Janice Williams Loves Austin

Through the week I always think that great things will be accomplished here at the house if I just had the time to do it. Then the weekend arrives and I sleep the day away.

I have high hopes of organizing my genealogy a bit more. I visited cousin Paula last weekend in Comanche and her files and folders are all so neat and she can print off a document at a minutes notice because she has it all together. He has wonderful notebooks full of paperwork in plastic sleeves so it is all readable, protected, and in order! I want that. But my stuff is in piles and boxes and so disorganized. So tonight I decided to start the effort of getting it where it needs to be. But there is so MUCH of it all. I pulled out files from a cabinet in the garage, boxes piled around my office, scrapbooks, notebooks, more boxes, and sacks full from the closet. Genealogy in every nook and cranny. I divided it into some piles in the living room. Piles that quickly lost their meaning as family lines blurred. Then I look into the closet and see the big box of letters, and more piles of photographs. I don’t want to get in and divide THEM tonight, too, do I? No. So I pack it all up, place it all around, and wait until it frustrates me again.I still have such big projects going for the Cunningham reunion that there is no time to organize the rest of it.

One fun thing I did find tonight was a photograph. We have a sweet little photograph framed and up in the drum room of Mark as a toddler playing a little guitar (or maybe it is a plastic ukelele). Whatever it is, it is sweet and showed his musical bent from an early age. But I discovered (again) tonight that we have Mark’s baby book. And there I discovered where this whole thing began:

I don’t know where the sticks are, but he looks quite pleased to be wrapped around that drum.

I read other people’s blogs and they tell hilarious tales about the foibles of their families and co-workers and the idiots that surround them day to day. I love that stuff! I would like to write that stuff. But every time interesting, blog-worthy stories happen, I also think about THAT person reading their story in my blog and I can’t do that. Sometimes because it would affect my livelihood, such as it is, other times it would just affect a good friendship or family relationship.

I guess I can tell this one story, though, because this person doesn’t even know that I have a blog or that I use this name to the world. It is a “new” cousin I discovered through the internet and that fabulous findagrave site. She is a cousin, not too distantly related, and I found her and got some information from her. She made it apparent that family history doesn’t interest her much, though she was quite nice and gave me the information I asked of her. But now I have become one of her “forward friends.” I am getting several forwards a day from this woman I don’t even know (I don’t even know where she lives!). They are all of the “bless you” kind, the kind that request you to forward this prayer to 10 friends to show that you have time for Jesus and are not a heathen. Or the kind that say “This is so awesome!!” and then it shows a picture of a sunset with the face of God glimmering in the clouds while the midi version of Amazing Grace blares out as you are scrambling to turn off the speakers because you decided to check your email at the Starbucks. Amusingly, she also calls herself “Angle Mom.”  Yes, that is not a typo. She calls herself “Angle Mom.” I truly think she means Angel, but it always Angle. I have not yet asked her to take me off of her forward list because I expect I will need some more information from her and I don’t want to aggravate her just yet. I got a forward today that actually had her name in the subject line and I thought maybe, just maybe, there was something more personal than a forward here. But, no, I opened it up and it has a picture of Jesus walking toward me (and it was animated so he was getting closer) and it said, “I just left Rebecca’s house and I am on my way to yours!”  My first thought was, “Jesus can’t come to my house today, it is too dirty!” Then my second thought was that somebody didn’t understand the concept of Jesus…. how can he be at HER house? He’s been at my house for years!

I’ve seen some good music lately. Well, at least the Derailers last night at Hill’s. Many more of those untellable stories surround the other music I saw, but we definitely won’t go there. I’m just happy that the computer is up and running, the weekend is almost here, and I am home in air conditioned comfort.

After I had a reasonably good connection on Friday night at my cheap motel in Brownwood, I didn’t have it on Saturday night so I missed updating and broke my promise. I’ll catch up and there will be plenty to read in the upcoming days. I had a wonderful weekend and I am worn out! Lots of walking and standing in the hot sun to take pictures of graves of people I didn’t know and don’t even know if we were related. Pictures that are already on the web for the most part and I can go find them there in air-conditioned comfort. But there is something about being there and I enjoyed that immensely, though the grassburr situation in one cemetery was a little overwhelming. It was called Evergreen . . .  I guess that didn’t mean trees and grass, it only meant weeds and stickers.

Family reunions are so interesting. As I’ve said before, this is a completely far-flung reunion of people that all have a common ancestor, but don’t know one another hardly at all. Some there seemed to be there only to interact with their close relatives and didn’t came much about the rest of us. My handful of close relatives always makes me seek out more folks to visit with. My branch of our family tree only had 6 there. There were several branches with no one, so I guess we at least have something.

The reason for my trip was the reunion, of course, but I think I enjoyed my visits with cousins from another side of the family even more. Perhaps because they were in air conditioned houses while sipping Coke and petting a kitty. Or just because I know these family members more closely and can ask more sincere questions than “Where are you from? What do you do?”

More coming up, but this day is already stacking up to be full. And this week! I came home, thinking I would certainly slow the pace down this week if I could, but since I have Lyle Lovett added to the mix for tomorrow night, I think I will be out and going every single day. If you are living vicariously through me, I suggest you take some Tylenol Arthritis formula. We’re aching!

Ah. Underwoods. The name from my childhood brings back many happy memories, begging my parents to let us eat lunch at Underwood’s after church. It was a big black building on Amarillo Blvd. (Route 66!) and had a big tile depiction of the Underwoods’ man. I wish I had a picture of that building.

But it was the food that was most memorable. Barbecued steak and cherry cobbler and hot, HOT, delicious rolls fresh from the oven.

Years roll by and Amarillo’s Underwoods closed. Every so often, we would find ourselves in Brownwood and would take the opportunity to eat at the Underwoods that still operated there. Waco had one, too, until just a few years ago. A meal at Underwoods is one of the very few I would recommend that you plan a trip around.

So that is exactly what I did. I came up for my family reunion today in anticipation of eating at Underwoods in Brownwood tonight. It is the last remaining restaurant of the chain that used to cover Texas. I have never been a fan of cafeterias, but Underwoods is different. At most places, you have to pay for every little item you pick up. At Underwoods, you buy the meal and can have all the side dishes AND cobbler AND rolls you want. Ahhhhhhh. So this is what I had:

I’m not a great food photographer. I didn’t want to be too obvious about it so it was a one shot snap. That is the fabulous barbecued steak as the main course. I wonder why other barbecue joints don’t have barbecued steak? It is a wonderful thing. They don’t have brisket, but they do have sausage and ribs. I can’t break tradition and have anything but the steak. Yum. But you know how I search for great fried chicken so I had to try it here, too. One thing Underwoods has over Allen’s in Sweetwater is that they have honey ready and waiting on the table for your chicken. Yum. The beans were like homemade Ranch Style Beans, the mashed potatoes were just so-so, the potato salad was really good and different (did it have cheese in it maybe?).

Those hot rolls are worth the trip alone. And they keep coming around with hot, fresh ones, just like grandma used to do.

As for the cobbler, I talked to Mom once I got to my motel for the night. She asked if I had had the cherry cobbler. I said, no, I had considered it and opted to go with the peach this time. There was a pause and then Mother solemnly said, “That was a mistake.” She could be right, I’m sure thinking about running by about 11 a.m. tomorrow for a quick taste.

Anyone that knows my capacity for food might be surprised that I did NOT clean my plate at Underwood’s tonight. Fabulous, but SO much I did stop short.

As for the other adventures of the day, I stopped first at the Newburg Cemetery and communed with my ancestors for a long while. I hoed weeds off of lots of graves and put out flowers and just wandered. I’ve done so much genealogy lately, a lot of the names were more familiar than they have been before. Two of my cousins came by while I was there, so we had a short visit and I will see them more tomorrow. It is very comforting to be 140 miles from home and bump into cousins.

Tomorrow—- REUNION!!

Tomorrow I am on my way to the Cunningham Reunion. I need to pack and think about what food to take and get my genealogy together and on and on. There is a lot to do, but I know I promised to write here today and I also need to update the calendar before I leave you for the weekend. Even if I’m not going to be seeing live music in Austin, somebody will want to.

I thought I would tell you briefly about the Cunningham family. They came to Texas in 1840, settling up in Titus County, near Mount Pleasant. So they were here during the Republic of Texas. They lived down here in Travis County and Williamson County (where my great-great grandfather was born) briefly before settling permanently in Comanche County about 1855. Captain James and Aunt Susie Cunningham were true pioneers and they built their home and raised their children while farming, ranching, and fighting Indians. Seriously, read any book about Indian depredations in Central Texas and you will read about Capt. Cunningham and his sons.

So Capt. James and Aunt Susie (as they were called by people in the community, too, not just family) started a family reunion in 1889 to get their 12 children and their 110 grandchildren together for two days in mid-August. They held it under pecan trees by Mercer Creek. They had several more reunions over the years before making it a permanent annual event beginning in 1909. By then there were 267 great-grandchildren. I have pictures of some of those reunions in the earliest days, pictures with my grandfather (born in 1899) as a little boy under the pecan trees by Mercer Creek. One of these days I am going to put those pictures up on a website. They are amazing.

But tonight, I’ve chosen three pictures just for a flavor of the reunion. This is from late 1940s, I would think. Mother may have a better idea.

That’s my great-grandmother Hallford on the far left. She was born Henrietta Cunningham–”Het”, a grandchild of Capt. James and Susie Cunningham. She would have known them well since they didn’t die until she was in her 20s. She was born in 1875. She&