MAURICEVILLE, Texas (AP) — Nova Holts Strickland thinks her adolescent years were normal, the same as everyone else’s.

She doesn’t see anything different about living in the Orange County Jail in the 1940s with her family, which included Orange County Sheriff Chester Holts; her mother, Ada; younger sister, Wanda; and their pet, Polly the Parrot, aka The Jail Bird.

Living in the jail was part of the job for the sheriff at the time. Ada even cooked for the prisoners upstairs — men on the second floor, women on the third.

County Judge Sid Caillavet would go to the jail from time to time to eat lunch prepared for prisoners by Ada. He’d stay to watch the soap opera “As the World Turns.”

But the jail stories aren’t the only ones this 76-yearold has to tell.

Strickland spent her early childhood in a house in Mauriceville on land her father homesteaded. He built the house and she grew up without electricity, running water or indoor plumbing.

The family, in those Great Depression years, didn’t even have screens on the windows to keep the mosquitoes and flies out.

Now, she’s finished a book about her life, and the hardcover editions should be ready for sale before Christmas.

“It didn’t start out as a book, by no means,” she said last week from an easy chair in her house on the family’s homestead.

Strickland would sometimes recall things she had asked her mother and father about their lives. Then she had the idea of recording her own life.

“I thought I’d write a journal for my girls and grandchildren,” she said.

The journal got longer and longer. Businesswoman Barbara Knight in Beaumont heard about the project and helped arrange the journal into a book. Strickland pays for the printing.

The book, “Back to Bugscuffle,” is 315 pages long, with lots of family pictures. The name refers to the place her father talked about going to up in East Texas.

Strickland remembers the days when Lemonville, now gone, was bigger than Mauriceville.

“It had a bank and hotel and about 300 families,” she said.

The book includes the Orange County reports for the family to get government relief during the Depression.

She said her father drove a Mauriceville school bus after the timber jobs dried up. Sometimes the school district didn’t have enough money in the bank to pay employees, she recalled.

The general store in Mauriceville would let school employees get food and items until the district had the money for the employees’ checks.

World War II and the shipyard boom for the defense effort brought prosperity to Orange County and Strickland’s family. Even though Chester Holts had a well-paying job at a shipyard, he agreed to become a deputy for Sheriff Dick Stanfield in January 1947.

When Stanfield died in December 1947, the Commissioners Court appointed Strickland’s father as sheriff. Strickland was 13 at the time, and her sister was an infant. The family moved to the downstairs of the jail, which had an apartment with three bedrooms, a living room, dining room and kitchen.

And most importantly for Strickland, the jail had a bathroom. Prior to their move, her family had to use a two-seat outhouse. They also bathed in water heated on the stove and poured into a washtub.

“The bathroom was my favorite room. My mother had a hard time keeping me out,” Strickland said of their jail home.

Strickland’s father served 21 years as sheriff, the longest serving sheriff in the county’s history. The jail apartment was the only childhood home Wanda Holts (now Reinert) ever knew, Strickland said.

Strickland was in high school during an incident she calls “the hootchie-kootchie dance.” She came home to see a crowd gathered outside the jail. The Woodmen of the World lodge across the street had let out from a meeting and the women in the jail were performing for them.

Strickland’s parents weren’t home.

“I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I turned off the electricity,” she said.

Without the lights, the men outside couldn’t see the female prisoners. The men hollered at Strickland. When her father got home, he asked about the electricity. She said he laughed when she told him about the incident.

In another risque twist, someone once complained about the prisoners whistling at women as they passed. The sheriff had to tell them it wasn’t the prisoners: It was Polly the Parrot.

When anyone knocked on the door, Polly would holler “Miz Holts! Miz Holts!” The parrot lived more than 50 years, and died a year before Ada Holts’ death.

Strickland said her parents treated the prisoners so well, they often would come back and visit after their release.

Strickland married Jerry Strickland when she was 19. They had known each other six weeks. She remembers her wedding as the only time she saw her father cry.

The Stricklands had two daughters and three grandchildren. Nova is now a widow, and her first great-grandchild is expected to arrive next year.

That great-grandchild, and other generations, will be able to know all her stories through the years. They’ll have a book as reference.

———

Strickland plans to get the books on local shelves in Mauriceville and Orange. She will take orders at (409) 745-1849