L.D. Cunningham grew up in Sublime, Texas, where his mother operated the Cunningham Cafe and his father was a barber, sold mail-order suits, and made molasses. He was married to Vera Grant for 55 years, and they raised seven children. L.D. Cunningham passed away in November 2004.
A Sublime Life
It wasn't so sublime in Sublime when the circus came to town.
Sublime located about nine miles east of Hallettsville, was a railroad and truck farming community at the time when Cunningham was growing up in the 1920s and early 1930s, and he has many memories of living there.
"The lion roared so loud," he recalls about the circus coming to town, "that many of the citizens could not milk their cows." While the cows might have been frightened by the noise, the circus did prove entertaining, otherwise.
"There were prizes for anyone who would wrestle the bear," he says, noting that some braggarts who said they would tackle the bear then balked when the time came to actually get in the ring.
Sublime was a busy place with four trains passing through daily and the occasional excursion trains. There were docks for loading the harvest of vegetables and cattle pens on the railroad, and a section gang that helped the economy of the town, as well as paint and bridge gangs that would come through.
As a boy, Cunningham helped his mother in the cafe and remembers the tiring job of cranking ice cream "with one hand and then the other." "And all I got," he says, "was what was left on the dash."Other items on the menu of the little cafe, located in a former doctor's office, included beef stew, chili, fried chicken, fish and oysters. "My father would order oysters from Rockport," Cunningham notes, " and when the train passed our house near the track, I could tell him the fish box was on the train." The ice for the cafe also came by train.
Cunningham attended grammar school in Sublime, Eilers Industrial Training School at Brown's Chapel, and graduated from Yoakum High School in 1935. He received an associate of arts degree from Paul Quinn College in Waco, a bachelor of arts from Tillotson College in Austin, and a master of education degree from Texas Southern University in Houston.
Cunningham began teaching in 1937 at Sublime. In 1950, he was hired by the Hallettsville Colored School, where he served as principal from 1953 to 1957. He later taught at Stevens-Mayo High School and became a social studies teacher at Hallettsville Junior High School until his retirement in 1971.
Mr. and Mrs. L.D. Cunningham were honored on their 50th vvedding anniversary at Riverside Park. Hosting were their children and grandchildren. Children arc Ms. Gwendolyn Demps: Claudette Lucas: and Rovvcna Cyprian: Debra Stallworth: Carolyn Holley: and Leon Cunningham.
My job has been a blessing to me more than I have been a blessing tot he kids.
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DownloadThere were three of four grocery stores in Sublime, a meat market that opened every Friday afternoon and Saturday, a saloon, a pickle vat where people bought and sold pickles, a lumber yard and attached hardware store, a filling station and auto supply, a hotel where a large hand bell signaled the time for meals, and a cotton gin with a mill where the citizens could get their com ground on Saturdays. There was also a barbershop, post office, blacksmith shop and garage, depot, churches, schools, and other essentials of a thriving rural community.
There was a public scale and a windmill, watering troughs and hitching racks for the horses and mules. 'Some of the merchants had long white water hoses that could be attached to the town's water tank," Cunningham recalls. 'There were two black-owned buildings in town," he notes, "Our cafe where the Knights and Daughters of Tavor met upstairs. The other was a burial club. Some of the entertainment in Sublime was provided by traveling picture shows that would come through peddling their concoctions. He remembers once when a agricultural demonstration train with all kinds of cattle, chickens and swine stopped in Sublime. He also remembers the time "an airplane pilot offered rides for 50 cents in a plane that looked similar to Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis."