DONNA LUNDGREN SNOWDEN

Interviewed by Karen Bernstein

        Donna Snowden is an educator, a former county commissioner, and a civic leader. She has spent most of her life in Elgin and has deep family roots in the community. Donna recounts her family's Swedish history and church connections. She describes downtown retail activities in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as her high school experiences. Donna tells stories of her life with her two children and husband who operated a successful family business in Austin and served as a county commissioner. She expresses her love and devotion to her immediate and extended family and the Elgin community.

         The interview was conducted by Karen Bernstein who moved to Elgin in 2018 and is a recognized documentary professional. Her work has aired on public radio and received numerous awards. Ms. Bernstein is engaged actively in the community.

INTERVIEWER: What date is today?

SNOWDEN: August 10th, 2022. Well, I go by Donna Snowden, but on my Facebook page, I have Donna Lundgren Snowden, just so that people from high school and stuff will know it's me.

INTERVIEWER: I know, I feel like when I interview people . . . maybe there should be an interview question about HEB, because HEB is such a cornerstone of things here.

SNOWDEN: We had to beg to get it. I mean, they worked for years to finally get HEB to come to Elgin. But yeah, I mean, when they had opening day--you can ask Amy Miller--when they had opening day, they had the high school band playing and everyone . . .

INTERVIEWER: Everyone was very excited.

SNOWDEN: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Because it had just been in Taylor or something?

SNOWDEN: There was one in Taylor. We had Super S and it wasn't very good. It was a lot smaller.  HEB is a wonderful grocery store, I think. I mean, we are so lucky to have them in Central Texas. I don't think they even have them up in Dallas. But I was in Corpus from first grade through eighth grade, and HEB was real big.

INTERVIEWER: Were you born here?

SNOWDEN: Well, we lived in Elgin. I was born in the hospital in Austin. But yeah, we were living in Elgin. And then we moved to Corpus and I started first grade there. Then we moved back, right before I started high school. But I spent every summer vacation, every holiday in Elgin. I mean, the minute there was a holiday, we packed up the car and came to Elgin. That's where both sets of my grandparents were. I mean, as I told Jacque yesterday, at that time, Elgin was a little over 3,000 people. And I was related to probably half of them. Or at least a third of them. So I was related to everybody.

INTERVIEWER: Can you tell me how you were related?

SNOWDEN: Yeah. So the family names that I'm related to were Rankin, Stone, Carter, McGee, Snowden--well, Bubba Snowden, that's my husband--but Lundgren . . . seems like I'm missing one, but anyway, a lot of family names.

INTERVIEWER: What was their origin?

SNOWDEN: My dad was a Lundgren, of course. And they came over from Sweden in the late 1800s. I think 1888 was the first one, my great-grandfather. Oh, and I'm a Stenholm, too. My great-great-grandfather Stenholm came over from Sweden. And then my great-great-grandmother came over and they married once they were here. And then Oscar Lundgren, my great-grandfather, came over when he was about 17 years old.

INTERVIEWER: And he came over from where?

SNOWDEN: Well, from . . . I can't think of the name of the port in Sweden where they . . .All of them left from that . . . Gothenburg. And they came into Chicago. I don't know if they came through . . . I don't know if Ellis Island was open then. I don't remember when Ellis Island opened, but I'm not for sure if they actually came to Ellis Island, but I know they ended up in Chicago. And then from Chicago, took a train and I think came across the Gulf from New Orleans to Manor, Texas. There was a railroad then. I mean, the railroad came through here in 1872. So there was a railroad, but they went to Manor--they didn't come to Elgin--and bought farmland in that Blackland area, out there between Manor and Elgin and farmed. My Carter relatives came from South Carolina. And my husband's family, the Snowdens , , , Well, it wasn't the Snowdens. I don't know where the Snowdens came. Well, they're originally from England, but his grandmother came from Alabama. In fact, I have a trunk that came on the wagon from Alabama. And my grandfather, Howard McGee . . . Have you been into McGee Brothers, downtown?

INTERVIEWER: I didn't realize that there was a connection there.

SNOWDEN: Mm-hmm.

INTERVIEWER: But I interviewed...

SNOWDEN: James Lloyd?

INTERVIEWER: Well, I'm trying to think of . . . Okay, so who is the McGee that still goes by that?

SNOWDEN: James Loyd McGee.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, James?

SNOWDEN: Uh-huh.

INTERVIEWER: Right. Okay.

SNOWDEN: He and my mother were first cousins. I told you I was related to everybody. Now so many of the people that I was raised with have passed away. They're not around anymore, but James Loyd's still here, and he's over ninety and still opening up that shop. I told Jacque yesterday, she should go in it, because to me when you walk in it, it is just walking into a museum. And it was just . . . When I was fourth, fifth grade, or even younger, that is the way it looked. Very little has changed. What they did used to make, they made . . . My Uncle Ross was in the front and did the shoe repair. And then my grandfather, Howard did . . .He put on seat covers, because people used to get new seat covers in their cars. He did upholstery and seat covers. And then they also made mattresses back in the back. Oh, I know. Yeah, he's doing good. So that's my McGee connection. And then my grandfather, Howard McGee, married a Stone . . . or a Carter. The Pleasant Grove Cemetery . . . I don't know if you've ever been out there. It's about a mile and a half from my house. And I have, well, probably seven generations buried out there, but we also have a lot of family buried in the Elgin Cemetery and the New Sweden Cemetery where a lot of the Lundgrens are buried out there.

INTERVIEWER: I was wondering about that, whether you were attached to that church?

SNOWDEN: Oh, well, yeah, it's really funny because I was raised Baptist, and I went to the Baptist Church here. And so did my husband. And my great-grandfather Davis--Oscar Davis--was the choir director. He laid the brick on the church and he also laid the brick on the Nofsinger House, which is  the City Hall, and quite a few buildings around town back then. I guess he was Irish, because he sure looked Irish. I have a whole book from Sydna and Judy Davis--that's their grandfather and my great-grandfather.

INTERVIEWER: Out of curiosity, do you have any idea how they knew about this area? Coming all the way from Sweden, what was the deal?

SNOWDEN: Well, for that . . .  And I cannot think of his name. There was a guy that . . . a man from Sweden that came over and he sold the farmland. I can't remember why he came over. But anyway, there was all this farmland and, of course, they were starving to death over in Sweden at the time, I think. And so he went back and that's why there's so many Swedes in this area, because he brought so many young men over here to get land into farms. So I'll send you his name, because it's an interesting story. Now, my great-grandfather's Stenholm, he had a farm out in New Sweden. Then my great-grandfather, Oscar Lundgren, had a farm out there too, in Kimbro. John Alfred Stenholm, my great-grandfather, was sick. So he needed to go to Chicago to see the doctor. I guess he had been to doctors around here and they couldn't help him. And I can't remember, I guess he died in the early 1900s. Anyway, he asked Pastor Scott, who was a pastor at New Sweden Church then if he would go to Chicago with him. So they rode the train to Chicago and they had a day or two, I think, before the doctor's appointment. They went to all these musical events and stuff in churches. And it's all described in a book that I have. And anyway, he finally went to the doctor and he had cancer. He died in Chicago. And so Pastor Scott brought him back on the train to Manor, where the family picked him up and took him home to be buried. But I always thought that it was a story I never knew until someone in our family, a distant cousin, wrote this book, and I sat down and started reading it--it's this thick--and when I read that story, I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, I didn't know that." And so Pastor Scott, his family still goes to New Sweden Church, part of his descendants.

So I was going to tell you, I was raised in the Baptist Church, and my great-grandfather Davis laid all the brick on it. But about four years ago, we moved to the New Sweden Lutheran Church. So now I'm a Lutheran. My daughter was living in Manor at the time, and she wanted to take the girls to church, but I don't know, our Baptist Church was kind of changing and it was more modern. We like real traditional. So, she decided to try the New Sweden Church, and we just fell in love with it. I don't know if you've ever met the pastor there? He's about eighty-two or eighty-three. Everybody loves him. We have about a hundred people at services. So it's very small. It's a beautiful church. And it's just really nice. We really enjoy it.  I would go to New Sweden Church off and on through the years, because it was my family church, too. My grandfather Stenholm, the one that died in Chicago, was a founding member of the church. And so we would go there for weddings and stuff.  I always felt comfortable there.  I guess I have two churches, the Baptist Church and New Sweden Lutheran Church. Well, my grandfather, Luther Lundgren, was Swedish--a full Swede. And that's my dad's father. He married my grandmother, Ora Belle. And she was not Swedish, and she was Baptist, as I said, a hard-shell Baptist. So when they married, he became a Baptist and that's how I ended up being a Baptist. Yeah, probably so. I just don't know, but because we had New Sweden Church and then we had the Lund Church, which is out . . . if you familiar with the Lund Community. And then, of course, we have St Peter's here in town. So yeah, there were three and maybe more, I don't know. At Pleasant Grove Cemetery, there was a church right across the street from it. And it was really, I think, maybe originally a Baptist Church, I don't know. But they shared, and we had circuit rider preachers at the time. Not us, but way back. And so one Sunday, the Methodists would meet. And then the next Sunday would be Presbyterians. And then the Baptists. And they'd alternate. So one of the circuit riders is, I can't think of his name right now, is buried out in Pleasant Grove.

INTERVIEWER: Interesting. So do you remember any stories that come to mind about what it was like? Family lore about settling in this area? Or the kind of relationships with people who were already here?

SNOWDEN: Yeah, let's see. Well, I mean, my Grandfather McGee, the one that had the shoe shop, came from Gary, Texas, when he was probably about ten years old. He was born in 1900. So I guess he came to Elgin when it was about 1910, around that time. And they came on a wagon with his mother--his mother was a widow--and his uncle, Ross, I guess, and I don't know, two or three other kids. I just know they were poor. They didn't have anything. And I don't know how he ended up here. I don't know how they . . . I think maybe she had remarried. She died the year I was born, so I never knew her. I think she had already remarried and her husband was a preacher. So maybe they moved here because he was preaching in a church around here or something. I don't know how he got here. My husband's family are the Snowdens and the Hallstroms. The Hallstroms came from Alabama and that's the one I have the trunk that came from there. His great-grandfather is buried out at Young's Prairie Cemetery, and he was a stage coach driver, which I always thought was kind of fun, to know that you had a stage coach driver in your family. But I'm trying to think of... Well, my mother . . . growing up . . . families lived together and there was a building downtown- - in fact, her story is in one of the books. It was a three-story building. And so they rented, I guess, the top . . . no, the middle floor. And the top floor was for the Masons or something. And then the bottom floor was . . . It might have been the movie theater, because there used to be two movie theaters. But I don't know. The way they lived. They just had to divide those rooms up. And one bathroom and no washing machine. They just had to hang their clothes out to dry, out the windows, I guess. We've talked about it. Elgin had some wealthy people in it, but it was a poor town, too. It was a poor town in those really early days, I wasn't around then. I can remember the 50s.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, tell me about that?

SNOWDEN: Well, I do remember when I probably was around four, how busy downtown was on the weekends and how much fun that was. On Saturday morning, everybody . . . I would go with my father. We had two drug stores, the Upchurch Drugstore and Ramsey's. Everybody at Upchurch's--well, Ramsey's, too--could get coffee and stuff. And it would be just so busy. It'd just be standing room only in those days with everybody visiting and busy.

And then on Saturday afternoons--you've probably heard this from other people--especially in the 50s and probably in the 40s, everybody would just park their cars downtown--get somebody to drop you off and you park your car. So you'd have a place in downtown Elgin. That's when everybody that lived out in the country would come to town to buy their groceries. And so everybody came to town. The people that lived in town would park their car, so they'd get parking. And everybody would just stand out on the sidewalks and visit. And it was, I mean, it was busy. Busy, busy. Lots going on. And sidewalks just packed, of a Saturday afternoon, coming to town.

INTERVIEWER: I have heard other people talk about that and you wonder, how can we get back to that somehow? I mean, I think we're on the way.

SNOWDEN: We kind of are, where the shops are, you can stroll. I mean, that's been the most successful thing we've done in a long time, where people keep coming. And it's just kind of been hot lately, but that was just a standard thing. And back then, we had... I mean, we had others before, but we had Eli's, a grocery store, and Red & White grocery store. And then for a while, there was a Piggly Wiggly. But at Eli's, you could go in and buy your groceries and then have them delivered. So, this was even in the 70s, because I was young, married, and had two little kids and I wasn't working. So I'd go buy my groceries. I always left my door unlocked. I never locked my door, except when I went to bed at night. And when I would come home, after doing my other errands, all my groceries would be sitting on the kitchen counter. It was lovely. You just trusted everyone. I mean, you would never think that any of the deliverers would take anything. And that went on through the 70s, when you could. We have curbside now. I never thought we would ever have that convenience again. And now you can have your groceries delivered, or you can do curbside. And I really thought that was just a thing of the past, that would never come back. 

INTERVIEWER: Oh, okay. Now I'm making that connection. . .  I came during their [Powell's Printery] lunch hour and the door was open and I was like, "Huh! This is Karen. Jerry? Cindy?" And nobody answered. And then I came back and I said, "Wow, you guys are really trusting. You just left the door open." And they laughed. And Jerry said, "My father used to say, 'Well, what if somebody needed something?'"

SNOWDEN: And that's true... Well, and another thing that Elgin did, every time there was a funeral, downtown--all the businesses--closed for the hour that the funeral was going on. Yeah. I mean, you knew there was a funeral because all the business would just close down. And then every day at noon, the fire whistle would blow, and everybody knew it was lunchtime, but I don't know why they stopped that. I always liked it.

INTERVIEWER: Did that have something to do with the fact that there were a lot more . . . well, the brick yards are still here. So, I just wondered how much business impacted the atmosphere of downtown. Like manufacturing, maybe there was . . . did you have any thoughts on that? Or just the kind of businesses that were here?

SNOWDEN: Back then, you would see, or I thought it was a lot, you would see a lot of businessmen, dressed in their suits and stuff. And most of them worked in the bank. There was only one bank when I was in high school, but I mean, there were insurance men. Women just didn't work much back then. But you would see, all the businessmen from the bank and everything, would come up and go over to Upchurch's for their coffee break. And so you would see them, all dressed up in their work attire.

So yeah, now when you go downtown, it's a different feeling. It's not so business . . . I don't know. It just was a more business-like feeling. I mean, we knew everybody and we visited everything, but there was an element of the business world in downtown Elgin, growing up, more so than there is now.

INTERVIEWER: I think people get their needs met in other ways, like online.

SNOWDEN: Right. And we're just more casual now, but I mean, you knew they were . . . I don't know. It was just different. It was kind of nice. And then of course we knew the pharmacies. The pharmacists, Mr. Ramsey and Mr. Upchurch. And what was Mr. Upchurch's son-in-law's name? Anyway, he was a pharmacist. And then we called him Epoo, but Roy Jones, he had his drug store.

INTERVIEWER: Tell me what going to high school was like here?

SNOWDEN: Oh, okay. Well, yeah, it was fun. It was fun. My high school days were just a lot of fun. So we probably had maybe two hundred kids in four grades then. Maybe a little more than that, but not much. The girls couldn't wear jeans or pants, except on Fridays, or if it was below thirty degrees. And on Fridays we could wear our hair in rollers. Can you believe we'd go to school with our hair in rollers? But we did, because back in the early 60s, I mean, you just didn't have the hot rollers and stuff where you could do things quickly. So we had to have our hair rolled up all day for the football game that night. So that was . . . yeah, I don't know. One of my good friends, really one of my best friends, had polio. And of course, there was no elevator in the building, because we were in the two-story building. And I always carried her books for her between classes. And, well, some of the classes were upstairs and some were downstairs and we had just a straight back chair like this, no arms or anything. And she wore braces, and she wasn't in a wheelchair. She had crutches and braces. So we would get--it would always be a senior boy--two boys out of a class. And she would sit down in that chair and I would carry her crutches and her books. And we just had no fear and they would carry her down two flights of stairs. She had nothing to even hold onto, not even an arm chair, and they never dropped her. Now, it would just be on the news. But we loved it, because we got to be with the senior boys; we always liked to pick cute ones. "Can so-and-so come carry Judy? Judy needs to go downstairs." We didn't have elevators, of course. And football, of course, was a big deal. And all of my teachers . . . I remember when, I guess I was a sophomore in high school, that JFK was shot. And we were all gone for lunch. And I came back in. I remember going upstairs to my class, right after lunch. I had typing with Mr. Martin. He came in and he just couldn't talk. We just thought, well, something's wrong. And I remember him finally telling us, and he just could hardly keep his composure. He was so upset about it. Well, we were all upset, but we were just kind of in shock. We were young and never imagined anything like that could have happened. And then I remember we didn't have school the day of the funeral. I can remember sitting at home and watching that all on TV, but it was sobering. It really was. It affected everyone. And look at what we face now, all the violence and stuff. And we were just . . .  so sheltered back then. We really were very sheltered. We had that idyllic life, really, of just having fun and having good friends. And . . . I don't know.

INTERVIEWER: Feeling like you were protected? You were not protected?

SNOWDEN: Yeah. Our biggest problem was who we were going to sit with at the football game, I guess. I don't know, but it was a different time, and I don't think we'll ever be going back to that. Things are much more complicated now. But we had the movie theater, the ElTex, and we loved that. It was 50 cents to get in. And Granny was the person that ran it, and she walked the aisles with her flashlight to make sure we didn't have our feet on the back of the chairs. Very stern! But we all respected her and liked her. I don't know what we would have done without that ElTex. There was just . . . I wish we had one now for all of us, but for kids, teenagers, a place to go, besides just . . .

INTERVIEWER: Did people go to Austin?

SNOWDEN: Mm-hmm. Well, yeah.

INTERVIEWER: What kind of things would bring you to Austin or Houston or Dallas?

SNOWDEN: Well, it was Austin, mainly, where we went. Well, the movie theaters, because we would go to the ElTex, but we would also go to the Paramount and the State theaters downtown on Congress, and we went to those. And then another one opened at Capital Plaza. And, of course, others. But yeah, we would go to Austin to eat, or play miniature golf, or swimming. Elgin didn't have a swimming pool. And so we would go to Barton Springs or go to that... They have a really nice pool at Northwest Park in Austin. And so yeah, Elgin didn't have a swimming pool until . . . I don't know when that opened, but that was one of the cutest things. Of course, I want to say maybe it was the 90s before we got a community pool, but even so, back there, there was maybe one private pool in Elgin. Well, two. One was at Sunset Motel, right there on Highway 290. There was a pool there. You know where it's a Mexican food place? Right next to Sandy Menley's place. Yeah, well, there was a pool, a small pool there, at the motel. And then the Mecey family had a pool, but there was no community pool at all. So that was a big deal.

One of the cutest things I ever saw--and my kids were already grown, I guess--is when they put that pool in, and I'd see all of these little kids, poor kids mostly, that had spent the day at the pool and they were all walking home with towels around their necks. And it was just like, that is just one of the... I wish I had a picture of one of those, because you'd see them all over town, walking home, after being in the pool all day. It was a big deal for kids to get to go swimming. Taylor had a community pool. And gosh, Taylor's pretty close, but I only went maybe once or twice, but we'd go to the Bastrop State Park pool. It was nice.

INTERVIEWER: So you started teaching, you said? Was that a goal of yours?

SNOWDEN: Well, no. No, I had three years of college. Then I got married. And I was tired of school. I did not... That was it. I was done. And so I had two kids. Every year, my husband Bubba would say, "Don't you want to go back to school?  And I would say, "No. I do not want to go back to school."  I was a stay-at-home mother and enjoyed it. I mean, one morning, we'd go visit my one grandmother; that afternoon, we'd go visit another. We had plenty of things to do in Elgin when I was raising my children--lots of family to visit and things like that. So every year I would say, "No. I'm not going back to school. Period." And so we had built a duplex in town, right after we got married. That's where we lived for about ten years. And we just moved in out here. It was 1980 and my kids were all in high school, I guess. Or middle school, something. And he said, "Don't you want to go back to school?" And I made the mistake of saying, "Well, maybe."

Well, that was it. He wouldn't leave me alone. "Donna, you need to go back." So finally, by that fall, I was registered and went back to school. So, I was thirty then and got my degree. It took me about three semesters. And Mr. Brandt, who was a principal at the Elgin Elementary School . . . I graduated in December and had not planned on trying to look for a job until the following fall. And the school had burned down that December, the elementary school here in Elgin. One of the teachers was moving. Her husband was a preacher and he was being transferred or something. And so he [Mr. Brandt] kept calling me and finally I said, "Okay" I really didn't want do that either. Isn't that something? So I started teaching and ended up with a thirty-four year career, which I love. It was one of the . . . Going back to school was one of the best things I ever did in my life. And I wouldn't have done it, except he [Bubba] kept pushing me and pushing me, "You need to go back." And so when I went back to school, we were living here and I just got my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, to simplify things. I would get up before . . . it was still dark and drive to San Marcos. And he would take the kids to school. My mother and father would pick them up after school. And then I got my classes all in the morning, so I would meet friends in Austin for lunch. So it was a fun time. It was kind of a carefree time, and I never studied . . . It worked out really well, because I'd wait until everybody went to bed at night and then I'd go in my little room and that's when I would study. It just came so easy and I loved it and enjoyed it and whole different perspective on education then.

INTERVIEWER: So when did you meet Bubba?

SNOWDEN: Okay. Well, I met him . . .  I was born in Elgin, but I wasn't ever . . . Now, his mother was Gladys Snowden and she was . . . I call her the Florence Nightingale of Elgin. She was such a wonderful nurse. She grew up in Thorndale, and her mother was determined that she was going to get an education, because she lived on a farm and she was the only child. And so Gladys went to nursing school at Brackenridge in Austin. And this was her first job,  here in Elgin and that's where she ended up staying. But as I told Jacque last night, the nursing staff and Dr. Morris were such a close tight knit group and they all loved Gladys. They all loved each other. You didn't go to the hospital to visit a friend, that you didn't stop at every door and say "hi" to someone, because you knew everyone. I don't think there was a closer group in Elgin than that nursing staff, unless it was the firemen. And they were a close group, too. So anyway, Gladys was a lovely person. People would call her and she would say, "Well, honey,"--she'd be at home, cooking supper--"I'll come over in a minute and I'll come check." That's how comfortable they felt with her, that they could call her, and she would go over and help them. When Dr. Morris got so ill, towards the end of his life, and Mrs. Morris was still alive, they would call Gladys to come help with Dr. Morris. So it was a very, like I said, close group. So I moved back from Corpus the summer before my freshman year. And that's when I met him, with a bunch of . . . That's when we were all out in the summer. That's when kids were out more. I don't know what the kids do now--at home on their computer games, I guess. But we were out, just riding around. And that's when I met him. I thought he was really cute and he was very handsome, but we didn't start dating then. He dated a lot of Austin girls. And I was dating someone else. But then the next year, we started dating and that's . . . from then on . . .

INTERVIEWER: How did you end up starting to date? You just were traveling in the same circles?

SNOWDEN: Well, we were in the same circles, but every year the high school band had a band dance. And if you were a girl in the band, then you'd ask a boy to come. So I asked... Not Bubba and I'd broken up with Millard. So I asked Oscar Almquist to go to the dance with me. And he was a really nice boy, and we'd been dating some. And so, then Bubba came and asked me to dance. And while we were dancing, he said, "Would you like to go to the movie tomorrow night?" And I was just shocked, because tell you the truth, a lot of the girls were wanting to date him. So anyway, so that's how it started. So I went, "Yes, I'd like to go to a movie tomorrow night." We went to the movie in . . . no, we went to the movie here in Elgin. We went to the ElTex. FFA [Future Farmers of America], which I was not involved in, was having a school dance. So we went to the FFA dance. And then we went to the Dairy Queen. That was our date, but we thought it was fun.

INTERVIEWER: How many years later were you married?

SNOWDEN: When he passed away--we dated for a long time, too--we were married 51 years. And we dated probably seven years before we were ever married. He was a year ahead of me in school. So when I was a senior, I remember Mr. Martin, the typing teacher, I was taking shorthand then, from him. And we were going around the room; he wanted to know what all of us were going to do for college. And I said, "Well . . ." Bubba was going to Sam Houston State in Huntsville. And I said, "Well, I think I'm going to go to San Marcos," Southwest Texas, too. Well, he just loved that. He didn't think that Bubba and I should go to the same college together. We need to have a . . . I don't know what he thought. And isn't that funny? That he even had an opinion? But anyway, well, that's good. That's good. But anyway, that's what I did. I applied and got accepted there, but Bubba transferred and came to college with me.

INTERVIEWER: And what kind of work was he always . . . did he have his eyes on politics?

SNOWDEN: Oh, no. Never. That just happened. One of those things that you never know where life's going to lead you. No, his father had a sewing machine store that he opened probably in 1960, on Sixth Street in Austin. And they sold all these Singer machines, of course, and then all these German, expensive sewing machines. Plus Oscar had worked at Sears and learned how to fix sewing machines. So, he opened his own store. The boys, once they got middle school, they would go to Austin every Saturday and work. And he taught them how to fix sewing machines, and they could monogram and everything. And so then later, Bubba and Sherman . . . I guess all of them, maybe, but the two older boys . . . also started selling. And yeah, Bubba was a freshman in college. And he would write classified ads in the newspaper, in the area newspaper. I never thought that much about it, but looking back, I'm going, "My gosh." Anyway, it's pretty impressive. He liked the Taylor newspaper and the La Grange newspaper. And he would run an ad for a used sewing machine. And so then, they would call him. And usually, they were people that lived on farms, farmers' wives and stuff. On a Saturday, he worked all day on Saturday at his store, his father's store in Austin. Then he would come home and pick me up, and he'd have two or three sewing machines in his car to show them. We would go wherever: La Grange or Fayetteville. And he would go. I would usually just stay in the car and read. And he would go in and sell a sewing machine. Then we'd go out to eat. And they'd started that at a young age. But anyway, his father opened that sewing machine store on Congress, I mean, on Sixth Street, probably about 1960. But in 1965, he moved to Congress Avenue, to a really large location, right next to the Greyhound bus station on Congress, and started selling color TVs, which was a big deal then. So he sold the TVs and sewing machines. He had a sewing machine department. TVs and appliances. And they had that business for 42 years, until they closed it in 2001. Yeah.  I said at the CARTS dedication that--because they kind of honored Bubba, with a dedication--"There couldn't be a more appropriate location to honor Bubba," because when he was about ten, eleven, and twelve, he and his older brother Sherman--they were just a year apart--would wait for the Greyhound bus station to come in, and it would come right over there where Dorothy's Jewelers is, and they'd unload the afternoon newspaper, because the Statesman had two papers. And then they would split them up and they would go--one would take one side of Main Street and one the other. And that's because all those businessmen, who I was talking about, lots of businessmen were in Elgin then. And they would go to all the stores. They had their regular little route and the men, or women, too, would wait for them to come deliver the newspaper. Then they'd come down across Central, where you live. Bubba would go into the Paradise Bar, which is now the gun shop.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, that was the Paradise Bar?

SNOWDEN: That was the Paradise Bar, yep. Gus Mecey owned it. And it usually closed maybe six o'clock in the evening. It was not open at night. It was just the men would go down there to have an afternoon beer. And so Bubba would go into the Paradise Bar, and they'd wait for him, and he'd sell them the newspaper. Sherman would come the other way. And they'd meet at South Side Market, which used to be down there. And they'd go into the back, and Mr. Scott cooked the sausage, and he'd give them a piece of sausage for a newspaper every day. So they were always enterprising. No, he never was interested in politics, period, but he was really good friends with Lee Dildy, who was the County Commissioner for twenty years. And he saw what a county commissioner did. And when Lee died so unexpectedly, it was horrible. I don't know. Several people came up to Bubba and said, "You should run." And I looked at him like, are they crazy? I didn't say anything. I never thought he would even take it seriously. But after a few weeks, with people encouraging him, he finally thought, well, you know? Because he'd been at home from 2001 until 2011, after he closed the store, which was fine, which was really good for him, because he had worked six days a week for forty some years in retail and that's hard work. So after he closed the store, I was still working, but he was taking care of cattle, taking care of our rent property, doing what he enjoyed doing, and what he wanted to do. But after ten years he was kind of bored. So, I think it just came at the right time. He was bored and people were encouraging him to run and he had a feel for what the job was, because he was such a good friends with Lee. So, that's how it kind of happened. He never really thought of it as political. He just thought of it as a kind of a job and he wanted to do a good job at it, that he had a real strong work ethic, very strong work ethic. He really did, but he also liked to have fun. But he told me one time, he said, "I can't really relax and have fun until I've accomplished one thing each day." And I thought, well, that's true. That's what you do. I never thought about it. So anyway, he worked.

INTERVIEWER: And the kids you have?

SNOWDEN: I have two children. My son . . . Tracy is the oldest. She hasn't gotten home yet. She works at the Senate, at the Capitol. She's the Calendar Clerk. And she started off with the Comptroller's Office, when Bob Bullock was the Comptroller. And when he was elected Lieutenant Governor, he took a handful of people to the Capitol with him. And Tracy was one of them. And she started out . . . she wasn't in the Senate at that time. She was in Human Resources. And then, after a few years in Human Resources, Mrs. King, who was the Secretary of the Senate at the time, brought her up into her office. And so she's just worked her way up where now she's the Calendar Clerk. So any bill that comes through the Senate, comes through her. Yeah. So anyway, I have a daughter Tracy. And then I had a son, Gary Junior, who was two-and-a-half years younger than her. And he died unexpectedly when he was 20. He was fixing to go back to school for his sophomore year. And it was at Western Days. He had strep throat, but I don't know, he just wasn't getting over it. And so I took him to the doctor that morning of Western Days. And I don't remember what the doctor said. So anyway, I brought him home. He was laying on my bed in there and it hurt to move. And I could tell that there was . . . I mean, in fact they had to give him morphine, just to examine him at the doctor's office. So anyway, so I drove him to the emergency room. Of course, don't ever get sick on a weekend. You don't get the same kind of care. But anyway, we were in the hospital, so I felt safe then. And they were waiting. Sunday, they were going to run more tests. And on Monday morning--Sunday evening--he had a blood clot that went to his lungs and killed him. So he was just . . . oh, he was a beautiful, handsome guy and an athlete and fun. I mean, just very likable. And really anything you can ask for, to tell the truth. I'm not exaggerating. But anyway, so we lost him in 1991. And that was hard, really hard to get over that. Well, you never get over it, but anyway, it was difficult, but that's life.

INTERVIEWER: So two kids? Two?

SNOWDEN: Two. Then Bubba passed away in January 2019, suddenly. And so I was living out here after that, and I was fine. And so I waited two years and then I called my daughter, Tracy, who lived in Austin and said, "It's been two years. I'm fine. I'm not scared out here. I've been able to take care of things. But if you want to move back to Elgin, I'll give you the lot next door. That's up to you. You don't have to. Don't tell the kids, because I know the girls want to come to Elgin. But don't tell them. That's not their decision." So she called the next day and said, "Well, we do. We're ready to come back to Elgin." Her husband is from Elgin, too. And she said, "But we don't think we need two big houses. We just want to add onto your house." And I went, "Are you kidding? Are you sure?" And I said, "You know I like my privacy." And she laughed. And she said, "I know." But anyway, so that's what we've done. They moved in. The girls moved in pretty much immediately, because that was during COVID and they were online, going to school, anyways. It didn't matter where they were. So they moved upstairs. They were so excited. And then I turned Bubba's office, up at the barn, into a guest house--bought a Murphy bed and everything. So they've been living up there. They've just, in the last couple of weeks, not everything's finished in there. They've added on a wing over here. It's huge. So they've got a lot of... I told them, "Oh, you can handle them." Yeah. And so, yeah, it's working out fine. And now the girls are all involved in ag [agriculture]. They are showing cattle and stuff that they wanted to do--Bubba always wanted them to do--but they weren't ever here. They were here on the weekends, but not in school. So they're doing stuff that Bubba always encouraged them to do and they love it. Yeah, I mean, it's just our home, but I just told Tracy, "I don't have enough room for all your Christmas decorations and stuff in my closet. So when you add on that bedroom, you add on a big closet," and she did. So they've got a huge room. Huge bathroom. But it's very private and it's really nice. So it's almost finished, pretty much. They're sleeping in there . . .

INTERVIEWER: I like to ask people, if you had to . . . you've traveled outside of Elgin, obviously. And when you talk to people about where you're from and what this area is, how do you describe it? How would you describe?

SNOWDEN: Well, I've always said I love Elgin, and one reason I love Elgin is just because it's so close to Austin. And I think that is a big advantage point, because I love Austin. It's getting a little bit too big now, but you can't control that. Austin's a beautiful city, and we always had a business there with Bubba's family. And so we spend a lot of time in Austin, and you get the best of both worlds. When I drive in now, even now as much traffic as we're getting in this area, you come in from Austin and you're in traffic and you get off of Highway 290, and you turn onto Main Street, and it's like, "Ah." You're in another world. It's just so peaceful. And I think it's . . .One of the ways I describe Elgin, especially in this day and age with so many people and growth now, is that it's peaceful, but what surprises me about Elgin is how many newcomers love it so fast. I'm going, "Well, we don't really offer that much." We don't have a movie theater. Not that a lot of people who are moving now are moving here for a Target or whatever it, but as the traffic gets worse, people want those things, because it's too hard to . . . It's too time-consuming to get to Austin. But I just think it's peaceful. Evidently, the community comes off as friendly. And it's just kind of, I guess, welcoming to a lot of people. I don't know. And I guess I always loved it, because I had so many relatives and it was just fun. I had a lot of relatives, a lot of friends, and like I said, then it was thirty minutes and you'd be in Austin. And then the farming part, the farming community. I said it's going to be a sad day in Elgin when I don't see a horse trailer going down the street, on Main Street, or a cattle trailer or something. I'd hate to see that. It'll be a while before that changes. But one day we are not going to see many horse or cattle trailers going down Main Street of Elgin. And I think that's going to be a sad day because we used to see them every summer, this time of year, when cotton is ready in August. And you would see all the big cotton trailers, where it was handpicked and dumped in there, and now they do it all out in the fields, compress it and bring it in. But you would see and you could smell it. You could smell that cotton seed. And you would see, late in the evening, all summer, all August long, big old trailers with the tall, walled sides, coming in, full of cotton. And you don't see that anymore, at all. So yeah, those are the things that I miss. When we would leave Elgin to go to Austin, you saw nothing, except when you got to Manor see a few things, but it was all cotton fields. All the way from Elgin to Austin was cotton fields. We didn't see the maize or the wheat. We had corn, but mainly those fields on Highway 290 were cotton fields. My grandmother McGee always said--her birthday was in August--and my grandmother McGee would always say, "I always hated when my birthday was coming, because I knew I was going to have to pick cotton." 

Yeah. So, her parents were sharecroppers. In fact, I didn't know this, when we bought this land, that they leased this land or share cropped it, at one time--my uncle, my great-great-uncle Noble, told me. Well, it was really . . . I own the farmhouse up here, too. And right down in that corner on the road, was where they had... I don't know what they were growing--some kind of crop and it didn't make. And he said, "I thought we were going to starve to death that  winter." But anyway, I thought . . . after all these years, we end up buying the property that they used to share crop. Yeah. They were poor, poor, poor, but everybody just had fun back then. I mean, you just did. 

You spent a lot of time going to church and socializing at church. My grandparents did. And on lots of Sundays--my grandfather McGee and his wife--the preacher would come to their house to eat lunch. We'd always have lunch with a preacher. But things have just changed. But really, Elgin looks so much the same when you get down in the downtown area. Parts of it look better. It's being revived. So it does look better. There was a time, probably in the 70s, when downtown looked really bad. The shops were closed and it was dying. It really was.

INTERVIEWER: Well, thank you very much.

SNOWDEN: You're welcome.