Big Thicket Legacy

Bill Willie Gilder

Introducing Bill Willie Gilder Bill Willie Gilder lives in the Haynes settlement, which was owned by a slaveholder before the Civil War. When the slaves were freed, he offered to give the land to the slaves when he died ifthey would stay on and help him work the land. They stayed and got the land, and Bill Willie bought his place from some of the heirs. We visited him one Saturday afternoon in the fall of the year. He received us warmly but with mixed feelings, I'm sure, as his radio was about to broadcast a Southern Methodist University football game and Gordon Gilder, his grandson, was a backfield sensation on its team. Quickly Isuggested we come back some other time. "Tomorrow," he said, "Tomorrow, after church." As we sat in his yard and talked the next day, the wonderful aroma of collard greens cooking interrupted our conversation. "That smells wonderful ," I said; "nothing smells much better." "I guess so," he said, "but it don't 'specially start my appetite no more. Ieat so many collard greens during the Depression, Ihad to wrap my ankles to keep the cut worms off; but they's good food, you betcha." "I practically raised Gordon," he said, "me and my wife. He stayed with us, and you might say we raised him, just like my own boy. Ithink that's where he got that speed-from me. I used to be fast, could outrun most anything when Iwas young." Cecil Overstreet, who has known Bill Willie since boyhood, agrees. "When Bill Willie was young, he was very athletic," he said. "He could throw a baseball plumb out of sight He could take two rocks, take one in each hand, take two steps and throw both of them out of sight, together . Throw them with one hand as well as the other. And he was the best bird shot I ever saw. He could kill five birds on a rise with a pump gun, shooting them individually. During the Depression nobody had any money, shotgun shells were forty-nine cents a box, and Bill Willie said, 'If you buy some shells, I'll kill us some quaiL' There are twenty-five shells in a box and he got twentythree quail and a hawk, and had one shell left, and everything he shot, he shot flyin'. He'd train bird dogs for people in Beaumont and they'd give him a dog now and then. Igave him a pair, myself. He babied me when Iwas young and I've babied him ever since." Bill Willie earned his living as a nursery man. He learned the business from a teacher he liked a great deal, Mr. D. P. Reagan, while they both worked for Griffin's nursery, south of Kountze. "Mr. Reagan was a good teacher, one of the best," he said. "He told me there would always be a need for a good 'tree man.' .. Afew years ago Texas had two pecan trees for every person in the state, and, if it is not true today, it is not Bill Willie's fault. He is an expert "tree man" and has budded more pecan trees than any other man in that part of the state. He has worked for himself for many years and, even yet, does an occasional job for an old friend. BILL WILUE GILDER o far as I know I'm the onliest boy child my father had. Iguess that's the reason they call me Son. I named myself. Iwas maybe eight or ten years old and Itold them, "My name is Bill Willie." Isign it "B. W. Gilder" to make it short. My father was Jack Gilder-he come up from out of Tyler County. He worked at Old Nona, Nona Mills, died November 18, 1918, of flu. Iwas born at Old Nona. Nona is about two miles from here, and Iused to run from here to school up there. We had one room and one teacher and twenty-five children. I got to the seventh grade; that's all we had. There wasn't any high school. I had the best teachers in the country. The first one was a man, J. N. Perkins, and the next one was a woman, Miss Foley, and they was strict! I'd study my lesson by a coal oil lamp, get down in front of the chimney. Someone told...