Callie P Adkison

(1889-1972)

wife of Thomas Dugan Adkison:

 Recollection & Photos by: Ludy Adkison Gibson

Submitted By: Ludy Adkison Gibson

(March 2003)

**Click on the pictures to enlarge in a new window.**

As children, our father would take us to Dotson, Tx, a community that was not more than just a "hole in the road" where he had spent time with his grandfather and wandered the fields as a boy. He told us tales of buried treasure and "ghost" stories that had occurred in the "holler" of the tiny community.  Aunt Callie was one of the most loving and kind people I had ever met. She was like a grandmother to us kids and we always enjoyed going to visit. Even though the approximately 200 to 250 mile round trip was a long way to go in the days before fancy automobiles and super highways, we probably visited at least two or three times a year. Many a trip we had to stop on the side of the road for Daddy to work on the old car to get us there and back.

I remember my Aunt Callie very well. I was 17 years of age and a senior in high school the year that she died. She was a wonderful woman and we all loved her very much. As a child, we went several times a year to visit my father's old "stomping ground" in Panola County, Tx. Aunt Callie, the widow of Thomas P. "Dugan" Adkison, lived with her only daughter, Hazel Atkerson.  Aunt Hazel, as we children called her although she was actually a cousin to my father, married Amber Atkerson. (her maiden name was Adkison) They had two children as I recall, Roger Meryl Atkerson and Glenda Sue Atkerson. My youngest brother, Jesse Rufus, said that he thought that Uncle Dugan was blind from birth. My older brother, William Steven, said that he remembered that Uncle Dugan sold pencils that he got from an organization for the blind. He did not remember how Uncle Dugan lost his sight or if he had indeed always been blind.

My brother, Steve, and I recently made a trip to Dotson, Tx, the little community where they lived for as long as I can remember. We saw the small white lap-board-sided Dodson Store where an old metal sign from the 1940s or 1950s still hangs obliquely across the front, and the paint is worn and peeling. A grandson of Aunt Hazel's (I think one of Roger Meryl's boys) now resides in the family home. We saw that the Atkerson name was still on the mailbox, so we pulled up into the driveway just on the chance that maybe our "cousins" still resided there. The young man who came out to greet us was probably in his early 30s, and when we told him who we were, he was clueless. My brother told the young man of how we, as children, often visited the old home-place and wandered the fields looking for buried treasures that my father said he had been told stories of by his Uncle Dugan (Thomas J "Dugan" Adkison was a brother to my father's grandpa, William Adkison) and his Grandpa Will when he was just a boy. We spent many a spring morning and colorful fall afternoons wandering those fields hoping to find the treasure that would provide our poor family with everything that our young hearts could ever desire. It would take years for us to realize that those timeless days WERE the treasures. We told him how Uncle Dugan, his great-grandfather, was blind yet my father said he could walk every acre of that old home-place and never get lost. I really don't remember Uncle Dugan because I was only 2 days old when he died on March 13, 1954 but I know my father loved him dearly. I'm sure my father left my mother with a new baby, to attend the funeral. I just can't imagine that he did not go. We learned from the young man that day that our Aunt Hazel, his grandmother, had passed away only a few years before. It was sad to think that we could have visited her more often and copied some of those stories. We had stopped visiting when my father died some 22 years before. I guess it never occurred to us that our Aunt Hazel had outlived our father that many years especially with her being eight years his senior.

I'm not sure how frequent our visits were, but I know that we ALWAYS went at least once a year for the County Line Picnic. It was there that our father told us of how he came to be an Adkison. His father was not born to William and Mary Alice Moore Adkison. I have been working on the family history for years and have yet to discover how it came to be. I'm sure that my father told us, but as children, we didn't listen very carefully not realizing that one day it would be important to us. I do remember that he told us that our grandfather, Rufus Adkison and his two sisters Nellie and Lizzie, were adopted by Grandpa Will and Grandma Mary. Daddy told us that their mother was a Gammage. I'm not sure if Gammage was her married name or her maiden name. We did find, on the Panola County Census for 1900, that Will and Mary Alice Moore Adkison had two "adopted" daughters living in the household. There was no mention of a "boy", so I don't know why my grandfather was not there. Those mysteries are yet to be uncovered. My father proudly carried the Adkison name as do my two brothers, William Steven Adkison and Jesse Rufus Adkison.

My daddy's family at Dotson didn't have a telephone for a long time, (nor did we) so our visits were always unannounced. We would drive up in the yard, and they would come out and welcome us with open arms. Aunt Hazel would always head for the kitchen where she would tie on an apron and start cooking. Uncle Amber (my father always called him Ambers, with an "s") was a farmer and that's all I ever remember him doing. They always had fresh vegetables and home-grown meat. Aunt Hazel and my mother would go to work preparing the noon meal and we children would sit on the porch with our father while he visited with Aunt Callie and with her son-on-law, Uncle Amber if he wasn't working in the fields. We were a musical family and we always took our instruments. Aunt Callie loved the "old-timey" gospel songs. My youngest brother and I played the guitar and my father played the "french harp" (or harmonica). We would "tear the roof off" that old house singing songs like "Tramp on The Street",  "Church In The Wildwood", and "I'll Fly Away". Aunt Callie loved to hear us sing and play, and when she died, my brother and I were asked to sing at her funeral, but we were so saddened by her death, we felt we just couldn't do it. I often think of what an honor it was to have been asked to do so.

They didn't have running water or an indoor bathroom in the old farmhouse. There was an outdoor toilet that was down between the house and the hog pen. Lord how I hated to have to go to that old outdoor toilet. I was always scared that a snake might be in there or a spider would be waiting to bite me, and there very well could have been.  When it was time to eat, I remember my father taking us kids outside and "drawing up" a bucket of water from the old stone well that stood on the back porch. He would pour the water into a white enamel basin with a red rim around it that sat on a ledge attached to the railing of the porch. He would cup his hands and wash the dust from his face in the ice cold water and then take a bar of soap and wash, first his large hands, then our little ones. We would go into the kitchen and sit at a table with a red-checked oil cloth table cover. The "blessing" was always said before we ate. My father was not a religious man, but he was quite spiritual, and he always blessed the food before a meal. The chairs had rope bottoms in them and there was a picnic-style bench that we children always sat on. Aunt Hazel would put out a feast!!!! We would have fried chicken freshly killed and plucked, fresh vegetables from the truck patch, scratch cornbread, and home-made pies and cakes. It just amazed me that she would prepare such a feast and never ever made us feel that we were an inconvenience to her. We would stay till almost dark and then load up in the car for the two-hour ride back to Mt. Pleasant. My brothers and sister and I still carry the memories of the visits that we had with my father's family in Panola County, Tx.

Aunt Callie was 83 years of age when she died. I just assumed that she probably died of old age. As I said, she was just a doll of a woman ,and we loved her so. I wish, as a child, I could have really appreciated the time that I had with her. I guess, at the time, we thought our Aunt Callie would be around forever. We would have listened to her stories more carefully had we realized at the time that she would soon be gone and would take all those wonderful stories with her when she left. I can still see her clapping her age-spotted, withered hands and patting her tiny foot as she smiled and looked to the heavens as we sang His heavenly praises. I'm sure she's singing and clapping still.     

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