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by stories of experiences at sea. At age nine he expressed a desire to become a sailor. My advice to him was to become the kind of sailor I would have preferred to be had I had the opportunity he could have - become a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. He began to study the proper courses to prepare for that ambition. Two years later, in 1945 I purchased a thirty two foot lugger, installed a new engine, and named her the "SEVEN SEAS." If Bob was to attend the academy, he must learn a bit of seamanship. He was an apt student and learned it the hard way, but he loved it! I opened an old service station at Henderson Point and used it to advertise Our new business, "deep sea fishing". Bob and I enjoyed instant success, customers came from as far away as Chicago that spring. And when the shrimp season opened in August, we purchased a forty-foot trawl complete with line and boards. That year shrimp were bringing sixty dollars per barrel and we caught enough barrels to enjoy fantastic success along with our deep sea fishing. In fact our fishing party customers really enjoyed the shrimp trawling exhibition, besides we were catching bait, crabs and flounders. That first year we paid for the SEVEN STARS, her new engine, and we were well paid for something we both loved to do! And Bob was getting some great training in seamanship, not to mention character building. We operated the boat and service station for two years. One day two men from Gautier, Mississippi offered me thirty five hundred dollars for the SEVEN STARS. Fortunately I sold her to them, and also disposed of the service station at that time, because about a month later the 1947 hurricane devasta-ted the Mississippi Coast. That vicious storm destroyed our family home in Mississippi City and drove eight feet of water into my old service station. We rode out the hurricane in our home in Cuevas which suffered no damage. The morning after the storm I managed to drive to our family home by using back roads and finally reaching the beach at Cowan Road. My brother Merrill, his wife Nell, and their littla boy had ridden out the storm with my mother. At one time they were standing in water knee-deep in the kitchen, which was eight teet above ground level! Merrill and Nell had lost all of their belongings, and Mama did not fare much better. Merrill and his family had been given shelter in an old house in Mississippi City
and I learned from them that mother was being cared for at Gulf Coast Military Academy by an old friend, Mrs. Evans, the RN there. I drove down there with much difficulty and picked Mama up and brought her to our home in Cuevas, where we were privileged to have her for the next six months. At the time of the storm, I was service manager at the Sears store in Gulfport. But in the summer of 1948, my brother Jack came to see me and sold me on the idea of entering a "model food distributing business" with him in Houston. I resigned from Sears and went to Houston where we set up a General Foods, distributor business, the first of its kind in that growing city. We handled Sheffield cheese, Blue Bonnet margarine, mayonnaise, salad dressing, and Fleishman's yeast. Unfortunately, the business did not turn out to be the bonanza we thought, and after I had gone to the expense of moving my family to Houston, Jack sold the business and we returned to our home in Cuevas broke but happy.
After our return to Cuevas, a good neighbor who was with Sears, suggested that I return to the Gulfport store. Taking his advice, I went down next morning and was interviewed by the assistant manager who looked up my record and seemed very anxious for me to return. He agreed to start me at the same salary I had when I left, but asked that I keep his offer confidential. I returned to my old job next morning and was checking the current service calls when Harry, the head janitor, knocked on my office door. "Mr. Jim," he said, "I remember when you never had time for anything but work, but the boss told me to tell everyone to come to the big store meeting on this floor." I told Harry I'd be there. When I arrived, the assistant manager was giving a pep talk about the Sears birthday sale which began that very morning. "And now, fellow employees," he chirpped, "we will all sing "happy birthday, dear Sears", f couldn't take it! I retired to my office, picked up my belongings and headed for home. If I had to sing happy birthday to Sears to stay around, to hell with it!
In the meantime, Mother needed a place of her own. Mama's friend and next door neighbor for more than twenty five years, Mrs. E.D. Smith, had drowned in the hurricane and because they had been such close friends for so long, Mama refused to move back to our family home, even if we rebuilt it. We had been critical
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