Introduction

I fought my way into this world on November 11, 1943, kicking, screaming, and demanding immediate attention.

Success in getting that attention allowed nine years to pass before I learned the date commemorated something other than my birthday. Until then, the red calendar numbers belonged only to me.

My house, my clothes, my physical appearance—none of these things served to make me unique in my community. The people I lived with—the ones who loved and guided me—believed my presence alone was enough for celebration. Mama doted on me and often spoke of me as God’s blessing and His challenge to her.

Every child should feel so special.

I began as a difficult pregnancy, and Mama breathed a sigh of both apprehension and relief at my appearance just short of her thirty-third birthday. Mama’s survival was so in doubt that Daddy offered me to his childless sister—should Mama die while bringing me into the world. She survived, and I became Aunt Olevia’s namesake instead of her daughter.

Together, Mama and I cherished every minute of the dozen or so years we were to share, and I coveted any of her time that belonged to others. A shy, bookish child, I got my library card a year before I had earned a first-grade report card. Twice a week, I clung to Mama’s hand as we hiked a mile to choose books that offered windows to the rest of the world. Books and my mama became my best friends—maybe my only real friends.

With brown hair cut square, bangs across the front and the sides just below my ears, and glasses perched on my flat nose, I had a sense of invulnerableness based on complete trust in my mama’s ability and desire to protect me. Despite my innocence and naivety, in my heart, I knew I could take care of myself. God built into my psyche a mix of rural simplicity and unearned worldly confidence.

Mama and Daddy brought me home from Pineville’s Texada Clinic to our Tioga residence. If you looked up “rural” in the dictionary and found a picture of Tioga, Louisiana in the 1940s, 50s, or even early 60s, it would be an apt and accurate definition. Fewer than three hundred people called Tioga proper their home, and most of those were housed in frame structures—many with a dog on a short chain prominently staked in the front yard.

The Tioga area consisted of several smaller, mirror-image villages—Ball, Lee Heights, Kingsville, Paradise, and Rigolette—but none of them merited their own school district; thus, Tioga reigned as king in their midst.

The Yeager family came from Illinois and settled near Flaggon Creek and Paradise community where they bought 1,800 acres. One of the Yeager sons, Clemont, formed a company to fight in the Civil War and appointed himself sergeant. While Clemont was away at war, his brother died; when Clemont returned, he married his brother’s widow. Clemont Yeager is credited with building the first sawmill in the community in 1870. Records show he bought a long steamboat boiler in Shreveport, floated it down the Red River to Alexandria, and hauled it to his home with a team of oxen.

A one-room school erected by locals in 1897 provided the podium for Miss Daisy Margaret Yeager as the first teacher. According to my dad, she held a place as a direct relative in our Yeager clan—more specifically, our cousin Yeagers, who we referred to as the “rich” Yeagers who lived nearby. Daisy was born in Rapides Parish in 1878 and died in Pineville in 1950.

In 1905, the post office’s name officially became Tioga Post Office, and in 1925, the sawmill closed. The community and Tioga schools remained. In 1915, a thirty-thousand-dollar bond issue allowed Ball, Rigolette, Brasher, and Tioga schools to be consolidated under the Tioga High School name.

By the time I reached school age, the school consisted of three buildings housing grammar, junior high, and high schools, plus a large gymnasium and plenty of acreage. Locals called the complex Tioga High School. Black families across the railroad tracks shared Tioga as a living and sleeping space, but local whites did not count them in the population. Their children were bussed to schools somewhere else—I don’t know where—and they attended church “with their own kind” somewhere outside of Tioga.

My Daddy said God ordained segregation as the Christian way to live. He was wrong, but he believed it.

Louisiana is synonymous with mosquitoes. As a deterrent, Daddy creosoted the entire interior of our house. The place was bug-free and had plenty of windows to pick up any breeze; even so, a dark, tarry odor often hung in the air. Most of our playtime occurred in the backyard. Three narrow, wooden steps led out the back door, and, on my every exit, Mama cautioned me to be careful.

Our three-room, shotgun house, the kind still to be seen on the back roads of Louisiana, did not give the appearance of “wind-proof” or even “rain-proof” at first glance. Still, it was well-kept and sent the message of “we’ll survive whatever comes our way.”

The front porch had a couple of rocking chairs, the roof held solid, and our house, without fail, sported a fresh coat of white paint. The lawn, impeccably mowed all the way out to the cattle-guard, revealed a pride of ownership. Daddy built and maintained the six-foot, white picket fence that stood between us and the gravel road. He bragged about the fence from construction to usefulness and claimed it cut down on dust.

Maybe he wanted to keep us as isolated as possible. My daddy could be like that. It makes me smile to think about it.

Tioga and its residents were typical of small, central Louisiana towns between World War II and the John F. Kennedy era. I grew up in this tight-knit, rural community and ultimately found my way to Dallas, Texas. I came to own an insurance agency, got married, and gave birth to three children. I now have five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. I invite you to share my journey from 1943 until 1962, as I remember it, through this memoir.

— Ann Mullen-Martin