Third Ward Texas

The small community, Houston Texas called "Third Ward Texas" consisted of three major streets...Holman, Dowling and Ennis...Three major schools; Blackshear Elementary, Ryan Junior High, and Jack Yates High ...This was all the boys knew, for they never been anywhere else...This was Home...This was Third Ward Texas... Most of the houses were small shacks, called "Shotgun Houses", sat on bricks with a wood porch... They had two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a kitchen, which was in the back of the house...You had to go through the second bedroom to get to the kitchen, and if you opened the back door or the front door you could see straight through the entire house and probably into another house is you were on the second row of houses on Division Street.. Most of the residents had old sofas, called couches or dive-ins, that sat on their little wooden porch, which served as living rooms...The small Shotgun Houses set up high on about three feet of bricks thus leaving room under the houses for the kids to play and hide things...Some of the residents used the under carriage of their shotgun houses as storage, therefore they were kept pretty clean...