Thursday December 23, 2004 Skinning a Cat in Texas City Texas in 1937

Thursday December 23, 2004 Skinning a Cat in Texas City Texas

I called my dad last night and my mom answered the phone. We exchanged pleasantries—she’s fine, were fine out here. I asked about my niece C and mom said she was still racking in too much in tips being a bartender and part-time white witch and tarot card reader at a local bar to find a proper job. C and mom have always had a very close relationship, with the two of them discussing books (would you believe The Satanic Verses; of course you would since I told you C is a white witch) as well as lots of secrets that the two of them share. I asked mom what the two of them discussed in their daily tete-a-tete but mom was not about to let me in on the exchange. “Talk to your father and kiss the babies for me.”

I had called my dad to check on the progress of several shipments of Christmas packages winging their way from various warehouses around the country to El Paso, Texas. They had all made the journey without incident. I had assuaged my Christmas guilt that retailers nationwide have collectively instilled in me as well as the rest of you out there. I asked my dad what was the name of the guy who first helped him jump aboard a freight car leaving Hattiesburg, Mississippi heading west. It was 1937 and my dad was 16 years old. His grandmother who he had lived with nearly his whole life had died and my father and his mother were not getting along and dad’s illegitimate father was not part of his life. There was a silence on the phone line and I could almost see lines of concentration streak my father’s handsome Aryan face, a legacy of his first generation, illegal-immigrant, German father, who was a well-to-do businessman in New Augusta, Mississippi.

“I just remember, now,” my dad finally said. “I can only recall that I just called him “Pops” and he called me “Son.”

“Just how was it you two met?” I asked.

I heard dad chuckle on the other end of the line. “I had jump aboard a box-car on a slow moving train,” he began, “and I thought I was on my way. About a half hour later the boxcar ends up at the same place I jumped it. The train engineer was just switching cars. I jumped off when the train came to a stop. Then I heard this voice call out to me. ‘If you're planning on going anywhere you better get yourself over here,’ it said. ‘Train’s about ready to take off.’ That was Pops and there was a good natured laugh in the way he said it that made me take to him instantly.’ I gathered up my bag—I had a couple of changes of clothes in it—and ran over to where he was and he showed me which car to jump on and the two of us got aboard, just about the time the train started moving.

“We must have been on that train a couple of days,” he continued, “before Pops said we should get off. We were in San Angelo, Texas. Pops said we should go down to a creek he knew close by where we jumped off and get cleaned up so we didn’t look like a couple of hobos. After we got cleaned up and changed clothes, we found to a café and went in for a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and coffee all for well under a dollar. We were still in the depression and things were cheap. I had some pocket money and Pops had money too—not bad for a couple of bums that had just traveled over 800 miles.

“As we were finishing our breakfast another man in the café approached us and asked Pops if he was looking for work. Pops said he was and the man asked Pops what he could do. Pops said he was a carpenter, plumber, metal worker, and he would have continued his list of skills if the man hadn’t cut him off and ask him: ‘you know how to skin a cat?’ Pops replied immediately, ‘that’s what I do best.’ The man said he’d take him on if he’d be willing to work in Texas City, Texas—down near Galveston. Pops said sure and the man said to bring me along—he thought I was Pops’ kid—and he’d find something for me to do.

“The job that the man needed done was clearing a swamp nearby a group of newly installed oil wells that had just been sunk. Part of the deal for the oil company's rights to drill was that the company had to clean up the swamp. That’s where Pops skill with a Caterpillar tractor came in. He had to control a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer with a shovel on the front and a ripper on the back. My job was cutting bush in the swamp with an ax. The swamp was cluttered not only with the natural debris that accumulates in a swamp, but by the discards of a lumber company who had come into the area and taken out all the timber .

“It wasn’t long before Pops showed me how to operate the Cat and in no time at all I was controlling the beast almost as good as the old man. He’d put me on the machine so he could take a break. On one of these occasions, I was operating the Cat and I felt this tap on my shoulder—you couldn’t hear anyone because of the noise the tractor made. It was the superintendent. I cut the engine and he asked where Pops was. I told him he was in the bush—meaning he'd gone to take a crap. He said he wanted to see the two of us in his office when Pops got back.

“I thought we had been found out but Pops didn’t seemed bothered. We went in and the boss asked Pops if he could put me on another Cat. It seems there was a deadline to get the job done and the oil company was told to step up the pace so I got my own Cat and we kept working. As soon as an area was cleared, the company had dump trucks coming in with topsoil and we would grade the dirt. We worked at that job for a good year and as we were finishing up Pops came down with yellow jaundice. The man looked like hell and he said he was going back to New Orleans and that I should stay on. I told him I’d come with him. He’d stuck by me and I wanted to stick by him.

“He was dead set on jumping a freight car back to New Orleans, but we had made a ton of money back then—I had saved over $1000 and I said we can afford to pay for a ticket for the train ride back. Besides he was weak and was running a high fever and two days in a boxcar wasn’t the best therapy for his symptoms. He relented and we rode back in relative comfort.

“When we got back to New Orleans, Pops had a room at a rooming house that he either owned or was in his family and I stayed with him the night. He was home or as close to home as he was going to get so I didn’t feel bad about leaving him and getting back to Mississippi. I told him I was going to buy a car for the 100-mile trip home. He gave me his phone number and said if I needed anything to give him a call.

“I went to a local Ford dealer in New Orleans and found myself a 1931 Ford Model A Coupe with the mother-in-law seat in the back outside the cab of the car. I told the dealer I wanted to buy the car but he didn’t want to sell it to me because I was only 17 years old. I gave him Pops’ phone number and he called and Pops said, ‘give the kid what he wants.’ And the dealer sold me the car for $300 cash. I drove it home and then bought myself a Philco car radio to go inside. I’ll never forget that car. I’ve been looking for one like it to buy just so I have it.” Yet another artifact for the Museum of Earthly Possessions collection.

Dad and I started rambling on about other things after that but I am determined to find a scale model of the Model A and have it sent to dad for a Christmas present. After we hung up I went to Yahoo shopping and found one, charged it on a credit card and had it shipped to El Paso. I’ll call him on Christmas to see if it made it.