Stay ConnectedDr. Stephen Sloan of Baylor’s Institute for Oral History and Department of History explores the people, places, and stories that have shaped Waco, Texas.
Through interviews, local-history insights, and narrative storytelling, the podcast highlights both well-known events and lesser-told community histories—helping listeners learn more about Waco and its place in broader Texas history.
Pests—the creepy-crawly, buzzing kinds—are a year-round nuisance in Waco but are especially present in summer months, when they come out in full force and bring misery along with them.
Louise Murphy describes her introduction to one such pest:
"I didn't know anything about roaches until we got an icebox. I got acquainted with Mr. Roach. And off and on all the years, we still have a problem with Mr. Roach because they can get in these cracks in the ground where there's shift[s] in there, and you cannot get rid of them."
Interviewer: "Well, what—what do you think it was about the icebox that—that—"
"Oh, they were full of them. They love that. It was the coolness. Besides that, they—they had moisture down in under there, and they clung to that. And I didn't know what they was until we got one, and I couldn't imagine what that was."
She recalls an experience with bedbugs in the 1950s:
"Boy, they get in your bed, they get in your walls, and they would get in the cracks of the—under the house, the cracks and what have you. And what they do: when you go to sleep—ooh, you couldn't sleep for them things sucking the blood out of you. So my dad says, ‘Ooh.' Said, ‘What have we got into?' I said, ‘Bedbugs.'"
Murphy explains that she and her father waged war on the unwanted guests by using DDT:
"I said, ‘Well, go to the feed store, and ask them if they got any.' I heard that would just get rid of everything, our roaches and everything—which he did and brought it in. And we made a solution, and I got a paintbrush. Now, I went around every window, I went around our mattresses on the beds, I went around the baseboards, and every room was painted just like I painted the door facings and all with paint. I don't believe I had to do it twice, just once, and I got rid of them. Boy, I want you to know, I kept that stuff as long as I could because I didn't want it anymore, you know. But you—the roaches will come back."
Thomas Wayne Harvey tells how his family dealt with mosquitoes:
"Every once in a while they would—they would get bad, but we'd burn cork, like a cork in a—a fishing cork. The same kind of—you could burn that just—it'll burn slow, you know, and it—that thing'll burn for hours. And you could sit out there, and it would—for some reason they'd stay away from that cork."
Charles Armstrong recalls a pest that took advantage of the open windows during the summer months:
"Flies were a nuisance. And my family would—would give me so much for flies, for killing flies, see. And I—I went around the house all the time with two flyswatters and save them flies; put them in a jar and save them, see. And they'd pay you so much for them—them flies. My brothers, were pretty strict on me. If they caught me cheating, they'd get after me, see."
Insect pests are unfortunately a part of life and annoyingly resilient. It's easy to understand how the urban legend began that says cockroaches are the only things that will survive a nuclear holocaust.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Guests: Chris Hansen and Carl Hoover
Topics:
o Florence Gerald
o Texas Guinan
o Ann Gwynne
o Cindy Walker
o Victor Bozeman
o Shannon Elizabeth
o Peri Gilpin
o Jennifer Love Hewitt
o Steve Martin
o Angela Kinsey
o Thomas Harris
o Terrance Malick
o Kevin Reynolds
o John Lee Hancock
o Derek Haas and Michael Brandt
o Waco in Films
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Prohibition in the United States led to the decade most associated with flowing alcohol and crime. The Eighteenth Amendment, on the heels of the Volstead Act, put into place a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol in 1920. Local law enforcement agencies were not prepared.
Helen Geltemeyer of Waco recalls a relative concocting whiskey during Prohibition:
"But I have an aunt—his sister in Austin—made it. They made it in their bathtub. And the reason why they did there because if they found out the cops were coming, they'd just let it go down the drain."
Ann and William Walko of Windber, Pennsylvania, explain how Prohibition affected the moonshine trade:
A. Walko: "My grandmother, they said she was in jail almost every weekend. They take her to jail; my mother have to find somebody to go bail her out, you know. But that was survival. They had—they needed money, so they would make the moonshine. And these bachelors were all living with people. You know, they worked in the mine. And they would—she'd sell them bottles, you know, and they'd pick my grandmother up, and away she'd go (laughs) off to jail. But she wasn't the only one. There was a lot of women around this area."
W. Walko: "I remember my mom and that, they used to make—my grandma used to make that moonshine down in the cellar. And I notice they'd put it in a little spoon, and they'd light it, see if it'd burn. (laughs)"
A. Walko: "If it was strong enough."
Interviewer: "And you knew it was good."
W. Walko: "If strong enough."
A. Walko: "Yeah, you knew it was good then."
W. Walko: "I didn't know what they were doing then. But then, this one time when they heard the cops coming around, boy, they got rid of that, (laughter) stuffed in their cars and everything else."
Folklorist and educator Martha Emmons of Mansfield describes her and her father's impressions of Prohibition:
"I remember a lot of people that thought it was so cute to break the law. And I know my father used to say—now he was pretty well on the idea of strict construction of the constitution of states' rights. He was brought up in that, don't you see. And he used to be in favor of local option because he said he was in favor of prohibition on the state scale if anybody could enforce it, but he said, ‘You just watch it. It will not be enforced on a—the bigger your scale, the less the enforcement will be.' And he did think it was a degrading thing to have laws on the statute books that were not enforced and not obeyed. And now a lot of people said that when they say, I'm for local option, that that was just a cop-out, that we want statewide prohibition.
"But I know it was often discussed around that supper table at home, and I heard so much of my father's sentiments. Now, he wasn't above taking a drink. As I tell you, we grew up on whiskey. And the doctors told us, though, that in prohibition there would be something else. I used to think, What in the world will we do if we get sick? Because whiskey was available to everybody, and that was a common remedy that we all had."
Throughout the twenties, Prohibition grew steadily more unpopular, and enforcement proved impossible. In the spring of 1933, President Roosevelt signed an amendment to the Volstead Act, and in December Utah's ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment officially repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, bringing an end to Prohibition.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Dr. Sloan talks to Jayme Lynn Blaschke about the storied history of the Infamous Chicken Ranch
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Dr. Slaon talks with Dr. Kenneth Hafertepe who is a professor and chair of the Department of Museum Studies at Baylor University about buildings around Waco.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
During the scorching months of a Texas summer, there's nothing quite so refreshing as playing in the water or at its edge. Wilma Bunton of Houston lived for five years in Galveston as a child.
We would go to the beach and we called it bathing. My aunt brought her bathing suit. It was one of those old fashioned, looked like a short skirt. And had white, three rows of white braids around the bottom, it came just below her knees. She had black stockings that went up above her knees and bloomers around her.
Doesn't sound real comfortable. No, she had bathing shoes on. And then she had a bathing cap, as it was called, that looked like a dust cap. And if she had fallen down in the water, we wouldn't have been able to save her. But the ladies at that time didn't swim. They even had puff sleeves, of all things. So that that would fill up with water, too.
But we'd go down and we'd beach comb. Early in the morning it's easy to find the shells and you can even find the sand dollars that are not broken. If you pick them up carefully, you can have the whole sand dollars. So we'd beach comb a while and then we'd bathe a while. Then the water made us so hungry till we couldn't wait to get home and get a bath.
My mother always had a good breakfast for us. Martha Howe of Waco remembers her summers at Oak Point, or Lacey Point, on the Old Lake Waco. Everybody loved sailing. My father went to Culver and, uh, was in the, in the Naval School, and, uh, Papa bought the boys a sailboat, and then Papa, um, also bought them a wooden boat.
And so they water skied and then over on the town side, that would be the east side. Papa had put pea gravel out into the lake so that you wouldn't get that old squishy mud between your toes. And I remember, I was in diapers and we would swim there. And it had big cottonwood trees all around it so it was shady and it was wonderful.
It was kind of... Like a little beach, but it was with Lake Waco water and, uh, daddy would teach, taught us how to swim there. We had piers out into the lake. We had a wonderful person that worked for us named Sherman. He would fish on one of the piers. So we called it Sherman's pier, but we would swim from the pier and we had a canoe and we had a speed boat.
And so, yeah, we, we definitely took advantage of it, but that was when the lake was small. Texas offers 15 major rivers, more than 150 lakes, and a gulf coast to consider for summer activities. The Texas Parks and Wildlife website provides recreation suggestions and safety tips for these locations at tpwd.state. tx. us.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Dr. Sloan talks with Buck Cole about the Evangelia Settlement that he helped achieve a state historical marker.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Home remedies have been around for thousands of years, passed down from one generation to the next and utilizing common products to treat illnesses. In early 1900s Waco, these treatments abounded.
Mary Sendón recalls home remedies her family used:
"They would use coal oil and rock candy. It was supposed to be for coughs and chest colds. Then they used mustard plasters for chest pains and pneumonia. My—that's what they used on my grandfather in pneumonia. And this is a funny story about that: my grandfather really was a—they thought he was dying. He was having what they call sinking spells; you know, he'd just get so weak. It was during the Prohibition days, and the doctor could order whiskey from a drugstore with a prescription. Well, the doctor ordered a bottle of whiskey from Old Corner Drug Store.
"And he told my—all of my aunts—everybody came together to help—and he said, ‘Get him an eggnog every thirty minutes.' And he told them how to do it: put a tablespoon of whiskey in a glass and fill it with egg beaten up real stiff. Said, ‘Every thirty minutes, see that he gets one.' Well, he set out the whiskey. And, you know, all night long, they were beating eggs, and they beat them by hand; they didn't have any kind of eggbeaters. The next morning he was improving, and he recovered. The egg gave him strength, and the alcohol was accelerating the cure; it was accelerating the killing of the germ. That's the way he put it."
Sendón explains other treatments:
"They used turpentine. Turpentine was a good cure. I remember going after the milk one day for my neighbor's house, and I stepped on a nail. And, oh, everybody just got so excited because the nail was so dangerous. And that was a rusty nail. Well, they got coal oil and just poured it over my foot and kept pouring it over my foot. And that cured—that stopped the infection. Coal oil."
Woodrow Carlile tells how he nursed his nemesis:
"My main problem was poison oak. Being light-skinned, my arms would get poison oak on them and crack open like a dry riverbed, just separate. And if we had calamine lotion we used that, but other than that, in the summer you just laid out on the ground and let the sun or whatever heal it."
Cathryn Carlile remembers a home remedy her family once performed on her:
"I went to the Waco-Temple high school football game, and it was so cold. And coming home, I could hardly breathe. When I got home, they put towels on my chest and ironed through the towels—the heat. As I remember, we were up practically all night. And early in the morning, my dad went to get the doctor. We didn't have a telephone. And he came and said that I had pneumonia but that all the heat that had been applied had broken it up and that I'd be fine."
Today, the rising cost of traditional health care and a growing interest in a more holistic approach to illness have boosted the popularity of home remedies. And the Internet has made them much easier to share.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This special episode covers the music of Jules Bledsoe, Hank Thompson, Johnny Gimble, Mercy Dee Walton, and Billy Joe Shaver.
Guest: Jim Holmes, Waco City Councilman, District 5, investment banker, and music lover.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
When the Great War came to an end in late 1918, a cloud hung over the jubilation; the world was suffering the worst pandemic in history. From 1918 to 1919, the Spanish Flu killed more people than the fighting did in World War I and infected more than a quarter of all Americans.
Educator Wilma Buntin describes the flu striking her family in the Houston area:
"And I remember my older brother Louis was the only one who didn't get sick. So he'd try to fix something for us for breakfast, or he'd tried to fix something for supper. None of us were interested whatsoever. They didn't have a doctor there, so you just had to do what you thought you could. And they knew to drink fruit juices and rest. Then he'd cry when he'd fix something. He said, ‘It's because I can't do a good job of cooking you all are not eating.' And he didn't—(laughter)."
In a 1987 interview, Louie Mayberry recalls how the virus changed everyday life for children:
"When we moved to San Antonio I started to school. I hadn't gone to school but a few days, they had a—a flu epidemic in San Antonio and they turned the schools out. And we stayed out for quite a while. And they was trying to teach me how to work. They let me shine shoes at the I&GN [International-Great Northern Railroad] station in those days; it's Missouri Pacific [Railroad] now. And then school started again, and it went on for a couple of weeks, and they turned out again. We didn't get much schooling before Christmas."
Bible translator Robert Bratcher, who was born in Brazil in 1920, tells how the illness affected travel:
"My parents and my older brother, who was at that time four years old, had gone to Brazil in 1919. They had been appointed by the Foreign Mission Board and were due to go in 1918, but the great flu epidemic was at that time, and it held them up. They stayed in Valhalla, New York, with some other missionaries waiting till the ships, you know, were available that had sailors that could man them to take them to Brazil."
Folklorist Martha Emmons remembers escaping the flu:
"I have often thought that the Lord in His providence kept me from having the flu. I used to give a more earthy explanation than that. People asked me how I avoided it because, oh, people just dropped dead all around from that. But I was so needed, I thought. See, I had my father with me, and I was teaching at Maypearl, Texas, and I remember when I was asked that I said, ‘Oh, well, all I can attribute it to is eating onions and staying happy.' (laughter) And I did eat onions and anything else that way that I thought was the right kind of thing. And I did make an effort to stay happy. But I've often just thought it must have been a providential stroke because I don't know what could have happened if I had had to have the flu right there with my father an invalid and with me, and we were in that little apartment there. And it would have been awful for him to have taken the flu from me, don't you see?"
The nationalism and acceptance of government authority heightened by the war allowed public health workers to easily put in place restrictive measures to bring the epidemic under control. The Spanish flu outbreak then faded from public memory, until flu scares in recent decades.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
