Stories from my Father - Working

At the age of 93, my father set out to write down by hand some of the things that he remembered over a long and active life. My brother transcribed these recollections, and I share some of them with you now.

Early Days

When I was about 17 years old I often worked with a hay bailing crew.  I made the boast that I could tie out and stack back the bales from any horse power press, and I could.  But I had to have help when I got with a crew that had a gasoline engine press.  That hay would really slide through that press.  Worked with grain threshers a little but more with hay bailing.  Often drove a team hitched to a buck rake which pushed the piles of hay to the side of the baler. My job in the grain harvest was to follow the binder and set the bundles of grain into shocks which looked like small teepees.  There the grain and straw dried out to be ready for the thresher to come around.  Then pitchers would go into the field and toss the bundles into a bundle wagon, which hauled the grain to the thresher.

Sometimes, accidentally a pitcher would throw a snake on to the wagon, along with a bundle.  The man on the wagon placing the bundles in order might yell at the pitcher,  “You knew that snake was in that bundle.”  He usually was angry about it but the pitcher had a pitch fork and that was a weapon hard to face.

I have had a full circle with wheat, from plowing the ground to planting it to cooking and eating it.  I helped sow the seed, harvested the wheat, including working at the thresher that separated the grain,  hauled it to market and helped store it in the mill bins.  When I was 18 years old I went to work in a flour mill that ground the wheat into flour and bran.  The master miller that operated the mill taught me how to operate it and set it to make the right grade of flour.  One test to determine if the grain was ground to the proper fineness was to take a pinch of the flour and roll it between your thumb and forefinger.  If it felt like you were rolling a small worm you knew it was the proper consistency.

That mill also had a pair of large circular stones on which we ground corn for meal.  The Miller said the best corn meal was that ground just a tad course.  He said to grind it finer killed the life of the meal.  I think he was right.  The course meal made a better cornbread.  Wheat ground on the stone mill made real good whole wheat flour.  That too was best ground a little course.  I worked in the mill two summers before I became one of Ma Bell's telephone men.

Hazardous Duty

The flour mill at Godley also had a medium-size hammer mill that we used to grind oats and bundle maize for stock feed.  There was no clutch for that machine.  When one needed to run it, they placed the belt on the hammer mill then hand fed the other loop of the belt on the running driving wheel.  A very dangerous job if not handled very carefully.  One could easily have lost fingers or a whole hand.  When stopping, we pushed the belt off the drive pulley with a stick.  A little safer.  But you had to stand where that spinning belt did not slap you because it leaped off that pulley like a giant snake and could have slapped one down easily.  We did not have OSHA inspectors in those days.  A broken belt would writhe around at first like a fire hose.  One slapped me on the side of the face once and almost got my left eye.  Lucky boy.  But we did not consider that mill work dangerous.  “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

Once I went to the Hardcastle gin to go to work.  Tom Reynolds was poking around one of the gin stands and fussing and cussing.  I asked what trouble was.  He said, "I started the gin up early to check everything out and I ginned a cat in this stand."  Now, how to get all the cat parts out of that stand was a problem.  It took a lot of picking and wiping.  Completely ruined the cat.

More Mill Mishaps

In a mill and elevator complex all products are moved vertically by elevator belt.  Those belts were woven web belts about 8 inches wide, with metal cups pointing in the same direction, fastened about 1 foot apart.  Those belts ran over powered pulleys to whatever height in the mill they were needed.  Horizontal movement of products was made by continuous augurs rotating in close fitting troughs.  Downward movement was by gravity fall through chutes. I am explaining all this to show how easy it was to make a mistake in setting the discharge chute from any elevator belt to the wrong storage bin.  Some bins of course, contained wheat and others contained corn.  As you have suspected, I made some wrong settings and mixed wheat with corn a few times.  The mill had a machine that could separate the two grains, but it was slow.  Five minutes worth of mixing required five days of separating.  Needless to say, I kept the separator running most of the time.

Noises At The Mill

Possibly you have heard that someone can become so accustomed to even noisy machinery that they can sleep in proximity to such until the sound changes.  Any change in the noise will awaken them.  It is true.  I know of an example.  We had gotten behind on orders at the flour mill and Tom, the boss man had the mill operating at night also.  I was the in-charge operator at night with a man as helper.  About midnight an elevator belt broke.  My helper said, "Oh, let us not wake Tom because we can repair that belt ourselves".  I replied, "We cannot avoid waking Tom.  His house is just across the road.  We will have to shut the mill down to repair the belt and changing the engine rhythm to idle will wake him."  Sure enough, as soon as I went to the engine room to open the clutch, the sound of the diesel engine slowed.  Before I got back up to the mill floor, Tom was coming in the door asking, "What is wrong boys?"

Making Moonshine

While working in the flour mill I delivered large purchases to the customers with a Model A Ford truck.  There was a small country store near Acton that ordered a truckload of corn meal about every other week. Another country store at a community called Mambrino did the same.  Mambrino was about midway from Granbury to Glenrose.  Those stores were out in the boondocks.  Now that much corn meal would have given everyone in those areas cornbread for every meal including breakfast, and some left over.  I, naive as any 19 year-old would be, did not realize for years what they were doing with so much corn meal.  The stores were selling it to moonshiners to make corn whiskey.  My boss, no doubt, knew where it was going, but he was selling to stores and not to moonshiners.

Filling Station Flunky

 I once worked as a flunky in a garage in Itasca, Texas, for about nine months.  Sold gasoline at the pumps, passed tools to the mechanics, swept the floors and such odd jobs.  Sometimes a youth, or a black customer, would buy as small a purchase of gasoline as two gallons. Spent most Sunday afternoons picking up wrecks on the main highway that went through town.  It was only a two-lane road then.  The firm had an old Cadillac converted into a wrecker.  The a-frame pick-up device was powered by a hand powered winch.  The old Cadillac was a powerful smooth runner though.  Several of our best customers at the garage were black land owners who had large farms, well improved, in the community.  Also had customers from the cotton spinning mill that operated at Itasca. Where did I stay when not at work? I boarded with a step-uncle who owned the garage.  Washed my clothes at a laundromat.