Ralls Pioneer

Ralls Pioneer Still Has Urge for Spring Gardening at 93 – Published in The Ralls Banner, March 28, 1969.

“I wish I were out chopping down big tender careless weeds. Spring has always been my favorite time of year,” Mrs. Goldie Minnie Chron said with growing excitement at the thought of getting out once more. She and Everett Chron had always turned the soil and when she wasn’t helping him, she had her garden–one of the best ever produced in Crosby County. But today, most of these are memories which Grandmother Chron recalls from her wheel chair at Ralls Convalescent Home, or where friends gather as they did Sunday at her daughter’s to help celebrate one day her 93rd birthday.

Mr. Chron died in 1944. Things changed. Mrs. Chron moved to the Ralls Inn for a number of years, then to the home. Still full of wit, a desire to work and a love for crowds, the former Selma, Alabama native joined the more than 35 friends and relatives at Mr. and Mrs. Dewey Wells. Sr. for the celebration.

She recalled after the 13 pound cabbages produced in her garden, moving to Crosby County with a pair of mules, two horses, and one milk cow aboard a leased railroad car in 1925 and having huge crowds over for games of dominoes or croquet. “Those mules drug a new two row planter soon after we arrived. We were so proud of that. No one around had a tractor then. But of course, this wouldn’t compare with the equipment Dewey Jr. or Elmer, my grandsons use today.” There was plenty to eat at this celebration. It was an opportunity for recalling good times. Dewey Jr. later told of all the canning his grandmother once did. He remembered those great pans of gingerbread she could bake and the fresh strawberries covered with thick cream cooled by running water.

Then someone else remembered how Minnie Chron had always taken care of the grandchildren. There was the time when Dewey Jr. brought by his new 22 they had given him for Christmas. It was cold. He had been out hunting rabbits. “Is it loaded?” Grandmother Chron asked. Before he could answer, the gun discharged blowing a hole in the floor. Grandma Chron filled the hole with bread dough and quickly painted over it with shoe polish. “She promised not to tell mother. I was 11 and things would be bad if she did,” Dewey Jr. remembered. She didn’t tell. But the other grandchildren did…years later.