Hood County Texas Genealogical Society
CRESSON
CROSSTIES
by Christopher C. Evans
The Guiles boys
from Baker were not unlike other brothers who went off to fight for their
country in the 1940s and ‘50s except that there were four of them, Maurice,
Derrell, Thurman and Fenton.
When World War II
came on, Ralph Henry Guiles and his wife, Madge Kelley Guiles, offered up their
eldest three sons. When the so-called "Korean Conflict" arose, the
least three sons went to war. The way things worked out, the middle two sons,
Derrell and Thurman, fought in both wars. Thankfully, all four outlived their
military pursuits.
Asked about the
recent assault on America by Moslem terrorists, Thurman Guiles, 75, ponders but
for a second and mutters, "Well, somebody hasn’t been lookin’ around, I
think." What he means is that he fears the national defense has grown soft
and penetrable.
"I think we’d
better start lookin’ around," Guiles added in a recent interview. "If
we don’t we’re all in trouble."
A veteran of both
World War II and Korea before spending 24 years with the U.S. Postal Service,
Guiles today holds forth from a wheelchair on what once was part of the farm
where he was raised. The location is some two miles east of Baker about five
miles north of Cresson, the terrain undulating with low spots covered with oaks
and hackberries. The actual house in which Guiles and his four siblings were
born is maybe a mile away from his present home via a rutted caliche road.
According to the
1980 Parker County Historical Commission book History of Parker County,
Guiles’ great-grandfather, Ben, came to Dallas County in 1855 and settled near
Cedar Hill before migrating with a wife and seven offspring to a place a mile
east of the Baker School. Thurman Guiles’ grandfather, John Guiles, helped
build the Weatherford-to-Cleburne railroad in the middle to late 1880s and was
paid in "gold pieces," the Parker County tome says.
Thurman’s father,
Ralph Henry Guiles, was born in 1884 on the same farm his sons and daughter
would be, a place Thurman today describes as isolated but active. And though
the Sept. 11 events in New York and Washington were much on his mind the day we
talked, some of Thurman Guiles` most vivid recollections were of life on the
farm when he was growing up.
That life, he said,
was built around work to keep the farm running, things the family did together
and play with his siblings. "My father was what you call a stock farmer;
he raised cows and oats and wheat and, for a while in the ‘30s, sheep,"
Thurman said. "What I remember about those sheep is that every year for
years my brothers and I would have to pull cuckleburrs so the sheep wouldn’t
get ‘em in their wool.
"Now that was
some fun," he said with a wry smile.
"Baker was two
miles away so we didn’t have playmates except ourselves," he recalled.
"My brother Fenton was the one I did a lot of stuff with."
The time was
pre-Toys R Us. "We pitched horseshoes but we had horseshoes that came off
horses and they were sometimes different sizes," Giles, who turns 76 Nov.
11, said. "We were always pitching washers, too.
"We used corn
cobs for cows," he said. "Grandpa taught us how to bend sticks and
make gates. Oh, we got stuff for Christmas but it wasn’t too much. Most of our
toys we made up ourselves.
The time was
pre-junk food. "We used to pack a pig in salt and we’d have salt ham
available a lot of the time," he said. "Then, my cousins had guineas
and we’d always have guinea eggs. And we had a garden plus things like wild
plums, so Mama put up canned jams and jellies.
"Mama also
made sugar pies, you know, where you roll the dough out and put sugar in it and
roll it up and fry it. We’d carry those to school."
Guiles said that
perhaps the lowest time he remembers from his childhood was a period in the
mid-1930s when his father, Ralph Guiles, had a spate of bad luck. "One
year he broke his wrist, the next year he cut his foot with an ax and the next
year he had pneumonia, could have died," the younger Guiles said.
"One year, about 1936, neighbors from Baker came and did his farming for
him the whole year. People did that back then, you know."
Thurman remembers
Cresson, where some of his neices and nephews attended school for a time, as
"being pretty far away (five miles)...I remember the (Dick and Ora) York
family and the filling station there, but I wasn’t around a lot of the people
Cresson was known for." He is related to Nina Ross Gibson of Cresson and
Dub Abbott of Godley. "And I remember very well (the late) Cotton Hooker
of Godley, who was one of my favorite people," he said.
Interestingly and
in spite of the military service of four of them, four of the five children of
Ralph and Madge Guiles -- daughter Mildred as well as sons Derrell, Thurman and
Fenton -- are still living.
Thurman Guiles said
those young men and women who defend our country today must operate in a world
that is vastly different, with different rules. The commitment to serve,
though, is much the same.
"I was in the
Marines, World War II from 1944 to ‘46 then the Korean War for four
years," he said rather matter of factly. "Back then, it was just
something you did."
Even if you were a
Baker farmboy.
SIDETRACKS: Kudos to Claudie Fae Bone Teich and daughter Carolyn
Richbourg for answering an appeal for names of folk who taught at or
superintended the Cresson School way back when. With Carolyn’s help, Claudie
Fae came up with these names by year, followed by teacher/superintendent, where
available: 1921 (Gracie Mae Kirkendall/B.F. West, 1922 (Laura Davis/??? Cox), 1923
(Laura Davis/???), 1924 (Lois Freeman/???), 1925 (Ilene Whitlock/??? Oliver),
1926 (Ruth Williamson/???), 1927 (Frances Neville/Victor B. Penuel Sr.), 1928
(Neville/Penuel), 1929 (Penuel/Penuel) and 1930 (Penuel/Penuel). Other teachers
who served at the school, from the Teich-Richbourg research and elsewhere,
include Dixie Penuel, Elma Fidler, Shady Oliver, Cecil Butler, Scott Milligan
and Katherine Hardesty. If you know of others please feel free to send them to
Cresson Crossties, Box 8, Cresson, TX 76035...Carolyn Richbourg also notes that
the physician of record in 1914 was "Dr. McCallam...as he delivered
Mother"...Thurman Guiles said his late father, Ralph, had a peculiar habit
when purchasing gasoline: "He bought gas every time he stopped but he never
bought more than $5 at a time."