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Woody Guthrie Days Pampa hosts Woody's sister
PAMPA — "It's dilapidated," Mary Jo Edgmon said with disappointment, but not surprise, as she made her way around the cab of a big red semi truck parked in front of 417 Hill St.
Born Mary Josephine Guthrie in February 1922 in Okemah, Okla., Edgmon is the baby sister of legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie and was in Pampa for the annual Woody Guthrie Days celebration Oct. 3-4. While most of the activities revolved around the Woody Guthrie Folk Music Festival at 318 S. Cuyler and a dinner for Guthrie's family at the AmericInn Event Center, 1101 N. Hobart, it was here on Hill Street that Mrs. Edgmon was at home. She walked around the brown stucco house on the arm of her great-niece Annie Guthrie, the daughter of Arlo Guthrie and granddaughter of Woody Guthrie, regaling those accompanying her with stories of bygone days. Edgmon's mother, Nora, was suffering from Huntington's Chorea, a genetic nervous disorder that eventually took her life and Woody Guthrie's life, and was not able to take care of her children by the mid-1920s. At the age of 3, Mary Jo was sent to Panhandle to live with her aunt and uncle, Maude and Robert Boydstun. By the time she was 5, they'd moved to Groom. Her father, Charley, ended up moving to Pampa in 1928 and marrying Bettie Jean McPherson in 1931 after Nora died in 1930. Mary Jo and her brother George lived with them at the Hill Street address. Standing in the late afternoon light, Mary Jo and Annie slipped down the hill to a gully in the backyard where Mary Jo played as a little girl. She was here, playing ball with Woody on a Sunday afternoon, April 14, 1935, when a devastating dust storm blew up. Woody, who had married Mary Jennings of Pampa the year before, went home. Mary Jo said she went inside and watched as the world outside became dark. The day became known as "Black Sunday." Mary Jo said the wind didn't blow, but the air was filled with dust so thick it blocked out the sun. "The next day it blew away," she said. "The sheets were thick with dust. We took them outside and shook them out." Mary Jo went on to talk about her bicycle that she kept on the front porch of the house on Hill and how it was stolen one day. It was found a few blocks away with a torn-up tire. She said she'd found a doll at one time that someone had thrown away. "It became my baby," she said. But her father said it reminded him of the daughter he'd lost in a fire in Oklahoma, so, while Mary Jo kept the doll, she kept it out of sight of her father. Charley and Bettie Jean's marriage was not a happy one. They separated and by the time Mary Jo was a teenager, she had moved to Borger to live with her stepmother. Mary Jo said she hated that and was happy when her brother George came and got her and returned her to Oklahoma. Mary Jo was delighted, however, when Josh Paulson, director of the Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center, said the center wanted to buy the house on Hill Street and renovate it. While Pampa has been celebrating Woody Guthrie Days on the first weekend in October, the weekend closest to his death in 1967, next year, Paulson said, the celebration will be moved to July to coincide with Woody Guthrie's birthday and the celebration in Okemah, where he was born. The new date will also fall during the final days of "It's Been Good To Know Yuh': Woody Guthrie In Pampa, 1929-1936," an exhibit at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, which will be seen from Jan. 24, 2009, to July 31, 2009. E-mail
comments about this story Posted: Oct. 9, 2008 |
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