NELLIE JO WILLIAMS BRITTON

This is an interview between Mary Ann Britton Gould and her mother Nellie Jo Williams Britton. It was recorded on December 1, 1998.

MAG- So, Mother, where and when were you born?

NJB- I was born on August 4, 1921 in Lowell, Arizona, which was a small suburb of Bisbee, Arizona. I was born at home and I weighed 5 pounds.

MAG- Why was your family over in that area?

NJB- My Father was working in the copper mines at that time and when I was six weeks old we moved to a small farm at La Union, New Mexico, which is close to El Paso, Texas. My Grandfather [Helms] had given the farm to my Mother and Father.

MAG- I understand that the place where you were born is no longer there but the mine encompassed that area.

NJB- Yes, it is in the bottom of the pit now.

MAG- Well tell us a little bit about your family, your parents, grandparents, and siblings.

NJB- We left the farm when I was five years old. I’d started school in September after I was five in August. The next spring my Father had sold the farm and we had moved to El Paso. After that I went to the first grade at Crockett School. Not long after that we spent the summer at the ranch, at the old West Well. We kids could sit on the back step and see the lights of town [El Paso] and we thought it was awful to be way out there and not much to do so we played in the ditch with the rocks and whatever else we could find to do.

My brother Bobby [Robert Lee Williams] was a little older than I, and my sister, Betty [Betty Rachel Williams Conklin] was four years younger than I was. We never did have a whole lot of toys. Usually some outside things like roller skates, Bobby had a bicycle but I never had a bicycle. I was a very active child. They always said I was a tomboy because I liked to do boy things more than I did girl things.

We really didn’t really see a whole lot of our Helms grandparents when we lived in town. We would only see them if they came to town for something and that wasn’t too often and we didn’t see my Grandmother Helms very often because she seldom ever came to town. So there was not a close relationship at all between the Helms side of the family.

There was my Grandmother Williams and Uncle Raymond and we were closer to them than to the Helms side of the family.

Is there something more specific you want me to say?

MAG- Well, tell us your parents names.

NJB- My father was Elbert Lee Williams and my mother was Nellie Francis Helms Williams.

MAG- I know that I have heard in the past that you talked about playing Shinny or Kick- the-Can. Will you tell us some of the specifics and rules about playing those games?

NJB- We lived on the edge of El Paso at that time. For a long time we lived on an unpaved street, so it was really a treat when they paved our street and we could play in the street. After Christmas we’d get the old Christmas trees and trim the trunks and use them for shinny sticks and you played it with a can. Oh, it would be something like soccer or hockey with a can. Baseball, there was always a vacant lot somewhere. I played baseball and shinny with the boys. We played that a lot. In the summertime we played mumbly peg, and marbles. I did cartwheels up and down the street and then sometimes we had skates. We would play with the skates until we wore them out and then we made scooters with the skate wheels. We had good sidewalks.

MAG- Was this when you lived over on Altura?

NJB- No, this was when we lived over on Dover Street but it is called Altura now. We lived right next door to where they built Coldwell School for one year before they built Coldwell. We had to walk to Crockett School, which was about one and a half miles away. Then they built Caldwell School, which was close, next-door across a side street. It was really nice to be so close to school. We went home to lunch and that made it handy. Then after graduation, I only went to Grade School for seven years because that was all they had at that time. Later they added eighth grade but I only went to seven. At that time we moved from Dover Street to Cumberland Street because Mother just wasn’t able to take care of the big house on Dover Street with all the people coming and going and some of them staying a few days and some lived with us and it was just to much and so we moved several blocks to Cumberland Street. Then I went to Austin High School. We walked from there but there were nearly always other kids from the neighborhood that we walked back and forth with. I went to High School for four years. [Graduated Class of 1938] I was always interested in Physical Education and Athletics and I took part in everything that I possibly could. I kind of took a leadership role, I guess because I just kind of liked it. In my Junior year I had earned enough points to earn a school sweater which was very unusual for anyone to earn in three years. I don’t remember exactly what you had to do to earn it-how many years of Physical Education you had and what teams you played on and what extra things you had participated in. I was active in the tumbling club and my favorite sport is softball and the one I cared least of all for was basketball. I never did like to play basketball very much but quite often I would referee the basketball games rather than play. Then in my Senior year I was selected as Best Girl Athlete and I had a full page picture in the annual which was quite an honor.

MAG- Are the houses that you talked about on Dover and Cumberland still there in El Paso?

NJB- The house on Cumberland is still there at 4130, right at the edge of the freeway but the house that we lived in on Dover Street was in the block that was demolished to make way for the North-South Freeway

MAG- Did you have a special friend at school and what kind of things did you do with your friends?

NJB-.I had one special girlfriend in High School. Her name was Lee Orbaugh and we used to visit back and forth on weekends. Her folks would bring her to our house or my Father would take me to her house because she lived way the other side of the school. I never did have a whole lot of friends at school. I had a lot of friends at church but I did not have a lot of friend friends but I had a lot of acquaintances, but not friends.

There weren’t a lot of outside activities or extracurricular activities at that time. There were different language classes that I could participate in. I took three years of Spanish but I just wasn’t much interested in other activities or dances. I did not participate in a lot of those things.

MAG- When you were growing up what kind of chores were you required to do as being part of the family?

NJB- The best I can remember we took care of our own room. Betty and I always had our own room since we were the girls and we took care of our room. I remember helping with the washing at times when I was not in school. I helped with the ironing, back in those days we had to iron everything. The best I remember I did the most of the flat things and my own things. We helped with the meals and the dishes. That was when we washed them, scalded them, dried them and put them away-every meal.

MAG- Are there any other childhood memories or stories you can think of here?

NJB- I remember when Monopoly first came in and we were living there on Cumberland Street. There were a bunch of kids around there in our age group and it was quite the rage. We’d start a game and if it didn’t finish or it got too late or something we’d cover it up and we would come back and finish it the next day. We played a lot of Monopoly. We played some dominos and we played cards. The game we played was called Pitch and I don’t remember how you played it.

MAG- Okay, so I guess we’ll leave childhood here and lets go into your young adult life. What jobs you may have had and kind of go into your marriage?

NJB- When I graduated from High School in May I was sixteen and I was not seventeen until August. I was too young to work a lot of places. That summer I had a friend who had a job at El Paso Hydro Gas, which was a kind of forerunner of butane type gas, which they delivered into tanks for people. I’d had two years of bookkeeping in High School and when this friend at the church got married she didn’t want to work anymore and so she sent me to apply for the job. I got the job and the best I remember, well. I don’t really remember what I made but I thought I was rich. It was on Texas Street close to Piedras. Quite often my brother, Bobby, would take me to work or come and get me. If not I had to ride the streetcar, which was not too inconvenient. I didn’t work there too long. It was just more than I knew how to handle because he ran his personal bank accounts in with the company bank accounts. He kept loose books and I just didn’t know how to work it. He found someone that was more experienced than I was, but it was good experience and I enjoyed it. He was very nice to me.

Then I couldn’t find another job for awhile because I was not old enough so I went back to school at Tech and it was not long after that I got called from the Telephone Company where I’d put in an application. I started to work there when I was seventeen and I worked there two and a half years. I got married December 22, 1940 to Argal Flanagan and I continued working. He was a carpenter so we were both working but his work was scarce and he finally applied at the railroad and was hired as a brakeman. After he was hired we had to leave El Paso so I quit my job at the telephone company and we lived in different places. He’d have a job but someone with seniority would bump him and we’d have to move so we lived in several places in southern New Mexico. We lived at Hatch, New Mexico several times.

We were living in Hatch and in April 1943 we were going fishing at Elephant Butte Lake and my brother, Bobby, and his wife Barbara Dell [Swihart] and Janet came up to go with us and our friends, the Barretts. So there were the three guys so we left and went over in the morning and they went out to set trot lines and the boat capsized and they all drowned. Barbara Dell, Janet and I were on the bank and they didn’t come back. Some men came and told us they had seen the boat go down and that nobody had ever made it back to the bank. They had picked up some things that had floated in and we could identify those things. They took us to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico to the Sheriff’s Department. The sheriff started the search; it was two weeks before they found Argal’s body. They found Bobby earlier and Barrett but it was a long time before they found Argal’s body because he had swum the farthest away from the boat. They found the boat where the men who had seen it happen saw it. They stayed there and knew which way the wind was coming and where the stuff floated in and about where they saw the boat go down so they measured that. Then I went back to El Paso and was with Mother and Daddy again. I wanted to stay up at Hatch but Dad told me I couldn’t, I had to come home. I kept close connections with my friends up there, down through the years.

MAG- Could you get a job?

NJB- Yes, that was when I went to work for Glidden Paint Company. It was during the war and most of the young men were gone and most of the men that were around were old or disabled or those not old enough to join yet because they either drafted everyone or they enlisted. So that is the reason I got the job at the paint store, because there weren’t any men available. A paint store was a man’s world then, but it was very interesting and I worked for about a week with a woman that had been working there. She was moving away and she informed me that I would have to be very careful about all these men that came in because they would make remarks and that I just had to be careful because you couldn’t trust those men that came in and out of the store. The only dirty joke I heard the whole two and a half years I worked there-she told. I enjoyed it and I learned a lot. I guess I did a good job. I kept the books and sent the monthly statements, took care of the banking and things like that. The manager was very good and if I ran into a snag all I had to do was ask him. In that summer after Argal drowned and I had moved back to El Paso I was elected Nazarene Young Peoples Society President. In charge of things for the young people and we had a lot of service men coming to the church. It really took lots of things going on to keep them interested. It was in that summertime that Charles [Britton] came to El Paso to Fort Bliss. He came to church all the time and I knew who he was. One of the things we did every once in awhile was to have someone give the story of their life and when they were saved and one night it was Charles’s turn. He told this story of his life and about having Millard and that his mother was taking care of him and it wasn’t long after that he was sent overseas. Then he was over there nearly three years. Anyway, when he came back I just said to myself now there is somebody I could talk to and somebody that maybe I could have a date with because I had not gone out with anybody in all that time. So, that was in August of 1945 that we started going to church things together and we got married October 7, 1945. He got out of the army in November and we had crated up some of my things and since he was in the service as a Sergeant the government shipped our belongings to Indiana and we went there. We were there in time for Thanksgiving. There was no property to rent so we stayed with Charles’s mother and father and Millard. The best I remember we bought the groceries and paid the utility bills and I did most of the cooking. He thought it was so wonderful that I made biscuits so I even made biscuits that year for Thanksgiving. We stayed there from November to March and never found a place of our own. I was sick a lot of the time with sinus infections and having to go to the doctor and take treatments. Work was very scarce. Charles was able to work some doing carpenter work for a company he had worked for before, but they don’t build many houses in the wintertime. There was also not a lot of lumber or plumbing stuff available at that time so they couldn’t build very many houses, so he didn’t work full time. The weather was bad. I didn’t see the sunshine from the time we went from Little Rock, Arkansas until we came back the next March. In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma we saw the first sunshine. It was a cold bleak winter and all we saw were fog, clouds and slush, it was icky, so we decided to come back to the Southwest. I told him that I was going back, if he wanted to come with me fine and if he didn’t he could stay there because I wasn’t going to live there in that. So we came back to El Paso. We stayed with my parents and in just a short time we found a place on Vista Drive. It was a neat house with two bedrooms. Charles had gotten a job right away as a carpenter and he didn’t work very long before they asked him to be a foreman. So we bought this place and it was a nice two-bedroom place and that was all we needed at the time and then we found out that Mary Ann was coming along and we decided that we would need more space. We sold that house and we moved back in with Mother and Daddy and lived with them for several years while Charles built the house. [7860 San Jose Road] It took that long because we had to build with what we saved and Charles could only build on it in the evenings and on Saturday, we didn’t work on Sundays. When the kitchen and bathrooms were finished we moved in and finished the rest of the house while we were living in it, which was a problem. We enjoyed living there during that time and Millard and Mary Ann and then Walter came along. I worked in the Parent Teacher Association at North Loop Elementary School and served on several committees and I was active in Home Demonstration Club and served on a bunch of their committees. I served on their State committees going to some of their conventions. I learned a lot and enjoyed that. That’s where I got a lot of the crafts that I used to do.

When Walter was ten we found out that we were going to have another child and Joy was born. By that time Millard had graduated from Ysleta High School and had gotten out of the service. He and Sharon [Petty] were married when Joy was born.

We were always very active in the church. I served as Nazarene Young Peoples President, many times as Missionary Society President, I taught Sunday School. I taught teenagers and I kept the nursery for a long time. I served on the church board.

MAG- What church was that?

NJB- First Church of the Nazarene, although when I first went there it was just called The Church of the Nazarene but when other churches started then it became known as the First Church of the Nazarene. And then we went to the Valley Church of the Nazarene because the church was close by. We went there for a long time before we finally ended up going back to First Church.

MAG- How old were you when you first started going to the Nazarene Church?

NJB- I was twelve and I had been going to the Methodist church. We never did go and stay for church but we always went to Sunday School. We didn’t stay for church because it was usually just us children that would go. Daddy and Mother’s good friend, Dolly Bitticks, invited Mother to come to a revival service at the Nazarene church so Mother went and Betty and Kerby went but I didn’t want to go there because I liked going to the Methodist church so they let me off at my church and then went to their church and came and picked me up when service was over. Sometimes I would go with them at night so I was acquainted with a lot of the young people at the Nazarene church and at the Methodist church most of the time didn’t even have a teacher. We never knew if there was going to be a teacher or not. Sometimes, there would be two or three of us in the Intermediate class. If we didn’t have a teacher we would read the quarterly [a booklet with weekly study lessons in it] and I finally decided that wasn’t a very good deal and so I decided I’ll go one time to the Nazarene church Sunday School and see if I like it. So, I did and I never did go back to the Methodist church and nobody ever bothered checking on me to see what had happened, so I’ve been going since I was twelve.

MAG- And now you are still active in that church here in Portales, New Mexico.

NJB- Yes. I have served on the church board and as Missionary Society President and I open the Sunday School for our class, so that’s my responsibilities here.

MAG- You said something earlier about the crafts you learned. What are some of the hobbies you’ve done?

NJB- Well, in the Home Demonstration Club we had one hobby type of craft every year. We did metal etching and glass etching and we made wooden trays with woven cane sides. We had some lessons and projects. That’s where I learned an awful lot of the sewing things that I know and that’s where I learned to tailor clothes because we had a special tailoring class. Back in those days that was what you did in those Home Demonstration Clubs. I learned how to patch, how to iron things to save energy in how you turn the clothes on the ironing board.

MAG- Practical homemaker things.

NJB- Yes.

MAG- I know you also crocheted and did craft type projects but I guess sewing was one of your biggest activities in your adult life and one of the ways you made extra money-doing sewing projects and you always seemed to enjoy the time you spent at your sewing machine. We have talked about some of the places that you have lived. What was the address where you lived on Carolina Drive? 344 Carolina Drive and the house we lived in on San Jose Road was 7860 San Jose. What year did you move up to the Cielo Vista area of El Paso?

NJB- I think it was about 1965 [in April]. Joy was about four and you [Mary Ann] were graduating from Bel Air High School when we moved up to 7107 Bellrose Drive. It was close to a grade school and a high school for Walter and Joy to go to school. We lived there until 1996 and then we sold the house and moved up here to Portales, New Mexico.

MAG- I know the answer to some of these but maybe you could tell us some of your favorite things, like your favorite color or food.

NJB- My favorite color is green and I like blues and browns, a lot of earth tones. My favorite food—I like sweets, I can eat a lot of sweets, which I shouldn’t eat, but that is my favorite food.

MAG- One of the stories I’d like for you to tell is about during the war when they had rationed things. How you lived in that time and some of the things that were rationed.

NJB- I guess that was during the time I lived on Carolina Drive. Gasoline was rationed. You had to sign up and you got four gallons a week. You had stamps in a book and that was the way you got your gasoline. I had traded at this station that Dad traded at and what I did when I got my stamps was I gave them all to that guy and he gave me all the gas I needed. I did sign up and I got a little extra because I lived down in the valley and had to go back and forth to town for work. There was a meat ration. You had a book for meat and a book for canned goods and sugar was rationed, so much sugar which wasn’t very much per person. And you had to give so many stamps for whatever product that you were going to buy in the canned food line. I remember it took two stamps to buy a can of peaches because they were very rare, if you could find them at all. That’s the only one I remember but nearly all canned foods were rationed. You could not buy leather shoes. You could buy cloth shoes and it was just the beginning of plastic soles and every once in a while you could find something plastic that you could wear. You could not buy bolts of material. Very seldom you could buy material by the yard, but I did go to Mexico where you could buy it, you could also buy sugar and meat over there until it got to be so many people going over there that they finally shut down that deal and some stuff you couldn’t bring across the border or even buy it over there. It wasn’t too long after that the war was over but there was still stuff you couldn’t get because it was not available.

MAG- What are some of the major changes that you have seen in the world and in society during your lifetime?

NJB- As far back as I can remember they were driving Model T Fords and there were a lot of people who rode horseback and of course, we lived in the country when I was small and I remember the school bus. I started to school when I was barely five and we rode on the school bus and it was an old bus. I don’t think it was any bigger than some of the vans now but that’s what we went back and forth to school on. That was what I remember of the early automobiles. I do not remember having a radio until I was in high school and then I don’t know why we never did listen to it very much. I don’t know whether there was anything available on it or whether we just didn’t do it. I was never encouraged to read a book. The only books I read were the ones that were required reading. I remember reading the newspaper but we didn’t touch the paper until after Father had read the paper and then we could read it. Of course, television didn’t come along until the fifties and we did not have one for a long time. The first TV set we got we bought from Mrs. Aulds.[Mr. and Mrs. Aulds were our next door neighbors on San Jose Road and he was a barber and had his shop there also.] It was black and white so I have seen a lot of improvement in that. We always had a telephone. Way back then you could call up the grocery store and tell them what you wanted and they would deliver it. One time, I remember, that every morning there was a young man, a Mexican fellow, who would come and want to know what groceries you wanted and take the order and later in the day he would bring it back. When we lived there on Dover Street we lived at the very end of the Government Hills Street Car Line. That was where the driver of the streetcar would take his operator knob handle and his money thing and go up to the other end of the streetcar and put the operator on that end. The back of the seats flopped over so you would always be facing the way you were going. At that time there was a place in the back of the car where colored people could ride. I remember taking one trip on the train when I was fifteen. Mother, Betty and I and maybe Kerby went down to Baird, Texas on the train to visit some of Mother’s family on the Helms side. Someone met us at Baird and took us where we wanted to go. That was the first time I remember riding on the train.

MAG- What are some other interesting places you visited during your lifetime? I know you had a favorite place over in the Arizona mountains that you really liked to go to. Where was that?

NJB- That was up in the Chiricahua Mountains. After we bought our first little travel trailer and Millard was living at Willcox. Arizona, he told us about this place and we went up there. It was right on top of the mountain. It was a beautiful place and quiet. It was high with big trees. It was just a nice place to camp and hike. We always enjoyed being there. When we had that trailer we went there several times. On one of those trips we went over to the White Mountains to McNary, Arizona and that is where we rode the little train that went up the tracks from the old logging trains back up into the mountains and at the end of that route they served a big barbecue dinner and then we got on the train and came back. Then after we left McNary we drove to Farmington, New Mexico and stayed a few days with the Flanagans. That was a good trip. We’ve been to Indiana many times to visit Charles’s family and seen different things along the way. One time we went to North Carolina when Kerby, my brother, was stationed there and went to the Atlantic Ocean. We made several trips to Florida and saw the Atlantic Ocean there and the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve been to California with Mary Ann and Roy where we took in Sea World and the San Diego Zoo. I enjoyed that. I’ve been to San Francisco with my mother to celebrate my Aunt Ethel’s ninetieth birthday and I saw a lot of the things there. I was especially impressed with the aquarium at Monterrey, California, a very interesting place. I’ve been to Pike’s Peak when Mary Ann was a baby one time. That was something new and exciting to see. We’ve made two trips to Idaho and so learned some very interesting things there. We’ve been to Millard’s one time with Mary Ann and Roy and then went down to Austin and San Antonio and saw lots of things in San Antonio. I feel like I have been to a lot of places that I enjoyed.

MAG- What are some of the more important things that you feel have happened to you in your lifetime?

NJB- That one is kind of hard. I guess the most important thing that ever happened to me was when I found Jesus as my Savior. I guess another thing that contributed to my life a lot was being selected as the most athletic girl because it gave me a confidence that I would never have had if that hadn’t happened. Then I’ve seen a lot of things and done a lot of things since Charles and I married, that has been a blessing. He has been an extremely good husband and companion.

Some of the outstanding speakers and things that I have heard and enjoyed, I think that I have heard the most of the General Superintendents that we have ever had in the Church of the Nazarene. I have heard some of the outstanding evangelists of the church. I heard Uncle Buddy Robinson speak several times. I went to revival services where Gypsy Smith spoke. I have heard some outstanding speakers in my lifetime in the church. One of the outstanding speakers that I heard out of the church was at a Home Demonstration Convention, at Kingsville, Texas. The speaker was a woman who had been the personal secretary of Mussolini and she told us some of the things that had happened to her and how she had gotten out of the country and away from him. She told us that people around the world were really not interested in how many big battleships we had and big guns and airplanes and things but their interest was in how did we get to the place that we could do those kinds of things. What was the core of our beings and beliefs that enabled us to accomplish so many things? That was one of the outstanding things in my life.

MAG- Do you have any words of wisdom?

NJB- Not really, I guess the main thing that I tried to do in my life was to live my life so that others could see Jesus in me. That was more important than it was to be going around telling people why I did what I did or how they should live it and I hope that my life has been an example to somebody along the way.

MAG- Thank you for sharing all these important thoughts.