Chapter One
I left my home in Wharton at sixteen, but no matter how poor I was, and I was
often very poor, I always managed to return for a visit at least once a year,
and whenever I met with friends or relatives on those visits we inevitably got
around to: "Do you remember when," or "I wonder whatever happened to..."
I was the first grandchild born into the extended family that surrounded me in
Wharton and Houston. On my father's side I had a grandmother, a stepgrandfather,
an aunt, three great-aunts, a great-uncle, a great-great-uncle and first, second
and third cousins in abundance. On my mother's side I had a grandfather,
grandmother, two aunts, three uncles, three great-uncles, four great-aunts and
many first, second and third cousins. Also, nearer the coast in the towns of
East Columbia and Angleton were other great-aunts and cousins.
I was fond of all of them, and particularly close to my mother's mother and
father, her younger sisters and her brothers. The backyards of our houses joined
and we were always, it seemed to me, visiting each other.
Whenever my mother and her sisters got together, sooner or later, one of them
would ask: "I wonder why the boys [meaning their ... read full excerpt from Farewell: A Memoir of a Texas Childhood ebook
