Olive Elizabeth "Ollie"
Montgomery
From Memories Compiled
by Elizabeth Maxson, Ollie's Granddaughter
Olive was a
school teacher and principal. She was Beryl's
teacher for the first 3 years of her daughter's
schooling. She was known
for the tamales she made, for the crocheted items
for baby showers in the community, and for being
generally artistic. Each month the County Agent
would come to the community, teaching a new craft.
Miss Ollie embraced glass etching, metal tooling,
and leather tooling. She had a complete set of
leatherworking tools, using them to make wallets,
belts, purses, etc., with leather purchased at
Tandy's in Ft. Worth. She also wrote poetry,
producing a new poem for each wedding, new baby, or
anniversary in the Paint Creek Community, located in
Haskell Co., TX. She had two poems published in
1942.
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Christmas
Memories
I remember fondly
the Christmas celebrations at my maternal
grandparents' home. They were farmers in west
Texas, so they never had a lot of money, but at
Christmas, my grandfather would go down to the
pasture, cut down a cedar tree and bring it home to
be decorated with popcorn strings and construction
paper chains. I do remember they had about 10
electric bubble lights, that would "boil" once they
got warm, and that were fascinating to watch. There
were a few special Christmas balls made of glass,
twisted metal icicles, and, of course, the foil
tinsel carefully hung on each branch. My
grandmother filled in the spaces of the giant 10-ft. tree with balloons and candy canes, which she
gave to children from the community who visited
their home. The most fun was on Christmas Eve, when
we opened all the family gifts, waiting for Santa to
come the next morning. My grandmother would shop
all year long, wrap the packages immediately, and
then put them under the tree, thinking she would
remember which package belonged to which family
member. She didn't! I might open one that
belonged to my father, and he might open one that
was my grandfather's, etc. It brought a whole new
meaning to "gift exchange" and was so much fun. Another tradition from the same grandmother was to
say "Christmas Eve gift" to everyone she met on Dec.
24th. Supposedly, if you said it before the other
person did, they had to give you a gift. Although
we never actually exchanged gifts with it, we had a
lot of fun "stealing" someone else's Christmas Eve
gift. In fact, I still do it today, and have taught
several family members and friends about this old
tradition. I cannot find how it originated, and
have met only two other people who have ever heard
of it. The other tradition was that same grandmother's
favorite Christmas dessert - purple cows. A purple cow is a wonderfully tart and
sweet concoction made from the best vanilla ice
cream with Welch's (my grandmother's maiden name was
Welch, so it had to be Welch's) grape juice poured
over, as in a float. My mother (Beryl Montgomery
Cathey) says they had those even before they had
electricity and a refrigerator. Apparently, on
Saturday, they would bring 100 lbs. of ice home from
town. My grandfather dug a deep pit on the north
side of the house out on the farm, which he lined
with burlap and boards. The ice would last until
about Thursday. When they were going to have ice
cream, they would also purchase dry ice to keep it
frozen. Mother says she remembers having
purple cows before she and Daddy married, and that
was 1938. Mother and I carried on the tradition
this year (2002) by having purple cows as our
Christmas Eve dessert. They were just as good as
they ever were.
Elizabeth (Cathey) Maxson
© 2002
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