You had a disaster?
Yes, out there on these cracking cars that I
was telling you about.
Now, they ran this very toxic crew.
And one day, a man climbed up a ladder to open
a valve up there,
and the top blew off of it.
And it killed him up on the ladder right there.
He had to get off the ladder.
Another fellow went up to get him off the
ladder and killed him.
Well, and there were about five or six men on
the ground over there
at one time over there who had gotten
asphyxiated over there.
And out of all those men, I think we lost two.
And we went over there, I was over there, I
went over there,
and this first aid team, we had a whistle out there.
Everything was whistling.
You had one whistle with somebody and two with somebody.
And I think, I don't remember what I was, I
think it was four.
And when we got a call on four whistles, we
called the operator,
and she'd tell us where to go.
Well, we went over there, and they revived all
the men but two.
And then that's when they were going to have
gas masks.
And then everybody wore a gas mask.
And they had gas masks everywhere then.
They'd have fresh air masks, and everybody had
a mask that he could,
everybody had one.
It was part of your equipment.
But now you didn't wear it all the time?
Not all the time, only in case you contacted
that gas.
If you contacted that gas, you had one
available, you just put it on.
Well, were there any other disasters?
Oh, not many.
That was the worst thing I think they ever had
out there.
That's pretty rapid.
Well, they had some fatalities, our first
fatalities they ever had out there.
A man, his son-in-law killed him.
They were unloading a car, a gondola,
and they were throwing some steel plates out of
that gondola.
They were about 14 inches square.
And the daddy-in-law was down on the ground,
and this guy threw one of those things out on
top of him,
and hit him on the head and killed him.
That was the first one they had out there.
Then another one they had out there.
There was a man operating a railroad crane.
That was a crane that ran on the railroad,
and he was trying to unload a car one time.
It had a vessel in it, and it was in a gondola,
and it was just stuck in there.
He tried to get it out of there, and he
couldn't lift it out of there.
It wouldn't lift.
So he told his man that was working with him to
get out of there,
and that he'd get it out of there.
The railroads that they had out there then,
they'd just throw up a mud bank and put a
railroad on them.
They didn't have any foundation.
Well, he was up there in this big old crane,
and he got to pulling on this thing
and kind of pulling it to one side so it'd come loose.
It came loose, and when it did, that crane
turned over.
It fell over on the ground.
That Fella got his foot caught in the machinery
part of it.
Not the moving machinery, but the levers in it.
He got his foot caught in it.
Well, there was a two-inch steam line right
over his head that had come loose,
and it was blowing that steam right over his head.
It wasn't blowing it on him, but it was
dripping on him.
The water was.
That man pulled his foot out of a laced-up shoe
to get out of there.
I know that's the truth because I was the man
that got the shoe out of the machinery.
He was getting out of there.
He didn't get anything but a few little
blisters on his back
where that hot water was dripping on his feet.
I thought he was scared.
He was. In his abdomen.
There were knots in his abdomen as big as his fist
where his muscles had balled up in there,
pulling so hard.
Well, I think that's about all I can tell you.
You told me the other day about there only
being not many things
in the way of equipment or dimes.
Oh, well, when we went out there, there wasn't
anything out there,
but the only recorders they had out there were
steam gauges.
Pressure gauges, let's say, pressure gauges.
If you had any kind of pressure, you'd screw
that thing in,
and it just went around.
Everything we did, we had to do in my hands.
They had no liquid control, no anything.
You had gauge glasses. You could see a liquid
in the glass.
If you had a vessel that you had pressure on,
well, you could see the pressure on it.
You had a temperature recorder, which was a
glass thermometer.
You had what they called thermometer welds.
They'd weld a hole in the pipe,
and then stick another pipe down in and weld it.
Then you'd stick your thermometer down in that pipe
in the heat from the vessel it would register
on you.
But by the time you got the thermometer out,
it was about 10 degrees off.
That's the way we first got our recorders.
That's the way we first operated.
Then they got an old well over there
where I'll tell you about where we made that
first unit.
They brought in an instrument there,
and we could get the temperatures on that unit
from 80 points.
It was controlled there.
You could turn the dial, and it would show what
the temperature was.
We just thought we were really doing good.
Then they just begun to get these instruments
and all kinds of instruments.
I had a man working with me one time.
He was a man from Rice Institute, a little
fellow in here.
I was telling him what a great thing this
temperature control
that he had, and he told me, he said,
well, a day will come when they'll be running
this whole refinery
with a button, just press a button, and that's
what I thought.
I said, well, you must be a little crazy.
But that's the way they did it.
Yeah, you don't see any people.
When we went out there, we couldn't smoke.
Oh, I guess not.
Now all the control units out there now,
like you were in this room, well, they're pressurized.
So you can sit in there and smoke
because you want to because there's nothing
going to come in there.
Everything's going out.
Quite a change.
Yes, Ma'am.
When we went out then, when we used to go to work,
you didn't have any relief.
If you went out there and worked eight hours
and somebody didn't come to relieve you,
well, you just stayed out there.
And, of course, they wouldn't let you work for
16 hours.
But if you didn't get a relief the first day,
well, you just stayed out there.
And if you didn't bring a lunch,
well, you just didn't have anything to eat
while you were out there
unless somebody gave you something.
Because if you didn't know that you were going to,
now, if you knew you were going to be stuck,
well, you could make provisions.
But if you didn't know and some Fella got sick
or imbibed too heavily,
and you got stuck out there,
if somebody didn't give you all this lunch,
you just sucked your thumb.
Oh, yes.
And we didn't have any way or anything.
You just brought a sack out there and had a
cold sandwich in it
and ate it and thought you were doing good.
And if you wanted to heat it, well, you could
put it on a hot brick
in front of one of those furnaces to get it hot.
And we had coffee pots out there.
They made coffee out there.
But they've got better kitchens out there now
than each one of those units in the average
home in Baytown.
So that's what I understand.
You know, the first one of those things that
they had out there
was a man came over here from California from
the Braun Company,
and he told me this himself.
He said, I got a drawing of a vessel,
and I never could figure out what that thing was.
He said, I've been in the refinery a bit all my life
since I was a grown man, and I never had seen
an instrument like that
or a vessel like that, and I couldn't figure
out what that thing was.
Well, he came over here a lot of times and
built another unit.
He came over here, and he said, there was that
thing in there.
There was a cooker that I had built over there,
and I didn't know what it was.
Oh, it was for the kitchen.
What it was, it was just a vessel, an enclosed vessel
with a concave head in it.
Then on one side it had a little opening in it
and a little valve on it.
Well, you could put the grease down in this
concave part of it,
and you could fry, you could do anything you
wanted to.
If you didn't want to fry, well, you could
toast your bread on it,
do whatever you wanted.
In the bottom of this head, in there,
there was steam line going up in there,
and you were shooting live steam up against
this head up here,
and that steam was about 500 degrees.
Then you just heat that thing up,
and you could cook anything you wanted to on
that thing.
From that, well, they just got everything.
Now they got all kinds of modern things.
They got a dinette set in each one of them just
like this,
dishwasher, sterilizer.
Ice Box, deep freeze.
When was it you ate in the tent?
Oh, that was in 1920.
Okay, but they didn't keep on with that.
No, Ma'am, they did away with that.
All the time they were doing that, Goose Creek
was building.
Everybody come here and bought a lot,
and they were just building and building and building,
and the company was building over there,
and they just finally just did away with all
those tents.
And they just finally did away with it.
Wasn't there a hospital on the...
Yes, Ma'am, there was a hospital.
Well, I don't know where you'd call it a hospital.
The one I saw, the man, the one that that
fellow went in,
that thing turned over on him wasn't much of a hospital,
and I went in there one time, too,
with my finger cutting nearly all.
It was just a little old building.
Maybe it had two rows of cots in it, one on
either side.
The alleyway down the middle, and then a little
dispenser in the front,
a little wooden building.
They had an old doctor from the Army there,
and he was just rough as he could be, you know.
And that was the first hospital.
Then they had a little drug store there,
adjacent to that.
They had a big commissary there also.
When they first started, they had a big
commissary there,
and that's where all these people bought their groceries.
Everybody could.
Everybody could go there and buy groceries.
And you had to buy a meal.
You had to buy those coupon books in there to
buy groceries.
And then when these people built these houses around,
well, everywhere, over here in town and down in Pelly
and everywhere else, they just didn't need that stuff,
so they got rid of all those things.
And then, as I say, the company went out of the
housing business in 36.
They just went in there with one of those
wrecking balls
and just tore all those houses down.
And that community house that they had over there,
that was a magnificent building.
It was a great big building.
It had a beautiful dance floor in it.
It had a big stage on there.
It had dressing rooms on either side of the stage.
Upstairs, it had a director's room and a big
library downstairs.
And on the right-hand side going in,
well, that was the ladies' room where they had
the ladies' clubs in there.
And it was just an identical place.
And they had picture shows in there, too.
They had a picture show booth in the back.
And they used to show first-run pictures out
there on that thing.
Well, for them to stay.
Yes, Ma'am.
But they had to pay.
Oh, I think it cost a dime or something like
that to go in there.
I forget now what it was.
Just nothing, almost. Yeah.
Let everybody who worked.
Yeah, everybody.
Then they had the band.
They had the band.
You mean the company?
The company had a band.
They had a big brass band.
There must have been 75 fellows in that band.
And they had a band master.
And that's all he did.
He didn't do anything else but just run that band.
And that was his full-time job? Yeah.
And if he needed a trumpet player, he'd just go
to the superintendent and say,
I need a trumpet player, and I know where I can
get him.
And that guy coming up, he might be a trumpet player,
and they might have him doing most nothing.
Well, no, they did the same thing for baseball. Baseball.
Yes, Ma'am.
But I never get out.
I played baseball on the first team they had
out there.
Oh, you did?
That's incredible.
But I wasn't fortunate enough to have gotten
hired to play baseball.
That was just the correct activity of mine.
But we played baseball.
The first team we had was in 1920.
We had a baseball team.
Well, back then, practically all the industries
had baseball teams.
Southern Pacific had one.
Admiration Coffee had one, which was a Maryland
club now.
They had one.
American Legion had one.
And the golf company had one.
Humboldt had a ball team.
They had one over at Barber's Hill, and they
had them everywhere.
Well, there were a lot of fellows.
There were a lot of ball players who had gotten
out of the professional business
because they weren't good enough or gotten too
old, one or the other.
Well, they were playing around in these places,
you know.
Well, as soon as they found out we had a
baseball team here,
they all flocked down here to play us, and they
ran us out.
We weren't good enough to play.
Well, I played long enough, I played.
Where did you play your game? Ma'am?
Where were the games played?
They had a big baseball park out there.
They had two of them.
They had one over here right where Lee College is.
We had one out there in Baytown.
They had a big grandstand out there.
Where in Baytown was it?
Where was it?
Yes, uh-huh.
Well, I'll tell you where it was.
It was on 7th Street and Baytown Avenue.
You know where the railroad runs to the docks? Yes.
Well, it was right east of that railroad.
At one time, there was a team from Omaha came in
and did their summer training here one night.
Oh, Gosh.
What a hot place to be.
Well, they needed to, you know.
They came here.
They needed the place to train.
Like, they used to go to semi-Florida.
I had to come here early, you know, so they
could get in.
Omaha, Nebraska.
They can't play ball, but they still play.
They can't play ball until May, you know,
until they came out here.
Our baseball park had a fence all the way
around it.
It was an excellent park.
Yeah, they did.
Well, who plays where Lee College is?
I think the golf company.
They paid for that.
We'd play golf one Sunday, and they'd play us
an extra.
They'd play Barbers Hill.
We'd play Barbers Hill.
We'd play teams out of Houston.
Well, you know, that was the only museum
towards you in the summertime.
We'd have as high as 25, 300 people out there
going to those baseball games.
Oh, cool.
Yes, Ma'am.
Pretty impressive. Yeah.
I think they charged ¢25 to get in there.
Something like that.
More than a movie.
It was, you know, there was no place to go.
Nobody had an automobile.
And there was no road.
There were no roads here to get out of here.
I shipped my furniture down here by boat.
Oh, you did.
Well, what other things like that do you
remember about it?
Celebrations or entertainment?
The Humboldt Company, they celebrated.
They had a picnic every year called Humboldt Day.
That was in May.
I think it was in May.
And that first started, they had it out in the refinery.
And I don't know why they quit.
But then they had it at La Porte for a while.
I think two or three years they had it at La Porte.
Then they brought it back over here.
Then they moved it up yonder.
Way up yonder at Eastgate, someplace up there.
But that was a big thing.
When I first came here, that Humboldt Day was a
big thing.
Oh, it was something else.
Everybody went.
And they always had a big...
They'd have a big barbecue, you know, and
everybody would come.
And then that afternoon, they'd have a ballgame.
And that night, they'd have a dance.
Oh, it wasn't all day.
Yeah, sure was.
They'd have a big ballpark.
I thought the ballpark...
Maybe have two ballgames.
Maybe have one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
And then they'd go over there and eat.
And then they'd all go to the ballgame in the afternoon.
And then that night, they'd all go to the dance.
And a good time was had by all. Wow.
What about other things like Fourth of July?
Well, I don't remember.
That wasn't a big...
Of course, they always had Fourth of July.
But Humboldt Day was a big day.
That was a big day, yes ma'am.
That was always a big day.
What about St. Joseph's?
Well, they had that...
We didn't have anything here,
but they always had something up there at the park,
up there at St. Joseph's.
A battle draft.
Do you ever go to that?
I don't believe I ever did.
I had no automobile.
Oh, well, that was limited.
Yeah, you just limited.
And when you went to Houston,
there was a band down there
that had a bunch of old touring cars,
big old touring cars, six people.
Some of them hold more than that.
They'd have these jump seats in them.
Well, they had a place over there on Texas
Avenue somewhere
around over there by the railroad
on that side, on Commerce Street.
Well, if you wanted to go to Houston,
well, you'd just go there
and go in there and tell them you wanted to go
to Houston.
Well, that car would be sitting there.
You'd go get in it,
and you might sit there an hour before you get there.
Just waiting for a crowd to come.
Yeah, you wouldn't go unless there were five.
And the same way in Houston.
You'd go up there at the courthouse
over there on Preston Street,
I think they had a place,
right at the courthouse.
Well, you'd go there,
and you'd go sit in the car and say,
how long before you're going?
Need two more.
When they'd come, you'd...
Oh, transportation was bad.
It didn't take you forever.
They'd go...
We used to go up Highway 90
and go way up there on the 5th Ward
and go into Houston, you know.
And I'd own a Ford Road over there.
By the time you went up that thing,
by the time you went to Houston,
back to that,
you'd have a floating kidney,
that road was a road.
I was on Shell Road,
just down and over there.
Just not for long.
Well, you mentioned over there
they had two cars planned.
Tell me about that.
Oh, well, I was about...
I believe that must have been in about 21.
There was a...
Right back of my house,
there was a street.
I forget now what street.
Fifth Street, I believe it is.
It's that street there
right by Barbara Brunson's store.
That street could go back up there.
Well, there were two neighbors, families,
that lived back there
about maybe a half a block off that road
right on the side of the street,
and they had two tents there.
First time I ever knew anything about it...
Well, I went to work one morning,
and I saw those...
They had a light pole right there
so they could get electricity.
And they signed on that light pole
telling them to get out.
And that told us who they were.
Well, I never told anything about it,
and it just gradually got worse and worse.
And the theory behind those people in those days
was the blacks and the Catholics, see.
They were after the Catholics and the blacks.
And then up in the east,
they were after the foreigners.
They were after the people that were immigrants.
Over on the west, they were after the Japanese.
Didn't you say you went to a Catholic high school?
Yes, Ma'am.
Are you a Catholic?
Oh, yes.
How did you feel about that?
Well, it didn't bother me.
I didn't care a thing about it.
It just made me mad.
Told me I wasn't a good citizen.
And I said,
Why do you think I'm not a good citizen?
Well, you owe allegiance to the Pope.
I said,
Hell, I don't owe allegiance to the Pope.
I said,
All he's supposed to do is get me to Heaven.
I said,
Man, I come out of the army with an honorable discharge
and an excellent character record.
You tell me I'm not a good American,
what are you talking about?
Well, did you know any of the people who were
in the army?
Oh, yeah.
I lived.
I was all around me.
And I used to see them come down here on Friday
from Houston.
And they'd come down here on Friday
about 5:00 in the evening
and have great big old Cadillac touring cars
with top down.
And there'd be about four or five of them in there.
And they'd come down here and pick out some.
With their robes?
No, they wouldn't have their robes on.
They wouldn't put those on until they went to work.
And then what would they do when they got here?
Just got down here and they'd probably
go somewhere and get dressed.
And when it got dark,
well, they'd go out and pick up some fellas.
They wouldn't want to whip with somebody or something.
Did you ever know anybody who would whip?
You dang right I did.
I knew one fella that whipped,
caught him out of the refinery and whipped him.
What had he done?
Well, he hadn't done anything that they hadn't done.
There was a man out in the refinery.
These two fellas worked at the same unit
and they were good friends.
And this guy used to go invite this man to his house
and eat dinner with him.
We'd say one of them was working one shift
and one was working another.
Well, and this guy that owned the house,
he'd go on 4-12 and this guy would be there
eating dinner.
Well, he wouldn't leave, see.
Well, now you know, who am I to judge?
Well, anyway, they decided they'd whip that Fella.
Well, they caught him one night coming out of
the refinery.
For doing what, though?
Well, they claimed that he broke up this
Fella's home.
Well, anyway, they whipped him one night
coming out of the refinery.
He was working 4-12.
When he came out of the refinery,
they picked him up at the gate
and they took him out there on the road
about where Bayville is now.
And they gave him a good whipping
and they brought him back, put feathers on him
and tarred him and feathered him,
brought him back to the refinery and dumped him out.
And the next day, he went back out to the refinery
and he recognized one of those fellas
and he said something to him about it
and the Fella took off, laughed.
So he left here. This fella left here.
And the reason he left, he said,
I know who those fellas were
and I'll have to kill some of them
and I don't want to do that.
So he and this lady that they whipped him about,
they left here.
He married that lady and they left here.
And the last time I heard of that Fella,
he was superintendent of a refinery up in Arkansas.
Yes, Ma'am.
And then there was a man here one time.
There was a man here one time.
There was a lady here
that lived over in Goose Creek somewhere.
I don't know where she lived.
But her husband was a driller
and he'd gone to South America
and they left her here with two children.
And she had a friend.
And I don't know.
You know, I'm not the judge. Yes.
But back in those days,
these houses were all shotgun houses, practically.
Well, you'd go in a shotgun house
and the first room in there was a big room
and it had a bed in there.
That was always the living room.
The bedroom and the living room.
Well, this woman was sick.
And this fellow went over there to see her.
She was sitting in there in the room
with these two children and the man came in.
And they came in there and got that guy out of there
and nearly killed him.
And they took that woman off,
cut her hair off,
stripped her and whipped her good.
Well, and so there was an old judge up in Houston.
He sent a man down.
He had investigated.
There was an old boy he hadn't found
that had something wrong with him.
I don't know what it was.
He wasn't demented, but he was deformed
so he kind of walked sideways a little bit.
And there was another fellow here in town
that was a damn rascal.
He was in that thing.
Well, when they came down here, they arrested him.
They arrested this old boy that was this old guy.
They never did do anything to that other fellow.
But it got, you know, they're back in business
around here now.
They're pretty heavy. Yeah.
And then there was a fellow here one time
that was a postmaster.
And he was a man of that town.
You know, as I say again, you know, I had both been
as I was saying to myself, I wasn't bothered by anybody.
But anyway, he went out, he was, he went out,
started out for that Masonic lodge out there at
Cedar Bayou,
which is that old one out there.
Well, he had a man with him, a deputy sheriff
with him.
And why that deputy sheriff was with him, I
don't know.
But when they got the railroad out there
on that Cedar Bayou road there,
they started, they kind of slowed down
to go over that railroad.
They jumped out and got after him.
And this guy run, this deputy sheriff run out there
and pulled his gun.
And when they did, they all broke and ran.
And one of them got hung up in the fence out there
and they caught him.
Then there was an old judge in Houston
that was very anti-clan.
And he came down here, they told him, he came
down here
and he was going to talk against him.
And they told him if he came down here, they'd
go with him.
Well, he said, I'll be there.
Well, right over there where we used to play baseball,
well, of course, they had a grandstand over there.
And he was going to make a speech over there.
So, told him not to come.
He said, I'll be there.
So I went over there to see what was going to do.
And he made his speech and everybody raised
their hands.
And I think he just kind of petered out around here
or something, I don't know what happened.
About two or three years in that kind of activity?
Yes, Ma'am.
There was a priest in Houston who was a very
patriotic man,
a fellow by the name of Curvin.
And Clu Clucks gave the city of Houston an
American flag
and it was on the corner of Main and McKinney.
They had a memorial flagpole there.
And he told them that he wouldn't salute any flag
that was donated by a man with a seat on his head.
And one of the papers up there in Houston got,
kind of reprimanded him for that, real bad.
They said some unkind things about him.
So he sued them for a dollar.
It wasn't a judgment.
Yes, he did.
And I went out to see the buyer one time on
Memorial Day.
And I was with the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
We were out there in a military uniform
and had our rivals.