This is the first of many stories about Italy residents that some of us know or would like to get to know better.

Carroll Lewis – A Wealth of History

Even though many Italy residents know he is a familiar face, not many of them know Carroll Lewis by name. That does not bother him one bit. In fact, he is not bothered by much at all. Mr. Lewis is a wonderful man with many interesting stories of North Texas history and most of them he witnessed first hand.

When Carroll and his wife, Ernesteene, decided to sell their home in Dallas and move to a rural area, they thought about Cedar Creek, but because they had children and grandchildren living in Italy, they opted to move here. He will tell you right quick that he never regretted that decision.

Visitors to the Magic Mirror Beauty Salon on Main Street have only seen a glimpse of Lewis’ knowledge and consider themselves fortunate to have crossed his path. He can spin yarns for hours and not repeat any of them. Even though his tall tales seem like folk lore, nothing could be farther from the truth. They are real, just like Carroll. What you see is what you get. He has experienced more in his lifetime than most folks ever will. His adventurous nature helped him experience things that most people have only read about in books.

“I used to jump trains,” he said. “I worked on the pipe line and needed to get to a new job site so I would hop on a train and ride to my next destination. I met the best people in my travels, and besides, the price was right,” he said with a smile.

He rode from Dallas to Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. One trip to Louisiana on his way to work the pipe line, the job office did not open until the next morning which left him with no where to sleep for the night. The people there allowed him to sleep in the courtroom at the courthouse.

“They gave me a blanket and told me to be sure and leave before the judge got there to hold court. They were so nice I knew I had to do just that.”

From the time he was a small boy growing up in Dallas, Lewis loved adventure. If none came his way, he would make some.

“There was an abandoned golf course in our neighborhood, and we would go and build forts out of blood weed,” Lewis explained. “My little brother, Jimmy, always wanted to tag along. One day I tied him to the clothes line pole and took off to the forts to play with my friends. Needless to say when my parents found out, I regretted it.”

Lewis would collect whiskey bottles to use for target practice in his fort area. When the City of Dallas realized what the kids were doing, they set fire to all the forts. That was a very sad day for Carroll and his friends.

As a teenager, Carroll wanted to work so he got a job at the Majestic Theater in Dallas making $12.50 a week for 53 hours of work. While there, he found many items of history left from vaudeville days. He even found a sword with brass handles used in one of the vaudeville acts.

“When World War II ended, I quit my job because I was just a kid and would have been the boss over the military men coming back from war. I did not think that was fair,” he said.

In 1948, Carroll met Ernesteene, the love of his life at Donald Duck’s Ice Cream Parlor on the corner of Peak and Bryan in Dallas. Eight months later they were married and were together until she passed away in 2005. They were blessed with five wonderful children; Danny, Debbie, Becky, Sam and Connie. Carroll relishes spending time with his nine grandchildren.

When Carroll Lewis reflects on his life and the history he as made, he stresses one thing more than any other — he never blames anyone for his mistakes.

“I made all the bad times myself and the good times just rolled in.”

Pretty good philosophy from a very wise individual.

The following is an article from Trend Section of the Dallas Morning News – Sunday, July 27, 1975:

Squash grows tall as farmer’s tales

by Mary Brinkerhoff

You can’t tell whether Carroll Lewis’ tales grow taller or his squash grows longer.

Both, he swears, are real.

There seems to be some argument over the gardening printer’s (or printing gardener’s) yarns about colorful creatures — the beer-swilling but brand conscious sow, the dog that peeled and ate cucumbers, the dill worms that spit in your eye, the energy-saving chicken.

No one, though, questions the authenticity of the cucuzzi (Italian squash) in Walt Sisco’s photograph, some of it three feet long and still growing when Carroll picked it.

During his 47 years — the latter part of them, anyway — he has raised just about everything you can think of; five children (in partnership with wife Ernesteene); a hand-built house; the blood pressure of News composing room foremen — he’s a crack printer but full of mischief; an assortment of animals; vegetables sufficient to stock a food store chain, if any were so fortunate.

Sisco’s picture shows a sampling, boxed as a bon-voyage gift for a friend about to retire, of the produce which thrives on Carroll’s 110 × 80 foot plantation in Pleasant Grove.

Besides the long green cucuzzi, there are white patty pan and yellow crookneck squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, okra and dried pinto beans.

He also grows corn, beets, asparagus, broccoli, green beans, hot peppers, black-eyed peas, Irish potatoes, lettuce, carrots, onions (from seed), cantaloupes and probably other things he forgot to list.

How does he do it? Partly with a little help from friends like ladybugs and praying mantises. Carroll uses no pesticides, explaining, “the only poison my garden ever sees is a stranger coming in, walking around and stepping on things.”

As an old hot-metal man watching with amused and cynical skepticism the infant flounderings of computerized, electronic cold-type journalism, he often threatens to bring his insect allies to work, feed them into what’s known as The System and let them clean the bugs out of it.

The pest aren’t all his garden has going for it. There’s the soil structure in Carroll’s neighborhood, a kind of sand hill resting in a saucer of clay which holds the water and keeps the sand damp.

And finally, if plants and animals do indeed know when they’re being appreciated, Carroll Lewis’ crops and chickens enjoy the highest incentives to flourish and multiply.

In an age of canned entertainment and spectator sport, he gets his kicks outdoors, working, puttering or merely watching the small-scale wonders of a natural universe most of us have never touched or have let slip through our fingers.

Though he learned a great deal about gardening from his father-in-law, the late W.P. Burns, Carroll grew up savoring nature’s drolleries and surprises. After all, he says, “When you lived in the country and didn’t have anything to play with, you had to do something.”

He pities the child who never has rigged what you might call a toad buffet — a hole in the ground with a small lighted bulb dangling into it. The toads gather in a ring and feast on the thronging insects.

Other country-bred folk may have shared this caper, but some of Carroll’s animal adventures are unique. It has even been charged, as noted earlier, that he spins them out of wholesome fresh air.

Consider the beer-loving sow, his children’s pet many years ago. She loved Budweiser, he recalls, and sucked it up with a gratified “OOOOOOOOh.” If he dared to serve her Falstaff, however, she dumped her trough over in a rage.

Then there was his mother-in-law’s dog, who lived next door and became a cucumber freak. If Carroll didn’t hand over his daily cucumber, he would run along the fence, select one carefully and pull it off the vine.

Also, The dog followed his owner’s taste in preferring his cucumbers peeled. He used to hold them between his paws, gnaw off the rind and discard it.

Does this strain your faith? Then reflect on the hen — one of 22 known to their fond godfather as The Girls — who figured out for herself what conservation of energy is all about.

She lays an egg only every other day, but she puts a double yolk into it.

Consider also the dill worm, a tiny piece of mobile artillery about which Carroll says, “A chicken won’t eat one and a chicken will eat anything.”

When a famished fowl approaches as it feeds on a dill plant, this small but scary creature extends a pair of retractable horns from its head and fires a double stream of strongly dill-scented juice. The chicken backs off at once. Who wouldn’t?

The spinner of such backyard facts or fables, whichever they may be, was born in Uvalde. From his mother, he inherited Polish blood (he lives to wear buttons proclaiming it); his father, a printer, bequeathed him more of an inky-black thumb than a green one.

Carroll spent much of his childhood, though, on a farm at Natalia in Medina County, the place in which he learned to find his fun outdoors.

Many a fellow employee at The News, where he has worked twice for a total of almost 20 years, anticipates the year-round progression of his crops like a starving robin with its eye on a worm hole.

He’s as famous for his pickling as for his gardening. In tandem, he and Ernesteene, who handles the canning, turn out hoards of treasure like 70 quarts of dill pickles, 50 pounds of frozen okra, mountains of green beans.

The anticipation with which news workers await nature’s and the Lewis’ bounty is matched only by the eagerness of their children: in order, Danny 25; Debbie 24; Becky, almost 21; Sam, 16, and the pickle-eating champion, 10-year old Connie.

“She walks around all the time with a pickle in her hand,” Ernesteene says. And Carroll observes of Connie’s friends, who scorn the usual afternoon snack and slumber-party fare, “They’ll strip you of pickles in no time.”

For Connie’s father, the garden offers more than good eating. He finds retreat and refuge in cool corn corridors or in breezeways of okra stalks higher than his head.

At least, he says, everybody knows where to find him. “They know I didn’t run off to the pool hall.”

Our community is very fortunate to have Carroll Lewis call Italy home. He is an asset and a wealth of knowledge in many areas. If you ever have a chance to visit with him, stop what you are doing and take advantage of his sincere nature, sense of humor and wisdom. You will be glad you did.