A Charmed History

If you are lucky, you had a home like Pete and Jessie Givens’ to live in or visit when you were young. I know the fact I spent time there certainly made my life better.

Pete and Jessie were my maternal Great-Grandparents. Their final home, the home I knew, sat right on 22 highway, in Central City, Arkansas, about 5 miles East of Fort Smith.

William “Pete” Givens left his home in Paris, Texas, around the age of 12 and was on his own from that point forward. I didn’t know until I was grown that he couldn’t read or write because he had to leave school at such a young age. One of his early jobs was caring for an infant for a man whose wife had passed away. Can you imagine being a young boy and having the responsibility of caring for a newborn? His travels eventually brought him to Oklahoma, where he met his wife, Jessie Butler.

Jessie and Pete lived around Shawnee, Oklahoma in the tiny town of Meeker, Oklahoma during the earliest parts of their marriage. The story I have been told is that the Butler family left Meeker in 1926 in covered wagons on their way East. In one of the covered wagons was Pete and Jessie’s two-week old daughter, Addie, my maternal grandmother. The temperatures must have made that trip pretty miserable as my grandmother was born in November. I am not sure the total number of people who made this trip together, but the large Butler family all settled in the area around Lavaca and several families in this area are from that original Butler clan. If you know a Green family member from around Lavaca, chances are they are from this family as Jessie’s sister Ellen was the matriarch of the Lavaca Green family.

My grandmother, Addie, told me stories of how they stopped near Lavaca, which is the town I am from, and camped in the cold, not far from the Arkansas River. Pete and Jessie ended up in Paris, Arkansas for a time because Pete got a job mining coal in one of the local coal mines. She showed me the area in Paris where they lived, just a block or so off the Paris square, but the house is long gone.

They then moved to a house on the banks of the Arkansas River in the general area of Central City. My grandmother told me stories of how cold that house was in the winter for her and her sister, Wanda. You can imagine with no insulation, or central heat or air, how miserable that might have been.

Eventually, Pete and Jessie ended up in the house I knew. The house sate close to the dirt road, Hwy 22, which is now 5 lane and is one of the primary routes into Fort Smith from the East. Even though Pete never learned to read or write, or perhaps because he couldn’t read or write, he was good with his hands. He worked for the County Road department for years as a mechanic. There were very few things my great-grandparents bought. Usually, if they needed something, Pete built it, or Jessie made it.

Pete built the Central City house with his own hands. In fact, when my parents inherited the place, my husband and I took the original pine wood planks Pete laid, from the floors of the tiny, two bedroom house. We stored the planks until I had my kitchen island made out of them years later. I also had 4 wooden boxes made for my two daughters, my mom, and my brother.

My mother was born in this house in Central City. In the tiny little bedroom, with the low windows that ran along the south side of the room. Pete and Jessie worked hard. When I stayed with them, in that room in which my mother was born, I remember lying in the full size bed between them when it was still daylight outside. Time seemed to drag for me as I laid there waiting for sleep to come, but I am positive that bed felt like heaven to them. I understand the joy of an early bedtime more and more the older I get.

Staying at their house are some of my fondest memories. When I stayed, it was usually on a Saturday night so I could go to church with them at the Central Freewill Baptist the next morning. The church, which was within a short walk, was the same church where my parents were married. I can still smell the juicy fruit gum inside her purse that she always kept for me. In fact, the only items I remember being in her purse were the gum, a handkerchief, and the little plastic squeeze coin purse with the local bank’s name printed on the back.
Compared to the kitchens of today, Jessie’s kitchen was tiny with few amenities. She didn’t need a big, fancy kitchen, or Walmart or Harps to feed her family and others well. I have it on good authority that Jessie had nephews that would walk 5 miles from Lavaca, one way, for her pies. I remember her canning and baking the best. Pete was known for his gardens. Pete grew vegetables in his two sizeable gardens, and nothing went to waste. I remember sitting with them on the back porch shelling peas that would soon be canned for later days.

I have distinct memories of making peach and butter and cinnamon fried pies with my great-grandmother. Her dough sure wasn’t purchased from the Walmart cold section. I sure wish I had one of those now. Her tiny little kitchen made a lot of people happy in our area. Pete and Jessie were givers. My mom has told stories of how hobos passing by would stop at their house and Jessie would fix them plates and something to drink and they would sit under the big oak tree in the front yard and eat what she provided. In the pictures below you see Jessie in her kitchen and one of my mom’s birthday parties hosted there at the little Formica-topped kitchen table.

After his wife died, my grandparents built a tiny, one room home for Jessie’s father, my Great-Great Grandfather, Crosby Daniel (C.D.) Butler. When he built the house, Pete ran a line for a light that was in Jessie’s kitchen. If her father needed something, he could flip a switch and the light would go off in Pete and Jessie’s house to let her know. One Sunday evening, they came home from church and the light was on. When Jessie went out to see what he needed, she found that he had passed away. In later years, Pete’s brother Henry lived in a tiny trailer placed right in front of that old house and they took care of him in his later years as well until he passed. It speaks volumes about their character that they took care of so many people when they had so little themselves.

I could share so many more stories about Pete and Jessie, but I will end with this. The warmth and impact a home has on future generations is not determined by it’s size, or the fancy furniture it contains. The impact a home has on family and friends has everything to do with the people who make the home. I think there are plenty of us these days who could use that reminder. It’s nice to live in fine homes that contain comforts that my great-grandparents didn’t have, but it’s the people who live in and visit our homes that make the house a home.

Happy homing!

-Jennifer