|
Descendants of Joseph BRADBURY & Lorinda Cochran
Memories of Gwen Goff Hobbs:
The great-grandfather I knew as "Little Daddy" was born Ollie Cohen Bradberry but he heartily disliked his middle name and when the military mistakenly had his name Ollie B Bradberry in their records, he changed it . However, he didn't legally change his name. I have a copy of his Social Security Application and he's listed there as Ollie B Bradberry!
I am told that when I was two years old, he stood on his head in order to make me laugh. He was seventy years old by this time!
My last memory of my great-grandfather, Ollie Bradberry (I called him Little Daddy), was when I was four years old. We had gone up to Electra from Palestine to visit them. His wife, Leona (Big Momma), had geese that would snap at my feet and I was terrified of them until I saw her shoo them away with such authority. Little Daddy and Big Momma both enthusiastically invited us in, saying that they had fried chicken ready and all the fixin's. As the oldest great-grandchild, I was invited to eat with the adults. Puffed up with pride, I ran into the dining room to see where I would be sitting, and LO! and Behold! there was only a huge platter of fried chicken....there was another platter of fried chicken feet! There went my appetite. I sat there the whole dinner, just looking at those poor chicken feet and trying to swallow what little food I had managed to put on my plate. Later that night, Little Daddy place both of my hands within his hands and rubbing them, he looked me in the eye and said, "You see these warts on your hands? In the morning when you wake up, they will be gone." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the disbelieving look on my mother's face but decided to believe him as nothing else had ever worked. In the morning when I woke up, the warts were gone! I have heard through the years from other family members that they had had similar experiences with Little Daddy and no one can explain exactly how the healing worked but it did.
My grandmother, O Frances Bradberry Goff, was named for her father, Ollie and the place where he was fighting in WWI when she was born. However, she didn't know her full name was Ollie Frances Bradberry until she and my grandfather went to the courthouse to be married! Throughout my childhood, she would tell me stories about her childhood in Electra, Texas. Most of the time, her father worked in the oil fields and she would tell about how she and her siblings would play on the workover rigs out in the fields beside their home. At other times in her childhood, she would have to care for her younger siblings while her father and mother worked in the cotton fields. There wasn't much money for the extras like toys or even the glasses she needed as a child. It was a hard life.
When I was a child, Grandma would play mud pies with me out in the sand box that my grandfather had built for my sisters and me. When my family moved back to Texas from California in 1965, she still had a ringer washing machine and I thought it was great to be able to help her do the laundry. Oh! the folly of youth! She would take me to the dime store and we could make an afternoon of it. I still love dime stores today because they bring back such wonderful memories of other shopping trips. Another love she has given me (for better or worse) is General Hospital. I remember laying under the water fan in her living room during my summer visits and watching GH at two o'clock every week day. It's an appointment that I still make.
The Bradberrys as far as I can see have never had an easy life but they have been interesting and maybe in the end that's much more important.
"The Story of the Fiddle and the Flood"
Ollie played a Strauss violin (he called it a fiddle) that had belonged to his mother, Ruth Julia "Ruthy" Alexander Bradberry Martin. When she died, Ollie inherited the fiddle. We don't know if Ruthy taught him to play the fiddle before she died or if he was self-taught. There was an article about Ollie and his fiddle in the Wichita paper. Whoever cut the story out did not include the date. Ollie said that the fiddle was a Strauss and was 210 years old. He asserted that it belonged to his great grandfather whom he did not name. Ollie would play at dances in the area on the weekend to supplement his income from the oil field.
One day when Ollie and, his brother, Marion, were working on the irrigation ditches for the Wichita Valley Water Works, the water from one of the ditches flooded the campground and their tent.The fiddle was washed away in the flood. Someone recognized the fiddle and returned it to Ollie. Evidently, the water didn't ruin the fiddle as he continued to play it for many, many years afterwards.(as told by Meredith Bradberry to his daughter, Peggy Lois Bradberry Shepherd)
I am still gathering stories and pictures of the Bradberry family so check back often for updates
Table of Contents
|
