John Pinckney was a farmer and had a contract for the rural mail delivery in Hegar and Hockley. John Roland remembered how cold it was on winter mornings. Edna would heat water on the wood stove to pour over the radiator of the Model T Ford, and John P. would crank it. In the winter of 1922, John P. got pneumonia and died on January 18. John Roland, age 8 at the time, remembered how bitterly cold it was. He walked across to the cemetery and watched the family friends digging the grave for his father. They had a terrible time because of the cold and the frozen ground. There was no funeral. Virgil was 11 and Edna Ruth was 6. Edna and the children finished out the mail contract - not an easy job for them. Once cousin Arthur Moore loaned Edna $50 to pay back John Bruner when he paid their rent ($50 a year for 149 acres.) After John Pinckney died, Alfred Hegar paid off the property.
I asked my father and Uncle Virgil once why they left the farm. They told me they were starving on the farm - that they couldn't raise enough to survive. Edna and the children went to live with her father and mother, Alfred and Helen Hegar. Aunt Maye passed her teachers test at age sixteen, and was teaching school in Magnolia. The children attended there for a few years.
About 1925 Uncle John Page came to take the family to live with his family in Houston. The children went to West End School with the Page's six boys and four girls. Later the family got an apartment in the Heights - they moved every time they could find a cheaper place. Edna worked at a twine factory on Washington, at an overall factory, and at a blanket factory on Airline. After Virgil married Itaska, the family lived with them along with Itaska's dad and brother.