got a big plastic tray full of nails and screws. I have them in my hand, ready to throw away. I can’t throw them away
-- I’ve got just junk screws.

Utley: Or take an old beat nail and straighten it out. Tell me about when she passed away. How did that affect you?

Odom: I was in Houston at the Black-Tie function for my son; it was a debutante ball. They called us at the hotel when Big Mama died.

Clay: It was a relief to me. I was just glad to see her out of this misery. She got those bedsores, and I had people come in to dress those bedsores. It was just so painful to her. It was an acceptance, when she passed away. I just knew then that she was better off.

Utley: How did the community feel?

Clay: Same way. Everybody just accepted it. She was ninety-four?

Lareatha Clay: Ninety-three.

Odom: Well, she probably made us all feel the same way, but she always thought I was special. And she made everybody feel the same way.

Utley: Every single person?

Lareatha Clay: I thought I was special.

Odom: I was in business, working real hard and everything, but at least once a week, I would pick up the phone and call Big Mama to see how she’s doing. Then I would drop her a letter, and send a hundred dollar bill and tell her to buy some candy. I knew what she would do with it, she was going to put it up. I told her to buy candy or ice cream. Every week I would call her and once a month I’d drop her an envelope in there. She didn’t want stuff -- she didn’t need stuff. But it was some of those phone calls, the fact that she was getting a letter -- I sent her a letter that made me feel good, and made me
feel special because she made me feel special.

Utley: How are you like her?

Odom: How am I like her?

Utley: When you do something and you think this is Big Mama coming from me.
Odom: I probably just have to say -- I don’t know what phrase I would use on it, but Big Mama was able to keep the peace and the savvy to make things work out. And I believe that between my daddy, he getting it from her, and Big Papa is being able to work with people. And, that has been one of my strong points all of my working career, my college career -- working with people to get people on the team, getting them to understand. I probably would say that I watched her, how she got things done. And she would make it clear what she wanted you to do. That is what she would do.

Utley: What about you Laretha? When do you see something in you that reminds you of her?

Laretha Clay: Honesty and commitment (crying).

Utley: That’s when I know I’m doing the right thing. I’m touching the right chords here.

Laretha Clay: When she told you she was going to do something, it was done.

Utley: You did not have to question.

Laretha Clay: There was no question. She died the day before my thirtieth birthday, so every birthday I always think about her. My birthday was last Thursday so she’s been dead for fifteen years now.

Utley: So these reunions are the same though?

Unidentified: The door wouldn’t be open, children would be banging the swing against the wall

Utley: That music wouldn’t be playing.

Laretha Clay: Everybody would have been on time to church.

(END OF INTERVIEW)