Source: http://www.thepineywoods.com/JosieGaarFeb08.htm
At 96, Josie Gaar has lively memories of life in Winn
By Tom Kelly
The year was 1911. In December, King George V and Queen Mary of Britain were crow[n]ed Emperor and Empress of India, and explorer Roald Amundson's expedition reached the South Pole. Orville Wright set a record for sustained flight, at 9 minutes, 45 seconds in a glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.
There were important births that year. Movie cowboy singer Roy Rogers. U.S. Senator and Vice President Hubert Humphrey. And on November 3, 1911, the same day that Chevrolet first introduced a car for sale in the United States, to compete with the Ford Model T, there was born to James Michael Austin and his wife Mary Elizabeth Steven Eula Hearn Austin a daughter, Josie Frances, the seventh of 14 children born to the couple. One, Annie Mae, died at nine months old. The remaining 13 survived to adulthood. Today, Josie Austin (Mrs. Edwin) Gaar, aged 96, lives at home a stone's throw from the Welcome Home Methodist Church near the LA 126-LA 34 crossroads five miles east of Dodson, where she has been a member for many years. Her eyesight is dim--she has trouble reading--but she speaks with the clear authority of vivid recollection of days from her childhood, working at farm and household chores, attending school at Dodson and Gaar's Mill, and going as part of her large family to rural church meetings at New Hope, Dodson, and Hudson, communities in Northern Winn Parish.
I have personally known ``Miss Josie'' for more than 70 years, having spent my pre-school years on a 60-acre sand hill farm in the Gaar's Mill community of Winn Parish, down the road and up the hill from the early residence of Josie and her then-new husband, James Edwin Gaar, the sixth child of James Wilburn (Uncle Jim) Gaar and his wife Frances Missouri Walker Gaar. For this interview, I visited Autumn Leaves nursing home in Winnfield with Miss Josie, where we chatted for an hour and a half with her brother, Lonnie James Austin, the tenth-born on June 20, 1916, and at 91 the only other surviving sibling of the Austin family.
Lonnie, a retired teacher and school principal, recalls starting doing farm chores at age 10 or 11, including picking cotton and other work on the 200-acre family farm on what is now Ballio Road, a parish road leading off LA 126 about a mile west of the present Dodson corporate limits.
Josie recalls that her father bought the place from an absentee landowner, and the family worked to pay it off. She said that when the last payment came due, the owner refused to accept it. Why? ``He wanted the land back,'' Josie said. Her father got the money together and traveled with a friend to New Orleans and made the seller take the money, in the presence of a witness.
About half the 200-acre place was in cultivation, Josie said. The remainder was timber, ``But nobody knew much about selling timber back in those times.''
As the eldest of the seven siblings still at home by the time she was old enough to do household chores, Josie's job was to make biscuits for the family every morning on a wood-burning stove. The biscuits were baked in a couple of long pans, enough for the family breakfast, and also to pack lunches for the kids going to school. With seven kids going to school--walking the three miles from the Ballio road to Dodson school--they carried three large gallon-sized lard pails filled with food from home. (School lunches had not yet been invented.) As they walked down the road with woods on either side, hogs in the woods, hearing the buckets banging, would come running, expecting to be fed. Were you all afraid of the hogs? I asked. ``No,'' said Josie. ``We could outrun them.''
At mealtimes, the family sat at a long table, with a chair at either end, and wooden benches down either side. One parent sat on each end, and the kids occupied the benches. Everyone sat with head bowed until their father ``returned thanks.'' Then, father handed the plates of food down the table, with the kids passing from one to the next, replying, ``Thanks for the bread ...'' etc., as each dish went around the table. ``That's the way I was raised,'' said Josie. ``Now, folks eat standing up, eat out of the pots, off the stove.''
And ``thanks'' are often not ``returned.''
On Sundays, father would hitch the mules to the farm wagon, mama would put quilts in the wagon bed, and the family would ride the two or three miles east down the wooded road to the Welcome Home Methodist Church.
In summer, in August after the crops were ``laid by,'' the family went by wagon a few miles further, heading down what is now LA Hwy 34, to the Hudson Camp Meeting ground, for a nine-day truly ``camp'' meeting. They put a wood cookstove on the wagon, packed clothing, took pens of live chickens, and other food for cooking, and lived the entire nine days at the Hudson Camp Meeting campus, attending church services morning and evening, and socializing with neighbors and visitors. There were always guest preachers and visiting musicians.
As Josie grew into high school, she met Edwin Gaar, and soon dropped out of school to marry. The Gaar family, including the patriarch James Wilburn, five sons--Sylvester, Willie, Roy, Shelby, and Edwin--and two daughters--Annie Mae and Florene--operated the large community general store, cotton gin and grist mill, plus a large farming operation with six tenant families. The store and gin were located near the Gaar's Mill school, where at the road intersection leading to the school stood a large timber--probably a railroad crosstie--planted in the ground, atop which was attached a wagon wheel, with a collection of mailboxes, allowing the rural mail carrier to stop in one spot and service all the boxes for the small village by simply spinning the wagon wheel.
Another of the Gaar enterprises of that period, in the early 1930s, was a dairy, which was Edwin's responsibility. Josie recalls that as a young housewife, she and Edwin would rise at 2:30 a.m. and milk--by hand--thirty cows, and repeat the milking in the afternoon. They lived within sight of the Gaar's Mill High School, and Josie decided that she would go back to school. She continued with the early morning milking, followed by a short nap, then went to classes. After the afternoon study hall, she returned for another nap before the afternoon milking.
When graduation day came, there were five of the Austin clan to graduate--various ones having skipped out temporarily, then returned. And so, they graduated together--three times. The Austins, including Josie, the twins Zella and Zelma, Lonnie, and Laura, marched down the aisle at Gaar's Mill, where Josie was finishing, then came over to Dodson and marched down, where the others were educated. And finally, the elder brother W.J. (Willie) Austin, who was by then teaching school at Elton in Jeff Davis Parish, Louisiana, invited the clan to come to his school and ``graduate'' again. (W.J. Austin later taught and retired from a career in education in Winn Parish.)
Josie and Edwin were parents of a son, Douglas, who is a logger in Winn Parish.
After the death of Edwin's father, the heirs continued operations of the store, gin, and farm for awhile. But eventually, cotton farming died out, the gin closed, the store was shuttered, and Edwin and Josie built and opened a new Gaar's Store a couple of miles south of the old location, at the LA 126 and 34 intersection in 1956. After Edwin's death, Josie and son Douglas operated the store for a time, but he eventually got into logging. Josie kept open for an additional time, in more recent times mostly as a place to visit rather than do business. Closed for several months, the crossroads store is now open again, leased to new managers who have restocked and appear to be doing well.
After high school, Lonnie went into the U.S. Army during World War II, training for gunnery and was stationed in the Philipines. While serving there, he said, an officer once showed up and asked if anyone knew anything about barbering.
``I had watched my brother cut hair,'' Lonnie said recently. ``So, I said, `Yes, I can cut hair.' '' He was sent up to the barber shop, and spent the rest of his duty there.
While in service, Lonnie met his future wife, Edna Wilhelmina Rothenberger, daughter of a Kansas farm family, at the Shreveport airport while enroute to California from Louisiana. Soon after, they were married, and she came to California where she stayed while Lonnie was in service. His wife died in late 2007, while he was under treatment for a broken hip and a stroke. They have a daughter, Judith, a retired employee of TWA airlines, now engaged in sales.
(Josie's last surviving sister, Laura, died about a month after Lonnie's wife, at age 89.)
Upon returning from service in the Army, Lonnie Austin earned degrees in education administration and special education, and spent a career teaching, beginning at Gaar's Mill in Winn Parish, and retiring from the school system at Springhill in Webster Parish, where he spent 20 years.
The fourteen children of James Michael and Mary Elizabeth Austin are:
The seven children of James Wilburn Gaar and his wife Frances Missouri Walker Gaar are:
Editor and Publisher
Maggie Lemora, born Nov. 26, 1895.
William Joseph, born Aug. 22, 1898.
Johnny Elbert, born Jan. 22, 1901.
Jessie Coy, born Aug. 9, 1904.
Evin Willard, born Jan. 18, 1907.
Eva Vinnie, born Jul. 26, 1909.
Josie Frances, born Nov. 3, 1911.
Zella Fronie and Zella Lonnie, twins, born Mar. 10, 1914.
Lonnie James, born Jun. 20, 1916.
Laura Weaver, born Jun. 28, 1918.
Vera Mae, born Jul. 19, 1921.
J.B. Roy, born July 2, 1923.
Annie Mae, born April 9, 19?, died at age nine months.
Sylvester Henderson, born Jan. 5, 1898.
Willie, born Feb. 24, 1900.
Roy Verlon, born May 12, 1902.
Annie Mae, born Jan. 28, 1906.
Shelby Eugene, born Sept. 1, 1908.
James Edwin, born Sept. 1, 1912.
Mildred Florene, born Nov. 16,1918.
An infant boy born Jan. 28, 1902, died at age two months.