My name is Betsy Weber, I'm with the Baytown
Sun and I'm making this tape interview with
Jim Nelson of the Sporting Goods store for the
Baytown Oral History tape collection.
Mr. Nelson, is Jim Nelson your full name?
James M. Nelson, my full name.
And how long have you been in Baytown?
Well I came with my family in 1919, I was just
under five years old when we arrived
here so my early recollections may be from the
standpoint of a child but that's when
I came with my mother and father from Benton
County, Texas and the reason we moved down
here is because my grandfather, Dr. N. L.
Dudley, had already settled here a couple
of years before and there was a great need for
a doctor down here and he wrote and told
popularly plenty of jobs and all that stuff and
so that's the reason my family moved
down here from Benton County, Texas.
Did your father go to work down here?
Well he worked at many jobs during his
lifetime, he was county treasurer of Benton
County at
one time for one period and he was a druggist,
in fact he owned two or three small drug stores
around the small town of Benton County at one
time but the doctor, before World War
I, the doctor told him that if he didn't get
out of the store and go get out in the sunshine
and do some hard work he was going to die and
so Mama said they nearly starved to death
while he was learning to be a farmer but he was
a wheat farmer during World War I and
then after the war, that was immediately after
the war while they moved down here.
Did he set up a drug store down here?
He did, he didn't work in one down here.
What they did, Dr. Dudley and Papa and Mr.
Woods finally bought out the whole deal.
Which Woods is that?
His son was Merle and Lynn Woods and I don't
know Mr. Woods initials but he was the druggist
and he finally bought out the store there, it
was on Asheville and Texas Avenue, it was
the northeast corner of that intersection where
his drug store was.
Can you tell me your father or your
grandfather, one, had bought a block downtown
for him?
Oh well when Grandpa moved up here, you know
the original population center in this area
was down there around the mouth of Goose Creek
stream because of mostly boat transportation
and this is where the people started settling
most heavily and then where Pelly eventually
was the people started settling up there and
this is where my grandfather's first medical
office was, was there right in about the middle
of where the old town of Pelly finally was
named Pelly.
But they called the area down around the docks
Old Town and they called the Pelly area Middletown
and this was Newtown, what's now the Texas
Avenue business section there was referred
to as Newtown when it first started and so he,
he came up to Newtown and to get away
from, to build him a home up there and he built
this home at, at D.P. and Asheville
facing north on D.P. and Asheville and there
wasn't any houses or anything
on that whole block between Texas Avenue and D.P
. and west of Asheville, I forget the name
of the street running by the post office over
there but it was, it was this home, Gillyard
I think, Gillyard okay and the reason he bought
that whole block, he bought it for $400 and
the reason he bought that whole block was that
he had a horse and buggy to make his
house calls on, he was a general practitioner I
believe they call him and, and he'd have
to catch that horse in a hurry to make an
emergency call and he didn't want to have
to chase him all over the prairie so he fenced
in that block and made a horse pasture out
of it and then later on as the town started
developing, well people would come along and
offer him a couple of $100 for a 50 foot front
on Texas Avenue, well he'd
sell it because he was, he was making money, he
was making a big profit and he finally
sold out all of the Texas Avenue frontage over
there for, for a little of nothing like
that, I guess it was good money in those days
though and, and after Grandpa died, the estate
sold, sold at a hundred, hundred by hundred
corner there where his home and office was,
they sold that I guess for at least ten times,
that hundred, hundred by hundred, bought at
least ten times as much when they, when the
estate sold it as all the rest of the block
sold for back there when he sold it out. Now,
now Dr. Dudley was my father's stepfather
there, most people thought he was my mother's
father because he wasn't named Nelson and
so they just assumed, well it must have been my
mother's family but actually my real grandfather
died when Papa was five years old and, and then
Grandma Nelson married Dr. Dudley and,
and he was, he was our grandfather on my
father's side and he was a good one, he was a real
fine religious person and he was real good to
us, he couldn't have been a better grandfather
to us but actually he was my father's stepfather.
What, how long did he live, when did he die?
Well, let's see, Grandpa died in, in about 41,
now he hadn't been in practice for a good
long while, for several years at that time, he,
he brought Dr. Ham Davis in to, to help
him there in the practice and finally just
gradually eased out and, and turned the whole
practice over to Ham Davis and Ham Davis bought
the property there where the office and the
whole residence was located on that hundred by
hundred block that I mentioned there, well
Ham bought, bought the whole thing after my
grandfather died.
Did he have any hospital facilities that he
could use or use his home?
Well, he, he had his own clinic there, he, he
built this office and, and had an upstairs
to it and he had several small rooms there and,
and a nurse so that if we had, you know,
most of the operations, this eye or nose and
throat operations, they would just be hospitalized
for maybe a day or two, just keep them there
where you could wash them, there wouldn't be.
Wasn't he a general practitioner?
Oh, he had, he, he quit practicing, he, he, I
don't know just when it happened but he
became an eye or nose and throat specialist, I
would say in about sometime between 1922
and 25, he, he just quit practicing and went
back to med school and became qualified as
an eye or nose and throat specialist and that's
what he was all, all doing his later life,
eye or nose and throat specialist and that's
what Ham Davis is.
Well, I knew he was, that's why I wanted him.
Yeah, I didn't, didn't clarify that.
I have a little old book back there that my
sister gave me just recently, she
was going through some of Papa and Mama's stuff
there and she ran across a little old,
a little old Bitty book small enough to be
carried in the, in the pocket and she got
to reading it and what do you know, it was
Grandpa Dudley's records of babies that he
delivered and I have that, I intend to give it
to the library here because there's a lot
of people, prominent people in Baytown are, are
listed in that book, I remember Jack Jacobs
down at the bank is one of them that he
delivered there in that, in that period of
time, I think
it runs for about, oh about three years and it
must be six to seven to babies, a pretty
good population here at that time.
Oh, but he was here before Ross Sterling came
and started the refinery then I assume.
Well, yes, Grandpa came down here in about 1917
because he was here about two years before,
before we moved down here in 1919.
In any event, my, my parents did move down here
and Papa started looking for some acreage
and he found this old Hoskins Place, we always
referred to it as Hoskins Place, it was the
old, old Gillette Place out on, out on
Galveston Bay and here's a picture of the old house
out there that was built by slave labor.
Well, now wasn't Gillette a doctor, wasn't he
the one that was connected with the Bailin Orphanage?
This was Henry F. Gillette there, now, now, and
I don't know whether he was a doctor or
not, but I think, I'm not quite sure, this,
this is way before my time, but Miss Anna
Wright was the, was the foster daughter of, of
the doctor there.
And it was called Bell Prairie.
Yes, that, that area there where that, where
that house is a pretty long prairie running
north from there.
So that would be over in the LaPorte area or
beyond LaPorte?
Oh, it sits on Tri-City Beach Road.
You know, you know where the, where the new
canal went through to let the water come in
to go to the Houston Light and Power?
They just missed taking in the old home site
out there, it's still there, I went down a
few years ago and, and looked the area over.
Well, that's on Trinity Bay, isn't that Trinity Bay?
And we lived there from oh, from 1918 to about
around 1950 when Papa and Mama moved away,
and we rented that place from the, from the
Hoskins family all those many years.
Is this the house that you lived in, the one
that sits there?
Oh, no, that, that was just a big pile of
bricks there, but, but when we moved there
in 1919, it was just water everywhere, and that
was the highest place, that was the
only place that was dry, and so that's the
place where Papa built our home there.
Actually our house was located just, just to
about, the East wall of our house was about
15 feet from the, from what the remaining
standing, about a three foot wall is the only
thing that's left of this wall right here, but
this was a high place, this, I don't know
if they had, they must have chosen a high place
for the, for this old great home, but
it was built by slave labor before the slaves
were freed, and, and then it was, it burned,
it was hit by lightning in, in the 1915 storm,
and cracked the walls or something there,
and nobody lived in it from then, and in 1919,
lightning struck it, I think it was during
the hurricane in 1919, lightning struck it and
set the fire, and that's, that's when
it all came down, this old brick building.
But Papa went out there and he built a little,
about a three room house, just enough we could
move in, and started getting ready to farm, and
he did, he, he farmed and raised cattle
there for many years, and he worked on a lot of
those wildcat wells out there in the early
days, and, and lots of the, lot of those
fly-by-night operators didn't have any money,
and what
they would do, they'd get them in to work for
them, and they'd give them a small salary,
and they'd, and they'd give them stock in the
company, if they hit oil, well, they'd
gonna all be rich, and, and Papa had a lot of
those stock certificates there.
You better look them over, it might be good.
I remember one time my sister married a fella
during, during the war, she was working
in that, in one of those, what they call a
united something deal there for, for soldiers,
to entertain soldiers there, and she met a
fella from Michigan and married him, and,
and he, he was, had worked for Sears, and after
the war, well, he, he went to work as
a manager at Sears, and he got pretty rich, I
guess he was a millionaire at the time he
retired, he's retired now, and, and so they
were doing pretty well, and he came home one
day and told Helen, said, this is my youngest
sister, said, I want to tell you something,
that I, I invested $10,000 in a Wildcat scheme
today, and I don't want you to get mad at
me about it, Linda says, oh, I mean, Helen
said, all that's just, just fine, it's perfectly
all right with me, says, you're gonna lose your
money, of course, but we can afford it,
and but said, if you just wanted to get some of
those beautiful, gilt-edged stock certificates,
there's a Wildcat oil well, said, my daddy's
got a trunk full of them down there, he would
have given you, did any of them ever turn out
to be worth anything, no, no, none of
them ever turned out, because all down in that
area down there, that wasn't where the
oil was, they just hit a little gas and
whatnot, where was it, over on Trinity Bay, all right,
you know, where Tri-City Beach crosses over
that new canal that they dug from Trinity,
from the Bay to the bowl, if you were to stop
there and, and cross the canal and
walk, walk on the westerly direction, out
toward the bay of the, of the south side of
that canal, about 150 or 200 yards, well, you'd
be standing right about where the old,
where our house stood, this is gone now, and
you'd find those piles of brick there, that
was that old Gillette, and it was in that area
that they drilled for oil, well, right
there, or was it down in the Goose Creek field
where they struck oil, I'll just
lay it all out for you and give you the names
of these people that drilled in this thing,
because when I was, I was, at least one time I
was smart enough to take some notes when
I was talking to Perkins, yeah, Perkins Wright,
he said, I worked on the first, on
in the, I worked in the crew of the first
attempt to drill for oil in this whole country
around here, and I said, well, did you hit oil,
and he said, no, it was dry hole, but
he said, I was just a kid, and they hired me to
fire the boiler, and he said, it's right
there, pretty close to where you, where you
lived when you was a boy, and I said, right,
and so I said, let's go out there, and you show
me right where it was, and it was right
beside the road, Tri-City Beach Road, and he
got out, and he said, you see that piece
of old pipe sticking out of the ground, said,
that's part of it right there, and it was
just off of the road, the road just missed
maybe 20 feet, it's just about 20 feet inside
the fence, it's now, that location is now in
that canal, it is in the canal, yeah, it's
gone, when they cut that canal, they got that,
that particular location, but he said, he
said, I can remember the names of all the
people that were on that, he said, Jim
Eisenhower was the, was a driller, and said,
the other driller, the night driller was a
fella named Bartlett, and he had a couple of
boys that worked on that, and said, I remember,
I said, I don't remember what his name,
Bartlett, the father was, but the boys were
named Dick
and Jack, and they worked on the drilling rig,
he said, the others were, yeah,
they called it the Goose Creek Oil Company,
that was in 1906 or 7, and, and the other
fellas working on it were Bill Yawn, Y-A-W-N,
Bud Smith from Barbers Hill, and, and another
Smith who was a cousin to Bud Smith, I guess
from Barbers Hill too, and Elmer Shook, and
Perkins Wright was, fired the boiler, and, this
is Patilla Higgins, it was Patilla Higgins,
I bet you that's him, all right, that's what, I
was just writing it down like it sounded
to me, is that him, Patilla Higgins, that's the
one that drilled at Gladys City, oh, well,
he drilled, and now he was telling about
another deal, this was a dry hole here, and I said,
well, when did they hit oil, and he said, well,
the third well drilled on John Gilliard's
property, hit the first real oil producer up
there, and he said, the first oil that
was on our property, you know, Miss Anna
Wright's property down there on the bay, he
said, this,
this Fella, Higgins, drilled it, and, and said
it, they hit oil for the first time on
their properties, that it wasn't very much,
very much oil, but they did hit oil on their
property for the first time, and that's the
driller that drilled it, well, if I'm not
mistaken, he, I think he's the same fella that
drilled at Barbers Hill later, and then
he brought in the well over at Gladys City,
it's P-A-T-I-L-L-O, Patilla Higgins, they've
done a lot of research out in the Barbers Hill
area about him, and some of the wells
out there, and they have a, Gene McGinty has a
picture of the first well that he drilled
out there in Barbers Hill, but of course the
big thing was over at Gladys City in Beaumont.
Did he, did they, they have it listed that he
drilled the first producer on the Wright
property down there? I don't know. Is that part
of that history? I'll have to ask her. Well, anyway,
this is what Perkins Wright told me about it,
and the reason they drilled that, they chose
that location, was because the, we had a water
well about 50 yards from there, and it was already
in existence, and it was a flowing well, it was
an artesian well, when we came there the water
was flowing, we didn't have to pump any water
or anything, that was about, it was about 75 yards
from our house, and, but there was gas coming
out with the water all the time, when we were kids,
we'd go there and we'd just hold our hand over
the, over the side of the pump, we had a pitcher
pump on there, and we'd hold, we'd hold our
hand, when it quit flowing, we'd put a pitcher pump
on there, and we would hold our hands over that
thing for a little bit, and somebody would strike
a match and stick it in there, and it'd go
poof, there's no gas that, you could just hold
it for
a minute, and it'd, and this gas, the fact that
this gas was coming out of there, they said it
must be oil there, and that's the reason they
chose that location, because of the gas coming
out of the water wells there on that old
property. Well, he didn't miss it far, did he?
Not too far,
in fact, they, they found quite a lot of oil
after, let's see, they, they sold up property
later, the Gillette family sold it, oh, it was
an oil man from Beaumont over there, and he drilled
all around where we lived, all around the house
there, and they, they brought in about 12, 15
producing wells right there around, around our
old house area there, but the oil was, was a
real fine
sand down there, and they could never keep them
flowing, because they would, we would sand up,
they just couldn't get a screen, they couldn't
screen out that fine sand,
and so they finally gave up on that oil
production there, it would cost them more to
keep those wells
producing than the oil was worth. Well, I'll
make that. Phelan was his name. Phelan, I spell that.
P-H-e-l-a-n, I think, but it'll be somewhere in
these records here. He's the one that bought the
Gillette property? Yes, we called it the
Hoskins property, because the Gillette girl
married Mr.
Hoskins there, and, and it was in her, it was
in their name, and you can read all that,
it's your leisure there if you want to. A
fellow came down here later on when the Phelan
injuries sold the property, they wanted to
establish a property line, and my father was the
only one who knew where it was, and they wanted
a statement from me about whether or not anybody
had ever lived on that land, as a squatter, and
all that kind of stuff, and they wrote
down what I told them, and, and asked me to,
uh, know, to give an affidavit to that effect.
J. H. Phelan is his name. Okay. This has some
good information in it. Oh.
Uh, anyway, my dad finally here, as years went
on there, he, he worked on the drilling rig
with the
Sun Oil Company, and finally he got to be a
pumper up there in the Sun Oil Company field,
and, and he
retired from there. He was over 70 when he
finally retired, because they didn't have any compulsory
retirement, and he was in such good health.
Actually, the truth of the matter was, is some
of the fellas that were four, five years
younger than him were in such poor health that
Papa was
kind of doing their job for them, and he felt
obligated to stay there as long as any of those
old men hadn't reached retirement age, because
if he quit, they would find out he'd been carrying
those guys that wasn't doing, they couldn't do
their job. Anyway, he liked his work, and he did
retire from the Sun Oil Company down there, as
well as one that bombed, and it was mostly cattle.
We quit raising cotton and corn and stuff when
all the kids were gone, and there will,
and he couldn't do it by himself, he just ran
cattle, and about 400 acres land that we had
leased from the, from the Hoskins people. Mr.
Hoskins always, they never would sell it.
Papa tried to buy that land, you know, when it
was worth maybe 75 or $100 an acre,
he tried to buy that land a time or two, and Mr.
Hoskins would never agree to it, because
he just knew that that whole area down there
was floating on a pool of oil, and all those crooked
oil men would just drill those holes and find
that oil and cap them up and try to, try to get
his land
away from where he was. What was his initial,
Hoskins? It might be on this, but they'll be
sure and get their details straight. Yeah, I
see it's just her name there, it's his wife's name,
because she was the one that inherited it, she
was a Gillette. Okay, well now that was kind of
out from town where you lived then, out from
where Goose Creek was on the bay, and where did
you go
to school? We went to school right here in, in
what's bay town now, it was Goose Creek then.
We had to, we had to just about make our own
roads, we came on, we'd go north through that
Bell Prairie and come out at the end of James
Street in dry weather, that was probably the
best way to come to town. The east end of James?
The east end, well the lower, you know, yeah,
the east end of James Street, we'd hit it down
there and come up James Street, but in, in bad
weather, we had to go along that bayfront,
there was lots of shell and stuff along there,
and we
could, building material to build roads was
plentiful, and we'd, we'd just patch up the
road ourselves and we'd get those old Model T's
over them and get up to, to that evergreen area
where the public roads started. Well there was
a road out to your house then. We made the roads,
there wasn't any public road, no public road
until they, until they put that Tri-City Beach Road
through there, and I was already in college by
that time, so I didn't get to travel any of it,
going to school for sure. Well was it in the
area, was the road that y'all made anywhere
near where
the Tri-City Beach Road is now, or did it
follow the bayfront more? Oh the road along the
bayfront went below the hill between the water
and the, and the rise, the hill, it was down
close to
close to the waterfront all along that bay, all
the way up to, to Evergreen. We'd come up on the
hill just, just east of Evergreen and then get
on the public road and come on in that way.
And the road across Bell Prairie was, oh I'd
say it followed for a mile or so it would follow
the, pretty much the Tri-City Beach Road going
north from our old house there. Just veer off to
the, to the right maybe a half a mile in the
first mile and a half of travel there. The
school you
went to, was it at the corner of Sterling and
Commerce, North Commerce? Let's see, it was,
I don't know just where Sterling would be over
there. Sterling, you know, crosses the railroad.
Well I'll tell you, there weren't any streets
or anything, it's just a big old school ground
right over there across, across Commerce there,
across the railroad track and on Commerce,
it's just a big old school ground, there wasn't
any streets through there in that day and time,
that's the reason I don't know exactly what,
what street to be. But it was somewhere near where
Commerce is now, North Commerce. It was, it was
adjacent to, it would have been just, just West
of Commerce there and it was a big horse barn
and they converted it into a schoolhouse and there
were so many students that we only went for
about a half a day, we didn't get much of an education
in the early days there and it wouldn't even
let me in till I was eight years old because,
because my birthday was a little late coming
you know and I, and I didn't get in and I was,
it threw me a year late in school, I don't know
if that's good or bad at,
but in any event, that's where I started over
there and I went to the first and second grades
in that old barn and then I went to the third
grade over on Pruitt Street, or what's the name
of that grade school, grade school where we
went to school, Anson Jones, yeah, I knew,
I knew it wasn't Horace Mann because that's
where I went to junior high, yeah, and then
went to
Robert E. Lee. You went through the third,
fourth, fifth, and sixth at Anson Jones.
And I guess it either was the sixth or seventh,
I was in junior high, I don't remember which one,
but I did go to junior high at Horace Mann.
Seventh through the ninth I guess at Horace Mann.
Now Horace Mann was a senior high at one time
wasn't it? It surely was, but I was in grade
school when he was a senior high because my
next oldest brother Robert, who's a dentist in Dallas,
there, he went to high school in that building
and then they built Robert E. Lee and they made
a junior high out of it and that's about the
time I got up there. So you are a graduate of
Robert E. Lee? Oh certainly, and when I go to a
Robert E. Lee sterling football game, well I wear
a blue windbreaker so that the sterling know I
support them and I wear a maroon cap so everybody
know I've graduated from Robert E. Lee by
George. I hope you can keep it up.
Sometimes it's hard. I get a lot of flack. To
keep your lawyer
this straightened out. All right, you spoke of
the block that belonged to your grandfather.
Do you remember when Texas Avenue began to
develop businesses? Well it was, it was in a
very short
while there. They, I think grandpa thought that
DP would be the main street there, but within a
year or two it was obvious that Texas Avenue
was going to be the street and they were mostly mud
streets. I remember when I was a kid playing in
the mud right there on Asheville in front of his
office and it was a long time before there was
any hard surface streets, but the town grew pretty
rapidly along in that time, but I was just,
just small and we, we didn't live in town actually.
In fact, it was pretty rough in town, a pretty
rough element there and, and my father,
I know mom was talking about it, he said, well said,
if he wasn't going to let anybody say anything
rude to mama on the streets and it was very likely
to happen and so it's just best for her to stay
home there until things settle down
because to keep him from getting in a fight
with somebody because nobody ever wins a fight,
everybody loses, you know, just like wars,
everybody loses and, but there was some danger.
Do you remember anything about the activities
of the Ku Klux Klan in Baytown?
Well, very small. It would have been about 1921
and 22 and 23. My wife remembers them
a lot better than I did. Why would she?
Because, because she, she said that they had,
they'd wake up at night with them marching down
the main street here. That was your wife's name?
Who was she before she married? She's Pearl
Hollingshead. That's me. Oh, and, and you lived
in town? Yeah, we lived in town. Did you see
the parade? Well, I was just a little old kid,
but I remember seeing them marching down with
the white sheets and the torches, you know,
just sort of a, I mean, that's an impression. I
don't know what date it was or anything like that.
We lived on the corner of Murrell and, and
Maine and it was just a muddy street.
They finally had to disorganize the Ku Klux
Klan here. There were a few things that happened
that were sort of unfortunate and I think they
finally gave up on the Klan. But some of the men
that I talked to about the Klan said that it
was, the purpose of it was to help establish
law and
order. They had tried to get help from the
sheriff's office and nobody would pay much
attention to what happened there. And of
course, there's always people that, that'll get,
the bully type people that'll get into an
organization like that where, where, where
they're anonymous. They, they sometimes get
just about as bad as the crook, which not out
in the
open, where everybody can see what's going on,
you know. And then when, yeah, people do things
when nobody knows who they are that they
wouldn't do when they were using them. That's
right. Well,
since you knew so much about all this oil and
everything, how is it that you didn't get out
in the refinery and work out there? How, how
did you end up here at the sporting goods store?
Oh, I was a little too young to work in the oil
field, of course, when my father and my
brother were doing all that work and there was
so much activity going on. And, you know, I was born
in 1914 and, and by, by the time I was big
enough to work in the oil field, it was, you know,
things would settle down. There wasn't so many
jobs available. I've heard them talk about,
if you wanted the job in the oil field down
there in the early days when they were drilling
so many
whales, all you had to do is just go down there
and stand around until, until one of the guys on
the rig got killed or crippled and you got his
job. This was pretty rough going. Yes, but there
was a big refinery over there and people were
coming here from all over the country. My brother
Bob, the dentist that I mentioned a while ago,
worked out there at the refinery a summer or two
when he was going to college. He went to Baylor
and, and he'd come home telling about working
out there and that mud and stuff and, and so
they would, for example, they'd have about
20 men and they were going to move a big pipe
and, and they'd have some poles underneath this pipe
and a man on each side, pairs of men on those
poles and they're going to lift this pipe up and
move it somewhere and the foreman is, everybody
get, got a hold of the poles and he'd holler,
okay, heave, and everybody grabbed the pole and
come up with it and said the pipe never
would move. What had happened is all the men
would go to their knees in the mud.
They must have done something because they got
a refinery built. It must have been rough,
I'll tell you, but Bob was telling me about
that. He was, he'd walk up to,
to Evergreen and, and he would ride with
Blondie Panchill, I believe was his name,
from there out to the refinery and work and
then he'd come home with him and walk about the other
two miles on down back to the farm. Did you
still have to walk when you were in high school?
Did you have to still walk that five miles back
out to the? Well, we'd come and, we'd come in a
Model T Ford or Buggy. We didn't, we didn't
walk it too much, but we occasionally, you know,
something happened there. We just set out
walking. We didn't think anything about walking
five miles.
The roads hadn't improved? We'd go right
through the woods there because it's just as
good or maybe better than the roads that people
have been driving up and down.
We'd just go straight through the woods when
we'd walk home. Yeah, but seems like there's a couple
of gullies between here and there now. There
is, you just have to jump across them or find a log
or something. We knew all the routes through
the woods. I bet you did. Okay, well, how about those
roads? Have you, the changes in the roads? You
say you were in college when they built tricycle
beach roads and then the roads gradually
improved. Did y'all ever go to Houston or
anytime? Yes, I
remember, oh, we would go on that, on a shell
road over there and it's all real hazy there.
I know my sister's driving an old Model T Ford
and some ran into, there's two cars. She, she and
another car collided coming back from Houston
there one night. Knocked the front wheel off
of the old car. I remember that real plain. I
just remember the narrow shell road, but I don't,
I don't remember the roads too well. Did you go
to Liberty or Dayton or Mount Bellevue more
than you did or Cedar Mile? Pearl and her
family lived over there and they used to go
across that
old high bridge there at Liberty. Yeah, I
remember. They said that was a really exciting
event going over that highway. Kind of swayed
up there at the top, I believe. Where did you
go to
college? Uh, University Tech. I studied
mechanical engineering. I got a degree in mechanical
engineering and I worked at it for several
years. I, I worked as a contract cost estimator
in, in
Houston for, for an insulation company for a
couple of years and I had put in my application
to the Humboldt Company when, when I got out of
college and one day they called me over there and,
and they, this was Depression Day. This was,
jobs were hard to find and they called me and
asked me if I was still interested in a job and
I asked them how much it paid and I could go to
work in the labor gang for about what I was
making over there at, as an engineer for this
insulation company. So I pulled up stakes and
came on out and went to work for Humboldt and
worked for him about five months and then we
had a hunting accident and my brother let a gun
go off
and shoot me through the foot, a shotgun, and
put me on crutches for about two years and, and when
I got back on my feet again, well, I went to
work for an industrial line of goods,
Ray Bestes Manhattan out of Pennsylvania, and
they were making gaskets and, and stuff that used
primarily in industry and they needed an
engineer for a salesman and that's where I
started my life
as a salesman and then after the war, well,
that, that job played out and they were fixing
to move
me away from here and I didn't want to move
away from here and that's when I went in the sporting
goods business. After World War II? Did you,
you started your store here, you bought the property
and the equipment? No, this, this building here
belongs to the Aaron Estate and, and I, I started
in across the street over there and another
fellow, Joe Dehart, I had appliances and just some
sporting goods there and he, he was, started a
sporting goods store here in this building when
it was brand new in 1947 and he propositioned
me just to put my stock over here and go in partnership
with him, which I did and this, this worked
fine for about a year and then, then we
decided, well,
it's not going to make a living for both of us
and so we decided on a buy or sell deal there
and I bought him out and went into the sporting
goods business. And you opened your store,
you remember what year it was? 1947, that's
when I bought him out.
Okay, that's 30 years, isn't it? Yeah, you'll
have an anniversary this year.
It's a long time, you should go find a hurry.
Well, you got married during all that time. And
then, where did you live after you were married?
Well, now before, before I was married, I was
in and out of Baytown there for about five
years. I
was, I wasn't actually living in Baytown and
when we, when we first got married, we lived
in the little old brick apartment house there
for about six months, right over there on the corner
of Sterling and, well, it's just north of the
post office. Gillyard. Gillyard, that corner there.
It's on that North West corner of that, that
department house is still there. We lived in one
of those apartments for about six months and we
moved down in the 600 block of Texas Avenue where
that, oh there's a filling station there with
the clover leaf. Oh, Shamrock. Shamrock, yeah.
That, that's the location where that house was
standing that we rented down there and then we
finally bought this, this old house over on 500
East St. David and fixed it up. Do you live
there now?
We live there now. How many children did you
have? We have three. What are their names?
Linda is the
oldest. Is she married? Yes, she married Mike
Nance from, from this area here. In fact,
Mike is the great-grandson of Miss Anna Wright.
He's one of the old families here.
Well, what does he do? He's, he's a career man
in the Air Force and they're in England now.
They've been in Germany and he was in Turkey
but Linda couldn't go to Turkey because of the
situation over there at the time. Does he have
a title like colonel or sergeant? No, no, he's,
he's a non-colonel. He's one of the high
sergeants. I forget what they call him.
He's a technical sergeant or something there
but, but he's real, they're real happy with,
with the Air Force. Do they have any children?
They have two. Two children? They have, they have
a 10-year-old son and then they adopted a child
in, in Germany when, when Charles was five years
old so she's, he must have been about four.
Anyway, she started school and she must be