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when Mama had purchased a lot in Edgewater Park some ten or twelve years before the hurricane (we had felt she had no business adding to her burden with more obligations), but now we advised her to sell the old home and build a smaller cottage on her lot in the park. We told her how much safer she would be two blocks' from the beach. Allen Kerr sold the old home for nine thousand dollars and Jack, Merrill and I built a new home for her with our i own hands and.tools on her lot in the park, 206 Balmoral Avenue. According to Jack's figures the new home cost eighty four hundred dollars, which left six hundred dollars to install a new range, refrigerator, and attic" fan. Because Merrill and I were both broke, we drew fifty dollars per week salary. When the house was completed Merrill and I went around Mississippi City collecting those pieces of furniture that we had salvaged from the storm and which Mama's friends had been kind enough to keep for her. Miraculously, three beds (we purchased new mattresses), two china closets, the living room set, several chairs, a fine old bookcase, and a lovely library table were spared! Mama had spent the last six months, before we cdmpleted her house in Jack's home in New Orleans.
My brother Harry was now well established with Schlumberger. He was in Midland, Texas, when we completed Mama's house. I was happy about Harry's success in his profession because I was responsible for his being employed by Schlumberger. He had returned from the war when I was in the deep sea fishing business.
I recall he was all fired up to enter the retail liquor business in New Orleans, make plenty of money and get married to a pretty thing he had fallen for in North Carolina. I told him he had to be out of his mind, that he had spent four years and one summer getting a degree in petroleum geology and would never be happy until he proved himself in his chosen profession. I advised him to goto Houston, call upon all the major oil companies first, then call on Schlumberger, and take the best offer. He had not crossed the Bay bridge before I called the personnel manager at Schlumberger and told him that my kid brother wbuld be in to see him in a few days and if he did not hire Harry he'd lose one of the best men Schlumberger ever had. One week laterHarry jumped out of his car, hugged me around the neck and said, "Brosie, I'm a
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Schlumberger man!"
After we moved Mama into her new home, Jack offered Merrill and me a job building houses in New Orleans. He had already built several and now wanted to expand his operation. I had no other prospect at the time and accepted. Merrill declined but joined us some months later. I spent a year and a half with Jack under an agreement which called for ten percent of our net profit. I handled the engineering and supervision for some fifty houses and two buildings during that time. Because of the prior knowledge I had of construction, I was able to contribute a great deal to our operation by working with our carpenters. I moved Fran and the twins to New Orleans for about a year, but Bob lived with Mama in order to attend Gulfport High School. He worked for me as a helper for several weeks that summer, then he and Mama went on an extended tour, they saw Carlsbad Caverns, the Grand Canyon, and wound up in Coos Bay, Oregon, for a visit with the Bill McDonalds, my sister and Bob's three cousins. They went fishing and Bob caught a thirty-pound salmon and sister Florence canned it for him and shipped it home.
I resigned from Jack's construction business in late 1950. My earnings amounted to twelve thousand dollars gross in eighteen months that I was associated with him. After taxes and living expenses, half of my earnings were deposited in a Gulfport bank when we moved back to Cuevas. Jack, Anna and little Ann spent Christmas with us in Cuevas that year and it was a most enjoyable one. In January, 1951, I learned that the CB base in Gulfport would be reactivated so I made application for a job. In a few days I was called to work in their Construction Equipment Department and was charged with the responsibility and the care and maintenance of all heavy equipment.
The Civil Service System under which I worked proved to be a farce. Salary was based upon the number of men one had charge of. I felt that it should be reversed - the fewer men one could operate with, the more one should earn! I had twenty-four men, but my superiors kept the pressure on me to hire more. One day I told the commander I had enough men, that I was having trouble keeping them busy. He told me to hire more mechanics because we would need them. Each week at a meeting with management, I
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