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when I was letter perfect in each. I have always been proud of that accomplishment and proud to be a Mason. And proud of all the good Brothers I have known! I enjoyed the two years I lived in the town of Bay St. Louis, having made many fine friends there, men and women of character and culture, many of whom still live in that community. In 1927, we, the bridge workers saved the town from being destroyed by fire. Sterling Barrelleaux and I held a nozzle of one of the fire hoses, fighting a fire that was consuming a large automobile garage. When the stream of water came close to a couple of tanks of oxy-acetylene, someone hollered, "My God! don't put the water on those tanks;" Sterling yelled back, "What the hell's the matter with you - are you afraid to die!" I never knew a man with more guts; he was fearless. The following summer, (1928), I got a job for my brother Jack, diving to recover tools accidentally dropped overboard by bridge-workers. He did retrieve many lost tools and really earned his pay. He was seventeen that summer.
I left the bridge job in May, 1928, and went to work as Mate on the tug BUSTER.Our job was to move all barges and ? construction equipment from Bay St. Louis to the New Orleans job. Our employer, the W.W. Moore Company, had the contract to raise the bulkhead on the Pontchartrain lakefront eight feet higher, covering the distance from the New Basin Canal to the Industrial Canal. This would reclaim, when completed, many acres of land for the Orleans Levee Board, acres that later became Lake Vista and several other valuable and beautiful residential subdivisions. This was accomplished by pumping sand from the lake bottom to the area behind the bulkhead we built.
One June day I was using an air-drill to drill holes through the new piling into and through the old bulkhead in order to anchor them before the 3 x 12" planks were bolted into place. The new superintendent, Bill Chavenelle, yelled to me. I was standing in waist deep water. It was cold and I had struck a number of eighty-penny spikes in the old bulkhead which made it even more difficult to get the drill-bit through. I stopped drilling and looked up at him standing on the old bulkhead about three feet above me. Chavanelle sneered, "It looks like I will have to hire a mechanic that really knows how to handle an air-drill!" I had heard of his
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reputation, and no doubt he was familiar with mine. I threw the air-drill onto a nearby barge, climbed out of the water, and replied, "I'll tell you what you can do,you two-bit so-and-so. Hire one of your relatives and make him kick a percent of his wages to you, and give me my time! I refuse to work for a rat!" Chavenelle was a big man, but like a lot of big men he never had any guts. He wouldn't give me a time-slip because he did not want it to look like I had been fired, as he well knew how I stood with Bill Moore. Besides I was ready to fight, and he knew that too. I walked down to the field office and told Joe Collins, the office manager, I wanted my time. Joe was surprised;he knew lhad been with the company more than a year and he tried to talk me out of quitting but my mind was made up.
Next day I walked down to the docks. The first ship I came to was the POINT MONTERA. I went aboard and asked the second cook if he knew of any vacancies. He said he had overheard the first assistant engineer say they were one oiler short, so I looked him up. I signed on to Vancouver, British Columbia, other west coast ports and back to New Orleans. It was not exactly what I wanted but it felt mighty good to feel the roll of the sea under my feet again. And to see the Panama Canal once more.
Our first port was San Diego, then San Pedro . I caught a car to Los Angeles during my time off. What a city I As I walked through Pershing Square I almost got raped by homosexuals, and finally had to punch one of them on the chin before they stopped accosting me. For some reason I have never figured out, homosexuals were attracted to me even though I held all of them in the utmost contempt. Why would any man want to be seduced by a fag when he could have a lovely woman? From San Pedro to San Francisco, through the Golden Gate, then up to the Strait of Juan de Fuca into Puget Sound and to Seattle, Washington. After four days in Seattle we sailed up the sound through the Can Juan Islands to Vancouver, a very beautiful Canadian city. From here we sailed down the west coast to the Columbia River and up the river to Longview, Washington, to load lumber at the Longbell Lumber Company.
A bit of hard luck befell me at Longview. I was struck on the left shoulder by a large timber when a cargo hook broke. The captain
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