Durham:           The following interview is on May seventeenth, 2005, with David Pitts   who lives in Wells, Texas. It will become part of the oral history project of Wells High School at Wells ISD in Wells,
Texas. The interviewer is Douglas Durham. Well, Mr. Pitts, how long have you lived in the Wells area?

Pitts:                 Well, Douglas, most of my life. I was born December 10, 1943, between          Crossroads and Forest. I went to school in Wells. So I have resided here—except for about one year that I worked in Houston and two years of formal education at Lamar Tech in Beaumont. So, I’m 61 years old…so I’ve lived here most of my life.

Durham:           Alright. Do you have any brothers or sisters?

Pitts:                 I have one sister, Mignon Brewer. She married a local man by the name of  Hollis Brewer of the Brewer family of Wells which had resided here for many years. And they moved away when I was about two years old to Houston, and they’ve lived in the Houston area for most of their life. And my sister is sixteen years older than I am, so I really didn’t realize that I had a sister until I was five,      six, or seven years old.

Durham:           Well, could you tell me what a usual day in your childhood was like?

Pitts.                 Oh, it was a lot of fun back in those days because I loved the water, and your Uncle Douglas [speaking of Durham’s uncle, Douglas Durham], who I think you were partially named after, and I went to school together and grew up together and lived just across the pasture from one another, and Roy Joe Bailey—another childhood friend—we grew up together, and we liked to swim. If there was a mud hole, or a pond, or a creek, or a river, whatever…we went swimming in it. We rode bicycles in the lazy summer days, did some fishing on Larrison Creek and other ponds. So, it was just, you know, like most country boys at that time did…and that was usually a childhood day.

Pitts:                   Well, as a young man I didn’t have a whole lot of chores—just to take out the trash for Mother and help her take care of the house somewhat. But as I got older—12, 13, 14, 15 years old—then Dad began to find more manly chores for me to do: clean the fence rows, tend to the cows [because] we always had cows to take care of, and he bought a tractor and a brush hog so I had to keep the pastures mowed. I liked to work on the car and the lawnmowers; that was more for             pleasure than a chore. But those are just some of the chores that I had to do as I was growing up.

Durham:           Now, when you were going to school, was the one at Forest consolidated then with the one at Wells or were they still separate?

 Durham:          Well, the Wells area used to have, I think, three lumber mills. And your house is built on one of these areas, right?

Pitts:                 That is correct. The Payne sawmill.

Durham:           Well, do you know anything about the sawmills that you could share?

Pitts:                 I sure do. I know a little about the one that I live at. It was created right after the War, either in late 1945 or early 1946 by a man by the name of ‘Shorty’ Payne. He operated the mill here at our location—which is US [Highway] 69, 4.7 miles North of Wells…actually, it’d be about halfway between Wells and Alto on US 69 on the West side of the road. It was about a 4 and a half acre lake that was used for steam generation for the operation of the mill, and it operated until about early 1956. The wood ran out, so Mr. Payne closed the mill down and began dividing up the property and selling off. And my dad, M.C. Pitts, bought 15 acres—which included the lake and the Payne house. The house is made from lumber that was cut and used to build the house, except for the living room and the foyer which, the material for it was Ponderosa pine from New Mexico. But all the rest of it is East Texas knotty pine from right here in the Wells, Crossroads, and Forest areas. And then in 1957 my dad bought the place, and we’ve owned it ever since.

Durham:           You mentioned to me earlier [previous to the interview] that you’ve had some experience in the political system in Wells.

Pitts:                 Well, you might say so…yeah. Would you like for me to elaborate on that a little bit?

Durham:           Alright.

Pitts:                 And then I’ll work my way into the politics. I think the Lord would be    more pleased with me if I was to put Him foremost and upfront. I was saved at the age of twelve years old in Forest Baptist church. And we’d attended church there for many years. Then later as I grew up and married, I began my life with my wife and children there in Wells, and we became members of Calvary Baptist church. And we’ve been there for some 33 years. Later, on May 1983, the church set me   aside and ordained me as a deacon. And I have been a deacon serving Calvary Baptist church for 22 years, which I’m very proud of. Hopefully the Lord is proud of me also. I’ve held many offices and positions at Calvary; I taught Sunday School there for 22 years.

                        So with that aside, I’ll move into my political and, maybe, civic affiliations. I’m a           charter member of the Wells Lions Club. C.W. Williams came to me and said ‘What do you think about us forming a Wells Lions Club?’ I said, ‘Well, what is that C.W.?’ And he said, “Well, it’s a civic organization that meets once a month, or whenever the need arises, and we have projects and we            help the city with fundraisers and anything that’s civic or anybody that has a need. Children that don’t have glasses; we’ll help them to get new glasses. Or we trade in old glasses and have them refurbished to where young children can have glasses.’ And I said, ‘Well, that sounds like a good idea. Let’s do it.’ So I became a charter member of the Wells Lions Club. But because of my activity in the church and my married life, my job—trying to make a living…and I realized that God’s work must be first and it’s got to come first and foremost before everything else. So I had to give up my membership in the Wells Lions Club. And I believe that Wells still has a Lions Club that’s operating even today, but I’m no longer an           active member of it.

                        Now to my political activities that you asked me about earlier. I served one term on the Wells City Council—that was in April of ’73 when I was sworn in until April of ’75. A term was two years at that time. And I think that we accomplished quite a bit during that one term I served, along with the other members on the Council at that time: one of them being Gary Burke, one of them Dewey Hathorn…many people recognize those names. But during my term, we established a city office. We hired a city secretary/office manager, we hired a police chief and established the first police department, we bought our first police car. When I took office, the city business was conducted out of shoeboxes out of  an individual’s home at that time…very primitive. [The paperwork was stored in the shoeboxes.] We were able to move that all into a City Hall into an office and brought business into the 20^th century. And at the end of my first term, which was two years, I decided politics—at leastwise in a small town—was not for me and I did not run for another office.

                        Then after about another year of not serving civically or governmentally in any way, the City Council came to me and asked me if I’d consider serving as the Fire Chief because at that time they didn’t have one. And I said, ‘Well, I really don’t have any fire training.” They said, ‘That’s all right, you can learn as you go.” So I accepted the position in 1976 and served for seven years, which was in    1983 when I finally stepped down as the Fire Chief. During that seven years, the first year was very hard and very trying on me. We had seven homes that were lost to fire, and we had four lives that were lost to fire. And that began to kind of depress me, but I began to look around at the larger fire departments like
Lufkin and Nacogdoches, and they weren’t doing much better. But I said, ‘We’ve got to do better than this.’ And a gentleman who was a lifetime resident [of Wells] who  was affiliated with the Farm Bureau at that time, Mr. Cecil Goodman, he came to me and said, ‘David, the Farm Bureau will pay for your fire training if you’d like to go to Texas A&M to their fire training school,’ and said, ‘The city and the     Farm Bureau will sponsor you for this. Would you be interested?’ And I said, ‘Yes, sir. But in order to continue doing this, I’ve got to have some training and know a little more about what’s going on.’ So I did, and as I would go to a week’s training or a weekend training, I would bring it [the know-how] back, and I would train our volunteers. And at that time we had approximately 12 to 15, more or less, volunteer fire fighters in the city of Wells. And during that seven years, we were able to build a new truck, the old truck that we had…we refurbished it, had     it repainted, had a new tank built, we reworked the pump on it and the valves…we put new brakes on the truck. Now back to the Lions Club: the Lions Club and their civic projects, the fire department was one of them. They came to me and said, ‘Is there anything that y’all need?’ And I said, ‘Yes, sir, there sure is. We need some way to be able to go into a burning house filled with smoke and be able to survive and fight the fire.’ And they said, ‘What will it take?’ And I said, ‘It takes air packs, breathing apparatuses.’ [They asked] ‘How much did they    cost?’ I said, ‘Well, they’re about $2,000 each.’ Now, in the 70s, that was a lot of money. And I don’t know what they cost today, probably twice that. And they said, ‘Okay. How about coming to our dinner this month and giving us a keynote speech and explain what the need is. And I believe we can come up with it.’ So I did, and they provided us with a new air pack. It wasn’t too long after that I went          back to them again. And they said, ‘Come and make us a keynote presentation at our dinner, and I think we can help you again.’ And they did. And we were able to buy—through the help of the Wells Lions Club—two MSA air breathing apparatuses. At the same time, I would go to Wells ISD and put on fire         demonstrations and safety talks for the kids. And then after that, I still continued to give many talks at the Wells Lions Club at their monthly dinners. And then after nine years of civic duty with the city of Wells, I decided that I needed to move on and do something else. So I resigned my position as Fire Chief and
moved on to another area of my life. How’s that sound?

Durham:           Good.

Pitts:                 Alright.

Durham:           Well, family histories also play a part in a community’s history, and I was just wondering if you’d like to share about when your family came over and any impact that they might’ve made on the area?

Pitts:                 Well, my family did not actually live in Wells; they lived in the Forest community. My dad came from Nacogdoches county when he was fifteen years old, came across the Angelina River and settled over in the Forest community where my mom—Lilla Pitts, Lilla McCullough at that time—lived with her parents, who were Ace and Mary McCullough. She [Mary] was a descendant of  the Hesters, and the Hesters are still very prevalent in the Forest community. And from there my sister was born to M.C. ‘Doc’ Pitts and Lilla Hester Pitts, and then sixteen years later I was born—still in the Forest community. So, actually my parents did not live in Wells, but they traded in Wells, did business in Wells. My dad was a construction worker, and he did work all over the state of Texas and other areas; my mother was a homemaker all of her life.

Durham:           Well, is there anything particularly interesting in the history of Wells that you could share with us?

Pitts:                 Well, yes. I remember the…in the earlier days, I remember the tomato sheds that used to be there. There was some eight to nine tomato sheds at any given harvest time. I remember the Ruby Theater. As a small child going to school, a lot of times there would be a picture show that would be educational or worthwhile for a class to go see, and they would take us up to the Ruby Theater       and—probably for a dime or fifteen cents—we could go see the picture show. And then later, as I got a little older, as a young teenager I went to the picture show there at the Ruby a few times. And I remember the evolving of the bank [as it moved] from one side of the street over to the  ‘square’, as we called it, and the building of the new bank, and the building of several different post offices as it    moved from one part of town to the other. Then I can remember the bank getting—we’d laugh about that—the ‘time and temperature’ sign. And prior to that, what did we do on a Saturday night in Wells? You know, we’d sit and watch the chrome rust on the bumpers of the cars. And then after the bank got the ‘time    and temperature’ sign, we’d sit around on the ‘square’ and watch the time and the temperature change. And then one summer we got—and this was after I was young, married, and grown and had my family—we got cable TV and a Dairy Queen, all in one summer in Wells. And we thought city-folk life had come to town when that happened. And then Wells began to kind of, I guess, fall into—as the big cities folks call it—‘urban blight’, and businesses closed down. You know, the cotton gins that they had there at the time the tomato sheds were operating, they closed up. The sawmills and the lumber companies began to close up and move out, and people moved out for lack of jobs and lack of work. They had to move to Lufkin, Nacogdoches, Houston, Dallas and other areas. And the people that were there, you know, had to go somewhere else to work…like myself. I didn’t want to leave Wells, but there was no work there. You know,  after I got my formal education, which was in diesel mechanics, I was fortunate      enough to get a job in Lufkin working for the Department of Transportation— which is known as TexDot now—which I served 38 years and eight months, and I have been retired now for…well, this coming August will be two years. So, that’s pretty much how Wells evolved during my lifetime there. Not a great little town, but still it was home. And it’s had its great moments, and it’s had its bad moments—just like any other city—and I’ve seen the population go from around 600 to almost 1,000 and then back down to about 700, where it is now. So the population has increased and decreased several times since I’ve lived there.

Durham:           I’ve heard stories in the past about country music stars coming to Wells. Could you elaborate on that for me?

Pitts:                 You bet…you bet. You talk about the city coming to town or big life coming to town, I remember—and this had to do with a fundraiser for our volunteer fire department. A lot of our fundraisers were aimed, you know, at our volunteer fire department. It had to have funds to operate, and there were no taxes to take care of the needs of it. So everything was by donation or projects. And this particular project involved the Porter Wagner and Dolly Parton country show, and this was when Dolly and Porter were still together. And they came to Wells one summer, and we were in the old ‘rock building’, which it’s known as today. At that time it was the old gymnasium and auditorium where they had the bleachers,  you know, hanging over the balcony around the sides. And it was hot that          summer…it was hot. And at that time, and still today, when Porter Wagner and Dolly Parton perform, they wore sequin clothes—you know, jackets and whatnot. So, during their first song, Porter stopped about halfway through and said, ‘Stop! Stop. Has everyone seen this jacket that I’ve got on?’ And everybody, you know, shouted and clapped and whatnot—and it was pretty and glittery ad shiny. [Then Porter said] ‘Good, because I’ve got to take this thing off because I am about to die from a heat stroke.’ So he took that jacket off, and they went on with their show and they put on a great country western show right there in Wells, Texas. And as everyone knows, Dolly Parton especially went on to claim great stardom in her life. She, later in life, left the partnership of Porter and Dolly and went on her on and she became the great star that she is today.

                        And then later, we had the Skeeter Davis country show come to Wells. And they also put on a show. And during this time, it came a thunderstorm that summer and it got dark and rained and had thunder and lightning, and it knocked the electricity out. And we without electricity for about an hour until the light company was able to restore it. So everybody just had to sit around and visit with            Skeeter and the band and all the people that were with her on her tour, and we got to know her pretty well. And it seemed like they enjoyed it, and we enjoyed it and when the lights came back on the show went on and everybody had a great time.

                        And then another great show that I can remember—and one that is near and dear to me because I’m real partial to Southern gospel music—was the Happy Goodman family came to Wells and put on a show. And did they put on a show…They had some good music, up-tempo Christian gospel music and everyone had a good time and enjoyed that. And that was a highlight, too, that I can remember.

Durham:           Well, before we close the interview, is there anything else that you’d like to say?

Pitts:                 Well, Douglas, I just appreciate you involving me in this little project. You know, I may not have a whole lot to offer, not something spectacular but it’s important to me sharing with you my church experiences and my offices in my        church…and, you know, I always try to put the Lord first, and I think that we’ll be rewarded for that when you do that. And I’ve been able to see our church         evolve and remodel and rebuild and add many members through baptisms, professions of faith, and movement there by letters—and not only our church, but  I’ll have to brag on other churches there in Wells also. We’ve seen the First Baptist church move from a two-story building that they shared with the Masonic Lodge there in town to out on [Highway] 69 and build them a new facility, which is very nice and very beautiful. Falvey Memorial Methodist church....we have very good fellowship with this congregation. You know, they’ve added on to their church, built a fellowship hall—even our pastor, at one time, he roofed churches as a supplement to his income, the salary that he made at our church, and he roofed the Methodist church during his time as our pastor. So, I’m very proud of the work that we’ve done with our churches there in Wells and the affiliation and  the Thanksgiving joint worship services we’ve had with the various churches throug the years…the Easter sunrise services we’ve shared with other churches up at Mt. Hope Cemetery—I look forward to those every year and enjoy those, it’s a  very uplifting and inspirational time not only because of the time of the year but fellowshipping and the sharing one with another of other faiths in our community. So, those are some highlights that I look back on and can say that I’ve enjoyed  and has been worth living.