JAMES E. WYLIE

The following bio was taken from page 460 of the book entitled "Rusk County History" compiled and edited and used with permission of the Rusk

Transcribed by Claudia Schuster

Submitted by Gloria Briley Mayfield, Rusk County TX Coordinator

"Things That I Learned from My Father"

When my father, James E. Wylie, was about eighty-five years old, I saw him working on a cane pole with his knife. I asked him what he was doing. He told me that he was going to make a water gun. He said that he used to make them when he was a little boy, and he knew how to make it. He said that when he grew up "if children had toys to play with, they had to make them." When my father got through with his gun, it worked. The hollow cane was the barrel. He whittled a round piece of wood that fit tightly in the orifice. He filled the hole with and inserted the plunger. When pressed down, it shot water a long ways.

My father told me about his experience of going to Woods Post Office with a team of oxen and a wagon and moving Mr. Freeman to Pine Hill. The distance was about thirty miles. Oxen are slow travelers, and it took a number of hours. He spent the night along the road. He said that when he got to a creek along the way, the oxen smelled water. They broke and ran, leaving the road, and they were determined to get a drink from the creek. The creek had steep banks. Had they sought the water, they would have fallen in on their heads and in all probability broken their necks. My father jumped off the wagon, ran past them, and started hitting them on the heads and calling to them to stop. I have forgotten what word he used to mean "whoa" in the oxen language. The language used to drive oxen is different from that for mules or horses, but it gets the same results. My father succeeded in getting the team back on the road without any damage done to the team or the wagon. He said that the next water hole he came to, he made sure that his oxen got a drink.

"Things I Remember About My Mother"

My mother, Florence Henigan Wylie (1892-1934), was the daughter of Allen and Mary Elizabeth Harris Henigan. The things I remember about her most were the things that she did about the house and the errands that she had me to run.

I vividly remember her taking us children with her berry picking, and we would go long distances in search of wild berries. She canned them on a wood cook stove for out-of-season use.

The wood cook stove cooked the best lightbread in the business. When I was a little boy, about six years old, I recall her sending me to my Aunt Mertle Wylie Duran’s house to get some yeast cakes. My mother had me bring stove wood to heat the kitchen cook stove. She cut her a switch and said, "Children, the kitchen must be very still while the bread is rising. You can’t fun and play in the house while it is cooking. If you make my bread fall, I will whip you; but if you are good children and play outside, I will give you some fresh hot bread with butter."

These were glorious time for me, and I gain pleasure just thinking about those times.

Submitted by Woodrow Wylie