The Life and Times of
Mary Lou (Stage) Huffman
By Mary Lou (Stage) Huffman
PROLOGUE
In 1996, my youngest daughter,Deb, encouraged me to write a journal of my life and the many stories I had told my grandchildren with whom I have had the pleasure of spending many hours.
I have been able to trace my heritage back on my father’s side to 1812 starting with Samuel Stage. He was born during the War of 1812. At that time, nothing west of the Mississippi had been explored and the US consisted of eighteen states. My mother’s side has been traced back to 1820, the year Maine became the twenty-third state. She is from the descendants of Joseph Murray.
I have three wonderful and beautiful children, Marshall, Patricia, and Debra. I have five biological grandchildren and four great grandchildren and many step-grandchildren and step-great grandchildren.
I have lived, traveled, and worked at many jobs during my lifetime. I have enjoyed a great life due to all my family and friends who have done wonderful and loving things for me.
MY LIFE STORY
I was born Mary Lou Stage in the little town of Lexa, Arkansas on the hot summer day of July 12, 1925. Our family was made up of seven brothers and one sister. I was the sixth of nine kids which was a lot even in those days. Some areas of my life are hazy but others are as clear as yesterday. This story is about the memories of my childhood in Arkansas and my later adult life.
My dad, Frank (Francis) Stage had a job working for the Missouri-Pacific Railroad Company. We considered ourselves middle class but because there were nine children (Frank, Gerald, Bob, Bill, Kathleen, Mary Lou, Ed, James, Don) in our family, people thought we were poor. We never considered ourselves poor because we didn’t know any better. Living so far from the city we had no perception of rich or poor. Now that I look back at that time we really were poor. When I say poor, I mean dirt poor! Our house was built on wooden blocks. We had no inside plumbing, screens for the windows or any other basic comforts. Even the doors didn’t close properly. Because of the blocks the house sat on, we could crawl under the house and play in the dirt, which was great fun.
We would dig big holes and fill them up with water and then we would catch frogs and put them in the water and poke them with sticks to see how high they would jump to get out. If my grandchildren did that I would have told them that it was cruel and mean.
We would build roads in the dirt and race our little cars and wreck into each other. Often we would make wooden stilts and have long races and see which one could knock off the other ones.
I remember making a play house with a dirt floor with my sister Kat and then dressing up our younger brothers and making them our babies. We also made dolls out of ears of small corn.
We had many dirt ball and mud ball fights, which was great fun. We would get on the roofs of the two old barns and throw mud balls at each other all day long. One day someone got hit in the eye so dad stopped the mud ball fights.
One of the roughest and most fun games we played was “King of the Hill”. We lived by a big hill and we would each get a big box, open it up and slide down the hill. The one that got to the bottom first would be “King”, and then we would try to keep everyone else from getting up the hill.
The town would have a big 4th of July fireworks and we would go and watch them. They were probably nothing like today’s events but when we were little they seemed like the greatest thing we had ever seen.
Christmas at our house was nothing like what goes on today. It wasn’t a commercial event but a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ our Savior. We would get only one present and mom would cook a special meal. Our stockings would have candy and fruit in them. Later she would read from the Bible about the birth of Jesus. We still believed in Santa but Christmas was more about Christ than the presents.
I had a very happy childhood as far as I can remember because all the people in our little town were so nice to us.
My dad and mom were very happy and they never talked about money or anything that made us unhappy.
I, however, never remember seeing my mom when she wasn’t pregnant. “Oh! Happy Day! Another brother!” we would say when dad would tell us the baby was here.
This is what I remember up to eight years old.
My mother, Hattie (Murray), was a saint. She was so kind to all of us. Mom taught all of us to have manners and be kind to each other. Going to church was expected of the family, but my dad like many men in those days, was not very good about going because he was so tired from working long, long hours.
Mother would sing with us all day long. We would help her clean the house then we would go swing in the old swing on the porch and sing (none of us could carry a tune in a bucket). At the end of the day when the sun would go down and the temperature start to fall, we would all go for a long walk, which was a real treat to the family.
A BIG CHANGE
When I was around nine years old my dad got bumped from his job and we had to move to a big city. (When you get bumped that means your job is given to someone more senior.) The US was in the throngs of the Great Depression. The stock market had crashed and millions of Americans were suddenly out of work. Drought conditions were sweeping across the central plains causing even more misery.
So off we went to live in Helena, Arkansas. I was so sad and afraid. Our life had been so simple up to this point but now things were changing so fast for me. My childhood comfort level took a big hit. Before the move to Helena, my mom and dad would paint the house each spring with white wash, paper the walls with new newspapers and wash all the curtains and bedclothes. Now we were going to a big town where they had telephones, cars and sliced bread you could buy at the store. I also heard my parents talking about black people there, which was new to us. But worse of all, sometimes they had doctors that would take your tonsils out if you were sick very often.
Once we moved to Helena, I tried very hard to stay well but didn’t make it very long before I had to go to the doctor. You guessed it; I had to have my tonsils out! All I remember is on the day I had my tonsils removed, I missed a big parade and I had never seen a parade so I felt like a very sad and mistreated little girl.
Living in town did not go over well with any of us. Before long dad moved us out in the country so we adjusted to Helena much better. In time we had lots of fun in Helena once we moved out of the city. Once again we had lots of space to play and explore.
The cotton wagons would come by our house in the summer. We would catch the wagons and ride to the cotton patch. When the wagon got loaded and headed to the gin, we would ride back home again.
This was a time of new discovery for all of us. We found out how great the black people were to us. They were so kind and we would have such a joyful time with them because they would sing lots of happy songs. In my day, people would look out for children and treat them very special. It was much safer for us than it is today.
Some days we would spend all day playing school on the front porch. We did not have many store bought toys; however, with so many brothers and a sister we always had someone to play with. Kat and I also had favorite brothers so my sister and I would have fights if one was mistreating their favorite brother.
We always had a big garden, pigs, and a cow, and my mom would make butter for us. The only thing about that was the kids had to do the churning and I really hated churning, but I loved the buttermilk.
We also had chickens and the boys had to kill the chicken and pluck their feathers. Mom would can the vegetables from the garden all summer long.
We also got to go see our grandma & grandpa once a year during the summer.<
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One day when I was about ten years old, my mom told us she was going to have another baby. I prayed so hard it would be a girl; I was tired of having so many brothers. Unfortunately it didn’t happen. Oh me, oh my, my seventh brother, Don, was born.
My mom got very sick and my grandma and Aunt Lorene came to help with the new baby. After that, mom never recovered. It was a very sad and difficult time for all of us. My mom called me over to her bed one day and told me she was going to die and go to heaven and to please take care of my little brothers. The next day she passed away and it left such a big void in our lives.
Grandma had to take the new baby (Don) with her as dad had to work and had the rest of us kids to take care of. That same year my oldest brother (Frank) went to live with grandma so he could attend Jonesboro College.
Gerald, the next oldest brother, was such a wonderful and sweet brother. He did so much for all of us; we still had a cow that he milked every day before school.
MY DAD
My dad (Frank Sr.) was such a wonderful father. He married my mother, Hattie Murray, on March 25th, 1918 in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Sometimes dad would take us to the roundhouse where the broken trains were. There was a high shed over a sand pit and Dad would let us spend the day playing in the roundhouse, jumping into the sandpit and jumping on the bales of cotton. After mom died in 1935 he was left with having to take care of all of us. Taking care of the eight of us that lived at home was an incredible hardship for a single parent. Just keeping us in clothes and food was a daunting task.
For the most part my father was easy going and could usually find the good in people. He always seemed to be laughing about something one of us had done. Like all parents, there was a line that we knew we couldn’t cross or we would end up paying the consequences. He was a little harder on the boys but that is the way it often is, besides, they were a lot more adventurous and got into trouble more often. Kat and I were perfect children - not! Actually, we just didn’t get caught as often.
As hard as it was, the depression was making dad’s life even more difficult. Everything was harder to come by but somehow he kept the family going and we always had food.
Dad’s job changed once again and we moved to Paragould, Arkansas. We all loved that small town. Dad’s office was so close to our house you could see it out of the back window. Dad had to go to work at 10:00 p.m. so we all were supposed to be in bed when he left. Sometimes we would be stinkers and get up and play after he left. Someone would look out the back window because he would check on us an hour after he left to see that we were okay. When we could see him coming with his lantern, we would all jump in bed and pretend to be asleep when he got there.
In the morning he would come home and get us up for school. He always fixed us breakfast. That is the reason I was strict about my children eating before school.
After we were all on way to school, dad could go to bed until lunch time then he would fix our lunch (no lunch at school) and then go back to bed until it was time for him to fix our supper.
The house had to have everything picked up and clean before we went to bed.
My sweet dad was a hardworking man. In the summer we had big gardens and dad would can our food for the winter. Sometimes he would have as many as 300 cans of food for the winter. The winter months weren’t bad in Paragould, which helped dad, because he also made our quilts and feather beds. None of us ever got in serious trouble, which was very important to him.
We were just a normal family trying to stay together. We were all growing up and things were changing.
ARKANSAS SUMMERS
We loved the summers most of all. Even though the temperature was sometimes beastly and the humidity even worse, it was still my favorite time. There were long lazy days to play and explore the world. In those days it was safe to play outside until after dark. The whole time I was growing up we never worried about someone coming along and hurting one of us. It was so much simpler then. Of course we had no TV since it wasn’t even a reality at that time.
One summer a small part of the Mississippi river dried up because there was no rain for such a long time. Gerald would take us to that part of the river and look for arrowheads. Sometimes we would get lucky and find a lot of them, other times we couldn’t find a single one.
We had a dog named Boots but something was wrong with him. We were in the bedroom telling stories and Boots had a foaming fit. Everyone made it out of the room but me. My brothers closed the door and held it shut leaving me behind with Boots and his foaming mouth. After that I was so afraid of him that dad found someone to take Boots. I guess that’s the reason I don’t like dogs to this day.
Sometimes we would go up the hill and get grapevines, cow weeds, and coffee grounds and roll them in paper and smoke them while dad was in bed. Maybe we were smoking pot (probably not). We kept our “stash” in cigar boxes hidden in the shed. Dad never found out or else we would have been in trouble big time.
We were all growing up and things didn’t change too much. Frank was going to college so we didn‘t get to see him as often. Our youngest brother, Don, was growing up with our Grandpa and Grandma. We would go see them and my baby brother, for one week in the summer.
Grandpa and grandma were nice but we didn’t know much about them. I remember grandpa was a very quiet man and my grandma would make my sister and me dresses while we were visiting them to help dad. We didn’t have a car and they lived in Jonesboro, Arkansas so our uncle would come after us. It was about twenty-three miles. We always had a great time there because our grandpa was a janitor at the high school and he had lots of work to do in the summer and so he took us with him to play.
OTHER THINGS I REMEMBER
These are a few other things I remember while I was growing up. Perm machines had long tentacles like those of an octopus. Curlers and clamps were on the end of each one and heated the hair. They got so hot they would burn your skin if they touched the back of your neck. You had to sit very still. After, you could smell burnt hair all over the house.
Our Sunday shoes would always squeak when we walked and we would giggle. Dad would put oil on them and try to rub it into the soles. It was supposed to help but it really didn’t do much.
Our slips were called underskirts. They were to keep the light from showing through our dresses. The fabric was very thin in those days. What a change from today. Some women go out in public with hardly more than their underpants on. Modesty has long since vanished.
Sometimes mom wouldn’t have a handkerchief (no Kleenex Tissues in those days) and would have to wipe our noses on the hem of her dress. Handkerchiefs were mostly used to tie our nickels in so we could keep them in on place in our pocket when we went to Sunday School. That would be our offering. Even a poor as we were, we always seemed to have a few nickels to give.
Comics were called the ‘funnies’ in those days but were never in color like today's. The paper was all about news, mostly local but we didn’t have those annoying advertisements that seem to be the biggest part of today’s papers. What a waste of resources.
The term ‘Television’ hadn’t even been invented. AM radio was all that was available and even that was on a limited time basis. I often wonder what today’s world would be like with no TV, no cell phones (or any phone), no computers, Gameboys, Xboxes, and gadgets. Kid’s today can’t comprehend living without these things that they think are so necessary.
Going to the store was a big event. Dad bought groceries all week long on a ‘tab’. At the end of the week we would get to go along as he settled up his bill. He would buy a small bag of candy and we would each get one piece. To us that was a big deal.
There were just forty-eight states and few roads existed which made travel a real adventure. No air conditioning for cars or houses existed until much later in my life. When we traveled, we would often buy a big block of ice and put it on the floor in the back seat. We would take turns sitting on it and occasionally chip off pieces so we could all suck on it.
/> Bikes were a big deal in those times. Not many girls had bikes, mostly only the fairly well off ones. They were considered a luxury and during the depression few people had very many luxuries. Most were living from day to day.
GROWING UP
The things we did were pretty much like most other people’s lives, school, play, baths, homework, and bed.
I did get in really big trouble one summer. My girlfriend and I met some boys that lived over the state line in Missouri. Since we didn’t live very far from the state line we decided we would ride bicycles over there to see them. I didn’t have a bicycle, only my brothers had them at that time. They were their pride and joy and they spent a lot of time cleaning them and riding them. My brother Bill liked Kathleen more than he liked me so he let her borrow his. I had to borrow one from a friend who said she would leave it on the front porch for me. The state line was just a little further than we had thought. It turned out to be twelve miles. After riding most of the day when we finally got there they weren’t even home. We started back home when a policeman stopped us and started asking a lot of questions. We were so afraid and didn’t know what to do. After talking to us they took us to the police station and called my dad at work. They also called the people that had reported the bicycle I was riding as stolen. It took a while before the girl finally told her parents she had let me borrow it. They later released us and we got home just before dark.
When we finally got back home we were surprised that Dad wasn’t very mad at us. He was more upset with the girl lying and causing all that trouble. I was never allowed to play with her after that.
I don’t remember many other big events happening between the ages of twelve and fifteen years old. We did finally get a car and we did take a few fun trips. We would go to Memphis, Tennessee in the summer before school started back in September to get our new school clothes. When we all got on the train, people would look at us because there were so many of us. That would make dad mad and he would say something smart to them if someone made a rude comment about us.
The Life and Times of Mary Lou (Stage) Huffman Page 1