Mr. LE BLANC. Cans and bags.
Mr. LIEBELER. Or both?
Mr. LE BLANC. Cans and bags.
Mr. LIEBELER. How many maintenance men, approximately, do they have
working over there?
Mr. LE BLANC. Let's see; four.
Mr. LIEBELER. Four?
Mr. LE BLANC. Yes, four.
Mr. LIEBELER. Is that the usual number that they have?
Mr. LE BLANC. Yes, that is about it mostly.
Mr. LIEBELER. Do you remember that Lee Oswald was employed by the Reily
Company?
Mr. LE BLANC. Yes, sir.
Mr. LIEBELER. Tell us, as best you can recall, when you first met
Oswald and what your relationship with him was, what kind of a person
he was, what he did.
Mr. LE BLANC. Well, when they first hired him, well, they brought him
to me, because I was to break him in on his job, so I started the
procedure of going--start from the fifth floor on down, work a floor
each day with him to take and get him broke in on the job and start
showing him the routine, how to go about greasing. The first day, I
mean when I was showing him, it look like if he caught on to it, all
right, if he didn't, it was still all right. He looked like he was just
one of these guys that just didn't care whether he learned it or he
didn't learn it. And then after I took and--we usually go by the week,
because usually after a week anybody with any mechanical knowledge,
there is nothing to it, because all it is is finding the grease and
oil fittings and we put him on his own. I put him on the fifth floor
and told him to take care of everything on the fifth floor and I would
be back shortly to check. I would take and put him up there, and about
a half hour or 45 minutes or so, I would go back up and check how he
is doing. I would go up there and I wouldn't find him. So I asked the
fellows that would be working on the floor had they seen him, and they
said yes, he squirted the oil can a couple of times around different
things and they don't know where he went. So I would start hunting
all over the building. There is five stories on one side and four on
the other. I would cover from the roof on down and I wouldn't locate
him, and I asked him, I said, "Well, where have you been?" And all he
would give me was that he was around. I asked him, "Around where?" He
says, "Just around," and he would turn around and walk off. On one
occasion when I was in the shop and I was working on some sort of piece
of machinery--I can't recall what it was at the present time--and he
come in the shop and he was standing there by me and watching me, and I
asked him, I says, "Are you finished all your greasing?" He said yes.
So he asked me, said, "Well, can I help you?" I said, "No, what I am
doing I don't need no help." So he stood there a few minutes, and all
of a sudden he said, "You like it here?" I said, "What do you mean?"
He says, "Do you like it here?" I says, "Well, sure I like it here. I
have been here a long time, about 8-1/2 years or so." He says, "Oh,
Hell, I don't mean this place." I said, "Well, what do you mean?" He
says, "This damn country." I said, "Why, certainly, I love it. After
all, this is my country." He turned around and walked off. He didn't
say any more. And then after that a lot of times I would be looking for
him and the engineer would be looking for him, and on quite a number
of occasions when it would get to be a coffeebreak time, we usually go
next door to the Crescent City Garage to get a Coke, and there he would
be sitting in there drinking a Coke and looking at these magazines.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did you have a regular break time?
Mr. LE BLANC. Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER. In the shop?
Mr. LE BLANC. We had 9 o'clock in the morning and 1:30 in the evening.
Each one of them was a 10-minute break.
Mr. LIEBELER. What time did you usually start work in the morning?
Mr. LE BLANC. Well, I started on different hours there for awhile. For
awhile when he was there, I think I was around 8 to 5, and I pretty
well stayed those hours as long as----
Mr. LIEBELER. Oswald was there?
Mr. LE BLANC. While Oswald was there.
Mr. LIEBELER. Except for the break periods, you were supposed to be at
your job----
Mr. LE BLANC. Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER. In the plant?
Mr. LE BLANC. In the plant. That is right.
Mr. LIEBELER. Now what kind of supervision did Oswald have in his work?
You said that you took him around and tried to teach him how to do
the job, but then after you finished breaking him in, at least as far
as the fifth floor is concerned, he would be pretty much on his own,
wouldn't he?
Mr. LE BLANC. No. I mean from the--I started him on the fifth, and
then he would work his way on down to the first floor. See? The way I
broke him in, I told him, "Make sure that you have got everything on
that one floor," and I said, "If it takes you a day to do it, let it
take you a day," I said, "but make sure that you have got everything
greased and oiled and cleaned." And that is what he was supposed to do,
and I told him, I said, "Then if you get finished the fifth floor, or
whatever floor you are on, you can always work to the next floor." And
then in the evening at 3:15 when the lines were shut down, we had these
three machines that had to be cleaned, oiled and greased every day and
sometimes twice a day--it all depends on how they ran--and he had to
see to it that each evening at 3:15 they was cleaned and greased.
Mr. LIEBELER. Now did he have anybody keeping track of him as a general
proposition? He really didn't, did he? I mean, he was just----
Mr. LE BLANC. Well, the majority of the time he had somebody over him,
but as a practice, I mean after you got broke in on your job, well,
they wouldn't look after you, keep looking after you. They figured,
well, you knew your job and you would go ahead and do your job. But
after awhile, well, they seen he was drifting off. Right to the last
day before they let him go, why, we kept an eye on him, because we seen
then that he wasn't doing the work that he was supposed to be doing.
Mr. LIEBELER. He really wasn't doing the work?
Mr. LE BLANC. No.
Mr. LIEBELER. He wasn't greasing the machines?
Mr. LE BLANC. No. And you see, we have a greasing log that when you
grease the machine you log it the day that you grease it, and actually
a lot of times I think he might have put stuff down in the log that he
didn't even get to sometimes.
Mr. LIEBELER. Just so I can get an idea of what kind of work he was
doing, how were the machines greased? Did he have a grease gun or cups
and----
Mr. LE BLANC. Yes; well, we have an air grease gun and we also have
these hand-type grease guns.
Mr. LIEBELER. And you used just regular Alemite fittings and grease
guns?
Mr. LE BLANC. Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER. So I would imagine from time to time he ended up with the
grease on his hands and it was a greasy job?
Mr. LE BLANC. Yes; it was a dirty job.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did he ever complain about that?
Mr. LE BLANC. Well, he would complain now and then. I would tell him,
well, that goes in with the job of oiling and greasing.
Mr. LIEBELER. Now was he just basically an oiler and greaser, or was he
classified as a maintenance man?
Mr. LE BLANC. No.
Mr. LIEBELER. That is a different thing?
Mr. LE BLANC. He was hired as an oiler and greaser and helper.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did he seem to have any kind of mechanical proficiency
at all? I mean, could you tell? Did he seem to know his way around
machines?
Mr. LE BLANC. It didn't look like he had. I think--I mean I don't
know--I think he had that in his application, that he was mechanically
inclined, but it didn't show up that way.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did you have any other conversations with Oswald that you
can remember?
Mr. LE BLANC. No; I tell you, he was a boy of very few words. He would
walk past you and wouldn't even ask how you are doing, or come and
talk, like a lot of us, we would stop and maybe pass a few jokes or
just talk a little with each other, but him--I think it was 3 months
that he was with us--still, I think if he said 100 words to me, it was
plenty, because even when I was breaking him in he wasn't the type boy
that would ask you different things about the machines. I was doing all
the talking and he was just looking.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did these absences of his occur pretty much all the time,
or did it get worse as he stayed there?
Mr. LE BLANC. Well, toward the last it begin to get pretty regular, and
that is when I think they decided to let him go. And another thing I
recall: He had this habit, every time he would walk past you he would
just [demonstrating] just like a kid playing cowboys or something--you
know, he used his finger like a gun. He would go, "Pow!" and I used to
look at him, and I said, "Boy, what a crackpot this guy is!"
Mr. LIEBELER. That is what you thought?
Mr. LE BLANC. Yes. Right off the bat I said, "This is a crackpot";
right off.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did he seem to just use his fingers like that, as a gun,
as a joke, you mean, or----
Mr. LE BLANC. Well, I didn't know what to think of it, you know,
because he--on quite a number of times he would do that, you know. If
you would walk past him, he would do that.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did he smile or laugh, or what?
Mr. LE BLANC. No. When he would do it, he wouldn't even crack a smile.
That is what used to get me. If somebody would be doing something in
a joking manner, at least they would smile, but he was one that very
seldom would talk or would smile either, and that is why I could never
figure him out.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did Oswald have any other associates or people that
worked with him closely in the plant, or would you say that you
probably worked with him as closely as anybody else?
Mr. LE BLANC. Well, I imagine I was about the closest, myself and the
other maintenance man.
Mr. LIEBELER. The other maintenance men? There were three more?
Mr. LE BLANC. Well, there is the engineer, and they had this other boy.
Mr. LIEBELER. What is his name?
Mr. LE BLANC. Well, the engineer is Emmett Barbe--I think you all have
a statement from him--and then the other boy was Arturo Rodriguez.
Mr. LIEBELER. Of Mexican or Puerto Rican background?
Mr. LE BLANC. He is Mexican, I think.
Mr. LIEBELER. Do you know whether Oswald was associated with Rodriguez
outside of the plant at all?
Mr. LE BLANC. No, sir.
Mr. LIEBELER. You don't have any way of knowing?
Mr. LE BLANC. No.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did Oswald ever talk to you about his family?
Mr. LE BLANC. No; that was something he very seldom talked about, and
myself and the engineer, Emmett Barbe, we always were talking about
our families. He had quite a bit of sickness and I had quite a bit of
sickness, and a lot of times we would be talking about our families
and kids and Oswald, he never would bring in his family, and it was a
good while after he was employed with us that I actually found out he
was married, because I didn't think he was married because he never did
talk about his wife or kids or nobody.