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Note: Eva Mae Davenport was the oldest of thirteen children. She was mother to the youngest of the family, since she was much older than they. She was the cook for all the ranch hands when her husband was foreman of Nathan Hall's ranch near Richland Springs. As a pastor's wife later on, she aided his ministry in many ways. She took great delight in scaring people if given half a chance. She once hid in the unlighted stairway to their upstairs appartment and waited for John Mabin and their son Alton B. Hall to return from closing the C. H. Parker store they managed with the Saturday's cash receipts. They were natually a little skittish about carrying all that cash around at night, and half way expected someone to jump them at any time. When Eva Mae accosted them in the dark of the stairway, demanding their money, they both grabbed her by the neck, and in the dark nearly choked her to death, not knowing it was their wife and mother. She was so choked up from laughing that she couldn't tell them who she was until Jewell yelled from the door to stop the melee. On another occasion when I (Joe Pat Lindsey) was maybe four years old, we were staying with Grandma and Granddad Hall (Eva Mae and Mabin). At the time they lived in the back of a Jess Phipps store in Dillard, Oklahoma and the bathroom facilities were out in the back yard. When Eva Mae and Jewell were preparing for the night, Grandma told me that they would be gone for a little while and I was not to be afraid. She said quite pointedly that if I saw a face in the window, not to think anything about it. So I played with some toys while they were gone and thought nothing about what she said. Soon I heard some moaning and sure enough, there was the face in the window -- for a fleeting moment. I was pretty sure it was Grandma, so I went back to my toys. She and my mother came in right away, and Grandma asked me all kind of questions about how things went while they were gone. She wanted to know if I had seen anything at the window. I told her I had seen a face that looked like hers, but it went right away. I think she was disappointed. When Grandma Hall was some where in her late sixties, she developed marked senility. She began to live in the past, as vividly as if it were the present. She often forgot her children and grandchildren, thinking they were people from a generation or two back in time. This disturbed Jewell, he daughter, but the sons just brushed it off as a natural part of growing old. Jewell quit her job and went to Petrolia to live and take care of her parents. The children got Grandma a television to help while away her idle time. She took to it avidly, and watched it quite a lot every day. Her rationalization of TV was that it was a little window through which one could see another world. The people in this other world could look back and see her. So it was all fair, eh what? Since she was being viewed as she herself viewed, it was important how she dressed. So neither she nor anyone with her could wear their gowns in front of the television. Moreover the house had to be in presentable condition. And this was not all. She was also a part of whatever was going on on the TV. The quiz shows were some of the most intense for her. One in particular, "Queen for a Day", would give her a lot of problems. In one week's episode, a woman who had been chosen to be Queen for a Day, would be feted with clothes, hairdos and manicures, tickets, etc. every day until the final day when she would be Queen for a Day. This one week, the woman was to go to New York and reign as Queen there. After Monday's episode, Grandma told Jewell to please tell those nice folks that she did not want to go to New York City. Jewell ignored her until Tuesday when it appeared to Grandma that the TV folk had totally ingored her lack of interest in New York. She then threatened to call the sheriff to have him prevent her from being taken to New York City. Jewell had to call in Siegel Hall on Wednesday to help her control their mother. Finally they just refused to let her watch on Friday, not knowing to what extreme she might go to avoid the trip. Jewell was troubled by her mother's erroneous view of TV. She asked her brother, Alton B, to come over for a day and explain to his mother what TV was really all about. A. B. agreed, and showed up one morning about 9 o'clock. He came in, put his hat on the table, sat down beside his mother in front of the TV and stayed there all day. About 5 o'clock, he got up, put on his hat and announced that he was going to have to leave. At the door, Jewell asked him if he had straightened out his mother relative to the TV. He said, "Well Sis, no I didn't. I'm not so sure but what she is right!". Jewell was somewhat miffed at him for this failure.
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