Sidelines

The Riddle Family (above) about 1925 is of standing left to right Willie {Bill} Turner Riddle, J.T. Riddle. Molly Beth Riddle, Fannie Elizabeth Raulston Riddle, and Sybil Riddle is on the drivers door.

Above (from Marty Busby) - My grandfather, Bill and Sybil in downtown Clarkesville in 1944.

I am trying to locate a full family picture of J.T. and Fannie with all of their kids if their is one. Their kids were Sanford, Andy, Willie {BIll}, Imogene, Sybil, Ona, Molly, and Maud. I have also found out some information on John Meade Riddle known as {Jack} who is J.T. Riddle's Father. He moved to Red River County with Mary Ann Blackard whom he married in 1869 in Tishomingo County Mississippi. John Meade Riddle was a Civil War veteran, but it is unknown at this time what his regiment was. It is known that John Meade and Mary Ann's first born child {William Carrol Riddle} and sixth born child {Sanford Riddle} died in Mississippi and are still buried in Tishomingo County in Riddle Cemetery off 3 Grave Rd. in Sharps Bottom. John Meade Riddle was the first owner of the Saw Mill in Red River County out in Bagwell and Mary Ann Blackard Riddle and him are buried near James Turner Riddle and Fannie Elizabeth Raulston Riddle in Young's Chapel Cemetery.

The picture above is of Jim Turner Riddle and Fannie Elizabeth Raulston Riddle.

Taken from the web.

	(See more pictures on the bottom of this page!)... Clarence Raulston, Sr. is holding Herbert Raulston so this picture had to be made in late 1928 or early 1929. Nannie Bess is next to him, and in front of her is Katie. Garland is 2nd from right, and CM is hugging the tree. E-mail Paula Duchesne
	This picture was taken at the 2001 County Fair in the fall of 2001. Kent's on the right and C.M. is on the left. Note the brothers both have on straw hats and suspenders!

The People, The Community and Where We Came From

Dimple is located in north central Red River County, in a lush pine forest seven miles north from Clarksville, on State Highway 37. Red River County is in Northeast Texas.

In the 1840s and 1850s, when Dimple was settled, the only road across Red River County crossed the Red River at a low water crossing at Jonesboro and ran a southeasterly course through Dimple to Clarksville, and onward to Nacogdoches. The first families to settle in Dimple along this road were those of Isaac Bruton, William Lee, Sam Williams, Harvey Sutton, John Fivash, J. H. Cole, George Box, WiIIiam RauIston, DanieI Chesshire, W. C. Cotton, and Elias Rhoden. They set to work clearing the heavy timber from the deep sandy loam using the only power equipment at their disposal, teams of oxen, horses and mules. Our Scot/Irish ancestors from Middle and East Tennessee persevered and Dimple became a prosperous community of small family farms with a liberal sprinkling of sawmills and cotton gins.

In 1842 a contract was granted to "cut a road" from Clarksville North to mile post four. In 1870 a contract was awarded to "cut a road" from mile post 12 North to mile post 17. This road reached the river in the community of Albion and was named The Albion Road. It entered Dimple at mile post 5 and on the South and exited at mile post 6 on the North.

The first school in Dimple was a log house on the Raulston farm. The first term of school was held there in 1855. In 1914 the Raulston School was consolidated with the Bayou Chapel School, the community to our East. A two room frame structure was built on the Albion Road and was called the Dimple School. The first term was taught there in 1916. Mr. C. T. Tucker was principal and taught fifth through eighth grade and Miss Lillian Gentry taught primer through fourth grade.

During the 1930s our school grew by leaps and bounds. In 1934, Youngs Chapel consolidated with Dimple and moved their two room building to Dimple. In 1935 Negley and Hopewell consolidated with Dimple resulting in five overcrowded classrooms and five overworked teachers. In 1936 a bond was floated and a building comprising seven classrooms and an auditorium was completed on the southeast corner of the Dimple Crossroads in time for the 1937-38 term of school. This building together with added vo-ag, gym, and home economics buildings served us well until 1965 when Dimple consolidated with Clarksville. At that time (1965), The Dimple School District included nine former schools and encompassed an area of ninety square miles.

In the early days our community was variously called Liberty, Liberty Hill, Raulstons Bend,and Cravens. In 1898 W. W. Crockett, a photographer in Clarksville established a general store on the Albion Road atop a clay hill 1/2 mile south of Pecan Bayou. He maintained his photography business by spending two days a week there. On his return trips to the general store he picked up the mail for the people in the community. During their first year in the general store, Mr. Crocket and wife Katie had a daughter born to them . They named her Dimple Dee. She died in October 1900 at age 2 years and six months. In 1901 the postmaster objected to Mr. Crockett's habit of delivering mail to his customers. As a result, Mr. Crockett established a post office in the general store and named it in honor of his departed little daughter. Since that time our community has been called Dimple.

The Dimple Community Club was organized in 1957 and met once per month for several years in one of the buildings on the school grounds. They helped the youngsters with their 4-H projects and encouraged them in their competitions at the County Fair. They also completed many community improvement projects. In 1965 members of the club moved one of the buildings from the school grounds to a site across the road from the home of Haskel and Helen Summers. That was the first Dimple Community Center.

Our Scot/Irish Ancestors passed their family farms down to a son or daughter who continued the tradition of farming it and passing it down . For this reason we had no residents outside this ethnic group until the 1910s when the Delese and May families bought farms here. They were of Swiss ancestry and their sons and daughters married sons and daughters of Scot/Irish persuasion and our community, culture was made richer. In the late 1960s the Rodriguez family settled in Dimple and Gracie Rodriguez became one of the most active members of our community club. Her granddaughter, Heather Lumen, is a member of the Dimple 4-H club and Heather and her family participate in community club functions.

We were taught in school that Dimple is located in the north temperate climate zone. We are sometimes given pause to wonder. Our annual rainfall average is 44 inches. In 1991 we received 80 inches. On July 25, 1936 our thermometers climbed to 120 degrees. Our average annual temperature limits are the low 20s to the high 90s.

In the early 1970s those sons and daughters of Dimple who had spent their working years in the large cities started returning for retirement to their ancestral lands. This gave our community new energy, and provided incentive for extra efforts.

In 1985 it was agreed that we should build a new community center. A program of fund raising efforts, such as bake sales; rummage sales; cake walks and catering food at public affairs was successful and the building fund started to grow. In late August, 1988 we removed the furnishings including the cabinets, doors and windows and the plumbing fixtures from the old building and sold them on the spot. On the first Saturday in November of that year we held our annual harvest supper and crafts auction in The New Dimple Community Center.

For many years there was a Dimple Grocery, located at the intersection of FM 2120 and State Highway 37. In the Mid 1980s it went out of business. In 1988 Thomas and Brenda Stringer, who live about 1/2 mile south of the out of business store, graded the top of a small hill near their home, built a store building and opened for business The Dimple Quick Stop. We were very pleased to have this new business in our community because, in addition to the convenience, there is the pride of once again having a Dimple Store. Most of our young people work in factories in the County Seat or in other nearby cities. Those who work in agriculture run cattle farms and/or engage in some facet of the timber business. The majority of our residents (235 at last count) are a collection of laid-back old-timers who participate in most of the activities mentioned herein, raise home gardens and pursue other hobbies. We love company and enjoy meeting new people. Don't ask what we do for excitement. At Dimple we try to not get excited.

Herbert Raulston's Dimple Class (1948)

SIDENOTES

In this section are some of C. M. Raulston, Jr.'s "Sidenotes" ... the first is recollections of Pearl Harbor, followed by his version of Mountaintop (brings the Dietz family into the Raulston clan), his 4th of July speech from 1976 at the Dimple Community Center, and one of his favorite borrowed sidenotes entitled, "Born Before 1940."

On December 7, 1941 I was rousted out of bed early, for a Sunday, by my father who commanded, "Get you some breakfast then saddle old Choc and take that fractious mare back down to Willie's, I am tired of foolin' with her." 0ld Choc was our bay Choctaw pony and "That fractious mare" was a 15 hand, high-strung paint mare which Pa had been working with for some six months in a vain attempt to calm her. Willie was Willie" White-gravy" , RaIston who lived on the Gentry Place where Scot and Betty Whiteman now live. It was a six to eight mile ride through the woods, across the Vessey Flats (pronounced Veasey) with the paint mare walking and prancing sideways most of the way. The round trip took about 13 hours which put me back home after 4:00 pm.

By the time I got old Choc put up and fed and walked into the house it was getting dark. Upon my entering the house, my mother threw herself upon me in great distress, weeping "Oh C.M., the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor. There will be a war, you will have to go into the Army and I will never see you again". They had picked up the news on the radio at about 1:00 P.M. The attack came at 7:00 A.M. Hawaii Time, 12:00 Noon our time.

I listened to the radio for about 1/2 hour. President Roosevelt made a short statement urging people to remain calm and to listen to his address to congress the next day. There would be no Jack Benny, or Fred Allen, or Fibber McGee and Molly that Sunday night. It was the fist time in the short history of broadcast journalism that the news departments of all the network stations would take the air-ways away from the entertainment media. The Radio Commentators, such as, Harry Von Zell, Fulton Lewis Jr., Walter Winchell, Elmer Davis, Gabriel Heater, and Edward R. Murrow were pronouncing Hawaii "Hi Wa Ya", John Daly was calling Oahu, Oh-ha-hu. They talked in shifts for almost twelve hours and I don't remember any commercial breaks. it was a cold, drizzling, foggy day in Red River County and after hearing about Pearl Harbor my spirits were very low. I was 1 and 1/2 months past my 21st birthday and had a good notion about where I was headed. I had a brother just two years younger and we both knew he was in the same boat. The whole nation was in a state of quiet panic.

After supper (dinner was the noon meal) my brother and I walked the short mile to visit the Vickers cousins who were the same age. While we were there, their father gave us some advice which would become a course of action for young men all across this country. He said, "Boys, your country needs you. At a time like this you do what you have to do. What you should do is decide which branch of service you want, then go soon to the recruiting station in Texarkana and volunteer. If you wait until you are drafted, you will serve where they put you". Their mother called him an old fool and begged us to not listen to him.--- That is my memory of "The Day of Infamy. C. M. Raulston Jr. 9/95

One of Katie Raulston's report cards. You will notice the old "Clarksville Square" advertisements around the report card.

Below is a letter C.M. Raulston, Jr. wrote in response to a solicitation of funds. You will understand it as you read.

C. M. Raulston Jr.

Route 6, Box 302

Clarksville, TX 75426

24 Oct. 1997

American Battle Monuments Commission

P.O. Box 96766

Washington, D. C. 20090-6766

Subject: WW II Memorial

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Commission:

I received your solicitation of funds for the construction of the subject memorial and will send a contribution in a separate mailing. The purpose of this letter is to point out a serious oversight in your eligibility requirements for the registry. I refer to those thousands of civilian members of the Enlisted Reserve Corps who served willingly and with pride at military bases in the continental limits and in war zones in every theater of operations. Our function was to repair, modify and maintain equipment which had incurred battle damage or had malfunctioned, and return that equipment to service ASAP. We were specialists in some trade which made our talents useful to the military. My trade was Airborne Radio Radar and Navigation Equipment Tech. In the shop next-door to mine at Nas Ford Island were 6 or 8 men past middle age who had been watch makers as civilians but were converted to Aircraft Instrument Mechanics, "for the duration and 6".

A suggestion: Insert a category which reads, "Anyone who was a member of The ERC during World War II.

Respectfully,

C. M. Raulston Jr.

Their, answer. - "We consider those who were members of The ERC during WWII to have been members of the military and are very eligible to have their names entered in our Memorial Registry."

Next Question. - WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR VA BENEFITS???

CMR 03/12/01

Salve recipe. Very old.

Dimple had a doctor!

LOOKING BACK 8TH GRADE 1895

Remember when our grandparents, great-grandparents, and such stated that they only had an 8th grade education? Well check this out. Could any of us have passed the 8th grade in 1895? This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 Salina, KS. USA. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, KS and
reprinted by the Salina Journal.

8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS - 1895

Grammar (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.

2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.

3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.

4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of do, lie, lay and run.

5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.

6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.

7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.

2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?

3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cts. bushel, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?

4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?

5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.

6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.

7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per metre?

8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.

9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?

10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.

2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.

3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.

4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.

5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.

6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.

7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?

8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607 1620 1800 1849 1865

Orthography (Time, one hour)

1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication?

2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?

3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?

4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u'.

5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e'. Name two exceptions under each rule.

6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.

7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup

8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.

9. Use the following correctly in sentences, cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.

10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)

1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?

2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?

3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?

4. Describe the mountains of North America.

5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.

6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.

7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.

8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?

9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.

10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give inclination of the earth.

Sure gives the saying of an early 20th century person that "she/he only had an 8th grade education" a whole new meaning.

MOUNTAINTOP

It is seldom that a person doing genealogical research has a Mountain Top experience but such things do happen, and did happen right here in Dimple. On Sunday, October 30, 1988 a young man introduced himself to my wife, Dorothy, as Ernest Lad Heisten 111, calling from Madison, WI to inquire if her husband might know something of the Dietz family in Red River County. Dorothy,, who tends to get a bit enthusiastic about such matters, replied, "he is out puttering in the shop, but you hang on, I will fetch him'. She then held the phone at armslength and blew a mighty blast upon her trusty police whistle which she wears around her neck. I appeared at her side in an instant, for I know when I hear that whistle, the lady of my house is in no mood to put up with any messin' around!

It developed that the State Library in Madison had a copy, of "Red River Recollections" and Lad had read R. L. Dietz md. Nancy Adeline Raulston - Oct. 31 1865 - in a short family lineage I had Written for that Publication. Lad knew from oral family history his great-great-grandfather was Logan Dietz, a veteran of the Confederate Cause. He had decided to not call me but his wife told him the L in R. L. might very well be Logan. When I answered the phone my knowledge of the Dietz family was as I had written in 1973 in The Raulstons of Red River County limited to what my father had told and what Mittie Dietz Gardener, a grand-daughter to Logan, had written to me in letters from Santa Fe.

Jonas Dietz came to Texas in about 1840 and worked for Sam Houston helping to build a stockade for prisoners of war on Galveston Island and was granted a land patent in Lamar County. Jonas had three daughters, Maggie, Hannah and Rebecca, and one son, Richard Logan Dietz. I had also listed the marriage of Logan to Adeline and the names of their children and the descendants of those children. I wrote that Uncle Logan was a fine carpenter and cabinet maker and at about the time he was courting Adeline, he made for her mother, Fannie Ousley Raulston, a pine kitchen safe. That safe sits in our house today (Dec. 1995).

Logan served in the Confederate Army, and he and Adeline were buried in The New Haven Cemetery in Dimple. During our phone conversation I learned the following.

In his research, Lad had discovered a Logan Dietz at age 19 in Lamar County married to a Mary C. Gray. He had Logan's father listed as Jonas with some vague information that Jonas had served in the Texas Revolution and that Jonas had a brother, Amos, buried in the Bogata Cemetery in Red River County. He then related the following family legend to me .

"When Logan marched off to the Civil War from his farm somewhere in Tennessee, he turned for a last loving look at his family and saw his young son and little daughter swinging on the yard gate waving goodbye and their mother who waved from the porch behind them. That was the last time he saw his Tennessee family and it was the last the little Tennessee family ever saw or heard of Logan. When the war ended and Logan returned to his farm he found the place had been pillaged, the buildings burned, and his wife had died from starvation and exposure. The children had been taken to live with relatives by people "going west." This legend had been passed down by the boy left swinging on the gate, James Monroe Dietz, who was Lad's great-grandfather. James Monroe and his younger sister grew up in the Missouri Ozarks near the small town of Webb City, MD, as did his descendants. Lad's parents, Ernest L. Heisten Jr. and Betty Jean (Dietz) Heisten live there today (Dec. 1995). Lad speculated that Logan, in his search for his children, returned to Lamar County to visit his father and relatives of Mary C. Gray, his deceased wife, who were the logical people to have the children. Imagine his terrible disappointment and grief upon learning his family had not been heard from in Lamar County. He further speculated that Logan met Adeline in his aimless wanderings and married her. When that first conversation ended, Lad was elated but I was not so sure because my father, who enjoyed telling me stories of olden times, never mentioned a prior marriage of Uncle Logan. Lad called me again on Sunday, November 6, to thank me for some papers I had mailed to him and we covered about the same ground concerning Logan. When we were about to hang up, Lad asked me if I knew anyone who might have a photo of Logan. Up to this point I had not remembered that Uncle Logan had a living, breathing grandson right here in Red River County in the Community of Negley. I apologized profusely about the memory lapse and gave him the name and phone number of Wes Braddock. About an hour later Lad called back in a state of high excitement to report that with no prompting whatsoever from Lad, Wes related almost verbatim, the story of the children swinging on the gate and their subsequent disappearance. At this point Lad and I were convinced we had old Logan nailed!

During the week of November 7th 1988 I visited with Wes and Jo Braddock in their home in Negley and borrowed a Black and White photo of Logan and his three boys standing in front of their Carpentry and Blacksmith Shop at 200 South Walnut in Clarksville. That would be where the abandoned Citizens Drive Through Bank is located today (Dec. 1995). 1 made several Photocopies and returned the original. Lad called on November 13, to say he had scheduled a trip to Texas for November 19 thru 23. Lad arrived at DFW at 11:00 A. M. November 19th, picked up a rental and drove to The Dallas Public Library where he extracted several documents concerning Logan's war record. He arrived at our house at 10:30 A. M. November 20. Soon after his arrival he called his wife to report his progress and told her his hand rested on an ancient pine kitchen safe which Logan had made with his own hands, here on this farm using timber cut from this land, and all the while he was courting Adeline. Lad and his wife were both ecstatic. Lad departed our house shortly after noon on November 20, 1988 for his first visit with Wes and Jo Braddock. Soon after his arrival there he made three important discoveries.

(1) Jo produced three photographs of Logan, one a studio portrait.

(2) Wes brought out his Mother's family bible in which she (Cumi Dietz Braddock) had written her father (Logan Dietz's) war record as he dictated it to her. In that record Lad discovered the young Logan had been in three major battles and two or three minor skirmishes and had sustained but one wound, a broken finger while trying to do rapid fire with a muzzle loading rifle.

(3) Lac Heisten has the final joint on both small fingers bent so the tips of the fingers point toward the other fingers on the same hand. If the hands are held, palms facing bearer, with the small fingers aligned and touching, the tips of those fingers point away from each other. Lad's Mother has these fingers as does her father and his father. Much to Lad's amazement and great joy, so did Wes Braddock!

Lad spent the night of November 20, with the Braddocks and on the morning of November 21, drove to Paris to search some courthouse records and drove back to Clarksville to look at some census records. He spent the night of November 21 at our house and in the morning of November 22, 1988 I accompanied him to The New Haven Cemetery where I pointed out the graves of Logan and Adeline. The markers were covered with lichen so I produced a block of Styrofoam which makes a good buffer but leaves the letters filled with grit. As he stood on his knees over the graves clearing the letters, Lad looked at me with tears beginning to well and said, "I am sorry, but you cannot know what this means to me". I replied, "You are the great-grandson of the man who started this search 124 years ago! You just this minute finished that long search, of course it's an emotional climax". He studied the stone in silence for a minute then, in a loud, firm voice filled with emotion said, "Richard Logan Dietz, You Old Warrior, After Your Being Lost For A Century and A Quarter, I HAVE FOUND YOU ! As Lad departed the Braddock home on November 22, 1988, an old Grandfather Clock began tolling the midnight hour, just as it had so long ago, in the home of Nancy Adeline and Richard Logan Dietz. That Folks, Is The TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN! CMR - 12/95

FREEDOM SPEECH 1976

DIMPLE COMMUNITY CENTER

CLARKSVILLE, TEXAS

by C.M. Raulston, Jr.

Today's date is June 13. 2001. Following is a speech I gave at the old Dimple Community Center on 4 July, 1976, to an audience of about 65 people. A large congregation for Dimple at that time.

MY SPECIAL FREEDOM by C.M.Raulston Jr. ... There are today, thousands of celebrations happening across this country. Many of them take the form of great masses of people congregated on crowded beaches to consume booze, to listen to loud noises which some of them define as music, to get sunburn and litter the landscape with the by products of their merrymaking. While we may disapprove of their littering and detest their loud noises and noxious fumes, we must strongly defend the right of every adult American to celebrate this day in whatever manner he chooses so long as his celebrating does not infringe upon the rights of another. That is what this day is about.

We have gathered here at Dimple to celebrate the 200th birthday of our nation in our own quiet way. To share our food, to talk of things of the past and share our dreams and plans for the future. I suggest that this gathering, along with hundreds of others like it, are the truly significant happenings of this day. It is important that we parents and grandparents realize we are the final generation to spend the years of our youth in a truly rural society in our Community and indeed in our Country. Our Nation is becoming urbanized at an ever-increasing rate and there is a real danger that our children will lose an important part of this freedom we celebrate today unless we parents reach back to our rural beginnings and teach those children the values so deeply instilled in us. We cannot prevent them becoming slaves to the clock on the "nine to five" but we can teach them to deal with it. We can teach them they should never let the things they do not have, or cannot have, spoil the pleasures of the things they do have. One of life's greatest lessons is learning to be happy without the things we cannot have.

About a year before I took the final plunge into early retirement it became common knowledge that I was seriously considering a move back to the ancestral farm. A man from another department stopped at my desk to inquire, "Just what are you going to do there?" To which I replied, "I am going to plant my feet ankle deep in Red River Sand and watch the sunrise each morning with the greatest possible confidence in my ability to decide alone, and unassisted, what I will do that day." I heard a girl inquire, "Isn't he married?" My special freedom was regained after long and diligent labor, careful planning and a lot of help and encouragement from a patient and loving wife. She sits back there right now, loving, admiring and encouraging.

To illustrate my disenchantment with life in the Metroplex, when I made my retirement speech to a group of uptight Aerospace engineers and a sprinkling of secretaries, I quoted a speech given by old Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Tribe after his having been chased all across the Northern Rockies, with his tribe including women and children, for more than a year by the U.S. Army. He stepped into the tent of General Crook, saluted smartly and in a voice which quivered with rage, sorrow and fatigue, said, "My woman is old and she is tired --- Our children are gone --- The young man that was my youth is no more --- From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more - -forever." Old Chief Joseph gave that speech upon the occasion of his surrendering his freedom, and that of his Tribe, to return to the reservation. I thought it not inappropriate that I repeat it there as I prepared to return to Red River County to regain mine.

My people came to America in 1670 and settled in an area that is now a part of Boston, Mass. They migrated over a period of 120 years through Pennsylvania and Virginia into East and Middle Tennessee. Greatgrandpappy, William M. Raulston, along with his wife and five daughters came to Red River County in 1849 or 1850. In 1854 he bought 240 acres of land for one dollar per acre, which included the old homestead where Dorothy and I now live. He celebrated the end of America's first 100 years in the shade of a postoak in front of the house which stands there today. (NOTE: A tornado took out the old postoak in 1991. It was 34 inches in diameter at the stump and solid as a rock.)

During the early years on the homestead, Greatgrandfather maintained an eighteen acre fruit orchard. He was a federally licensed distiller of brandies, wines and hard ciders which he sold retail and wholesale. I think it is important that we keep alive our family legends and remember our community and our nation's history, for it is history that tells us what we have been, of our law, of what we do, of what we are, of our ethics, of what we ought to be and through revelation of what we shall be. The experience of our ancestors, the hopes of the yet unborn unite their voices in an appeal to us. They implore us to think more of our character than of our possessions. To look upon our properties, not with ostentation and pride, but as a means to be converted, through the refinement of education, into sensory and spiritual treasures. To thus provide the example of a people whose wisdom increases with their prosperity and whose virtues are greater than their wealth. I propose that we here today resolve to do, each in his own way, what we can to make this Community better. If we do this in earnest - we need not fear the future.

Class of 1938

	We graduated Dimple High School in the early spring of 1938 and that was before television, before penicillin, polio shots, fast foods, photo copies, the internet or THE PILL. It was before radar, credit cards, split atoms laser beams and ball point pens. Also before panty hose , clothes dryers, electric blankets, air conditioners, drip-dry clothes, and our dish washers wore skirts and bitched a lot.
	We got married THEN we lived together, closets were for storage, not for coming out of, and a man walking on the moon was pure fantasy. Bunnies were small rabbits and we chased them because we were hungry. Designer Jeans were scheming girls called Jean, and a meaningful relationship meant getting along with your cousins. We thought fast foods were what you ate to lose weight and that idea was incomprehensible since nobody needed to lose weight.
	We were before house-husbands, gay rights, computer dating, dual careers, or computer marriages. We were before day care centers, group therapy or nursing homes. We never heard of FM radios, cassette players, electric typewriters, word processors, Organ transplants, or guys wearing earrings. Time sharing was visiting, a chip was a piece of wood, hardware was hardware and software wasn't even a word.
	In the late 1930s "Made in Japan" meant junk and making out meant how we did on a pop quiz. Pizzas, McDonalds and instant coffee did not exist and being told that scientists were making sheep from something called "spliced genes" would have created consternation amid visions of the mutilation of guys called Gene!
	In our teens there were five and ten cent stores where we could buy things for 5 & 10 cents. For one nickel we could buy a frozen malt, an ice cream cone, make a phone call, buy a Pepsi or enough stamps to mail one letter and two post cards. A new Chevy Coupe sold for $600.00 and gasoline was 11 cents per gallon.
	In our day cigarette smoking was fashionable, grass was hoed, coke was a cold drink, pot was a cooking vessel, aids were helpers in the principal's office and gay was a jolly personality. In our rural society most of us were taught "The Facts of Life" by the farm animals, especially the hogs. They produced an average of three litters per year at anywhere between six and twelve piglets per litter. After being around that in our pre-teens it didn't take a lot of imagination to get from pigs to babies.
	I am an old dobber of the WWII generation and we sometimes let strange things get to us. It bothers me a lot that the current generation of preteens have been taught by city guys on the TV that a pig is a pig when he is one day old and weighs 2 pounds or if he is four years years old and weighs 700 pounds, he is still a pig! Here are the facts concerning proper nomenclature of the family SWINE, called locally, HOGS. The newborn of both sexes from birth to about 25 to 35 pounds are pigs. when they are weaned and weigh about forty pounds, they are called shoats. The boy shoats after they are neutered, are called barrows, pronounced locally "bars". The boy pigs which have not been neutered are called boarshoats until they reach maturity, then they are boars. When the girl pigs reach the shoate stage are called gilts until they have their first liter of babies then they are sows, in singular, sow. Now I shall sleep better.
	When we graduated in 1938 Franklin Delano Roosevelt had his alphabet government going full steam. The CCC was the Civilian Conservation Corps which enlisted young men up to age 25 to go far from home to military style camps where they did construction work, timber clearing, road building, or fence building. for this each lad received $10.00 per month for personal expenses and his father or mother received $21.00 per month. The NYA was the National Youth Administration which enrolled boys and girls who had finished high school and sent them to camps within their state where they were taught blue collar trades and offered college prep courses in night school on campus. They received ten dollars per month for personal expenses and nothing for the parents. I was part of this latter group. The camps were not co-ed. I was in Marshall and the nearest girls camp was in Gladewater. There was an NYA Camp North of Avery and an NYA school on Depot street in Clarksville.
	When we graduated we were a hardscrabble bunch of kids who had known hardship most of our lives and there was more to come. We were extremely fortunate to have lost only two boys from Dimple School during WWII, one was Virgil Oliver, a member of our class. I have been told Virgil was KIA at Omaha Beach. The other boy, J.B. Tull, who graduated two or three years later than we, was also a casualty in the ETO. We all endured four long years of unbelievable hardship during the war but we survived and got ourselves educated and had a good life. And that ----