Antique Memories Library

Oak Street Village Shoppes 201 W. Oak Street Tel: 903.729.4099 Hours: 10:00-5:30pm M-F 10:00-5:00pm Sat.

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Here in Palestine, Texas we are fortunate to celebrate with a three week-end Dogwood festival that is always the last two weekends in March and the first week-end in April. There are different activities to entertain everyone on each week-end. We have a park of several hundred acres known as Davy Dogwood Park. It was named for the man that donated the land and it has several miles of curving roads to drive over and enjoy the many dogwood trees that are located in the forested park. It is especially pretty this time of year when the dogwoods and redbuds are in full bloom. There are picnic tables for those that want to stop and have lunch and let the kids play. There are numerous opportunities for amateur and professional photographers alike. Streams flow through the park that is live with wildlife. You just need to see it to understand the beauty. Many memories come to mind when I think of the Dogwood Trails. It is a year around park and is used by lots of people. I remember when I was young going out there for a family reunion one summer. All the aunts, uncles, and cousins were present. My cousin Donald Gene and I spent the whole day entertaining ourselves wading the creek with pants legs rolled up, chasing and catching minnows and putting them in jars, without a care in the world. It would be nice to live those days again. Well I guess I'd better go for now. It's almost time to open this store. There'll be plenty of people to talk to today while making future antique memories. Ya'll come to see us when you can.. . . Jerry
January, 2007 . . . Well another Christmas has come and gone. I've seen better but I've seen worse. I guess this past Christmas should be considered average. It was a good one though. The kids and grandkids all got to come in. However one son lives right next door with his lovely wife and the two prettiest granddaughters that ever lived. What else could you ask for? I remember when Christmas would roll around and our kids were small and the grandparents all made a fuss over them. I wondered why at the time. Now I know. It's what memories are made of. Not only has Christmas come and gone, but another birthday for me and my wife. We have birthdays only two days apart. Mine being on December 31st and hers on January 2nd. I was a real tax break for my mom and dad but she cheated hers out of an extra deduction for the year. We got some good news here in Palestine recently. As most of you know, funding for the Texas State Railroad was cut out of the state budget by the legislature and December 31st was going to be the last day for the steam engines to run between Palestine and Rusk. With a lot of hard work by many locals and our State Senator, Todd Staples, (who by the way is now the State Agriculture Commissioner), managed to get emergency funding to operate the railroad through the next fiscal year which will end on August 1, 2007. We hope to have a private company in place by then that will take over operation of the railroad park. We, in our business, depend on visitors a lot, and the State Railroad brings a lot of tourists to town. Thanks Todd and all the others for your hard work. We're also excited about our new billboard that will be going up in March, just in time for the Texas Dogwood Trails celebration here in Palestine. We will of course be using it to advertise our business but just as important we will be inviting people to visit historic Downtown Palestine. Look for it around the 5th of March. I've got to go for now. Please come see us when you're in town.
December, 2006 . . .I suppose everyone has a few vivid memories of Christmas past along with some of the presents that were Santa brought when they were a kid. I was walking through the shop the other day and ran across some old cap pistols. You know the kind that every red-blooded American boy had to have when he was growing up in the fifties. Cowboys were popular on T.V. and at the movies and we had to emulate our heroes by dressing and playing the part of cowboys every chance we had. We could ride stick horses and chase the bad guys out of the territory just as well as Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, or the Lone Ranger. What fun that was. A few years after the stick horse craze, most guys graduated to a BB gun. After extensive gun safety training from your father, usually at about ten years of age, you were exited and anxious for Christmas to come because you knew your first real gun would probably be under that tree, come Christmas morning. I couldn’t wait for what was to be a Daisy Red Ryder. That’s the only gift I remember from that year and it might as well have been the only thing I got because it became my constant companion. I remember the little red, “tube” that the BBs came in. You could remove the top and just pour the magazine full of those little round, copper colored, bits of ammunition. I practiced and practiced with the target that came in the box with the gun until there was nothing left but a ragged piece of cardboard. I spent many days after that sitting on the front porch shooting at flies that would land within eyesight. I got pretty good and could almost always pop those things at about six feet. There was also many days spent with friends on big game hunting trips in the woods behind the house. One other gift that comes to mind was one that I received when I was about fourteen. Remember those chemistry sets that were so popular? Well I got one of those things in addition to a microscope kit at the same time. I became the mad scientist for a while that year. I don’t guess there was anything that didn’t become the subject of close scrutiny under the microscope. There were all sorts of neat chemicals included in the chemistry set along with instructions for different experiments. Probably my favorite, but certainly not my Mom’s, was an experiment that required mixing a couple of chemicals together that made the worst smell that could be imagined. Imagine an egg that had been left out of the refrigerator for a couple of weeks and had become rotten. Well multiply that smell at least ten times and you can imagine what the concoction smelled like. Whew, it was terrible and I always liked to see the look on my sister’s face when I would invite her into my room under some pretense that I needed her help and catch her unaware of what I was doing. It was always worth a good laugh when she got a nose full of my latest experiment. I’m sure you have a lot of Christmas memories too. I hope your Christmas is a blessed one. Remember what the season is all about and I’ll try to write about more antique memories after the first of the year. . . . Merry Christmas to you all.
November, 2006 . . . As most of you know the festival has always been known as the "Hot Pepper Festival", for upwards of 15 years. It just seems that it gets harder every year to get folks to participate in growing peppers, making salsa, and eating those fire laden fruits for fun, so the name has been changed. Hopefully the trees will cooperate annually and turn their leaves all those pretty colors for us. That should be easy enough and doesn't require any effort on anyone's part. Mother Nature takes care of the necessities. Thinking back about the Hot Pepper Festival, hot peppers and the like, it reminded me of an incident when I was a kid. My mama loved hot peppers and still does. She says they aren't hot enough unless they cause you to hiccup. Beats me why anyone wants to punish their mouth like that but that's what she does for fun. Anyway back to what I wanted to tell you. My mom not only likes hot peppers but she has always grown them in her garden. Once when I was about 5 or 6 years old (old enough to know better) I decided that it would really be fun to watch my little sister Jan, who was about three at the time, eat some of mama's peppers. She, even at that tender age, knew those things were not meant to be eaten, especially if you didn't even have a glass of ice cold water available. Well I had my plan and it was really a good one. While Jan and I were playing outside one day I picked me a handful of those things from one of the plants and pretended to eat them, making sure she saw me. I began bragging about how good they were, smacking my lips and really putting on a good show. It was then that I offered her one that I had left over. She still would have no part of it. She was smart enough to be skeptical even back then. However as diligent as I am I continued to try to convince her that they were really sweet, pretending to pop another into my mouth, chomping down and munching away. I even picked some of the really small ones convincing her they wouldn't be hot at all, being as small as they were. My scheme finally worked and she was convinced to try one of the immature peppers because her older brother certainly wouldn't steer her wrong. It didn't take long before her eyes were full of tears. She was screaming at the top of her lungs. It was only then that I realized I had made a dreadful mistake. I didn't know what to do, but she did. She ran screaming to the house where our mom was doing her usual daily chores and let her know exactly what had happened and who did it. Well mom being the equal opportunity person that she is, decided that I should get a taste of my own medicine. Yep, I had to eat a pepper. I had to chew it up too. No swallowing it whole. No water, no milk or soda, no nothing. Boy was my mouth steaming. Not only was my mouth on fire but so was my other end by the time she was finished with me. It turned out that seeing my sister eat peppers wasn't as much fun as I first thought it would be. Just goes to prove, you can't be right every time. I'll write later with some more antique memories. Come see us when you can and "Happy Antiquing"..
October, 2006 . . . .I was looking around the shop the other day to see if any vendors had dropped off anything that Sue would think she couldn't live without. I wasn't looking necessarily to buy anything but more than likely I would be hiding it from her and pushing it really hard to other customers before she discovered it. She really likes unusual soda bottles and we really have a huge selection of them in here. Well I got to looking at all the "new" soda bottles that had come in and it brought back another of those "Antique Memories" from sometime back. Some of you, I'm sure, still remember when "cokes" required a deposit on the bottle when you took it from the grocery store. Every thing was called a "coke" back then, no matter what flavor soda you bought. You could drink it down right there at the check stand and leave the bottle with the grocer and wouldn't owe a deposit or pay up the $.02 and leave with bottle in tow. Even then $.02 wasn't a lot of money and I'm not sure why that was supposed to entice you to bring the bottle back. As I said, the deposit required wasn't enough to be concerned about for most folks, so guess what? When the "coke" was swallered down and thirst was quenched, more likely than not, out the car window went the bottle. I guess people either didn't care about throwing trash on the highways or assumed there was a bottle genie that would come pick up the empties from the side of the road. Whatever the reason, you would always see "coke" bottles on the side of the road. You had to be sure you weren't too close behind someone that had just finished a "big red" or some other popular drink when the time came to deposit the bottle on the highway right-of-way. You might just have to pull some defensive driving tactics out of your travel bag just to dodge a flying missile if their aim wasn't necessarily toward the right side of the road. Lord help you if several "big red" drinkers finished at the same time and decided to fling 4 or 5 bottles at once from an open window. You'd better hope there was no slack in your steering wheel so if your reactions were quick enough, the car would react as intended when you turned the wheel. This was another good reason for having that tailgating law. Well I'd better get to the story I was meaning to tell. I've been rambling too much, so here goes. It seems that my cousin Kenny and I, being about the same age and intelligence, or should that be lack of intelligence, decided that we needed to go to Lake Palestine for the afternoon. I didn't own a car back then but he had an old 1953 Chevy that was his pride and joy. It was a six cylinder and sometimes would fire on all six but most of the time we made do with five cylinders. It got us where we wanted to go most of the time. Neither of us had any money and that old tired Chevy had only enough gasoline to get us to the lake. There wouldn't be enough to get us back but we knew we had to go to the lake. It was decided and agreed upon that we would pick up "coke" bottles on the way to the lake and sell them in Frankston, and buy gas for the return trip. That's what we did. Every hundred yards or so a bottle was spotted and we would stop and pick it up. By the time we reached our destination more than enough bottles had been collected to pay for the return trip. We probably collected less than a case of bottles but those of you who remember know that gasoline was only about a quarter a gallon and it to only took about a gallon to drive to Palestine from Lake Palestine. Hope to here from you all soon. Write soon, or better yet, stop by the shop and say hello.
September, 2006 . . . . It wasn't until I stumbled into this business that I even wondered how old anything should be before it's called an antique. Honestly I still don't know. Some folks say it must be at least 100 years old before it can be put into that elite class. However, there are others that come into our shop and marvel at the "antiques" (collectibles really) we have available that they remember from their childhood in the olden days of the 1970's. Do some people really think of the 70's as the "olden days"? Sure makes you think back and wonder where the time has gone. Can this be called Antique Memories? What happened to those days of innocence when summers were spent playing cowboys and Indians with Pat and Mike, who lived in the green house right up the hill from me. They were closer to my age than my own little brother, Mike, and I certainly wasn't going to be seen having anything to do with my sister Jan. Pat and Mike, not to be confused with my little brother Mike, would come down almost every day if our mothers allowed it. We must have been about 8 or 10 years old at the time. They shared a Daisy pump BB gun and I had a Daisy Red Ryder. Heaven forbid a kid that age today to even touch a toy gun, much less a BB gun. We all knew the consequences if we even accidentally let that gun point towards anyone, much less pull the trigger with a person in front of it. The seat of our pants would smoke for days if we ever did anything in an unsafe manner with a gun. We would head to the woods behind the house with our dogs at our heels and stalk wild game, (sparrows, blackbirds, etc) for hours on end. There was a creek close by and we often found ourselves wading in the shallow rippling flow trying to catch minnows with our hands. Other times we would have a string with bacon attached tightly to the end and see who could catch the biggest crawfish. We had no need to be entertained when I was a kid. We made our own entertainment and I certainly think we are better for it. Check in with us every few weeks and maybe we'll offer some more antique memories. Send us a note at oakstvillage@yahoo.com and maybe we can print some of your antique memories in this space. Thanks for reading and come visit us anytime you're in Palestine. . . . . . . . Jerry
Oak Street Village Shoppes 201 W. Oak Street Tel: 903.729.4099 Hours: 10:00-5:30pm M-F 10:00-5:00pm Sat.

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