Weldon was learning new
words. Piers, port, wharfs, docks and jetty became common to him. His
grandfather Joe, ever the fisherman, loved to take him out on the jetty
to fish. The fishermen in the family talked for many years about how
they enjoyed fishing off the jetty.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jetty
(For your information).
Matamoros was a fun word,
too, and that held all kinds of different adventures for the boy and his
family. Bertha loved to go across the border to shop that town in
Mexico, until one time the border guards were not going to let her back
into the U.S. because they thought she was Mexican. Dean made calls to
Pawhuska and the agency there, so they could verify his wife was of the
Osage tribe. On that particular visit Dean had thrown out a bunch of
small coins he always jingled in his pocket to the street urchins. That
careless act nearly caused a riot. People poured out of the small
houses hastily erected to provide for the influx of Mexican people who
were there to work jobs while Brownsville was in a kind of economic
state of progress. The Mexican police had to lead the Jones family out
of the explosive situation. After those two happenings Bertha no longer
was interested enough to shop in Mexico. Instead, she busied herself
with the preserving of the cheap abundant food. They hired a Mexican
woman to help Bell and Bertha, and their work progressed. By the time
they were ready to leave a trailer was bought to pull behind the car
because there were so many canned jars of food.
Weldon always was dashing
in and out of the kitchen or playing with the children of the Mexican
woman . Dean made friends with the man who owned the airport. This
turned out badly later, when he came to visit them in Oklahoma. No one
dreamed Nanny would run and bounce over his Cadillac to make tiny marks
where her hooves chipped the paint. Nanny’s fun cost Dean a new paint
job in order to placate the man, which was no more than right. This
year, circa, 1934, was the last year they wintered in Brownsville.
