About the time I was fourteen a company was beginning to make waves in and around Aurora. Texas Gulf Sulfur had done some preliminary exploration and had found phosphate in the ground up near the sound. It appeared to be under our whole area to the extent that another company called North Carolina Phosphate went into gear buying up what they could ahead of TGS. At this time my dad, who had been working for a meager $75 a week and running a farm to feed himself, wife and four kids, was looking at something of a boon to not only the community, but ourselves as well. In a couple of years things began to take shape as Rae, Brown & Root moved in and started construction of a refining facility. This facility was large and took two or three years to build. At the same time there was a crane that came together and billed as the world’s largest crane at that time. It was run off of diesel engines that generated electricity to run its motors. It was said to be capable of generating enough electricity to power an entire town. When the crane was finished it started digging itself into a hole to the level of phosphate strata about a hundred feet down, yet the boom was still visible about the top of the hole it was in. This process began before the plant was finished, but was necessary to get to the mineral out ready to be refined when the plant went into production.
My dad had built finished home wood workings as well as the houses they went in. Cabinets in that day were custom built into the house. Not ordered up from some factory prefinished and hung on the wall. He had also worked on the research vessel, the Dan K. Moore at the boat yard in New Bern. There he built cabinets and such into the boat out of teak and mahogany. A lot of scrape wood like this made its way to our house where dad used it to trim out cabinets in our house. He also made candle holders, picture frames and small pieces like this for dressing up the house, so our house had a lot of expensive what-nots and such. The largest piece he made was a bookcase about waist high for pictures and mom’s figurines. He did make a large wall mirror with a mahogany frame. But those days came to a close. He was about to enter the world of rough carpentry. Construction called. Around 1964 he went to work for Rae, Brown & Root. He was hired to run a radial arm saw shop. It’s a very dangerous saw. It had a 15” circular blade on it that was very versatile in cutting and ripping wood. It would also cut angles. He and another man named Shorty Henderson from down around Chinquapin ran this shop and cut all the wood to order for the carpenter crews who built the forms for pouring concrete. There was also another man named Mitchell. He was quite interesting. He was a practical joker and was always in trouble in a friendly sort of way. There was also Beck Banks and his brother Mack. Dad stayed close to them for many years. There was one other old fart who was their saw blade sharpener. I wish I could remember his name. I lived with him and dad for a few months when I worked construction several years later after I got out of high school.
To some, this may be boring, I don’t know, but this tells you something that affected the family. Dad was now making more money than we’d ever made before and it came to a point the farming days were over too, so far as tobacco goes. I have much to say about that in a bit. Dad had had many days of good, but many more bad days while farming. He could grow some of the most beautiful crops you could ever ask for in soy beans, corn, wheat and tobacco, but rain or the lack thereof helped make the decision to quit. Money from construction was paying off now. During his time with this first construction job he worked seven day weeks, many times ten hour days. We were doing well financially, but not without its heartbreaks.
My mom started selling Avon in the eastern part of the county. At this time my grandmother had been selling Avon to the western side of us for a few years already. When my grandmother started selling Avon I was about ten or eleven and during the summer when I wasn’t busy working in the field pulling weeds or chopping tobacco I would travel around with her on her route just so I could see some of my friends. This was a treat to get out and about away from the same ole, same ole. You know what I mean? Well, my mom got into it so she could make some extra money and during this time she was doing well. When I hit fourteen, I believe, we were supposed to get a Soil Bank check. That’s a check you got from the government for NOT growing a crop on your land. That was cool. We paid our house payment annually because farming wasn’t a weekly pay check, so we’d pay once in the fall. Now this may shock a couple of you. Back then that house dad built with his uncle and friend, Jamie , cost a whole $7500. The annual payment was around a thousand. I know I’m straying, but there’s a story behind this, so hang with me. Now this check was supposed to come in the mail and it became apparent to us that it was not on time and the house payment was coming due. We’d had quite a bit of rain around that time and some erosion had occurred in areas. The roads around our area were still dirt and could wash away fairly easy. When it came down to it, mom came out and said one day that the check had come as she was leaving for her day out selling and delivering her orders and she put it in her sales case she would take into each home to show the ladies the latest fragrances and such. Well, dad asked her for the check and she went to retrieve it and it was gone according to her. Eventually after much looking around she made one excuse as to where it was and then another. She finally said it was found, but it was at one of the customer’s homes that was on a washed out road and couldn’t get to her house. Dad was getting impatient and finally angry. Then one day I was working in the field when I was called to the house. It was puzzling to have that happen, but when I came in I found out why. Mom had run away. She packed some clothes and took the car and was gone. We had no idea where she was. She left a note saying she had done a bad thing. She had used to the money for something else and it was gone. Dad found out that her dad had been put in jail and she spent the money on him to get him out of trouble. Now I know, I said my grand dad was a Baptist preacher. His problem wasn’t he was a criminal. He’d had stomach ulcers and back in that day they did surgery to removed the ulcerated portions of the stomach. In doing so they prescribed a powerful pain killer. I would suppose it to be something like morphine or such. Remember, we’re talking the fifties and sixties here. He had become addicted to this drug and had been picked up driving under the influence of the drug and was jailed. So this is where the money went that was intended to make the house payment. Well, it took a couple of days, but dad found her at her sister’s house. He went and got her and brought her home. We were all there when she came in the door. She came to me first and wrapped her arms around me and began to cry uncontrollably asking me to forgive her for this indiscretion. Of course I did. She’s my mom. You love unconditionally. We managed to find money to make it through.
One of my dad’s problems around this time seemed to be that he didn’t trust banks for some reason. I may have some time frames crammed together, but let’s say from thirteen to sixteen were rough times in a way, yet we were making good money. The reason I know, you ask? Well, I was an avid hunter of squirrel and bird. I had my own .22 caliber single action rifle to give those small animals a fighting chance, because I was a pretty good shot. I was roaming in the woods one day during the time my dad was working ten hours a day seven days a week. He was never home, so I took off down behind the house into the woods to find my prey. We had long abandoned the pig pens that ran through the woods back there and the undergrowth was no longer there. The pigs had rooted out most of it, so it was mostly trees and the leaves on the ground around them. As I was walking a path I was about a couple of hundred yards behind the house and I came upon a tree that didn’t look right around the base. There were two sticks about the size of large cigars laying neatly parallel to one another. I though this odd, so I knelt down to size check this out. I picked up the sticks and under them were pine needles that were too straight. Now I was interested. I lifted up the pine straw and underneath it was the lid to a Duke’s mayonnaise jar. I lifted the jar out of its hole and I almost had a heart attack. It was full of money. Knowing dad was no where around I started counting. There was over $2200 in that jar out there in the woods hidden at the base of this tree. The old man had hidden it out there from mom. I guess the distrust of the previous event had prompted him to make sure his money was safe. Well, it was to an extent. At least until I found it. I went back and told mom about it and she got so excited. We made a pact. We would not say anything about finding it, but we would occasionally go down and slip a twenty out of it and go spend it on whatever was necessary. We had to be very sly about it. I’m sure dad would count it, but we also figured he would think he must have miscounted it if he was keeping tabs on his money. He never mentioned it for fear he would give himself away and we never mentioned it to keep him putting money in the jar so we could have something to slip out of it on occasion. He finally pulled all the money out at some point, much to our dismay, but we enjoyed it while he had it there.
One other thing I might mention about my driving skills is when I took driver’s ed at the age of fourteen and a half. Okay, I know it sounds like bragging, so let me put it this way. If it’s fact and can be proven, it ain’t bragging as I was told one time. I’m not a daredevil by any means, but I do push the envelope. I made an A on the course and we had to do the driving part during the early summer just after school got out. Mr. Alligood, the principal was the road instructor for the course. I was riding and driving with two other students. Jimmy Archbell and Billy Windley were opposites. I sided with Jimmy. He was a classmate. Billy was a year up on us. Problem was Jimmy and I both grew up on farms and as farming goes if you were a boy, you naturally learned to drive at a young age. Billy was the “city boy” of us three. He’d never driven a stick shift. Jimmy and I thought an automatic trans was sissy stuff. Mr. Alligood recognized our skill levels and worked with us on those levels. About most every day Mr. Alligood had to go to the home office for the Board of Education to deliver his paperwork and he would only allow Jimmy or myself to drive in town. It was a 30 mile trip to Washington from Aurora. The first day when Mr. Alligood came by the house to pick me up he put me behind the wheel of a white 1955 four door Chevy immediately. I backed out of the driveway, dropped it into first and popped the clutch, spun a little dirt and we were off. With that, Mr. Alligood said he knew I knew how to drive already, but to not be spinning the tires anymore. I obliged and kept a lower profile, leaving the cocky side of me at home. Jimmy and Billy were in the back seat and we headed off to Washington. This went on for the three or four days we were on the road and Billy always got the back road driving because he would lurch when taking off about giving us whiplash. He was a horrible driver. The one mistake I thought Mr. Alligood did was to take us up on the rim of the dikes around the clearing ponds for Texas Gulf with Billy at the wheel. He made him do a three point turn on the narrow one lane path at the top. This turn around reminds me of the movie where Austin Powers tries to turn the electric cart around in that narrow corridor. Billy would back up and the back end of the car would start dropping down off the shoulder of the dike and Jimmy and I are looking at each other to see if we should jump or not. Fortunately Mr. Alligood had those extra pedals to stop and clutch the car for Billy. We did succeed in getting off this little path safely although mildly shaken. Of course Billy passed the course, but was recommended to get more time in a car with a stick before he got his license. Jimmy and I were good.
