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Y AS A GRIG by Ellen Bowie Holland

Y AS A GRIG

By

Publisher: Univ. of Texas Press

Memories of a North Texas Girlhood"" extend back in time through the author's maternal grandparents to the mid-nineteenth century. The first of the family to settle in Texas were great grandmother, grandmother and grandfather, who produced mother-- ""backbone all the way around"". Meantime, father's folks, the good-fighting Bowies, were a-growing in Scotland. As a venturesome young man, father came to New York, bought a ticket that took him $40.00 West and landed him in Avoca, Iowa, where he met some Texans who invited him to be schoolmaster at Black Springs. He accepted, and his steps were set to meet Mother, marry her, take up farming in Texas, then lumbering to which he was more suited, and become one of those fictitiously, fondly dubbed Colonels. The author's earlier material is the more interesting; when she comes to her own childhood with comments on her mother's keeping up with fashion (tea and a teakwood table were de rigueur), on Henry the swooning horse, on ice cream parlors and old time religion, there are happy moments, but they do not really lift this out of the personal memorabilla category.