Waco History Podcast

Dr. Slaon talks with Rev. Dr. Malcolm Foley about the barbarism of lynching and Jesse Washington in Waco Texas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé. Everyone loves a good ghost story, especially when it involves their neck of the woods. Around the summer of 1915, South Waco found itself with a resident ghost. Mary Kemendo Sendón, who was in high school at the time, recalls when her aunt first spotted the other-worldly figure: "She had been sitting by the window that night. And the next morning she told my mother, she said, ‘You know, I saw something down the street last night. I think I saw a ghost. I was looking out the window,' and says, ‘I was half asleep, and all of a sudden I saw this figure in a long, flowing, white robe coming down the street.' And she said, ‘I got up to get a better look, and by the time I got up, that figure disappeared.' Well, my mother thought maybe it was a dream that she had, you know, and no more was said. Well, and another night or two passed, and the same thing happened." News of the mysterious

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson. For more than a century, the majority of American women were denied the right to vote. Scores of determined suffragettes who wanted to reverse this injustice spoke out through publications, lectures, rallies, and appearances before legislators. Finally, these efforts paid off with the ratification in August 1920 of the Nineteenth Amendment, which states, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." Anna Gladys Jenkins Casimir was a student at Baylor in 1920 and recalls events surrounding the ratification: "I remember parades they had in Waco, and there were a lot of women dressed in white on a float, and they were carrying banners or saying, ‘We want the right to vote,' or something like that. I remember how thrilled my mother was that she got to vote in the 1920 election. She was

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé. At one time, the approach of cold weather signaled for many rural Americans in the South the time to begin planning for the annual hog-killing. It wasn't pretty but provided food for the coming winter months. Louise Murphy, who grew up in Falls County in the twenties and thirties, describes some of the preparations involved in a hog-killing: "We would have to get the old pot full of hot water and get us a barrel and get us a place to hang this hog. We had to have a cold day to get it so we could get our meat cold." Thomas Wayne Harvey recalls what his father did before killing a hog in October of '44 in Waco: "He had to dig a pit. And what he did, he went and got a fifty-five gallon drum and he dug a pit and he put the drum in there at a forty-five degree angle. And at the bottom end of the barrel, he built a fire pit that would heat that drum, and he'd fill it full of water until

Dr. Sloan talks with Dr. Bracy Hill about Waco Hunting History Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson. Pirate radio stations in the U.S. were born when President Taft initiated federal regulation of the airwaves in 1912. Navy ships had been complaining that unlicensed broadcasters were interfering with their transmissions. Even with the new laws in place, pirate stations continued to pop up all over the country, for radio was still relatively new and full of magic and possibilities, and equipment was easy to build. Charles Armstrong recalls the influence of his after-school stops by a local radio store in Waco in the thirties: "There was a little shop down on the corner of Thirteenth and Clay, and I'd just go by there on the way home from school and go and talk to him. I was real interested in it. And when they'd have the boxing matches they had, you know, way back there, well, a lot of people was interested in them, and I despised them. And so I made me an old device I could kn

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé. The origins of Americans riding the rails in search of work trace back to shortly after the Civil War, when ex-soldiers and others sought work on the frontier. Their numbers rose sharply during the Great Depression, when jobs and money were scarce. These hobos became common sights in transportation hubs like Waco. Charles and Ruth Armstrong, both longtime Waco residents, explain their impressions of hobos during the thirties: C. Armstrong: "Most of them was good people. They was kind of like the homeless. They wasn't out to hurt anybody." R. Armstrong: "At that time, see, it wasn't anything unusual. I mean, everybody was in about the same boat because everybody was having a hard time." C. Armstrong: "And, see, they called them ‘hobos' regardless. Some of them was hobos all they wanted to be, kind of like the homeless. There's some of them that want to be. And some of them was trav

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Kim Patterson. White lightning, hooch, mountain dew, firewater—all names for moonshine, or distilled spirits made in an unlicensed still. Although moonshine is most often associated with Prohibition in the U.S., the practice as we know it began shortly after the formation of the country, when people were attempting to avoid the new federal tax on alcohol. CBF missionary Earl Martin recalls his encounter with a moonshine still in the late forties, when he was teaching in eastern Tennessee: "I was traipsing in the mountain trails in an area that wasn't too well-known to me, and I suddenly came on a moonshine still. And it was—it was—the fire was going, and it was smoking. But I didn't see anybody because they heard a stranger coming, and I suddenly realized the danger of the situation because to discover a moonshine still back in those years—and since I was from Washington, DC, I could have bee

Prior to the days of refrigeration, people the world over relied on ice to keep perishables fresh as long as possible. The ice business was certainly alive and well in the American South, especially in summer months. Waco native Helen Geltemeyer recalls the trips she and her sister would take in the twenties and thirties to keep their house outfitted with the frozen substance: "What Allene and I did, went up Seventeenth to Ross, and they had a man who sold ice. And he had these little two-wheeler things that he would let you take home if you brought back. So Allene and I would go get that little old piece of ice and take it home, and we'd fight all the way there and fight all the way back. But that's the way we got our ice." Geltemeyer remembers the event leading up to a new contraption in their kitchen: "Then when I was fourteen or maybe—yeah, I'd say I was fourteen and going to South Junior, my daddy said, "We're buying an icebox because I'm tired of wanting a cold drink.' And he'd been working in the yard

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Maze. When KWTX-TV first went on the air in 1955, it was without a network affiliation, a situation no one in the industry envied. But being an independent station was in some ways a blessing in disguise, as it forced KWTX to focus on local creative talent for programming. One of the resulting series was The Harley Berg Show, a wildlife program that became a staple for many Central Texans during its twenty-four-year run. Former KWTX-TV news director Win Frankel describes the show: "Everyone in Central Texas knew Harley Berg. He was on for many, many years. It may have been about snakes or raccoons or whatever it was, and there was always one there. Whatever he was talking about, was a live one there. He explained all about the snakes and all the wildlife that ever came around here. It was very well done." One particular episode of The Harley Berg Show stands out in Frankel's memory: "An

Dr. Sloan talks with Dr. Jim SoRelle about the infamous novel Sironia by Madison Cooper. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé. Many memories from our youth are intertwined with those of school, the place where we were making friends and developing interests. Waco native Helen Geltemeyer shares a treasured memory from her schooldays: "My earliest memories of Bell's Hill is going to school, walking every morning and with our dog, Tex, following my sister and I and maybe my brother. And the dog would stand at the door of this far end, the east end of the school, and we'd say, Tex, go home! And he'd finally go home. Every day that dog went to school with us. And I loved that school because you could see one end to the other. And the floors were just so clean and nice, and we had such a good time. All my teachers were—seemed to be so lovely." She recalls her older brother Ross and his friends: "And a lot of them had donkeys around there across the street. My brother was one of them. They loved to take their do

Dr. Sloan talks to Jimmy Dorrell about Waco, the Church Under the Bridge, Jubilee, and all his other philanthropic deeds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. During the summer months in Waco before air-conditioning, getting comfortable enough at night to go to sleep could be a challenge. Charles Armstrong recalls an alteration made to the house his family moved into in the early 1920s: “We didn't live there long till Daddy and my brothers built a room on the back, went all the way across. They called it a sleeping porch. It had windows all the way around it, you know, just one window after the other all the way around it.” Mary Sendón remembers the porch on her childhood home: “Right in back of the hallway, at the end of the house, was a screened-in porch. It was screened in on one side; that was one side that opened out, but it was the coolest, most comfortable place. We spent our summers out there almost all the time. And, of course, the porch was a wonderful place to sleep in the summertime. My mother and dad slept on the back porch in the summerti

Dr. Sloan talks with Calvin Smith and Paul Barron about The Waco Mammoth site in Waco Texas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode we hear from Ashley and learn more about Waco's deep rich history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Sloan talks with James “Derek” Ross, a longtime missionary in the Philippines who moved to Waco last year about The Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, and their history in Waco Texas and the surrounding areas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Sloan talks with C. Cullen Smith, an experienced and well-known Waco attorney, about the Freedom Fountain and its history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Sloan talks to Rick Tullis, president of Capstone Mechanical here in Waco, about the history of Air Conditioning in Waco and the country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Sloan talks to Robert Fairbanks Former Professor of History at the University of Texas at Arlington about Urban Development in Waco. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices