Individual Details
Mary Katheryne "Kathy" Martin
(June 29, 1947 - )
Kathy's Williams 1992 address was 1438 Brookfield Drive, Longmont Colorado 80501; telephone 303-772-3734.
Thanks for the memories. We spent a lot of time out at your place and at the lake and I think we all learned to water ski with your family. I submitted a little story to Guidepost one time (that they turned down) but I thought you might like to read it. You guys came to visit us at our place several times over the years. -Kathy
The Gully
by Katheryne M. Raile
One of the biggest fears in my life as a child was getting caught shoeless in "The Gully". Now, this was no ordinary gully, to be sure. It spanned the entire eastern boundary of our land down on the Texas Gulf Coast. My father had returned from WWII and the Army Corps of Engineers, to a wife and infant daughter. During the month following Daddy's return to civilian life, I was put in the pipeline, followed by my brother and then my little sister. My parents envisioned a semi-self sustaining lifestyle for their fledgling family when they bought the acre of land close to the large oil refinery which had recently hired my father as a mechanical engineer.
As the next order of business (after clearing the land), my father built a rather elaborate chicken house, as chicken houses go. As soon as my brother, Jimmy, was born, my dad moved us from a rented house into his brand new two room chicken house. Then the real work started. My parents built us a fine, sprawling house right in the middle of that acre of land. Once it was reasonably habitable, we moved into the "big house". It had lots of room and became a fun, adventuresome house to grow up in. My little sister was born shortly after we moved in, so there was a good half dozen of us in the family.
We usually had several dozen chickens in the old chicken house, a couple of huge vegetable gardens along the back and down the side of the property, and every kind of small pet imaginable. There were dense woods on all four sides of our acre filled with huge oaks, pines, and a wide variety of poisonous snakes. The one lane asphalt road that ran in front of our house was bordered by two shallow drainage ditches that were usually flowing with a small amount of water just deep enough to harbor a contingent of crawfish to play with.
However, there was this beckoning area in the back of our property that was justifiably restricted to us kids. Through a child's eyes, the gully was huge. You could probably put the chicken house in it and not see the roof. Every few years, the government would come out with their huge yellow "steam shovels" and scoop out the sides and bottom of the gully so the water flow would not be impeded. Most people in America don't realize the volume of water that falls in that part of the country. That huge gully provided a much needed service by draining the surrounding area's abundant rainfall. It also had a high entertainment value for the mischievous children that lived in that big, sprawling house.
Before my parents had married, my mother was training to be a nurse. Nursing was her heart's lifelong desire and it came in handy all too many times as she herded her brood through the treacherous waters of childhood. Our days were filled with building tree houses, exploring the woods, playing with animals, catching fire flies, killing snakes with the machete Daddy brought back from the Philippines, tormenting crawfish and...inspecting the gully. We found such wonderful treasures in the gully. It was full of surprises...each day something new to find. The sides were steep and the drop down was a challenge but we made the best of it and formed a lot of great memories exploring this foreign world.
Jimmy and I, being the two middle children, were frequently partners in our adventures. Since he was the only boy, he was much better at making up great stuff to get in trouble doing than I was...after all, he was the one with the BB gun and the holster full of cap pistols. I tended to be the rule keeper of the family and carried the nickname of "little miss priss." However, I was a died-in-the-wool tagalong, with Jimmy always being an easy target for pointing the finger of blame at. Needless to say, Jimmy and I spent an awful lot of time together doing what brothers and sisters do best...getting into trouble.
Spring and fall rains made the gully just busting to crest its banks. But during the summer months, the gully was quieter, holding a steady trickle of water to jump over or wade through with reeds and grasses growing in its shallow trough, harboring a prodigious number of toads, crawfish, tadpoles, crickets, katydids, etc.
On the Gulf Coast, summer time seemed to start in late February and end before Christmas...if I was lucky. My shoes came off early on and once school broke for the summer the concept of shoes raised its head only on Sunday mornings. This put a considerable crimp in my style when it came to gully explorations. It was a very long walk from the edge of the gully back to the house just to get a pair of shoes. So, all too often the shoes were dismissed as unnecessary items.
The ring of my father's voice full of warnings of impending disaster, occupied a place in the back of my mind where I believe my conscience must have rented space to it. "Now, don't you kids go down in that gully without your shoes on, it's dangerous and you never know what is buried in there." It was a warning reiterated many times over by both my father and my mother. We kids recognized this as an important piece of information for us to remember...of that we were sure.
However, the pull of that "forbidden" area was just too great for a troop of barefooted little urchins like us. There is simply nothing quite like the marvelous feel of cool mud on a hot day, squishing through your toes and sucking your feet under its gooey, slick surface. It was unbelievably refreshing in those dog days of summer, before air-conditioning became part of our lifestyle.
Many of the adventures I was party too in that gully have blended together over the passing years, except for one. It was a time when the big yellow steam shovels had recently done their work and the gully had that fresh scraped look and feel to it. The reeds and grasses had vanished in one fell swoop. Because the torrential rains were notorious for pushing all sorts of objects downstream that had no resemblance to either dirt or water, there was an abundance of nefarious items buried over the years in the gully's silt. This current scraping prompted yet another stern warning from my father, "I don't want to catch you in the gully without your shoes on again. You will be in big trouble if you do." Then there was the ever present admonition to, "Watch your brother and make sure he keeps his shoes on." This was followed by that eternally curious parental phrase, "I want you to have fun but be careful while you're doing it." I don't think any child has ever figured that one out.
On this particularly hot summer day, Jimmy ran ahead of me, quickly disappearing inside the gully. I wasn't far behind him but once I reached the edge I was frozen in my tracks. There before me was my dear little partner in crime, crying, blood dripping from his foot...a lot of blood. Fear engulfed me. We were caught. There was no way to hide our lawlessness now. Our parents were going to find out for sure about our shoeless activities. There I stood, listening to my brother's pleas for help and watching the tears and blood flow. I knew I couldn't go down there. I knew I would get in even more trouble. Right now, I was still just an "accessory to the crime," while Jimmy was the one in really big trouble.
Boy, was my little eight year old mind churning. How was I going to handle this predicament? I was reasoning that there was no way a five year old would receive as much punishment as a big sister would.
Finally, my brother's tears were too strong for my heart to bear and down I went into the abyss. By the time my parents both showed up at the top of the gully (I still don't remember how they found out what was going on) I had managed to step on the exact same piece of glass that my brother had. My father searched all over that area until he found it and removed it from our midst. You know, it's funny, but I don't remember if we were ever punished for our misadventure, since my parents had a habit of occasionally letting the results of the crime fittingly become the punishment.
However, I did learn a valuable lesson that day. I really am my brother's keeper. And I always shall be...maybe because he just simply needs me to be, and that's enough reason for me.
Thanks for the memories. We spent a lot of time out at your place and at the lake and I think we all learned to water ski with your family. I submitted a little story to Guidepost one time (that they turned down) but I thought you might like to read it. You guys came to visit us at our place several times over the years. -Kathy
The Gully
by Katheryne M. Raile
One of the biggest fears in my life as a child was getting caught shoeless in "The Gully". Now, this was no ordinary gully, to be sure. It spanned the entire eastern boundary of our land down on the Texas Gulf Coast. My father had returned from WWII and the Army Corps of Engineers, to a wife and infant daughter. During the month following Daddy's return to civilian life, I was put in the pipeline, followed by my brother and then my little sister. My parents envisioned a semi-self sustaining lifestyle for their fledgling family when they bought the acre of land close to the large oil refinery which had recently hired my father as a mechanical engineer.
As the next order of business (after clearing the land), my father built a rather elaborate chicken house, as chicken houses go. As soon as my brother, Jimmy, was born, my dad moved us from a rented house into his brand new two room chicken house. Then the real work started. My parents built us a fine, sprawling house right in the middle of that acre of land. Once it was reasonably habitable, we moved into the "big house". It had lots of room and became a fun, adventuresome house to grow up in. My little sister was born shortly after we moved in, so there was a good half dozen of us in the family.
We usually had several dozen chickens in the old chicken house, a couple of huge vegetable gardens along the back and down the side of the property, and every kind of small pet imaginable. There were dense woods on all four sides of our acre filled with huge oaks, pines, and a wide variety of poisonous snakes. The one lane asphalt road that ran in front of our house was bordered by two shallow drainage ditches that were usually flowing with a small amount of water just deep enough to harbor a contingent of crawfish to play with.
However, there was this beckoning area in the back of our property that was justifiably restricted to us kids. Through a child's eyes, the gully was huge. You could probably put the chicken house in it and not see the roof. Every few years, the government would come out with their huge yellow "steam shovels" and scoop out the sides and bottom of the gully so the water flow would not be impeded. Most people in America don't realize the volume of water that falls in that part of the country. That huge gully provided a much needed service by draining the surrounding area's abundant rainfall. It also had a high entertainment value for the mischievous children that lived in that big, sprawling house.
Before my parents had married, my mother was training to be a nurse. Nursing was her heart's lifelong desire and it came in handy all too many times as she herded her brood through the treacherous waters of childhood. Our days were filled with building tree houses, exploring the woods, playing with animals, catching fire flies, killing snakes with the machete Daddy brought back from the Philippines, tormenting crawfish and...inspecting the gully. We found such wonderful treasures in the gully. It was full of surprises...each day something new to find. The sides were steep and the drop down was a challenge but we made the best of it and formed a lot of great memories exploring this foreign world.
Jimmy and I, being the two middle children, were frequently partners in our adventures. Since he was the only boy, he was much better at making up great stuff to get in trouble doing than I was...after all, he was the one with the BB gun and the holster full of cap pistols. I tended to be the rule keeper of the family and carried the nickname of "little miss priss." However, I was a died-in-the-wool tagalong, with Jimmy always being an easy target for pointing the finger of blame at. Needless to say, Jimmy and I spent an awful lot of time together doing what brothers and sisters do best...getting into trouble.
Spring and fall rains made the gully just busting to crest its banks. But during the summer months, the gully was quieter, holding a steady trickle of water to jump over or wade through with reeds and grasses growing in its shallow trough, harboring a prodigious number of toads, crawfish, tadpoles, crickets, katydids, etc.
On the Gulf Coast, summer time seemed to start in late February and end before Christmas...if I was lucky. My shoes came off early on and once school broke for the summer the concept of shoes raised its head only on Sunday mornings. This put a considerable crimp in my style when it came to gully explorations. It was a very long walk from the edge of the gully back to the house just to get a pair of shoes. So, all too often the shoes were dismissed as unnecessary items.
The ring of my father's voice full of warnings of impending disaster, occupied a place in the back of my mind where I believe my conscience must have rented space to it. "Now, don't you kids go down in that gully without your shoes on, it's dangerous and you never know what is buried in there." It was a warning reiterated many times over by both my father and my mother. We kids recognized this as an important piece of information for us to remember...of that we were sure.
However, the pull of that "forbidden" area was just too great for a troop of barefooted little urchins like us. There is simply nothing quite like the marvelous feel of cool mud on a hot day, squishing through your toes and sucking your feet under its gooey, slick surface. It was unbelievably refreshing in those dog days of summer, before air-conditioning became part of our lifestyle.
Many of the adventures I was party too in that gully have blended together over the passing years, except for one. It was a time when the big yellow steam shovels had recently done their work and the gully had that fresh scraped look and feel to it. The reeds and grasses had vanished in one fell swoop. Because the torrential rains were notorious for pushing all sorts of objects downstream that had no resemblance to either dirt or water, there was an abundance of nefarious items buried over the years in the gully's silt. This current scraping prompted yet another stern warning from my father, "I don't want to catch you in the gully without your shoes on again. You will be in big trouble if you do." Then there was the ever present admonition to, "Watch your brother and make sure he keeps his shoes on." This was followed by that eternally curious parental phrase, "I want you to have fun but be careful while you're doing it." I don't think any child has ever figured that one out.
On this particularly hot summer day, Jimmy ran ahead of me, quickly disappearing inside the gully. I wasn't far behind him but once I reached the edge I was frozen in my tracks. There before me was my dear little partner in crime, crying, blood dripping from his foot...a lot of blood. Fear engulfed me. We were caught. There was no way to hide our lawlessness now. Our parents were going to find out for sure about our shoeless activities. There I stood, listening to my brother's pleas for help and watching the tears and blood flow. I knew I couldn't go down there. I knew I would get in even more trouble. Right now, I was still just an "accessory to the crime," while Jimmy was the one in really big trouble.
Boy, was my little eight year old mind churning. How was I going to handle this predicament? I was reasoning that there was no way a five year old would receive as much punishment as a big sister would.
Finally, my brother's tears were too strong for my heart to bear and down I went into the abyss. By the time my parents both showed up at the top of the gully (I still don't remember how they found out what was going on) I had managed to step on the exact same piece of glass that my brother had. My father searched all over that area until he found it and removed it from our midst. You know, it's funny, but I don't remember if we were ever punished for our misadventure, since my parents had a habit of occasionally letting the results of the crime fittingly become the punishment.
However, I did learn a valuable lesson that day. I really am my brother's keeper. And I always shall be...maybe because he just simply needs me to be, and that's enough reason for me.
Events
| Birth | June 29, 1947 | Goose Creek, Harris County, Texas | |||
| Marriage | August 29, 1969 | Highlands, Harris County, Texas - Paul Clifton Williams | |||
| Marriage | Neal Raile |
Families
| Spouse | Paul Clifton Williams (1947 - ) |
| Child | Troy Martin Williams (1977 - ) |
| Spouse | Neal Raile ( - ) |
| Father | James Henry Martin Jr. (1923 - 2002) |
| Mother | Margie Cliftine Fewell (1923 - 2019) |
| Sibling | Nancy Karen Martin (1944 - 2010) |
| Sibling | James David "Jimmy" Martin (1950 - ) |
| Sibling | Linda Carol Martin (1954 - ) |