At Home on 8th Street

Berdie & Lee Johnston Home

3225 8th Street

Port Arthur, TX

I was such a lucky little girl. I lived in the same town as both sets of grandparents and two of my three aunts. I spent so much time at my relative's homes that I can still mentally walk through each home, remembering every room - the furniture, the smells, and - because I felt so totally at home there - even what was in many of the drawers and closets.

As I have been thinking about family stories, I decided that the best way to begin to tell the story of Berdie and Leroy Johnston, my paternal grandparents, was to tell the story of their home on 8th Street in Port Arthur. Their home was unique among our family homes, and the story of that uniqueness is a good backdrop for their individual stories.

My grandpa, Leroy Richley Johnston, was born in Globe, Illinois, on January 27, 1894, and lived in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood as a child. He was the sixth of eleven children born to Charles Henry Johnston and Harriet Dora Peterson Johnston. My grandma, Bertha Anna Rugen, was born on August 13, 1898, in the more affluent Chicago suburban community of Northfield (now Glenview), the youngest of eight children born to George Rugen and Henrietta Caroline Albert. Grandma says that she met Grandpa at a dance. Aunt Ruth said that Grandpa was engaged to another young woman at the time, but was so smitten with Grandma that he broke off the engagement eventhough he knew he would receive the wrath of his former fiance's family. Grandma and Grandpa were married in 1917 in Northfield. Their wedding photos, now in one of my guest rooms, hung in their bedroom for years.

Early married years were spent in Illinois - first in Lockport and then in Lawrenceville. Grandpa worked for Texaco and was eventually transferred to Port Arthur where Texaco had its largest refinery. After the first few years in Port Arthur, he and Grandma built the house on 8th Street where they lived until after Grandpa's death in 1969.

The 8th Street house was unique in several ways. First, it was a two story house - not that common in Port Arthur, but probably more typical of Illinois. There were rooms to each side of the central stairway; the dining room to the right and the living room to the left with a sun room just off the living room. An amazingly small kitchen (especially considering the cooking that happened there) was behind the dining room, and included a tiny breakfast nook and a small mudroom that led to the back yard. Upstairs there was one bathroom that included a tub but no shower, and three bedrooms. Grandma and Grandpa's bedroom was the largest, but Aunt Ruth's tiny bedroom had a magical balconied porch off to the side, perfect for sunbathing. There was a porch that stretched across the front of the house, furnished with canvas porch chairs and edged with a flower bed that was frequently planted with snapdragons and other pretty flowers.

The house was unique in that it was always full of people. My Johnston grandparents were very social people, and were big on visiting. Friends and relatives, including those from Illinois, were often there visiting and playing cards. Unlike my other grandparent's house, this house was a place where there was smoking, libations, lots of talking about who's doing what, and a well-worn welcome mat.

In addition to visiting friends and relatives, Grandma and Grandpa regularly had boarders in their house - sharing one of the bedrooms and the one bathroom in the house with a school teacher, nurse or other random person. My Dad talked about boarders (sometimes boarders who were relatives) living with the family while they were in Illinois. Apparently this activity began in Depression days when renting out a room provided a extra income and helped the boarders stretch their pennies. It continued, however into at least the fifties. The net result for me as a child was to become accustomed to extra people at the dinner table at the Johnston house, as the rented room came with Grandma's excellent cooking. Juanell Jones, was a boarder when I was a baby, and thus so many of my memories from my baby days include her as part of the family.

One of my best memories is of holidays at the Johnston House. Before the holidays, my Aunt Ruth spent hours wrapping and decorating packages, with the spare room upstairs serving as gift-wrapping central complete with an incredible bow-making machine. Grandma and Grandpa frequently had holiday open houses, so much work went into making fancy cookies, cakes, and pulled butter mints. Mint-making always involved a lot of people - a task made into a social event, Johnston style. What was fascinating to me was that the marble top from one of the living room tables was used in the process - buttered so that the hot candy concoction would not stick when it was poured on the slab and then tinted with food colored and flavored with mint extract before it was cool enough to pull. Pulling the mints was especially fun, with the candy stretched and then folded over again and again until it was ready to be cut into small squares.

Decorations often included mistletoe hanging from the entry hall light fixture and a big Christmas tree surrounded by mountains of presents at the back of the living room. Many of the decorations were handmade - felt items studded with sequins and beads that were made by Aunt Ruth and Grandma. Our family Christmas tradition was to head to the Johnston house for Christmas Eve dinner, which was always turkey and dressing will all the trimmings. We all dressed up - men in suits and ties, women in nice dresses, and children in new clothes for the occasion. Before the highlight of the event for the night for children - opening the presents - there was a prolonged time of picture taking and then socializing over dinner, with an agonizingly long time after dinner when dessert was served and the adults sat around the table with cigarettes. When the present opening commenced, the living room soon became a sea of wrapping paper, with children sitting in the middle of the floor and adults sitting around the room. Wonderful memories.

Other wonderful memories include cards, music and dogs. Playing solitaire was a frequent pass-time, and playing cards were always on the coffee table. Grandpa was always ready for a game of "Go Fish", and together we must have played dozens and dozens of games. Aunt Ruth's piano was a focal point of the living room, and both piano lessons and "name that tune" games were high points of my time there. Aunt Annie's organ was a buried treasure in the sun room, with its white knobs with German inscriptions and pedals that I had to stand up to reach.

Best of all for me were the dogs. Dogs in the HOUSE! This would have been unheard of in our family home and in the homes of all other Port Arthur relatives, so a dog in the house was certainly a unique feature! Aunt Ruth's crazy-ugly Grovey and brute strong boxer Captain followed by sleek black dachshund, Chris, and then a string of basset hounds were important members of the Johnston family. I was so entranced, right from the beginning, that the first word I uttered was the name of Aunt Ruth's dog, which I understand did not go over too well with my Dad. I remember dressing up Aunt Ruth's dachsund Kris in the fancy dog collars that hung on a key rack in the entry hall. There were collars for every holiday and special occasional collars with rhinestones. You can imagine how magical this was for a young girl.

I'll write more about Grandpa and Grandma Johnston and Aunt Ruth. There are many stories to tell! But the special character of their house - its very social character and even a bit of "keeping up with the Jones" spirit was so different from my other family that it seems fitting to begin with that to set the stage for the relationships that we formed and how they helped shaped my understanding of family. Stay tuned.