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"Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Personal:
Bio
Born in the small Central Texas town of McDade, Vicky J. Rose grew up listening to folklore about gunfighters, outlaws, buried treasure and Indians. Since then, she's lived in East Texas, West Texas and the Houston metropolitan area, working in such places as grocery stores, a law office, a dry cleaners and a car dealership. At age forty, she attended barber college and later opened her own shop. Always in love with words, she went on to earn a B.A. in journalism with a history minor. Vicky currently resides back in Central Texas with her son, Dan.
The Old Rock Saloon where outlaws were rounded up and forced outside to be hanged on Christmas Eve in 1883 is now The McDade Historical Society Museum.
Click here to read the story "McDade & Me" appearing in The Texas Folklore Society 2009 100th Anniversary Edition.
Need to download Adobe Reader to view "McDade & Me"? Click here.
Ramblings from Vicky:
September 5, 2010 -
Pam and I have been friends for 30 years-more like sisters than friends. Pam, her husband and her parents visited the old Pleasant Grove schoolhouse near my home and asked me to meet them there. Pam's the artistic one. She can have a funky colored dress and go in a store and find shoes to match perfectly without even dragging the dress along. Now that's an accomplishment!
Her father is joking behind us while her husband, Mark, takes our picture.
September 3, 2010 - The census that seemed to drag on forever finally ended, but with a little money in my pocket, I was able to visit South Texas. My friend Lora B. Garrison had invited me to spend some days with her at her ranch in Utopia, Texas. B. introduced me to some distant relatives of mine in Uvalde, which was such a pleasant experience because they were so nice to me. We visited the fabulous bank in Uvalde with its almost priceless art collection of former Gov. Dolph Briscoe's. We shopped and ate, and best of all, B. and her daughter LeAnn got me on as an extra in the Robert Duvall movie being filmed in the area, Seven Days in Utopia.
Click here to read more about that experience.
Thursday night I went to Bass Hall on the University of Texas campus to see The Jersey Boys with friends. It was good, but I'm afraid those boys from Jersey just can't compete with watching Robert Duvall make a movie!
July 7, 2010 -
I returned home last week from a 10-day trip to Tennessee. My friend Lora B. and I visited her cousin Belinda in Nashville. Belinda took us to see the sights; Andrew Jackson's home, The Hermitage; The Grand Old Opry, and a tour of the star's homes. From there it was to The Western Writers of America Convention in Knoxville. Click here to read about that on a separate page. We had a great time with Belinda and her husband, Jerry. They showered us with true southern hospitality.
At left, bottom: Daryl Singletary, Little Jimmy Dickens, Mike Snider - top: Jimmie C. Newman, Jim Ed Brown, Robert David Hall (from CSI fame) They were all fabulous!
Lora B. on right, her cousin Belinda Vanetta on the left.
April 4, 2010- Happy Easter! I just got back from the 2010 Texas Folklore Society meeting in that windy, but friendly city, Abilene. Some of the city's friendliness must have rubbed off because so many people, including me, commented on what an extra good meeting it turned out to be. A lot of "windy" tales floated around, too. But what else can be expected from a group of folklorists?
Memories, in no particular order:
- The Haile family (Tarpley) singing "I'll Fly Away" at one of the nightly hootenannies
- The emotion of Ken Untiedt (Nacogdoches) as he inducted his friend and mentor, Kenneth W. Davis (Lubbock) as a Fellow
- W. C. Jameson (Llano) describing rattlesnakes
- My friend, Lora B. Garrison (Utopia), getting sick the night before giving her paper on bump gates, and delivering a great presentation the next day regardless
- Ken Davis talking about hog killing time in old Texas
- Begging James Ward Lee (Ft. Worth) to at least part with $6.95 for my e-book even if he didn't read it
- Tangling with "Ab" Abernethy (Nacogdoches) and making up afterward
- Gossiping with Nelda Vick (Dallas, but she's really a Red Rock girl)
- Eating a great luncheon the last day and being asked by Lee Haile "Don't you ever stop talking?" A classic example of the pot calling the kettle black!
At a hootenanny after the day's presentations of papers, John Chapman, Lee Haile and Ab Abernethy regaled the rest of us with wit, wisdom and song. For more photographs of the 2010 TFS meeting, click here.
March 24, 2010 - On the genealogical trail:
Since the desire to join the Daughter of the Republic of Texas overtook me, my time seems to be taken up with dead people. When Evelyn Wolf, the registrar of the Baron de Bastrop Chapter found out how many Republic of Texas ancestors I have, she asked me to get the paperwork together and go in on one big splash. (She doesn't know I have cousins who have twice the ancestors I do because they can go in on both lines. I can only go in on my father's because my mom's people were still in Germany and Hungary. ) I'm still working on it.
The most fascinating things have come to light. My great-great grandfather, Titus Mundine, a legislator and friend of Sam Houston, was the first to propose that anyone, black, white, male or female over the age of 21 should have the right to vote. I'd be prouder, except I quite realize the Mundines are not idealists, and he was probably just being ornery.
Indians shot SVR Eggleston in his front yard in Bastrop. Years later, when his son was accused of horse thievery, evidently someone put pressure on the Bastrop Advertiser to print an article about what a fine upstanding young man he really was.
The Jackson women were petite with long, sad upper lips. Deeply religious, they huddled in prayer during the Battle of San Jacinto, so close to the fight they could hear the crashing of gunfire.
The biggest surprise came when I found out I am directly descended from one of the Old Three Hundred, Stephen F. Austin's original settlers. The Millicans make the characters on the television show Dallas look like The Brady Bunch, but they were all guts and grit. At right, a GGGGUncle: Elliot Millican(notice his hands, made knobby from hard work)
I'd love to find a picture of my direct ancestor, his nephew, Robert Groves Millican
Other things I found out while doing research:
No matter how much I think I know, there is always someone else who knows a lot more.
Little old ladies, who barely graduated from high school, if at all, know more than anyone and have done more than anyone to preserve history.
The academia tends to believe all the ground about the first settlers of Texas has been thoroughly researched. I was taught in college to believe Wikipedia is evil and the Handbook of Texas Online is an authoritative source. Well, guess what, Wikipedia is often wrong, but so is the Handbook of Texas. That ground needs to be re-plowed.
My ancestors were human beings who made mistakes and had all the character flaws the rest of us have today, but they are a loveable bunch of people, and I'm glad I'm getting to know them better.
Here I am at the tombstone of Titus and Catherine Merrill Mundine. This tiny family cemetery is five miles out in the woods from Lexington, unmarked and hidden from the dirt county road. Many thanks to my cousins, Dorothy and Travis McPhaul, because they spent the time to find out where it is and took me there. In addition, many thanks to the members of the Lexington Masonic Lodge for keeping the grave area of their former Grand Master from being overgrown with brush and trees.
March 6, 2010 -
At the Knobbs Springs Cemetery, Mrs. Grady Edwards shows me how to do "grave witching." In this case, long stiff metal rods are bent at 90 degree angles. The short ends are inside small metal cylinders. Mrs. Edwards holds the cylinders in her hands. When standing over a grave, the long ends of the rods will cross, indicating a body is buried underneath the rods. When Mrs. Edwards places one rod on the ground, the other in her hand will move toward the foot of the grave if the body is male, toward the head of the grave if the body is female. Very spooky! She let me do it, and it worked for me too, but it gave me goose bumps!
The grave we are standing near is my great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Harrison, a hotel owner in McDade in the late 1880s. The white stuff on the ground is the flour I was using to try and bring out the writing on his tombstone for a photograph.
February 3, 2010 - I've been very lucky; some of my "bestest" friends are also my cousins.
Recently my cousins and I had a picnic among the pines at Bastrop State Park. We roasted sausage and weinies and had a great time. No one could remember the last time we did something like that. Front row: Jeanie Mundine and me, back row: Scott Mundine and David "Buckshot" Mundine. Scott's lovely wife Jenny took the photo.
More good news. Almost a year after applying to work for the federal census bureau, I got a call today. It's just for 4 to 5 weeks, but they pay well, and I like the work. Maybe now I'll get to attend the Western Writers of America convention in Knoxville. Maybe! I keep telling my son that my ship is going to come in soon, and when it does, I'll pay him back for being so good to me. I just hope my ship comes in before my dock falls to pieces. :)
November 27, 2009 - Good news! Whiskey Creek Press offered me a contract on my manuscript Testimony. They will publish it as an e-book this spring, with an option to bring it out later as a paperback if they so desire. People ask me what it is about, and this is one of the hardest questions for an author to answer. How do you distill 88,000 words in one sentence?
When Jack falls in love with the orphaned daughter of his former best friend, he gets entangled in more danger than just a May-December romance, and he must slip back into a profession he thought he'd left behind forever.
Believe me, none of it is based on anything that ever happened to me. (Oh, that I would be young and sexy and have a handsome wealthy man chasing my little..., oh well!) I just have a big imagination.
November 12, 2009 - My cousins and I got together and had a lovely time at Aunt Opal Mundine and Uncle Bob and Aunt Doris Mundine's houses. Aunt Opal remembers going to house parties in her youth around Blue Branch and dancing so hard one night, the floor of the house fell in. She met Uncle Winifred at one of those dances and after taking one look, knew he was the one.
At Lexington, Texas
Back, left to right: David "Buck" Mundine, me
Front: Opal Fisher Mundine, Jenny Mundine
At Cameron, Texas
Back, left to right: Jan & Tom Reed, Doris Mundine, me, David Mundine, Scott Mundine, Robert "Bob" Mundine, Opal Mundine
November 2, 2009 - The Texas Folklore Society had a booth at the Texas Book Festival in Austin this past weekend. We signed 20 new members. Started by J. Frank Dobie, the society is 100 years old, dedicated to preserving Texas folklore, past and present. At left, former vice-president of Texas State University, Rollo Newsom, explains the facts of life to Carol Hanson, a librarian with the Dallas Public Library system, but Carol doesn't look like she believes him.
Me, Carol and Dow
Jean Schnitz with Kinky Friedman. Jean plays several instruments and is active in the Texas Folklife Festival. Kinky, a master at self-promotion, is running for governor again. I missed seeing Kinky, who came through the crowds on Saturday glad-handing people. I wonder if I could convince an editor to publish the book I'm working on if I ran for governor. Umm, it might be easier to become governor - it would certainly be more profitable.
July 30, 2009 - Dan's tobacco crop has not been a total success, but it hasn't been a total failure either. He carefully marked three different varieties of seedlings in a tray, but the wind blew the tray over, mixing them all up. He thinks these are a Hungarian variety, "Szamosi." He has one Yellow Orinoco that survived, but none of the Havanas made it. With daily temperatures topping the 100s, it's lucky any of them made it. The seeds were ordered from: www.seedman.co
March 23, 2009 - Buddy accompanied me all over Texas while I attended college. He cheerfully stayed in tiny fenced-in yards, some little more than mud-holes, behind the cheap rent houses I lived in during that time. He's happy to be back on five acres in the country where he can rule everything except the cat from his vantage point on the front porch. He's good about not roaming because he's been neutered, and he stays outside most of the day. Although he has a ferocious bark and a growl that causes brave hearts to quiver, like most Golden Retrievers, Buddy's a good-natured, lovable clown.
My son, Dan. A pipe smoker, he's holding an antique horn pipe that belonged to my Hungarian grandfather.
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