Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
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Part Two of Two Hank Williams was born in Mount Olive, Alabama on Sept. 17, 1923. When he was eight years old, Williams was given a guitar by his mother. His musical education was provided by a local blues street singer, Rufus Payne, who was called Tee Tot. From Tee Tot, Williams learned how to play the guitar and sing the blues. Williams began performing around Georgia and Greenville areas of Alabama in his early teens. During his shows Williams would sing songs from his...
* Remembering Roy Acuff and Hank Williams A two part series "I wondered home one day, where I used to run and play, only to find I was too late. Old Rover was gone from his pallet on the lawn, the old folks had died and gone away." Read Part 2 on Hank Williams next week in The Record Jimmy Rogers, the singing brakeman, blues and yodel man died about the time I was born but his songs lived on for years. They still bounce around in my head today. As a child, I met a young hobo w...
U.S. MAY NEVER HAVE A ‘MADAM PRESIDENT’ I would have liked to have a woman elected president but now I know it will never happen in my lifetime. There may never be a ‘Madam President’ in the United States. The Latino population will continue to grow and Latino men believe a woman’s place is in the kitchen. They will never support a woman CEO. As much as they loved Bill Clinton, they voted against Hillary. Kamala never had a chance. She got 10 million less votes than Biden. I...
Oh how the years have flown by. It just doesn't seem like twenty years have gone by since Mom died, Sept. 2, 2004. Her funeral service was held in the little Cajun town of Abbeville, on Sept. 5. For many years I had written about my life with Mom in the Cajun area during the depressed years and the hard times we faced just trying to survive. For a decade I had chronicled her life as a victim of Alzheimer's disease. At that same time President Ronald Reagan was suffering...
The roots of my raising in low cotton and the knowledge of mankind has fast forwarded to unbelievable heights in the span of one lifetime. When I was a lad in the Cajun country in the late ‘30s and ‘40s, South Louisiana was no paradise. The heat and dust, along with the humidity, were almost unbearable. Dust so heavy it filled your nostrils, your body became covered with the mixture of dust and sweat. You could have raised cabbage in your belly button. Dirty work in the fie...
From Possum Trot, Ga. to the Grand Ole Opry and beyond, Wally Fowler blazed musical trails. I’m proud to record those times in the pages of history. The year was 1948, Dudley J. LeBlanc, the inventor of Hadacol, had come up with a great promotional idea, a Hadacol caravan featuring the biggest entertainment talent in the country. The show traveled the United States and admittance was free. Just one box top from a box of Hadacol is all that was needed to catch the biggest s...
No Record but Good Average If you live an active, busy life, old age will creep up on you. Life is on a fast track. You are always looking back wondering where the last 10 years went. I've been most fortunate with a good support group and a caring family. As a poor kid during the great depression, I started working the cotton fields with my mother. Those old cotton fields back home is a reference point from those days on. Through the ages, I really never had any down time. I...
A personal hero that left his mark on a little boy, that followed him to old age. Back in the 1930’s times were hard around the country but in the Cajun parishes of Louisiana they were really bad. My grandfather died when I was four years old, which left no man around. My uncle Meldon “Tee-Dan” Duplantis was still single but lived away from home. He worked at the Abbeville newspaper and came by to visit grandma Avalia almost every day. He always took a few moments to play...
This is for those youngsters who will be graduating this month, who will be leaving the protection of home and striking out on their own. You have absolutely no idea what the future has in store. You will have great things happen, and you will also get a lot of hard bumps. The bumps will seem harder to you than they really are. Your parents, up to now, have been taking many bumps for you, sheltering you against them. Later, you will do the same for your children. Time will...
Monday I got a call from Senator Carl Parker, I always called him ‘Senator.’ He said he was checking on me. I told him outside of nearly daily visits to some doctor, and having to get up too much during the night I was hanging in there. He said join the club about night’s ups and downs, that’s an old man’s curse. He told me he was due to have a heart valve repaired. I didn’t understand why it was put off, something about the doctor not being available. I asked if he had talked...
My grandmother Availia had many children; among them were three sets of twins and a set of triplets. Many of the young died as infants. Only one twin, my uncle Meldan “Tee-Dan” survived. His twin Melda didn’t make it past 3 years old. Grandma had been the carrier of 20 children or more. Few made it to birth, some lived a few months or a few days, and only seven of those children lived a long life. My aunt Eve died in 2008 at age 105. The rest all lived to be 90, with the excep...
With great sadness, we announce the loss of our beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, sister, and family member. In loving memory of Barbara Ann Augustine, we are saddened to announce her passing into her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ’s arms on March 12, 2024. Barbara was born on June 12, 1942, to Ora Lee and Fred Alexander in Meridian, Mississippi. A life so beautifully lived, deserves to be beautifully remembered. She was the sweetest soul who loved her sweets a...
Clay Jackson Dunn was the product of a pioneering background. His father, Allen, had come to Texas from Arkansas in a covered wagon with his mother, Sarah Jane, who apparently was a pretty tough cookie for a 26-year-old. She embarked on a 14-month journey in Texas that held many uncertainties and dangers. Her husband, Dr. Stephen James Dunn, had been killed a few months earlier in the Civil War. Sarah Jane sought a new life for her son and younger sister. Abraham Lincoln was...
I started trying to make it through a Down Life's Highway column and have written this copy from the hospital on Christmas day. I came down with COVID and with my COPD and kidney problems I ended up at St. E's very sick. Phyl, being sick herself, drove to an emergency clinic and also tested positive for COVID but without the other issues I have. The medicine the doctor prescribed has done her a lot of good. My daughter Karen, who is seeing that I am being cared for, is also...
Having lived through that dreadful day and the times then, plus the years down life's highway since, this one day has never left my memory. From the time I was a child and throughout this long life, there have been many memorable events, from Pearl Harbor, WWII, the atomic bomb, many storms, all the way to 9-11, and the insurrection of the U.S. Capital on Jan. 6, 2021. However, no tragedy or event has lived with me more than the assassination of President John F. Kennedy,...
A time and place where movers and shakers congregated and 'Spice Girls' waited on them... I came in on the tail end of the heydays of the famous Holland Hotel, where a person could get a bath and a shave for $1. Rooms had no phones, no television, no radio. It was a historic hotel in a small town, featuring a barber shop with eight chairs and two shoeshine stands. The chandeliered dining room had white linen tablecloths. The hotel was located on the exact spot that Orange's...
The knowledge of mankind has fast-forwarded to unbelievable heights in the span of one lifetime as has today’s temperatures reach record heights. When I was a lad in the Cajun country in the late ‘30s and ‘40s, South Louisiana was no paradise. The heat and dust, along with humidity, was almost unbearable. With today’s temperature it would be almost impossible to carry a sack. Dust so heavy it filled your nostrils, your body became covered with the mixture of dust and sweat....
Jeanelle H. Montet, 90, of Bridge City, Texas, passed away on July 6, 2023, at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Beaumont. A Mass of Christian Burial will 2:00 p.m., Tuesday, July 11, 2023, at St. Mary Catholic Church in Orange. Officiating will be Reverend Antony Paulose. Entombment will follow at St. Mary Cemetery in Orange. A Rosary will begin at 11:30 a.m., Tuesday, July 11, 2023, at Claybar Funeral Home in Orange. A visitation will follow from 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m., at Claybar...
Often I've written about the Cajun side of me, but I seldom have said much about the fighting side of me. That's my Irish side. While a kid in Abbeville, I was a strange youngster, the only person in the little Cajun town with the Irish name of Dunn. The real kick in the behind was that this Irishman couldn't speak a word of English until I was nearly seven. I was poor and endured a lot of abuse because of the way I dressed or didn't. I didn't own any everyday shoes, but I...
How quickly the years have flown by. Come December 31, Phyl and I will mark our 68th wedding anniversary. I knew, my heart knew, and my soul knew, the second I met her that she was the one I wanted to spend my life with. I went home and told my mom that I had met the girl I wanted to be my wife. Phyl never suspected. She was blinded by a smooth talking half-breed Cajun and Irish. I'd been around a lot and mostly on my own since the age of 14. She was a beautiful, olive...
When you're poor, really poor, Christmas can be a very sad time, especially for a youngster. Sometimes the scar is so deep that even a lifetime won't remove it. My childhood Christmas' were spent in extreme poverty. If you ask me about my fondest memories of Christmas, without hesitation I will say it was midnight mass at beautiful old St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Church. The church sits up on a knoll near the bank of the Vermilion River in the Acadian town of Abbeville. With i...
It's come on the 81st anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Prior to the attack, life in the little Cajun community of Abbeville was slower and more country than any Norman Rockwell painting. Our home was a one-room grain storage shed that wasn't wired for anything. Our light came from a coal oil lamp and our heat from a small coal oil stove. Mom had paid $70 for the little shack that was delivered on a mule drawn sled. After the war she sold it for $90. The old hand pump I used as a...
This is for those youngsters who will be graduating this month, leaving the protection of home and striking out on their own. You have absolutely no idea what the future has in store. You will have great things happen, and you will also get a lot of hard bumps. The bumps will seem harder to you than they really are. Your parents, up to now, have been taking many bumps for you, sheltering you against them. Later, you will do the same for your children. Time will help you become...
My grandmother Availia had many children; among them were three sets of twins and a set of triplets. Many of the young died as infants. Only one twin, my uncle Meldan “Tee-Dan” survived. His twin Melda didn’t make it past 3 years old. Grandma had been the carrier of 20 children or more. Few made it to birth, some lived a few months or a few days, and only seven of those children lived a long life. My aunt Eve died in 2008 at age 105. The rest all lived to be 90, with the excep...
The Battle of New Orleans I turned down Larry Messier's offer to be his guest at the Ali-Spinks heavyweight fight in Vegas and made my annual trek to Rising Star's Sipe Spring cemetery, that dates back to the Civil War, where my dad Clay, his parents and siblings are buried. Leon Spinks shocked the boxing world and accomplished, against great odds, what he had told me a few days earlier he would do. He defeated world champion Muhammad Ali for the heavy weight crown. Ali was un...
