Ola Bell Boyd 1903-1995

Her religious outlook and belief was simple, leaving complicated issues of theology to church leaders. She was not pretentious in any way, was content to live and let live and to be satisfied with her position in life. She absorbed the values and prejudices of her surroundings. She thought of herself and kin as descent folk which she called "refined". She used to say her mother "raised her to be refined." By this she simply meant to live and act decently.

It is to her that we children owe our dedication to hard work, and the determination or stubbornness to see any task through to the end. She would say to us kids that no matter what occupation we chose in life we should strive to be the best. She did not see any type of work as degrading, and no work was to be avoided. She had no patience with laziness or shirking of duty. We had the best looking patches on our pants of any kid in school. She worked hard all her life and would pick up a hoe to go attack the weeds in the yard whenever a migraine headache came on, which was all too often in her middle years. Work was her therapy. She had no interest in politics, but she always voted Democrat, mostly because Daddy always voted Republican. So you might say she was just contrary. Both my parents inherited their political party affiliation from their parents.

She had a healthy since of humor, and was always eager to laugh, even at herself. She liked to tell stories of mischief and pranks from her childhood. Although she dearly loved gossip she was never mean, and "visiting" served as her intellectual outlet. She loved her family, including extended family, and for years traveled back to Wister, Oklahoma to attend "Decoration Day" (Memorial Day) at the local cemeteries, where she made sure dead relatives had head stones and flowers. She also took such opportunities to visit friends and kin. She and Daddy mostly took separate vacations.

In about 1929, when Daddy would not teach her to drive, she waited until Daddy went to work, then loaded her three children into the car and set out to learn. She jumped ditches and took out fence posts, also terrorized and panicked neighbors, but she learned to drive, or at least enough to keep the car between the ditches. That was one story she loved to tell about. Another was when she and her twin were young girls and got into Grandpa's whisky keg in the barn for a sample, then couldn't get the bung back in without it leaking, so they covered the puddle with corn husks and never said a word. Grandpa just thought he had left it leaking. When she was a young girl, Grandpa took his family to west Texas in a rented railroad box car where his brother, "Uncle Bill" had a farm, and stayed a few years until the local boys started taking an interest in his daughters. They moved back to Oklahoma by carriage and wagon. Mother told of loosing her bonnet one day when it dropped out of the buggy. She went back to look for it but never found it. She bemoaned the loss until she lost her memory some 70 years later. (Janet thinks she saw this incident on the television program "Little House on the Prairie" after she started having memory loss, and confused the incident as one that had happened to her.) When she was grown she took a job as housekeeper and all-around jack-of-all-trades with the Henry Peck family. Mr. Henry Peck was the Leflore County Superintendent of Schools. On election day, the Republican Party sent out a car and driver to take Mr. & Mrs. Peck to the polls. Daddy was the driver, and he and Mother struck up an acquaintance that ended in marriage.

After moving the family to California in 1943, Mother could not believe her good fortune in the high wages paid in the local packing sheds. She could make sixty cents and hour, and when out of work in the off season, she could collect pay [unemployment insurance] for doing nothing but stay home and do house work. She never out grew or gave up her southern mountain language and expressions. One time, shortly after the move to California, a lady friend came to our house to visit. She was relating some bit of juicy gossip about fellow workers in the packing shed where she and Mother worked. Mother would interject some of her southern expressions such as "Shut your mouth" or "hush" or "I want you to hush". Apparently the lady was not familiar with those expressions, which are really intended to show interest and encouragement to the talker, and suddenly stopped her story after Mother had said, "Shut your mouth" about the third time. She said, "Well! I guess I had better" and got up to leave. Mother sure thought that was strange behavior. She tried to apologize and explain to the lady that she didn't mean what she said, but it didn't do any good. She told that story on herself for years.

As mentioned above, Mother was not deep into theology, but she was attentive to church attendance. She considered church people as the right sort of people to associate with and have as friends. She made sure we kids were always at Sunday school and church, and she was proud of any part we had in church activity. Our social life revolved around our church. Sunday was not a day of rest for her, as if any day was for rest. We usually had a big meal on Sunday after church, and one or two families were usually invited to our house to eat. Otherwise the church may have a potluck social where every family took several dishes which were shared by all. No matter where we ate, Mother was the cook and servant. She thought it an honor to serve her family and friends. That could be considered her religion.

Although she lived in Grover City for twenty-five years, she always attended church in Guadalupe which was fifteen miles away. But attendance was limited to Sundays because of the distance. Mother needed more than one day a week for socializing, and so she joined several groups and organizations such as PTA, Oceano Woman's Club, Grange, and later the Eastern Star. The latter she really liked because she sometimes got to dress up as she never had in her life. I don't believe she had ever had occasion to wear an evening gown before.

[Contributed by Leo R. Estes 1 Oct 2000 12:00am; last modified by John W. Wilbanks 13 Dec 2000 5:44pm]