Tamina was once a big place. Back when I was a little girl, it went all the way north up to Minnox, east to the San Jacinto River, all the way west to Magnolia, and south to a little place called Halton, which was just shy of Rayford. There was a sawmill on this spot on Tamina Road before I was born, way before the Grogans came here. 

There were probably twenty-five or thirty kids that went to the Phyllis Wheatley one-room school. We went there until we were promoted to the seventh grade. Annie Jenkins was our teacher. She taught everyone, first through sixth grade. 

The trains carry a lot of memories, too. There was a switch here that the train would back into. The men would bring the cord wood and load it onto the train, which then went down to Houston. 

Everybody was real close when I was growing up. If one person killed and cooked a hog, everybody had a piece of meat. My mother taught me to treat everyone right. “You never know who, down the road, you’re going to have to turn to. You treat people the way you want to be treated. If you do, you’ll be respected.” 

In the ’60s, we couldn’t go into the bathrooms, and we could only drink out of certain water fountains. I remember seeing signs over the water fountains: “Colored Women” and “White Ladies.” We had to go into different stores, and when we did buy something, they’d throw us our change. 

In ’60 or ’61, when I started working at the hospital in Conroe cooking in the kitchen, we could go into the cafeteria to clean up, but we weren’t allow to eat there. It gets next to you, you know? We should have had those rights. The Lord delivered us from all this stuff though. 

To this day, we have no sidewalks. We were told about five years ago the roads were going to be widened and sidewalks would be put in. Money went to fix up David Memorial going down to the stadium, but nothing’s been done here. The kids have to walk to school, and I see a lot of people walking to work, and they all have to walk on the street. It’s real dangerous. I see signs in neighboring towns that says, “We love our kids.” Well, we love our kids too. I love all kids, no matter what color. I hate to see anything cruel happen to anybody.