A tough ol� bird. (original) (raw)
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 cottoncrop was exhausted, they returned to Overtonand 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,�
February 8, 2010 Column
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers
Copyright Bob Bowman