My Grandfather, Samuel Baldwin Killough, was a good God-fearing, hard working man.  He was a farmer.  He had cows and although he was not a vet., people would come to get him to doctor their cows when they were sick.  He was always willing to help.  I can remember when I was little, people would come to get him in the middle of the night.

We lived about 160 to 200 miles from him and didn’t get to visit him much but I treasure those few visits we had.  When I was about 4 or 5 yrs. old, we went to see him.  He had just plowed up the peanut crop and I’ll never forget that smell.  It smelled so good!  Times were hard but I can remember him coming back from town and bringing us kids a penny sack of candy every time he would go to town.

I also liked going to church with him.  This was a small Church of Christ.  He led singing and, Oh, how pretty it was.  They sing a capella and the voices made such beautiful music.  He also was Santa Claus every year until he fell off the fire truck and hurt his back.  He also told and taught me the secret of removing warts.  I thought this was really something!  He was a “Dear Man”.  Everyone loved him and he, them, he was affectionately known as “Uncle Sam” in the small town of Moran.

He loved music and loved to hear my dad, W. C. “Bill”, play the fiddle.  Just before he died, he looked up and asked my dad to play “Arkansas Travelers” one more time.

My Grandmother “Lillie” was also loving and hard working.  I can remember when I was little and would wake up to the smell of coffee and bacon she was cooking on an old wood stove.  The biscuits and gravy and bacon were delicious.  That smell would give anyone an appetite.  She also had to work outside of the home to help make the living.  I loved her dearly.

My Dad lost his first wife (Willie Irene Blackwell).  They had 5 children, with the youngest being 18 months old.  Some of his in-laws wanted to put them in an orphan’s home.  He would not hear of it.  He met my mother (Ollie Mae Williams) and married soon after.

“Bill” had lived in Sabanna, Nimrod, Pueblo, Callahan County, Sedric, Scranton Town, Eastland and a few more small towns in Texas.  Most of his life was spent in Big Spring, Tex., where he moved in 1929.  At this time he was working for the railroad.  He went to work around 1930 or 1931 for the Southern Ice Co. as an engineer.  They made ice for several counties.  During World War II, he went to work for a construction company building air bases. After the war, he continued work in carpentry, specializing in “finish work” until he was forced to retire for health reasons.  He loved “Family Gatherings”,  with 12 children and numerous grandchildren, we had a lot of those, and making music.  He was known as a pretty good “fiddle “ player and won several contests.

My mother was an extraordinary woman.  She married my dad at the age of  seventeen and one half years.  He had 5 children with the oldest one just 6 years younger than her and the youngest was 2 years old.  She loved them and raised them as her own and never showed any favoritism.  She and Dad had seven of  their own.  She worked really hard to raise all of us children.  She was a good mother and wife, a very good provider.  She washed clothes on a rub board and boiled them in a wash pot.  She cleaned and scrubbed floors--was the best cook ever.  She truly had to love Dad and all of us to do all she did for all of us.  She was strict on teaching us right from wrong--and to go by the rules of God as well as the laws of the Land.

I truly have fond memories of them and miss them so very much.

I think Families are Fantastic!!