Anyone who knew my Daddy, Russell Hollis, also knew that his generosity was boundless. He grew up poor in East Texas, but not poor in family treasure. Born in 1911, he hadn’t reached his teens when the Great Depression settled in on the United States. I recall from the stories he recounted about leaving Angelina County for the Gulf Coast that he was about 15 when he went off the make his way, along with his older brother Pat. Their Daddy Stephen wasn’t able to provide for the family with his barbering and farming. To say he was a farmer is a stretch, although Daddy’s young years found him starting school late each fall and leaving early in the spring to work on the family farm. His story of repeating grades and eventually giving up is the same story for countless others.Three siblings, Ray, Mary and Frances, remained at home with their Mama and Papa.
It seems that most Americans were in the same boat during the years from 1920 to 1940. Money was scarce, and Daddy earned a living as a soda jerk, short order cook, and other jobs that I don’t remember. He traveled from Galveston, Texas to Sanderson, Texas following jobs and following adventure. He had courage and strong work ethic. Around 1940 he learned the butcher trade after marrying into Mother’s family that had a meat market on Washington Avenue, near downtown Houston. It seems that Mother and Daddy worked seven days a week for much of our growing up years, and my sisters and I learned to work right along side them. When Daddy retired at 65, his health had already begun to fail him. He entertained himself by piddling down at the barn on their place in Leon County, Texas. This is where he hung out. That place in the country was, in his words, as close to Heaven as you can get here on earth. That barn today has become my home. Throughout the building, both in the space where I live and in the part that remains a barn, his treasures touch my life—the powder horn he made and carved with his initials, his workshop apron, bamboo fishing poles, a tooled belt he made for Mother, many odds and ends.
I can’t even begin to imagine all the kind, helpful things he did for each of his children. My sisters would have to tell their own stories. Always a middle-class wage earner, all of it coming through sweat equity, evidence of his efforts to make life better and easier for his kids is woven into the tapestry of our lives—the homes we live in, the mementoes we all have of our parents, and the memories. Daddy was a self-taught artist, although his media wasn’t anything that ends up hanging on the wall. He tooled exquisite belts, built boxes for trinkets, painted wonderful holiday store windows, and he drew Felix the Cat. He was a gifted story teller. These are just a few of his accomplishments. My love for treasure hunting, junking I call it, came from him. He saw value in many things, though, that I pass by. I remember a couple of Friday nights driving home from school football games—I was in the band and Daddy sometimes came to pick me up—when we stopped smack in the middle of blacktop Cypress-North Houston Road, once to pick up a large bolt that our headlights called attention to and another time to catch a large bullfrog. Maybe he used the bolt. We ate the frog.
Christmas in the East Texas where Daddy grew up usually consisted of a couple pieces of fruit and some hard candy. Only he could tell his story, although it was not an uncommon one. John Henry Faulk, a Texas folklorist cut from the same cloth as Russell Hollis, told a wonderful story about the true spirit of Christmas giving. It makes me think of my Daddy, and it makes me count my blessings, again and again. Let me share this with you. Merry Christmas.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5028755
Daddy—Santa Fe, New Mexico (December 17, 2007)
R. Harold Hollis
It seems that most Americans were in the same boat during the years from 1920 to 1940. Money was scarce, and Daddy earned a living as a soda jerk, short order cook, and other jobs that I don’t remember. He traveled from Galveston, Texas to Sanderson, Texas following jobs and following adventure. He had courage and strong work ethic. Around 1940 he learned the butcher trade after marrying into Mother’s family that had a meat market on Washington Avenue, near downtown Houston. It seems that Mother and Daddy worked seven days a week for much of our growing up years, and my sisters and I learned to work right along side them. When Daddy retired at 65, his health had already begun to fail him. He entertained himself by piddling down at the barn on their place in Leon County, Texas. This is where he hung out. That place in the country was, in his words, as close to Heaven as you can get here on earth. That barn today has become my home. Throughout the building, both in the space where I live and in the part that remains a barn, his treasures touch my life—the powder horn he made and carved with his initials, his workshop apron, bamboo fishing poles, a tooled belt he made for Mother, many odds and ends.
I can’t even begin to imagine all the kind, helpful things he did for each of his children. My sisters would have to tell their own stories. Always a middle-class wage earner, all of it coming through sweat equity, evidence of his efforts to make life better and easier for his kids is woven into the tapestry of our lives—the homes we live in, the mementoes we all have of our parents, and the memories. Daddy was a self-taught artist, although his media wasn’t anything that ends up hanging on the wall. He tooled exquisite belts, built boxes for trinkets, painted wonderful holiday store windows, and he drew Felix the Cat. He was a gifted story teller. These are just a few of his accomplishments. My love for treasure hunting, junking I call it, came from him. He saw value in many things, though, that I pass by. I remember a couple of Friday nights driving home from school football games—I was in the band and Daddy sometimes came to pick me up—when we stopped smack in the middle of blacktop Cypress-North Houston Road, once to pick up a large bolt that our headlights called attention to and another time to catch a large bullfrog. Maybe he used the bolt. We ate the frog.
Christmas in the East Texas where Daddy grew up usually consisted of a couple pieces of fruit and some hard candy. Only he could tell his story, although it was not an uncommon one. John Henry Faulk, a Texas folklorist cut from the same cloth as Russell Hollis, told a wonderful story about the true spirit of Christmas giving. It makes me think of my Daddy, and it makes me count my blessings, again and again. Let me share this with you. Merry Christmas.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5028755
Daddy—Santa Fe, New Mexico (December 17, 2007)
R. Harold Hollis
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