My First Winter

 1957

To me this is a 'letter-perfect' picture, a child's playground. I'm only several months old so I'm positive that I was sleeping warmly inside, while Mother and Daddy took my siblings out to build a snowman. I'm sure my daddy was the photographer. He loved taking pictures. I adore the glow and gusto on my sister's face. She was simply adorable and so full of life. My brother was the typical boy. He was always the agitator and never let life grow boring. 

The winter scene is in Vernon, Texas, in our front yard of the home on Texas Street. Mother and Daddy were a young couple who finally could afford a new home. This picture is in front of the addition my parents added when the family began to grow. Everything depicts a life of love, joy and happiness: a new home, landscaping that hasn't grown over, the old model car on the street over, excited children playing in the snow, a bicycle and tricycle waiting to be ridden, a mother who still wears a dress in the snow. I had a wonderful life.

Joe Carroll Jones and Ava Always Took Care of Family

 My grandparents on my mother’s side were Joe Carroll Jones and
Ava Ella McNair. They had 5 children, including my mother, Carolita Jones Quillin. Mother was most interested in helping me gather family information. Her brother, Martin Franklin Jones, was also interested in helping me throughout the years. There will be several Jones Family posts of the information gathered from them.

Recollections of Martin Frank Jones interview 2013

Pap, Pappy = J.C. Jones

Mimi = Ava Ella McNair

Martin Harmon Jones never owned anything.  He grubbed out mesquite trees, chopped cotton, was a day labor for other farmers.  People thought a lot of him.  He was known as “Farmer Jones”.  Martin Harmon always lived on farms.  When Depression hit, he lived in a 2 room house that Mimi and Pappy had lived in. They moved to their house on the hill.  When that home burned, Mimi and Pap rented from Allen Schulty, then bought the Stovall’s house (the house by the school).  Pappy moved the little 2 room house onto their lot, very close, so that Mimi could care for them.  That is the house that Martin Harmon lived in when he died.  Pappy had purchased a home in Crowell that he was letting Martin Frank & Yvonne live in. When Pappy retired from farming, Martin and Yvonne bought a house by the school and Mimi and Pap moved to Crowell.  Pappy moved that little 2 room house to Crowell and place it on a lot just across a pasture for Mattie Bell to live in. Pap added a room to it. Pap also purchased the house right next door and Bill/Faye lived there until Bill got a job as a game warden in Canadian. When Bill/Faye moved, Pap sold Mattie’s house and moved her in next door. 

Lucy had tried to move Mattie Bell to Abilene but Daddy (Pappy) wouldn’t allow it. He finally gave in and Mattie was moved to a nursing home (Shady Oaks Lodge) in Abilene. Martin went to see her and remembers her saying how mean they were to her. My thoughts: Mimi had always catered to her, hand and foot.

Mimi sacrificed a lot for the family because Pap always was helping everyone.  She would often say, “Carroll, if you didn’t spend so much on other people, we could do pretty well.”

Even Lucy and Dono borrowed a car to take their honeymoon in.  It was a nice 1936 Ford.  But when they returned, they had torn a rod out of it and the engine had to be overhauled….  at Pap’s expense.

New house in Thalia across from the school after their home "on the hill" burned to the ground.