Chancellor Edwards 1901-1983

 

Photo above, driver on the wagon is Rufus Garland “Rufe” McClinton, at right of him is Chancellor Edwards in front of the Pleasant Hotel, that was located on the Southwest corner of Jefferson and 4th Street. They would charge two bits to haul guest from the hotel to the railroad.

 

Special to the Journal

Synopsis by Donna K. White from an interview with Chancellor Edwards in 1979

Cathy Bryson and I visited with Mr. Chancellor Edwards at his home at 402 Arizona Street in Mt. Pleasant. Mr. Edwards was born January 28, 1901, in Morris County, Texas and moved to Mt. Pleasant the 13th day of May, and has been living here ever since. He is the only survivor living of 12 children in his family.

Chancellor spent most of his life messing with food and he still loves it. Still messes with it! He is a long time cook in Mt, Pleasant. He doesn’t read cookbooks and says that his hand is his measuring cup or spoon. He has quite a collection of recipes and was more than happy to share them with us. He has recipes that appear in the Tribune regularly. He told us a funny in­cident that he observed one day when he was in Brookshire’s grocery store. There was a young married couple in there arguing over cornbread. The wife was buying canned cornbread and the husband went to raising sand! He wouldn’t let her get it and told her that he was gonna get his mama to teach her how to make cornbread!

Chancellor first started cooking in 1919 or 1920 at a place called “The Wide-Awake Café. It was located on Third Street where Perkins law office is today and was one of the first cafes in Mt. Pleasant. He cooked on an old wood stove at “The Wide-Awake” that burned two foot of wood. When “The Wide-Awake” moved he went to work for Red Hodge’s daddy who had a cafe right where the double doors are going into The First National Bank. Marvin Coffey’s daddy had a Conoco filling station next door and just this side of it was the Post Office. Chancellor worked with Glenn Sisk’s mother and remembered that when Glenn was in diapers that he wouldn’t let anybody but Chancellor cook his eggs for him.

Chancellor was the first cook employed at The Alps Cafe when they went into business. It was run by Mrs. Nicholson and her son Irvin Gage. It was a little cafe and was called The Alps Number One. He cooked there almost 19 years. When “The Hillbilly Cafe” opened up he worked there. It was located in the spot where Harry Taylor’s law office is today.

Chancellor also cooked at the old Pleasant Hotel which was a 1-story structure with 18 guest rooms and was run by Mr. J. A. Angler. Right where West’s store is, there was the old Main Hotel where he cooked. It had a long front porch on it. He cooked at night and when the dining room closed at 10:00 PM, he’d clean up the kitchen and then was the porter for the Hotel until 7:00 AM the next morning. Rufus Garland “Rufe” McClinton had a wagon and team and they’d go haul trash for people for 2 bits every morning. They would also haul guests from the Hotel to the railroad station for 2 bits a head and Chancellor would get half of the money. There were only two trains running then. One going North and one going South.
Chancellor cooked for Camp Langston Ranch for two years. He told a funny incident that happened there one summer. One morning he decided to make up a few biscuits and he ruined those children. Every morning them kids didn’t want nothing but thickening gravy and biscuits. They wouldn’t eat bacon, eggs or anything else!

They used to pick and wash their greens, shell their peas and get just about everything fresh out of the garden. They’d have 10-12 coops of chickens. If three or four people came in and wanted a half spring the dishwasher would run outside and dress 3 chickens right quick while the cooks got the grease hot. They made gravy to go with it. Food was just better in them days. He says that nowadays, in these public eating houses, they ain’t no cooks. Nothing but can openers! That’s all! Chancellor just loves that old timey way.
Chancellor started cooking on a wood stove and from that went on to kerosene. They didn’t have gas until 1939. Then he started cooking on a gas stove. But wood cooked the best. He says there ain’t no way in the world that you could give him a microwave oven.

He told me what cracklings and flapjacks are. Cracklings are where people have ran out their lard. They cut that fat up real fine and that’s your cracklings. Crackling bread is nothing in the world but hot water cornbread. And you don’t use nothing in hot water cornbread but salt. Put a little flour to make it stay together, put in your cracklings and that’s your cornbread. Years ago, people called it shortening bread. Flapjacks are nothing but a thin piece of biscuit dough cooked in an iron skillet.

Chancellor remembered quite a bit about the way Mt. Pleasant used to be. Anywhere from restaurants to dump grounds.

The first dumping ground was right where Rhea’s Hot Link Stand is today. It used to be a ditch as deep as the courthouse is. There were old buggies and wagons and outdoor toilets with drawers in them. From the corner of where Boatner’s Furniture Store is to the other corner wasn’t nothing but a mud hole. That’s been many years ago when Mr. Edwards was just a kid.

 

There where the Guaranty Bond State Bank is was a big lumber yard and a plumb­ing outfit. That’s been quite a few moons ago. There were only two hardware stores here in them days. Roger’s was one of them. Up on Jefferson Street, Louis Riddle’s daddy had a furniture store and an “undertaker’s place”. He kept all of the caskets and stuff upstairs and he had an elevator he used which was pulled up with a rope.

Where SWEPCO is now on the corner of West 2nd and Madison there used to be 5 or 6 flights of stairs goin’ up there and The Merchant’s and Planter’s Bank was there. After it moved from there it was where Bird Old’s office is now. Right next to it there, ol’ man T. 0. Johnson had a grocery store. There were only about four grocery stores in town in them days. Where Duke and Ayres used to be was Riddle’s Grocery. Ed Jones had a grocery store right on the corner right across from Boatner’s and his brother Will Jones had a grocery store right where Tommy’s Sport Shop is. That’s been quite a few moons ago, too!

There used to be an artesian well at the courthouse. There was a hitching rack up there, too. During the summer, around 11:00 or 12:00 at night, all around the courthouse was benches. And people would just be sitting’ around talking’, chewing’ tobacco and dipping’ snuff and stuff like that! People would come from everywhere to get water to drink. There was a trough built around there to let horses drink.

Chancellor remembered the Red Springs very well. He says that a cow fell in one of them things and that’s why they closed it up. There were 2 red springs on this side of the branch and on the other side, that water was so clear until it was blue. People came from miles and miles to get water here. It was good! Chancellor remembers the Dellwood Hotel there. It had a long porch on it. There was also a streetcar to haul people out there pulled by a darned mule and it cost 15-25 cents a head. It was on a little ol’ track. That was the only place to go for recreation.

Chancellor remembers when they sold beer here. It was voted here when the Talco oil boom hit in 1937. These ol’ bootleggers put the beer out of busi­ness. There were a bunch of them around here. Not only from Sugar Hill either. Great big women used to carry a pint of whiskey in their stocking legs and up under their breasts. You could buy it on the streets.

Right where Piggly Wiggly store is was the first high school. Chancellor was cooking at night and every morning for 2 bits a day, he would lead Kathleen Lide and Wilson Jones daughters to school. That was way back yonder in the teens.

Before moving to Titus County, they used to go to Morris County to get Chancellor to come up here and play baseball. He was the catcher. This was way back yonder in the ‘teens and early twenties. There used to be a Negro National League and Chancellor went from here to Cleveland, Ohio in 1928 and played professional baseball for the Cleveland Tigers. Chancellor says that he has been all over the country not to have anything.

Chancellor finished High School twice. Years ago high school was over in the 8th grade. That’s back when teachers had to go to the courthouse to take a teaching exam. In 1923 he went to Jarvis College and finished high school there. He left there in 1924, 9 days before commencement exercises and they didn’t give him his diploma. He left to go and play baseball. He still has some of his old school books. The Beginner’s History and an old arithmetic book. 2 or 3 years ago, Chancellor went to night school here and had a lot of fun. He said that he’d ask so many foolish questions!

Chancellor is very interested in the history of some of the oldest churches in Titus County and was more than happy to share his copies of histories of the White Oak Baptist Church and Mt. Olive Baptist Church with us. When he gets the information he can, he goes to City Hall and the Courthouse to search the records. He has also done the history of The Church of the Living God. He enjoys working on these histories as it is one of his favorite hobbies. He remembers The First Baptist Church was first established and organized where Legg and Harrison’s store is. Everybody went to church there. He was just a tot in them days.

He remembered making sorghum syrup candy. People used to raise sorghum, and they made syrup and would make a long rope out of it and would have syrup all over them. It was thick and didn’t turn to sugar, but you could work it up in your hand and make a rope out of it and just pull it.
In the old restaurants, they had great big old ice boxes that held 200-300 pounds of block ice. The ice plant was down there by the railroad track where the junkyard is. There was an old cottonseed oil plant around in there, too. Back down there near the Cotton Belt station was a place where they shipped cotton out.

Chancellor says that the trouble with the world today and the condition we’re in today is because people are gettin’ in too dog-gone big a hurry. Instead of takin’ their time. I think that I will have to agree with Chancellor. He’s so right!

In 1938, long about the middle of August the High School football team had two weeks of football training. The team went to Beaver’s Bend which was a CC Camp 12 miles northeast of Broken Bow, Oklahoma. They were down in Little River Bottom.

There were 38 boys in training. Some of the boys were Horace Crane, 0. L. Colley, Jr., Bob Simpson and Jack Smith. The Head Athletic Director was named Winnie Beige and his assistant was Sam Parker. Chancellor was the cook. Mr. Plez Williams and his wife went along, too.

The National Guard loaned them a big truck and the grocery stores donated so much food. They carried lots of food! Mr. Williams, a great fisherman carried his boat down there. They were down there two or three days and it came a big flood. Red River and Little River both flooded. Red River water was blood red and Little River water was clear as a crystal. They were around two miles from the highway. Water was from 16-18 feet deep up on the road. The boys “played Tarzan” on the grape vines, and things to get out to a little National Guard Camp that was up the road a bit. They had a little boat that held only one person at a time. That’s how they got out of that bottom. They had four or five boxes of bread from Redfearn’s Bakery and two or three cases of Blackburn’s Syrup in big half-gallon jugs. For two days that’s all they had to eat while they were gettin’ out of the bottom.

Well, they all finally got out of there and came back home and the School Board made arrangements with Ellis-Kelly Lake members to let the training be held there. There was one lady Mrs. C. C. Cleland, she had the only jewelry store in town then, didn’t want the boys in her part of the lake to go in and take their baths. But some of the boys just “got the devil in them” and they’d go in there and spite all that was done Mrs. Cleland wanted to sue the School Board. So they had to move again.

This time they went about 5-6 miles out in the country to John B. Stephen’s farm. They had to train amongst cotton stalks, ditches and everything. They would take the boys to the picture show on Saturday nights and their girlfriends would come out on Sunday evenings to see them.

Horace Crane suffered an appendicitis attack and was unable to play football. Mt. Vernon was their worst opponent. It was the last game of the season and Mt. Vernon and Mt. Pleasant were tied for first place. They let Horace come home for that last game. Well, he was sittin’ on the sidelines and at the half the score was 0 to 0. Nobody knows when Horace Crane got off of that bench and went up to the gymnasium, got in a uniform, got out on the field, caught a pass and won that football game! (With stitches in him!)

The School Board used to get somebody to work in his place while he cooked for them boys. Chancellor was smokin’ Bull Durham at the time and remembers the boys used to steal his cigarettes.
They took their baths in an old muddy pool that cows and hogs wallered in and drank from. The boys wanted to come to town every night, but Saturday night was the only time for that. Chancellor did all of their cookinq on an old wood stove. I wonder what the High School football team would say about this today?

Chancellor remembers Mr. Ben Carr had a brother named Zeke who drove a little 2-wheeled jig with one horse and he had the best hot tamales in this part of the country.

Chancellor remembered some of the town “characters”. One of them: was “Black Patty”. She was a great big woman, not fat, just’ had muscles like a man. She used to work at the old hotel as a cook. She was tough! She was one of them kind of women that didn’t take no foolishness off of no human. The law or nobody else. There was another lady they called “Army Truck”. They claimed that she could ride a freight train like a man. Another was ‘Poor John”. He was half-Indian. He was a big whiskey-maker at Sugar Hill “be­tween the creeks”. He put a seal but no label on his whiskey. One time he was caught in Hunt County with a model-A Ford full of whiskey. They sent a case of it to Washington to have it analyzed and it came back 100% pure.

In 1929, P. 0. Thornton had a fish camp called Pal’s Fish Camp located right where T. W. Miller’s place was on the Pittsburg Highway. They cooked catfish and chicken. They’d bar-b-que it or fry it up anyway you wanted it. They had a huge bar-b-que pit which was nothing but a big hole in the ground with sticks across it. They’d bar-b-qued the old-timey way. There were two little ‘ol houses with beds in them that they rented out by the hour. Their ice box was also a deep hole in the ground lined with newspapers, ducking and sacks. They used a 300 lb. of block ice. It stayed cold for two days. They kept their soda water and “home brew” cold in there. They got their ice at the old ice house (Right down from the fire station). Used to be the ice plant, oil mill and power plant right in that spot. An oil mill is where cottonseed oil and meal is made.

When Chancellor came to Mt. Pleasant there was a movie theater right where it is now. Later on, it once moved to where Tommy’s Sport Shop is now. Chancellor paid a quarter for the movies. He would watch mostly westerns. At one time, there was another theater where Rhea’s Jewelry Store is now. Kids under 12 or 13 got in for a dime, My how times have changed!

He remembers as a kid having a great big “Graph-a-Phone” with a big horn on it that played records. But he doesn’t remember where they got their records. They also had an old self-playin’ piano. It had a roll of paper on it and all you had to do was pedal that thing and it would play like the devil! There wasn’t no electricity.

Chancellor remembered the old Smith Hotel was right in the same spot where Joe Buford’s place of business is now. Everybody ate there. They served family-style lunches. But they didn’t wait on the tables. They had a serving table as long as Chancellor’s house! You’d pay 50 cents and help yourself. They’d serve dinner there nearly all evenin’ on Sundays. And folks came from all around to eat there. But Chancellor never worked there. He was cooking somewhere else.

He remembered another boarding house where all the railroad men stayed. It was right at the back end of where the fire station is now. The only man he could remember living there was old man Buck Self.
Chancellor talked about “Badland”. 7 or 8 families lived up there. It was right across the railroad track between Drigger’s Lumber yard. There was fightin’, gamblin’, drinkin’ and stuff goin’ on up there and that’s how it got its’ name. There was 1 or 2 bootleggers up there that made “chock beer”. It was made out of corn meal and fruit and stuff like that. They sold it, too. Back in them days you could buy a quart of that stuff for 50 cents.

Where the Chevrolet house is now, all that property used to belong to Phil Blackburn. He was a big whiskey-maker and bootlegger. He was a tough booger too! The law didn’t mess with him. When they bulldozed that ground up there some 40 years ago they had so much liquor piled up there the people could stand up there on the streets and get drunk! Chancellor even brought him a Kroger sack full of whiskey home.

Years ago Mr. Colley used to have his “sales” in a great big ol’ pasture (There wasn’t a barn like there is today) right across from where the packing house is today. They held them once a week. When Roosevelt was elected President of the United States, Chancellor says that he found something wrong with cattle. He had everybody killing up they cattle. The poor people here in Mt. Pleasant had more dog-gone meat than they ever had in they life. They’d kill that meat and you could go out there and get any cut of meat you wanted. Roosevelt also had folks plowin’ up they cotton and stuff. But there wasn’t a thing in the world wrong with that meat!