The Story of My Life: Adalee Edna Love Sims

May 1990

I was born at home on a farm in Mobeetie, a small community in the panhandle of Texas on April 13, 1915; the only daughter of Minnie Lee Worthington and Len Walker (Bud) Love. My older brother John B. was fifteen years old and my brother Emory Walker was ten. Emory's twin, James Henry, had died at age two from complications of whooping cough and pneumonia, years before I was born.

When I was about three, we moved to another farm about a half mile east of Mobeetie at the edge of town, and there I was raised. My early memories are of this "home place." I lived in this house until I married at 21 years of age and moved away.

We had a large barn, a good-sized apple orchard and some peach trees. A creek came down from the pasture and wound around the house, the orchard, the cowsheds, and the animal lots (both a cow lot and a horse lot), and huge cottonwood trees grew along the creekbed and all around the house.

Our house was made of three little houses moved together and the floors of each building were on different levels. The two rooms in front were joined by a short hall with a porch all along the outside. The two back rooms were a foot lower and held together by the back porch. Under the back porch was a hand dug well; I don't know how deep the well was, but it was fourteen feet down to the water level. It was fed by a spring and was "the coldest water in the county!"

There must have been an open area between the floor of the porch and the top of the well because small animals would fall into the well from time to time: a mouse, a rat, a possum, or even a frog, and ride up on the side of the wooden bucket. Sometimes they would drown in the well and the water would get to smelling and tasting bad and Daddy and the boys would have to draw out all the water to clean the well.

Occasionally, they would find my small toys and maybe a spoon or fork; even pieces of onion found their way into that well! After they'd clean out the well, the back yard would be soaking wet and stay that way for 2-3 days, from where they'd thrown the water.

On the back porch, to protect the well, a wooden frame had been built up, about waist high, around the well site. There were two lids in the top cover. We drew water up by a rope draped over a pulley wheel; there was a wooden keg (bucket) on each end of the rope:

Our backyard was big and shady. There was a woodpile, a smokehouse, some chicken houses and an outdoor toilet. A fruit cellar had been dug into the side of a dirt bank beside the kitchen door. When I was sent down into it to get something I was always scared of spiders and snakes. We stored canned fruit, homemade lard, and barrels of apples down there because it was cool. I never saw a snake, but behind the shelves there were some holes in the dirt walls and I just knew snakes lived in them!

From my first remembrances, Mama's youngest sister, Ruth, lived with us. She was so pretty and I loved to go into her room  she had such nice smelling 'stuff' on her dresser. She used powders and creams and always smelled so nice. So, I smeared the cold cream on my self and covered it with powder. Of course I got into trouble, but she really loved me. She had me call her "Auntie" because she wasn't married and said that I had Aunts but I had only one Auntie. She was Auntie to me all my life.

Mama was an excellent seamstress she could look at the picture of a dress, cut her own pattern (to fit the measurements of whomever she was sewing for) and make a dress just like the picture. She dearly loved to rip up something old  a coat or a suit  brush it, turn it, press it, and make something new out of it. At one time, Auntie made hats  and with Mama sewing… they had quite a business going. I hated having to find pins and needles for them and folding up the patterns.

When I was four years old, John married Ira Belle Davis and they lived in part of our house. Ira played with me some, in the shade of the big cottonwoods in the back yard and showed me how to make a playhouse out of buckets and boxes and tree stumps and all kinds of broken dishes and pretend stuff.

Two days after my fifth birthday, Ira and John had the first of their children, a baby boy named Adrian Claude. So, I grew up with my brother's children, more than I did with my brother… they almost always lived near us. Daddy bought me some bib overalls to wear to the fields. I was too little to pick much cotton, but had to go along with the rest of the family. These overalls had a lot of pockets and I thought I had to fill all of them with something so I tried to find enough useful things to put there… but didn't have very much I could use… just a few nails and some string, so I finished up with rocks. This wasn't very comfortable, so I after a while, I got rid of most of them.

I had a little cotton sack, made out of a flour sack. I wanted a doll buggy, so Mama told me that when I had picked enough cotton, she'd buy me a buggy. I was finally told that I had enough cotton… I quit… I didn't pick any more cotton.

A few years later, I was picking in John's field and I found out putting the green bolls in the sack, made it weigh heavier. The first sack he emptied for me, he gently but firmly told me "that won't work" and sent me to the house to stay!!

My cousin started to school and had a book called a "primer." She'd show me the pictures in it and told me the stories, so, I wanted one, too. Daddy got me a primer and he'd read me the stories while I sat in his lap. He'd spell out the words to me sometimes; I learned to read and to spell; I was four years old.

Because I could do these things, when I started to school, I was put in the third grade. I didn't know how to write and I couldn't handle numbers so I ran into a lot of trouble. Finally, by the time I got into fifth grade, I could do the times tables and write passably.

Snows were deep in the wintertime. I can remember walking to school through drifts up to my waist, all wrapped up (clear to my eyes) holding Emory's hand. My first school was a large rock building: one room with a stage in the front. It was made of native rock and was oldthen. While we were in this building I was in a short play called the "Sleeping Princess" and I was "Thorn Rosa" the princess. After a few years the building was condemned, so school was held in the building next door for a year or two until it was torn down and replaced with the school building which still stands.

I loved to go to school and to be in plays  I was always in the class plays. I was even a Negro mammy in our Junior Class Play… blacked my face with soot and had a ball!

I got two paddlings in school  both for talking (of course!). In the fifth grade the girl in front of me kept turning around and talking to me  I had to answer her… and the teacher caught us. We got three swats each. I got the other paddling when I was a senior in High School for talking too much, again. Those three swats were administered by my English teacher and embarrassing to us both, I might say.

Every year, our school entered into the scholastic and track meets held at the county seat, Wheeler, 11 miles from Mobeetie. I always entered the spelling contests, and after drilling and studying for weeks, I never even placed in the contest! When I was in the 6th grade, I entered the declaiming division. That's where you memorize and recite a dramatic address or poem in contest with declaimers from other schools.

I had a great poem called "Out to Old Aunt Mary's" and I did a good job on it. It was an interesting, descriptive, and colorful story. My teachers thought I should have won first place instead of third. (There were only 3 of us declaiming.) They felt the judges were prejudiced by the fact that the girl who won first was the daughter of a leading merchant in Wheeler, was crippled with polio, and wore a beautiful taffeta dress  I don't even remember what I wore. I still love that poem; I still have it; at times I can recite most of it, though I might get the sequence of the verses mixed up.

I was Salutatorian of the 7th grade class… wrote my own speech and it was pretty good, even if I do say so. My best friend that year was a redheaded, freckled-faced girl who wore glasses. I thought she was the most fascinating person I had ever known; we were together just about all the time. My Mama made our 7th grade graduating dresses just alike and oh, did we feel special!

I wanted red hair so bad I could taste it. I knew my mother's family was Scotch-Irish from way back and that kept my hopes up that some day my hair would turn red. I watched it carefully but the closest I ever got was brown-with-reddish-highlights… that didn't fill the bill at all.

High School was 8th through llth grade. I had an awful time with Algebra in high school. Some of us had to drop it the first year, but the next year, we had a good teacher who explained it to us from the beginning and we caught on and made good grades all the way through.

I just couldn't make sense out of Geometry and I was complaining one day: "just what good is it?" The school principal told me I would use it every day of my life. He said, "Why, Adalee, you'll never cut out a baby dress that you won't use geometry." Huh! I bet I've cut out a hundred baby dresses and never once needed Geometry!

I never did like my name. I wanted to be a "Dorothy" or a "Virginia" instead I was named for 2 aunts (Delma Adah and Ruth Edna) and Mama (Minnie Lee). I was Ada Lee Edna Love, with 4 initials: A.L.E.L. Everyone else had 3 initials, so, when I got in high school, I began writing Ada and Lee together, which has confused people ever since. They just can't seem to see "Adalee." They've called me everything from Adlai, Adele, Adalla, and Adelaide, to Adell. I even had a teacher in college (who thought she was pretty cute [and she was]) call me even worse.

In college they don't call you by your given name. It was "Misterv or "Missv plus a last name. So, this cutie-pie teacher called me all versions of "Love": Lovey Bird, Lovey Dove, Love Bell, even Dovey Mae! But, anyway, in school when the teacher said Ada Lee, I knew she meant ME!!

I was raised in church. Jokingly, I have said I thought I must have been born on the church steps because we were there every time the doors opened. A lot of preachers would eat with us and spend the night at our house. We usually kept the evangelists and song leaders during revivals, because there was just me at home and people thought we had plenty of room, which we did.

Daddy was a quiet Christian man, he never said much at any time. He always sat in the Amen Corner to the right of the pulpit. The Men's Sunday School Class met there and all the men kept sitting there on through church services, while their wives and families sat out in the auditorium.

The church building was one large room, divided by curtains into class rooms. Mama taught a class of Intermediate boys up behind the pulpit. My Card Class was a bench at the very back of the building. The floor sort of slanted down to the front so you could see over the people in front of you. Our Cards had pictures on the front with a Memory Verse and a story on the back. I got a new one every Sunday and was to learn the Memory Verse by the next Sunday.

I progressed through various locations and classes in the church 'til I ended up in the Young Folks class on the left of the pulpit, which was also the choir area, and right by the piano.

Mama was active in Missionary Society and other church activities. I went to Missionary Society with Mama all the time because she wouldn't leave me at home alone. Other women had to bring their small children from time to time and there was always at least one baby. I loved to play with the babies, so I tended them for their mothers and played with the little kids out in the shade of the building when they met at the church. When they met in the homes, there were refreshments and a yard and swings to play on.

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One day, as Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Beck, Mama and I were coming home from Missionary Society (I was about 10 or 11) we heard an awful commotion: yelling and screaming coming from the pond just down the creek from our house. We found out some little boys had been swimming there and one had drowned.

I had the chickenpox when I was about 6 or 7. Daddy told me if I would let the chickens fly over my head, the pox would go away. I went out to the chicken house with him. He opened the door and I sat down in the doorway, and Daddy shooed the chickens out over me. The pox went away all right!

When I was about 10, I had the mumps during Christmas Vacation from school...and for Christmas I got a new warm bathrobe and house slippers. The pond down below the house had frozen over thick enough to skate on and as I was about over the mumps. Mama let me go skate for a little while with a friend. She didn't tell me NOT to wear my new bathrobe and houseshoes... that's what I wore skating. Soles of houseshoes aren't very "thick" and they didn't last long on rough ice. Mama was quite upset with me!

I was eight years old when Mama bought me a piano and arranged for me to take music lessons from our church pianist. I would walk to the pianists house after school to take a lesson, which Mama paid for with eggs, chickens, butter, the way all the farm wives got their spending money.

I had to pass by a house where they took a couple of Sunday newspapers: The Denver Post and Fort Worth Star Telegram. Those papers had wonderful funnies and every once in a while, I just had to stop by and ask Mrs. Long is she had any funnies I could look at. I think maybe she saved them up for me to read, because she always said "Yes, come on in and see what you can find." The papers were always stacked in the same corner and I'd spend a happy hour or so with the funnies and go on home, put my music up, and never mention to Mama that I had skipped my music lesson.

I don't know if the teacher ever spoke to Mom about my missing a lesson; if she did, I must have made up some excuse as to why I hadn't gone there that day. I loved those funnies.

In fact, I liked to read anything. Mom had a few books in a bookcase in the front room...probably 20 or so. In my growing up years, I must have read them 8-10 times over, every few years. I still love to read a GOOD book.

I learned to play a few church songs, as soon as I could find which notes made which sound on the piano. I played them mostly by ear, making up my own bass. I never did learn which key was which - tho' I was told over and over again - guess I had a mental block about getting down to basics as long as I could skim over things and make it sound like it should. I didn't learn about timing. That's why I never felt capable to teach music to my own kids. I wanted them to learn it right and I was lacking on that.

We lived in a good neighborhood... in a little place like Mobeetie, everybody knew everybody else, and most every body got along real good. We had good close neighbors:

Tarvins, across the bridge and up the hill had two older boys Halbert and Edd) and twin girls (Edith and Ethel) about my age.

Joneses, up on the hill to the South, had two adopted boys close to my age. The youngest one was quite a sissy we thought. He played dolls with the neighborhood girls (turned out when he grew up - he was "gay").

Becks were on up the road towards town. Their kids were all about grown, except one boy a little younger than me and a little girl the age of Peggy, my brother John's first girl.