Taped January 30,1978
Transcribed 2-2-78
Carroll Allen
I was born in 1913, about 5 miles north of Bertram. My brother is over at the lumber yard, and has been nearly all his life. My dad was Clarence, and he was in the livestock business.. He bought and sold stock, and farmed some too. My mother was a Crum, and she was raised here, too. Her father was a one-armed preacher, and I think he was named Ernest. I went to school in Bertram. My mother was sick and we moved to town, so went to school here all 11 years, graduating in 1930. Ed Gray and Gill Allison were some of the superintendents. I had a teacher named Jack Ward and a coach, Hugh D. Lane. He was a football coach, and that was a pretty big thing then. Football and baseball were about all we had (for recreation). They used to have county meets where they'd have track and field events. Those would be held in Bertram one time, or Briggs the next time, all over the county. The only football teams were Burnet ,Bertram and Marble Falls, but some of the other area schools played basketball. Liberty Hill had a good baseball team.
We had big programs at Thanksgiving and the end-of school, or at least we
thought it was big. Graduation from high school was a big event for the whole town. I thought I was the smartest man in the world, and I haven't been that smart since When I got out of high school there wasn't much to do. I just worked around here, whatever I could. Times were pretty hard. I worked some on the dam, and for contractors.
The stores had a pretty hard time. Potts & Atter Brothers was a big mercantile outfit that went broke. They had a bank in there, too. It was the big red building here in town. There was also First National Bank and Farmer's State Bank (the Barton Brother's Bank). Mr. Reed had a private bank in A.B. McGill's. Barton Brothers Bank was in the brothers' store. One of them was Walker Barton, and the other one was Herman's father, but I can't think of his name now. I think those boys were Cull Barton's sons, but I'm not sure.
The Happy Hour movie was here, and they had a show on Saturday night. It cost about 15 cents to get in and they sold popcorn. Old man Bailey ran that. It was about the amusement
The Happy Hour movie was here, and they had a show on Saturday night. It cost about 15 cents to get in and they sold popcorn. Old man Bailey ran that. It was about all the amusement, but once in a while a skating rink would come. They'd put up a wood floor inside a tent- a portable floor. This was strictly farming and ranching country, so on Saturdays the kids were mostly working, helping out at home with the crops or something. People grew corn, cotton, some wheat and a good many oats. We fed most of ours to the stock, and if we had a good wheat crop my dad took it to a mill at either Lampasas or Hamilton to be ground to flour. I think it was Lampasas. Some of the wheat was left for payment. There were corn mills everywhere. At one time there were 4 gins in Bertram: Nelson Gray ran one; the Reed Bank owned a couple of them; a man named Ross ran one for the Reeds; and there was Farmers' Gin, where a group of farmers got together and built one. they quit raising cotton around here about the middle 1930's when the price went way down. People went out and got jobs, some of them on the dams. And they raised livestock. We nearly always had stock laws, but some people did have cows in town, and nearly everyone had chickens. The last 2 years of school I lived with my grandmother, and she had a milk cow and a bunch of chickens. This was my father's mother, "Aunt Donie". My grandfather was Elias Allen and he was raised here. His family originally came from Georgia after the Civil War, but they took a while to get here, traveling until they got enough money. They went to Pensacola, Florida, worked on the railroad. My grandmother was a Garner.
Bertram had its own telephone exchange in that yellow tiled building on the corner until about 10 years ago. It's down where Wilbur Allen lives. Ella Smith was Central for years and there were 2 or 3 helpers. Miss Ella knew where everybody was. During the war I'd call home and talk to her for 20 minutes first to catch up on things and get all the news, then I'd talk with my folks.
There was a drug store here one time, but the man wasn't a pharmacist. He just sold things that didn't need a prescription. Both drug stores had soda fountains and sold sandwiches and such. There was a cafe where Herb's Bertram Food Sales is now. It was run by Ben Good (?). Chili was about all anyone knew how to order, or steak.
There used to be dances around here, not public entertainment, but a people's houses. The Masons have always been a pretty big thing here, but I'm not a Mason. There's also Woodmen of the World and Oddfellows.
For years I helped hold elections here, counting votes and such. Other people that helped with that over the years were Ben Warden, a man named Hutto, and Guthrie Taylor, who was the county Democratic chairman for a long time. There were only about half a dozen Republicans here, but they had to vote in the Democratic primary or didn't get to vote.
I guess when they moved (consolidated) the school, that was a bad thing, because things always seemed more lively when we had our own school.
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