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| Notes for Charles Calvin Higgins | ||||||||||||||||
| Daisy's Delicatessen I went to see my 94-year-old grandmother recently. My wife scheduled a trip to see her sister and best friend from the first grade and we always go visit my grandmother who lives nearby with her son his wife their daughter and her son. In the past I had visited my Uncle many times while traveling from Nantucket to Palm Beach every season. My Uncle Tom taught me a lot as a pre teen and I always looked up to him for advice. I always said I was going to see the mountain. A huge man he was. The whole family was big. Now with his demur mother living with them made her seem out of place with Uncle Tom his wife Carol their daughter Elaine and her son Philip. Grandmother had the figure of a flapper. Seemingly perfect body weight, excellent complexion, clear eyes and working duel ear bobs. Clare Higgins6s hair was a wonderful mix of gold, brunet and silver. As a girl she had hair she could sit on but now it was shoulder length slightly wavy and thickly laid out showing no signs of receding or thinning. For most of her life she had a permanent but now her and her son's hair seemed to be on the same head. While first visiting we sat in the living room talking every which way and that. My daughter played with grandmother and I rotated with a video and still camera capturing this wonderful time together. Later we went to lunch at a Mexican restaurant and I got to sit next to Grandmother's good ear. Being in a Southwest restaurant asked her something about something and she said mother had had a delicatessen called Daisy's Delicatessen. Back then Grandmother lived on the border of Texas & New Mexico. She was she was 15. Her mother's name was Daisy. Attached to the deli was a gas station. It was the first gas station and they called it Texaco because the station sat on the two states borders. I imagine that it was the town of Texline where all this took place. The delicatessen was right on the street, along the sidewalk. The gas station was along side on the deli. Inside the deli was a large room with a soda counter and lots of tables. Daisy served the wildcatters that worked in the oil fields. Occasionally they would celebrate a well's coming in at Daisy's Delicatessen by drinking beer which they served there. There may have been a record player there. The food was American although they did serve American Indian food made with lots of hot chilies. The deli had a counter where they served ice cream. This must be the place where grandmother learned to like Chihuahuas. That was the closest Mexican province. She had two of them Prissy and Perky when I visited them in Kansas City as a 7 year old. Prissy had a litter of five or so every six years or so, so everyone in the nationhood had Chihuahuas. Grandmother was in charge of the magazine section. Her twin brother also worked there. The gas station also had a place where you could tie up your horse. The livery was in the back. I can imagine a man working the livery that knew much about the old stage lines and had seen many of the horses delivered to the Army that grandmother's family had supplied to them. The Clarks, grandmother's family settled in the Oklahoma territory to raise horses for the Army. Great great grandfather had brought from Europe a great stallion for breeding. His ranch was in the Oklahoma Territory and probably near the Texas New Mexico borders. Grandmother enjoyed riding her own horse to school and when she didn't the bus took her. Her mother preferred riding a horse to riding in a car even though she had a chauffeur. Daisy did not do the cooking at the delicatessen. This fact brings up the vision of a chuck wagon cook in the back hanging over the steaming pots and almost open fire. The kitchen may have been a out building between the livery and the delicatessen The cook was probably a man and may have worked the trail with a chuck wagon. Now, I imagined he was serving huge slabs of beefsteak, potatoes, gallons of gravy, corn bread, stew and home made pies. This was the age of the automobile but the old west was still alive and horses were a big part of it. Living at the delicatessen was life in a city. The town stretched out before them making all the comforts available. Daisy had help running her delicatessen and they even had their laundry sent out. They went to the rodeo and celebrated the founding of the state with a fair. The delicatessen was not the most popular place for 15-year-old girls. That place was the local theatre where she saw Charlie Chaplin and Mary Picford movies. Nearby the delicatessen were several motels. They had just started calling them motels instead of hotels then. Most of the men lived alone leaving their families back home while they worked in the oil fields. Grandmother always called her mother's place with the full name: delicatessen. Grandmother, her twin brother and their mother lived on top of the delicatessen and gas station. It was 1920 and just after the First World War ended in 1918 great grandfather suffered shell shock and did not remember his family. He settled in California and married again. He lived till he was 74. It's hard to believe that great great grandfather would suffer such amnesia. Traveling so far to fight in France and then suffering such shock as to forget your whole life. I've been told it happened a lot back then. Great great grandfather was a Clark. The same Clarks supplied the Clark that blazed the Lewis and Clark trail. The same Clarks provided the Clark that was the first mate on the Mayflower. All that was forgotten on the battlefields of Europe. Who was he? Did he settle in California because it was a new land and everyone was new? Grandmother's life at the delicatessen must have been short. Daisy must have died around this time because grandmother went to live with her Uncle Billy. I believe there were three children left behind a girl and the twins. Grandmother was to go with her sister to her aunts but was too uppity and was left behind. She ended up with her Uncle Billy. He was the mess sergeant at Fort Thomas, Kentucky. Grandmother finished high school there and met grandfather. He was one of the new shave tails from West Point and was riding her horse when she came home from school. | ||||||||||||||||
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