February 4, 2019 - Many families who lived in the Post WWII days (in the mid-forties) lived in rent houses ….and were no exception. We had lived in a total of seven rent houses in my hometown of Center, Texas before I left for college in 1950. One of our rent houses was located in East Center and Daddy told all eight of us that it was very old and “needs a lot of work.”
Barney Bridges owned “The Deluxe Café” next door and asked my brother Bill and me to wash dishes there. We got off work around twelve o’clock every night. As we got home one morning we were careful not to wake anyone as we eased in the house. But our plans to be quiet suddenly vanished when we spotted a huge wood rat perched on a nail keg at the end of the kitchen table. Since the full moon had the kitchen lit up brightly, we grabbed our Stevens .22/410 Double Barrel to finish the beast off. Bill thought he selected the .22 barrel but actually had chosen the shotgun barrel. He carefully aimed at the unwary rat…and KABOOM! The whole kitchen shook…….. rat parts flew everywhere…. and Daddy exploded into the kitchen hollering, “are you boys crazy?”
Looking back over the years, I associate every rent house with certain things. With the Russell house, it was Robert Adams Lake….with the Maxwell House, it was the City Cemetery and railroad tracks….with the log cabin on Nacogdoches Street, it was Sandy Creek. But the Boothe House brings up the most memories: Barney’s Café, the Brick Yard, Dellinger’s Store…but above all else.. ..even more than our hunting place and swimming hole ….
……….I remember that nail keg….. the midnight shot, the huge woodrat….
.................and a promise to Daddy that we’d never do it again.
