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