Friends and family new and old came out to wish Thelma Clark a happy 90th birthday at her “90 for 90” party Sunday at the Mountain View Senior Center.
The family set out to have 90 people in attendance and ended the occasion with 93.
Thelma, who is a pillar of the Luber community, was raised in the community and in turn raised her family there. She and her late husband, Harley Clark, raised four children, Pauline, Louise, Ronald, and Lonnie, later unofficially “adopting” a son, Tommy Staggs. Ronald and Lonnie both remain in the Luber community.
Thelma was born on Jan. 23, 1935, to Thurman and Millie Anderson. She was an only child, and with the exception of a year or so that she lived in Batesville, she has lived her entire life in the community.
She is a lifetime member of the School Avenue Church of Christ, where her father served as a deacon. She remembers being baptized in 1950 or 1951 in Rocky Bayou Creek. She told the story of having a broken arm at the time, so everything but her arm has been baptized.
Thelma was born during The Great Depression, and her family knew what it was like to save and survive on very little. She remembers having dresses made out of flour sacks and living in a one-room cabin. She recalls that one winter it was so cold that the water sitting under their heating stove froze before morning. This fueled her love of gardening and canning her own food. If it can be canned, jelled, or frozen, she has preserved it, including her famous purple hull pea jelly that she makes from the hulls of the peas.
She often talks about things that happened when she was a kid. She remembers having a crazy teacher at the old Luber School House who would yell “A hiding place! A hiding place! A blessed hiding place!” Then she would run around her desk and hide underneath. Thelma laughs and says that she went home to tell her grandpa, who was on the school board, what was going on. She says that teacher didn’t stay around to teach very long.
Thelma graduated 8th grade at the one-room school house and then went to Mountain View when they annexed the school houses.
She remembers when her dad got the family’s first car. It was a Model T, and she says that she remembers her dad learning to drive it. He had a bunch of split wood stacked in the yard. He went to stop and hit the gas instead of the brakes. She laughs as she remembers him saying, “Whoa! Whoa!” like he was talking to a team of horses.
After getting married, Thelma and Harley ran a family farm and logging and sawmill business. She remembers Harley working for 50 cents a day. He was paid a penny a post and could get out 50 posts a day using a chopping ax and crosscut saw. She says that was good money at the time.
She constantly speaks of cutting lumber for this house or that barn or chicken house as she rides by them on the road.
She has always been a caring and affectionate person. She loves to cook. You never left her house hungry, and everyone always felt welcome.
Read the full story in the Jan. 29 issue.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here