MY TRAVELS TO THE GULF, MCCAMEY AND DENVER
As I look back I can easily see that all the ventures our family
had been caught up in through the years added up to a lot of
worry for parents with a bunch of kids to feed, shelter and
educate. But to me they were stepping stones to a better future.
Partly because of those experiences, I was building a confidence
in myself which culminated in my being unafraid to tackle most
anything--either with or without money, perhaps foolhardy at
times, but nevertheless, still unafraid.
By this time I had done quite a bit of running around, but most
all of it was close to home. I had never seen a desert, a big
river, big mountains, nor an ocean. There were other things I
wanted to see too, but at age nineteen I suddenly had this
overwhelming desire to see an ocean,--not just any ocean, but
rather one particular ocean, the Gulf of Mexico. Now, I knew the
Gulf was not a real ocean, but I reasoned that it was big enough
to please me. It must look a lot like an ocean. And since I
happened to know that there was a good-looking little girl
spending her vacation swimming in the Gulf that summer, I made up
my mind right away that the Gulf was indeed the ocean I wanted to
see.
I had this Model T--whoa, let's stop right here long enough to
let the younger generations know that the Ford Model T was never
called Model T until the Model A came along in 1928. Up until
that time they were just plain Fords, all practically alike
except in 1924 they began coming with balloon tires. And in
those days all cars, regardless of brand name and year of
manufacture, were black.
Anyway, getting on with my story, I had this Ford touring car and
I wanted to see the ocean. It was only 350 miles to the Gulf,
and it would take about four gallons of gas for each 100 miles--
and gas was 9 cents a gallon--add two quarts of oil at 10 cents a
quart--total one way only $1.50. My goodness, I could drive down
there and back and eat a week on five dollars. No problem, I had
$11 in my pocket. With that kind of money I could rent a cabin
and have money left over for a few movie tickets at 15 cents
each.
So, a day-and-a-half later I was standing there on the beach
looking at that big body of water with that little body of a girl
swimming in it. We had a wonderful time for a week, and my
financial estimate turned out to be almost correct. To get back
to Hamlin, I only needed $1 more than I had. And that was on
account of the girl's little brother. I hadn't figured there
would be three of us so much of the time. But I soon learned
that the third party could add up to an extra dollar in just a
few days, as well as taking away a lot of the pleasure I had
planned.
And so, that was another time I started home on just a little
money. I knew that the girl or her father would have been glad
to lend me a dollar. But I wasn't about to let them know I was
that near broke. I was a big boy, an independent man, out on my
own. At least that's the way I wanted it to look to them. But
to me it looked altogether different.
I had $1.20 in my pocket when I headed out for Hamlin. But I
wasn't afraid; there was no anxiety. I had been in tight spots
before. There was not even any hurry. I stopped along the road
to pick up hitch-hikers. One fellow I picked up was heading for
a ranch somewhere near Mason. He rode with me a long way. His
home was about six miles off the highway in wild country, and it
was a hot day. I told him my money situation and he told me how
he hated the thought of having to walk six miles on a hot day
carrying a suitcase. I offered to drive him home for a dollar.
It was a deal. I drove him right up to his house, he paid me the
dollar, and I sailed right on into Hamlin without any trouble.
I think a lot of my self-confidence came from reading the Bible
and one other little book. After we moved to Hamlin, someone
gave me a set of little leather-backed books. They were so small
four of them would fit in my shirt pocket, maybe even five or
six. One was titled "As A Man Thinketh." It was my favorite. I
read it through many times and kept it long after the others had
disappeared one by one. It was rich food for thought and it
strengthened my trust in me and in my fellow man. Its teachings
helped me over many a rough spot. Wherever I was, whatever I was
doing, whatever the circumstances, its philosophy made me
unafraid. And being unafraid, I would tackle most anything.
For instance, there was a kid in Hamlin who had an old motorcycle
he couldn't get to run. For some reason he thought I might be
able to make it run, so he brought it to me to piddle with. It
didn't take long for me to get the motor running. But I should
have looked it over better before I tried to ride it. It proved
to be quite a wreck and it had certain parts which were ready to
come apart from other parts which were supposed to stay connected
together.
After I started the machine, I took it out on main street and
headed toward down-town Hamlin. It was going pretty good when I
discovered the throttle wire had broken and the throttle insisted
on remaining wide open. I tried to cut off the gasoline at the
carburetor, but it was too hot to handle. By this time I was a
lot closer to town than I meant to be and was traveling a lot
faster than I wanted to be. I couldn't switch the thing off
because it had no switch. It usually died when I closed the
throttle, but this time I couldn't close the throttle.
What should I do? I could jump off and let the thing go. But
then there was a good chance the machine would suffer great
damage. I was certain I would suffer, and I didn't like the idea
of looking at my own blood. Nor would I enjoy hurting here and
there all over my body.
Quickly I thought about what made the thing go, gasoline and
spark. The gasoline was beyond my control. The spark--let's
see-
-can't get to the spark plug wires, but I can get to the magneto.
Two clips held the back end of the magneto on. Did I dare try to
steer the thing with one hand at the speed I was going, while I
leaned over and tried to take the mag apart with my other hand?
Why not try it? If I fall, so what? I was going to fall anyway.
And I just might succeed. It was my only hope, I had to succeed.
So I did it. I took the mag apart and it stopped. And that's
the way this motorcycle story ended, just one city block short of
down-town Hamlin.
A few years later I bought myself a good used motorcycle. It was
an Indian Scout and it proved to be the best little machine I
could ever hope to own. It could do everything but cook. We
kids had a lot of fun riding it all over Hamlin. On the paved
street I had as many as six of us on it at once, one on the
handle bars, two on the gas tank, me on the seat and two on
behind. Sure I was in the driver's seat; it was mine wasn't it?
I well remember one time I got on the little machine and went
down through San Angelo and on out to McCamey. The trucking
business was slow at that time and I wasn't especially needed at
home.
It began to rain as I rode west out of San Angelo. And as I went
farther west I ran onto a lot of new road construction. The road
became muddy and boggy beyond description, and the rain kept
falling. Of course you know you can't ride a motorcycle on
slick, muddy roads, nor in water on muddy roads. But you can
walk along beside it and hold it up and guide it while the motor
pulls it along. That is, you can until the water gets too deep,
like where it flows across the road in cement dips. That's what
I was doing until I came to one such place and I knew the water
was far too deep to try to cross. It was a real river of water.
I doubt that an army tank could have made it across. Anyway,
cars and trucks couldn't have crossed it. Come to think of it,
there were no cars nor trucks on the road. I hadn't seen one
during the last two or three hours. In fact, I think there was
only one person on that sloppy road between San Angelo and
McCamey--and he was a crazy kid on a motorcycle.
Some people might wonder why the boy didn't turn around and go
back. But I knew the kid personally, and I knew he wasn't in the
habit of starting something and then turning back. He never even
gave it a thought that he should go back. He was headed west,
and turning back wouldn't get him out west.
There was a railroad beside the highway. If I could get my cycle
up on the railroad, I could cross the creek on the railroad
bridge. But there was a ditch full of rushing water between me
and the railroad. The banks of the ditch were steep, especially
on the side next to the railroad. The water in the ditch was at
least waist deep and the ditch was twice that deep. So now what
do I do? There was just one thing to do, build a bridge across
the ditch.
I started walking along the railroad and finally found one loose
crosstie. I put it on my shoulder, carried it and placed it
across the ditch. It was just long enough. But I knew I
couldn't very well balance a motorcycle on one slick crosstie
without another tie for me to walk on beside the machine . Again
I looked all up and down the railroad but there wasn't another
tie nor a piece of lumber--not even a fence post. I finally
thought to myself, "So what? Let's not just stand here in the
rain doing nothing. Let's try it." We did. That is, we tried
it. We didn't make it, but we got half way across before I
slipped and fell.
Even before I hit the water, I glanced back and saw the
motorcycle leaning toward me and I thought to myself, "Boy, you
better hit that water on the run or that thing is going to be
right down on top of you." So I dived down stream. The rushing
water helped carry me from beneath the falling motorcycle.
I struggled to my feet against the angry current, blew muddy
water out of my mouth, brushed it out of my eyes and witnessed
the worst setback I had suffered in my life.
The bridge was okay, but the idea that I could balance me and a
motorcycle on one narrow crosstie was a complete failure. We
didn't make it across the bridge and the cycle didn't stay up
there on it. But I knew where my little Scout was hiding. I
could see one handle bar sticking up out of the water.
There was probably no other person within forty miles, but as I
stood there in that muddy water, I seemed to hear Someone shout
to me, "All right Boy, don't just stand there! Get busy and get
that thing out of there before it gets full of muddy water." I
fought my way upstream, stumbling over the cycle on my way to the
visible handle bar. I got two hands full of motorcycle and tried
to stand it up on its wheels, but it wasn't easy. And even when
I got it up, it was still mostly under water.
The banks of the ditch were steep and slick. It was hard for me
to stand, and the swift current was not friendly. I slipped and
fell a time or two. It seemed hopeless and the little Scout was
so heavy. And then I seemed to hear that inner voice again,
"Heave, Boy, heave! No, stupid, not back on the highway--up on
the railroad! First one end, now the other end. Tumble it over,
you can't mess it up any more than it is already. Okay, so you
did it. Now wash your nasty self up and get out of that muddy
water."
Now I was faced with still another problem, would the machine
ever run again? I doubted it, not for days anyway. But it was a
long way to anywhere from this place. If the motor wouldn't run,
I would really be in trouble. It would be too hard to push in
the mud. I had nothing to eat, there was not a house in sight,
and there was certainly no place to spread a blanket to sleep
through the night. So I had to try something, but what? While I
was trying to find the answer to that question, I got straddle of
the little Scout to sit and rest and think. Then, mostly through
force of habit, and with no faith nor hope whatsoever, I gave the
starter a kick. It didn't start but it sounded like it had
always sounded, not bad, not full of muddy water. I figured even
if it wouldn't start, another kick wouldn't harm it. So I gave
it a second try. It still didn't start.
Then I remembered that there had been times under normal
circumstances when it required four or five kicks to start the
motor. So with that in mind, the faith and hope which I had
rejected a short time before, were feebly creeping back into my
mind. And with that change in my attitude, I kicked the starting
pedal the third time. Well, you can't imagine my surprise when
it started and ran like a new cycle on that third try. I was
thrilled and overjoyed. I had always had faith in myself, but
until now I had never had that much faith in motors. After that,
I felt there was no place I couldn't go with a machine like that
working for me.
I crossed the big water on the railroad bridge and then got back
on the muddy highway. The next time I came to a dip with a lot
of water in it, I walked right through with that little Scout
puffing along beside me. When water came up over the exhaust
pipe, it kept puffing right along. Then water got up over the
magneto, then over the spark plugs, and the motor never missed a
shot. However, I watched closely to see that water didn't get
into the carburetor suction. Everything else was under water and
the motor still ran perfectly. She was a real little Scout. If
she could have cooked, I would have married her.
But years later when I finally did get married, I could easily
see that I would have gotten very little comfort from snuggling
up to a wet motorcycle on a cold winter night.
The road and the rain were the same all the way to McCamey.
There was an oil boom out there. Jobs were plentiful. Crime and
violence were apt to show up at any time. They told me a man was
shot down in the street the day before I got there. I couldn't
prove it if I had wanted to. They had already carried him away,
and I didn't look for the man who shot him.
I got a job with the Sun Oil Company and worked two days. The
hottest sun that ever hovered over a desert came out to greet us
early in the morning and remained all day. By midafternoon it
was unbearable. In those two days I decided that cutting grease-
wood to clear a right-of-way for a pipe line was not for me. I
would much rather do carpenter work. The wage for carpenters was
nine dollars a day; helpers got six dollars. I was not a
carpenter, so I thought it best to tell the truth. I signed on
as a helper.
They were just about to start building a bunk house when I went
to work. The carpenters came to me with a problem none of them
could solve. They knew how long to build the house and they knew
how many windows to put in it and they knew how wide each window
was, but they couldn't figure out how much space to leave between
the windows. They asked me if I was good at math and could I
figure it out for them. I was good, I could figure it out for
them, I did figure it out for them, then we went to work on the
house.
After working at that job a few days, I decided that carpentering
in McCamey was not to be my vocation either. I was a home-loving
boy and McCamey was not my home. A dollar a day in Hamlin
appealed to me more than six dollars a day in McCamey. In the
first place I didn't really want to work. I mostly wanted to run
around a little, see a little of the outside world and see how
other people had to work.
By this time I was running low on money and payday was a week
away. I had to decide quickly whether I wanted to work here or
go home. If I stayed, the company would advance me a little
money for board until payday. But my real question was, did I
want to work that long. I couldn't afford to get too low on
money and be forced to stay until payday, if I really wanted to
go home. It took about three minutes for me to make up my mind.
During that three minutes I counted my money and found almost
enough to take me home. My decision was final, I was going to
Hamlin. It was after work hours and the office was closed. But
they had my address and knew where to send my pay, come payday.
Again I counted my money. It hadn't increased at all. I
couldn't get all the way home on it, but I could get a lot closer
than I was at the time. It was 240 miles to Hamlin. I would
have to eat at least one meal and I would have to spend a night
on the road somewhere. I counted my money a third time. Would
you believe it, 95 cents, that's all. It seemed mighty small and
weak, considering what all I was planning for it to do for me.
But there was really nothing to worry about; I had a half-tank of
gas and I wouldn't need more than a quart of oil. With any luck
at all I figured I ought to get close to Sweetwater before I ran
out of money and gas and oil. And Sweetwater was only 45 miles
from Hamlin.
It was almost sundown and I hadn't eaten since noon. Any kind of
a little meal would take all of my 95 cents. So I went to a
grocery store and paid a dime for two eggs. Then I went out
back, cracked them one at a time and let them slide their way
down. They didn't make the best tasting meal in the world, but
our football coach had convinced me that it was a nourishing one.
By now it had stopped raining but the road was rough and the ruts
were deep. Travel was slow on a motorcycle. It was way after
dark by the time I got to Rankin, still 225 miles from Hamlin.
But I didn't like to travel in the dark so I camped for the
night.
I spread my blanket on the board walk by the front door of a
small store and went to bed. Before sleep overtook me, I thought
back on the last few days and on the beautiful night, and
especially on the tomorrow I was about to experience. Could I go
all day with nothing to eat? Sure I could. I had gone almost
that long before without food. I knew that only one of us could
afford to eat this time--either that little Indian Scout or me.
This time I had to take care of her first. She would take me
home, I could eat after I got there.
Next morning before the town's people began to stir, I rolled up
my blanket and was on my way. In San Angelo I drained my
pocketbook for gas and oil. On the road between there and
Sweetwater, I drained the Scout's gas tank. I pulled into a
filling station in Sweetwater with barely enough gas in my tank
to wet the end of a stick. I gave the man a check for a dollar,
filled up with gas and oil and got home with seventy cents in my
pocket--and mighty hungry.
When I got my check for carpenter work in McCamey, I found that
they paid me nine dollars a day instead of six. Maybe they paid
six dollars a day to those who couldn't figure feet and inches
between windows.
If you are beginning to get the idea that I was spoiled and
didn't like to work, you are half right, I was spoiled. But the
part about not liking to work is wrong. I liked to work; I was
just choosy about the kind of work and where the work happened to
be located. I had begun to realize that there was no need to go
way off somewhere looking for work.
Perhaps that realization was the reason for my riding a train to
Denver just to get a job washing dishes in a cafe. And a few
days later I went high in the Rockies to work at a sawmill. That
was knowledge working in reverse. I knew better; I just wanted
to see some more of the world. In the Bible we are told to get
knowledge and wisdom, then it adds, "And with all thy getting,
get understanding." I suppose the understanding was the
ingredient which was lacking in my getting.
Anyway, I landed at a sawmill 75 miles west of Denver, doing
whatever they asked me to do. It was cold up there; man, I mean
it was plenty cold! One morning it was 20 below zero, and that
was two weeks before Thanksgiving. The lumber mill was in a
valley between high mountains. During the three weeks I was
there I saw the sun a couple of times. It didn't rise over the
peaks until about nine-thirty in the morning and it set behind
other peaks at four-thirty in the afternoon. We went to work
before daylight and quit after dark. In the extreme cold, when
the wind was calm, as I walked through the cold air, it felt like
hot branding irons against my face.
One day five of us men were moving some cord wood and restacking
it in another place. The foreman came and asked if any of us had
ever driven a truck. I kept quiet because I had already seen the
old truck and I didn't want any part of trying to drive it in the
snow. It had solid rubber tires, no doors on the cab, and no
antifreeze in its leaky radiator. The earth was completely
covered with snow. I suppose there was earth somewhere under the
snow; however, I didn't see any of it while I was there. Besides
all that, there was not a level place within 50 miles.
Everything was uphill, downhill, or leaning to one side or the
other.
The other four men were eager to get out of the job we were
doing, so each one tried to tell the foreman that he would be
just the man to drive the truck. I kept my back to the foreman
and kept working while he talked to the other men. I thought I
might be lucky enough to escape having to drive the old truck.
But no such luck. The foreman came up behind me, tapped me on
the shoulder and asked, "You ever drive a truck?"
I could not tell a lie, so I told him, "A little." Then he and I
went away together to one old dilapidated truck.
That was another case of my getting more understanding through
experience and research, neither of which was intentional. Now,
you may or may not know that, in a snowy place like that, where
snow is forever, the snow in the ruts of a road is hard-packed
snow, and stacked up, and the snow on either side of the ruts is
loose, fluffy snow.
When driving on a muddy road, your truck is apt to slide into the
ruts and you might not be able to get it out. But on a snowy
road, your truck is more than apt to slide off the ruts and you
might not be able to get it back up on them. And if you get your
front wheels off the ruts to the right and your hind wheels off
to the left, you have just about had it, especially a truck with
solid rubber tires.
I was using the truck to haul crossties to the Moffat Tunnel.
The ties were to be used in the railroad through the tunnel. The
tunnel was eight miles long and would cut 25 miles off the
railroad distance through the Rockies. The railroad which served
our mill was curved one way or the other just about every foot of
its entire length. A 30-car train would have three engines
pulling it. And the three engines would not all be at the front
end of the train. That would have a tendency to pull the cars
off the rails on sharp curves. So, the engines were placed at
regular intervals between the cars. Even with all safety
precautions we constantly heard of derailments and the loss of
freight cars down the mountain sides. The trains had no time
schedules; they got there when they could.
I signed on for that lumber mill job at an employment agency in
Denver and rode a bus to the mill. Naturally I was not clothed
for that cold weather. But the bookkeeper at the mill told me to
go to the company store, get what I needed and have it charged.
That was before I started to work. That same night, in the bunk
house, one man was raving mad because they wouldn't credit him at
the company store. He and I had come out on the same bus and
were to begin work the next morning. I kept quiet about my
credit. I didn't want him mad at me like he was at the company.
One day the foreman told me to go to the tool house and bring him
a half-dozen picaroons. Now, I knew how many a half dozen was,
but I didn't have the slightest idea what a picaroon looked like
nor what it was used for. What's more I was too proud, or too
stupid to tell him I didn't know. So I went to the tool house
and looked at all the tools. I knew the names of all the tools
except one. I took him six of those, hoping they were picaroons.
I don't know what I would have done if there had been two kinds
of tools I didn't know the names of. Anyhow, he thanked me and I
went back to my other work.
In case you may not know, a picaroon is like a single-bladed ax
on a regular ax handle, except most of the ax blade is cut away,
leaving only a pick instead of a blade. The workman can thrust
the pick into the side of a log to roll it over, or he can stab
it into the end of a small log and lift the log into a desired
place.
Another time, the foreman came to me and asked whether I could
handle a horse. Again I could not tell a lie. However, I knew
he was speaking of Old Nig, and I also knew it would be a
pleasure for me to work for Old Nig.
Now, Old Nig was a black horse, and I'm not sure, but I think his
color had something to do with his being named Nig. This horse
had won first place in the state one year for his skill in the
art of log-skidding. That alone meant that Old Nig was a horse
to respect as well as to obey. I had watched a few men work with
the horse but had never seen one of them stay with him for long.
In fact, Old Nig changed drivers three times one day. He simply
wouldn't put up with anyone who cussed him or scolded him. He
knew more about the log-skidding business than most of the men he
had to put up with. He didn't need anyone to drive him nor try
to boss him around. Mostly what Old Nig needed was a man to work
for him, to pull his single-tree back when he backed up, so he
wouldn't step on it, and he needed a man to hook him onto the
next log. He had no hands or he could have done it himself.
If you scolded or cussed Old Nig, he would bite you, if and when
he got the chance. Or he might stomp his hind foot and switch
his tail just to remind you there was fire in that end of him
too. One man who worked with the horse was so afraid he might
say the wrong thing to him that he put a rein on his bridle and
led him around all day without saying anything to him.
So, when they put me with Old Nig, I already knew more about the
horse than I did about log-skidding. We got along well together.
What I didn't know about the job, he did. I just talked to Old
Nig as I would talk to you; that is, I would be as kind to you as
I was to Old Nig as long as you did your work as well as he did
his. I didn't care whether he had a bridle on or not. I didn't
need to lead him nor drive him. He knew where to go and what to
do. And without a bridle, he could see better how to do his
work. I would tell the horse when to back up another few inches
and when to get over to the right or to the left. Principally I
was his hooker-upper and his unhooker.
One day we were sorting a pile of logs, skidding the small ones
over by a pile of other small ones, the medium size ones by a
pile of medium ones and so on. But there was not a pile of large
ones on the yard. So I hooked Old Nig to a large log and told
him I'd have to find out where to put it. Then I went to the
office and asked the foreman where to put the big logs. In the
meantime, the horse took the log to the proper place but I didn't
know it. He was already standing there waiting for me to unhook
him from it. The foreman came to the door, pointed, and said,
"Put it up there where Old Nig took it. He knows where."
Thanksgiving came and went, and the sawmill changed owners. The
foreman told me that the new owner thought he could run the mill
with fewer workers. I was laid off. However, he was sure that,
if I wanted to stay around a week or two, they would need me. He
also told me that, if I wanted to leave, I had better go right
away because that place was often snowbound by this time of the
year and there was no way out until next spring. So again I
landed back in Hamlin with a little more knowledge of the outside
world and perhaps just a wee bit more understanding. I got a job
in Hamlin and soon paid Papa back the $22 he had wired me for a
railroad ticket home from Denver.
Papa was always kind to me in spite of all my failures and my
goings and comings. I respected him for it and was proud of him.
I was proud of Mama too, but there was an unspoken mutual feeling
of trust and regard between Papa and me that reached beyond the
bounds of a boy's expectations. The following poem which I wrote
while I was in Denver, expresses, in some small measure, my
feelings toward my father.
Daddy, if the Lord had made you
A companion fit for me,
If He'd made you noble minded,
As I think a man should be,
If He'd given you a courage
And a will to fight and win,
If He'd made your life a great one
From beginning to the end,
If He'd made you with integrity
Higher than the highest star,
Then He would have made you, Daddy,
Just exactly as you are.