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.
Dr. Sloan talks with Dr. Jim SoRelle about the infamous novel Sironia by Madison Cooper.
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 is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.
Many memories from our youth are intertwined with those of school, the place where we were making friends and developing interests.
Waco native Helen Geltemeyer shares a treasured memory from her schooldays:
"My earliest memories of Bell's Hill is going to school, walking every morning and with our dog, Tex, following my sister and I and maybe my brother. And the dog would stand at the door of this far end, the east end of the school, and we'd say, Tex, go home! And he'd finally go home. Every day that dog went to school with us. And I loved that school because you could see one end to the other. And the floors were just so clean and nice, and we had such a good time. All my teachers were—seemed to be so lovely."
She recalls her older brother Ross and his friends:
"And a lot of them had donkeys around there across the street. My brother was one of them. They loved to take their donkey to school, Hardy Jones and he, to feed—they were under these mesquite trees. They'd go over there and water them. We thought that was so funny for them to get to do it. It was just for the fun and heck of it. (laughter) They finally quit that, but I always would beg my brother to let me sit on his donkey. And he'd let me sit, and all his boyfriends would be standing around."
Manuel Hernandez, whose family moved from Mexico when he was three years old, describes his school years at Mt. Carmel and Elm Mott and his struggle to learn English:
"The teacher's didn't want to travel to that school. One of them decide to stay the whole week, and they rent the room. It was a nice community. But I couldn't learn English because half of the kids were Mexican people, and the others were white. We get along okay, but we separate on, kind of, the language. That was my problem, that I couldn't learn the English language until I moved to Elm Mott, where it was only three Spanish people in the school. So we had to learn it. And I was already about eleven years old, and being in the first grade, it make you feel bad. Of course, we had some Czech people that had same problems I had because they were speaking at home Czech and English at school. So it was kind of combination of language."
Hernandez left the Elm Mott school during the early days of the Great Depression to find work and help his family financially. Geltemeyer eventually graduated from Waco High in the mid-thirties. Through the years, they carried with them the memories of those formative days in school.
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 Jimmy Dorrell about Waco, the Church Under the Bridge, Jubilee, and all his other philanthropic deeds.
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 is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History.
During the summer months in Waco before air-conditioning, getting comfortable enough at night to go to sleep could be a challenge.
Charles Armstrong recalls an alteration made to the house his family moved into in the early 1920s:
“We didn't live there long till Daddy and my brothers built a room on the back, went all the way across. They called it a sleeping porch. It had windows all the way around it, you know, just one window after the other all the way around it.”
Mary Sendón remembers the porch on her childhood home:
“Right in back of the hallway, at the end of the house, was a screened-in porch. It was screened in on one side; that was one side that opened out, but it was the coolest, most comfortable place. We spent our summers out there almost all the time. And, of course, the porch was a wonderful place to sleep in the summertime. My mother and dad slept on the back porch in the summertime because it was right next to the kitchen, and they got up early.”
Sendón explains that fans helped a little:
“My grandfather had fans in his shop, you know. And he finally got the idea of putting a fan on the back porch, and that fan circulated the air. All the doors were open to—the kitchen, the dining room, and the bedrooms—all opened out onto that back porch. And that fan circulated air and kept that part of the house pretty cool. And then, of course, we had these little circulating fans, you know, we'd put down on the floor. But it would cool one spot; it really didn't do all that much good. Somebody got the fan; somebody didn't.”
She describes what she did one particular night:
“And my sister and I, we had a front bedroom, and all the windows were up, but still it was just blazing hot. So we decided—our front hall, this hall that went all through the house had linoleum covering on it. It was cool. We took our pillows, and we decided we were going to sleep on the floor in front of the front door so to be cool.”
Thomas Wayne Harvey recalls his family left the house altogether to get a good night's rest:
“It was too hot to sleep inside in those days. The folks, they'd move their bed outside about twenty or thirty yards away from the house so they could catch a breeze from all directions because there wasn't no trees or anything to stop the breeze. And I'd have my bed right there next to the house. I had a rollaway bed with a feather mattress on it. That was in case of rain that they could just fold mine up and roll it inside right quick. And then they could fold their—they carried one mattress out there, and they could fold that mattress with their bed—put the pillows in the center and fold the mattress and run inside right quick if it started raining.”
Harvey relates the perils of sleeping outside:
“It kind of got comical at times. We had an old cow named Pet, and you know how a cow stands around and chews the cud and they take their tongue and lick one side of their nostril and lick the other side of their nostril. Old Pet, she'd chew her rope in two and come up there and—that old cow liked my daddy—and that old cow would come up there and start licking him on the face (laughs) early every morning because she was wanting to be milked. And then we also had a rooster that would get up there on the head—the old iron bedstead, and he would get up there and crow every morning and wake everybody up. And it'd also (laughs) leave his telltale marks every once in a while right on Daddy's forehead.”
With the availability and affordability of window units after WWII, air-conditioning became a possibility for many southern homes, making it finally possible to snooze comfortably in one's own bed in the summer. The architecture of new houses soon changed as a result, and existing sleeping porches were torn down or converted into sunrooms.
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 Calvin Smith and Paul Barron about The Waco Mammoth site in Waco Texas.
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.
On this episode we hear from Ashley and learn more about Waco's deep rich history.
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 James “Derek” Ross, a longtime missionary in the Philippines who moved to Waco last year about The Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, and their history in Waco Texas and the surrounding areas.
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 C. Cullen Smith, an experienced and well-known Waco attorney, about the Freedom Fountain and its history.
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 Rick Tullis, president of Capstone Mechanical here in Waco, about the history of Air Conditioning in Waco and the country.
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 Robert Fairbanks Former Professor of History at the University of Texas at Arlington about Urban Development in 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.
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
