Neches and Orange Streets

As I recall it my mom and dad got a garage apartment on Neches Street when I was about 3 and then a duplex on Orange Street when I was four. While we were living in the garage apartment on Neches Street, the kids in the main house had a ride-in metal airplane with push pedals. I craved that toy.

I don’t have a photo of the Neches Street house or apartment.

My dad was working at the Magnolia Refinery – maybe two miles east of where we lived. I recall going with mom to pick him up after work and watching him come through the tunnel under the railroad tracks.

There was a medical clinic there that took care of our medical needs. This was 65 years ahead of Obamacare. Just across the tracks was the bathhouse where he showered at the end of the work day before coming home.

The rest of the story: In 2008 I was engaged to teach a course for AspenTech to some Exxon Mobil engineers at the Mobil Refinery in Beaumont. Sometime between 1950 and 2008 Exxon Mobil had repurposed the bathhouse into a classroom. So I taught the course in the building that had been the bath house 60 years earlier.

I think this is the Orange street duplex where we lived in 50-51. We lived in the right hand side duplex. While we lived there, every day, after work my dad had me sit in his lap and he read the funnies (comics) to me. My dad had a distinct aromatic hydrocarbon fragrance from working in the refinery. I recall it most from sitting in his lap, but still could detect it when I hugged him 30 years later. This instilled a desire to learn to read.

When Terry was gestating and mom and dad were thinking about names, I suggested Terry from the comic strip Terry and the Pirates. Terry, you can thank me for your cool name. We did a lot of family stuff on Sunday afternoons after church with either the Thomas family or with my dad’s family. We occasionally took the loooooong drive north on 96/69 to Kountze to see my dad’s parents (25 miles or so). About 10 miles south of Kountze there were two features on this highway: an odometer calibration range with mile markers every mile for 5 miles and a Burma Shave poem. Burma Shave advertised by posting cute sayings on a series of red signs along a well traveled route. For example: Many Make/A Big Mistake/Rely on Horn/Instead of Brake/Burma Shave It was cool to locate and read the signs aloud as we traveled. My grandma Bea Golden was a good cook and we had some excellent meals – her biscuits would win a prize. And my other grandmother, Nora Barrett, could cook as well and also made super biscuits. My mom was a good cook, especially pies, but could never replicate her mother’s or mother in law’s biscuits.

One thing I remember consuming as a child was cornbread in iced tea with lots of sugar.

My grandfather Jim Golden was famous for saying, ‘Use less sugar and stir like hell!’ I recall Linda’s uncle Gus Thomas having visited once and having cornbread and buttermilk. Yaaarrrggghhh! He also mistook dog food in the ‘fridge for corned beef - oops! We were not wealthy and almost never ate out. We at a lot of rice and beans, which I love to this day. Another famous weekend trip was to go to either Bolivar or to extend the trip across the ferry to Galveston. The ferries were free then as they are now, but the new ones are much bigger and faster. If we went to Bolivar we would stay with friends in a beach cabin. These beach cabins were a far cry from today’s insulated, air conditioned, multiroom, carpeted Taj Mahals. Then they were one large room on stilts, with a kitchen area and closed off bathroom and lots of cots and day beds lining the walls. The windows were covered with shutters and screens. We pulled up the shutters and prayed for a cooling breeze.

This is me, probably between Nora and Edith on a sandy beach. The grocery and dining establishments in both Bolivar and Galveston had slot machines. Gambling and prostitution were rampant then and bribery flourished to keep law enforcement at bay. This all got cleaned up in about 1961 with the James Commission. I was just old enough at that time to understand what was going on, but too young, thankfully, to have participated. I just remember asking for nickels for the slot machines and being told emphatically, no. I guess there is another tale to go along with this. When I was about 7 or 8 we were driving south of downtown Beaumont near the port and there was a tent set up with a sign, Nude Women. I asked my mom what Nude Women were. She told me that they were rude. My mom was so cool.