Where Were the Good Old Days?

By Tom Nolen

The book is the majority of the life of the author. It begins with the early thirties and proceeds to 2010. It includes entry of Mr. Nolen into three different branches of service. Then into the many professions that followed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Aug 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466945142

Book preview

Copyright 2012 Tom Nolen.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Printed in the United States of America.

isbn: 978-1-4669-4515-9 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-4514-2 (e)

Trafford rev. 08/02/2012

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Contents

Chapter One    The Early Years

Chapter Two    The War Years

Chapter Three    San Antonio

Chapter Four    The Army

Chapter Five    Civilian Again

Chapter Six    Back in the Military

Chapter Seven    Back on the mainland

Chapter Eight    The Insurance and limo Years

Chapter Nine    The Trucking Industry

Chapter Ten    Computers and Solar Plant One

Chapter Eleven    The Transition

Chapter Twelve    At Home in Flo Texas

Chapter One

The Early Years

I was born during the Great Depression. No one can say that there were any good Old Days, then. My father, Harvey Albert Nolen was one of the fortunate ones who sometimes had a job. He worked for the AT&SF Railroad Company. His job was to ride the rails on a flat car and look for wide or narrow spots in the rails. And when he found one he and his crew would fix the bow and then go on to inspect more rails. Of course this was not a daily work but he was on call to work when needed.

At times earlier he had been a farmer and never had anything he could call his own except a truly devoted wife and four young children. His was a life of moving from one tenant farm to another always looking for a better place to live and better land to till. We lived in the rural area of West Texas where the dust bowl days were not too far in the distant past. The sandy land there was dry and rain only occasionally relieved the situation.

Once a month he would load up the wagon with what he could gather in the way of produce and go into the big city of Post to market what he could, to pay for the groceries to last another month.

Post was a unique little town with a colorful history. It was originally established by the cereal magnate C.W. Post and was the first industry to be located in the barren portion of West Texas. According to tales of the past Post came to the community with a plan and contacted the local ranchers. The plan was that he would buy some land and build his cereal factory there where he thought he would be able to utilize the corn grown in the area. The story goes that at the meeting with the ranchers, he was more successful than he had hoped, in that he was given an offer that if he would buy some land that one rancher would double you that is, for every acre that Post bought the rancher would put in twice as much. He did buy, the rancher did give land and the town of Post was born. Post constructed the mill and built housing for the workers to live in and they were off and running. Voila!!! Post Toasties.

The city of Post and the farm where Dad was working was located just at the bottom of the Caprock Escarpment located twenty-nine miles southeast of Lubbock. The land is dry and sandy but loaded with rocks. When it rains the rain forms gullies or washes so the land is very hilly. Iron ore permeates the ground making the water less than perfect for drinking and even less suited for washing clothes. Mrs. Stewart’s Blueing was the accepted product for making clothes white again. It worked well with the homemade soap made with hog lard and lye along with potash from the ash under the family wash pot. He was the third oldest of a family of six children. His parents were Thomas Jefferson Nolen and the real boss of the family, Georgia Ann Teal Nolen. Although much research has been done to find the name of my great grandfather Nolen, we do know that he was descended from William Nolen who was born at Albemarle Virginia sometime before the Revolutionary war. In fact he (William) participated in the revolutionary war and was given 200 acres of land in Tennessee on which is now located the town of Nolensville. Family tales told through the generations has it that Thomas Jefferson Nolen’s father was killed during the civil war. This cannot be verified by any of the traditional means such as bibles or census or even war records since the name is not known. There was one brother named Will Nolen who was just a young man when somewhere in north Texas he was on the way to a nearby town and observed cattle rustlers in the process of stealing cattle. Although he went wide around them and avoided any conflict, he mentioned it to the people with whom he dealt in town and returned by a direct route believing that they would be finished and gone by that time but instead they were lying in wait for his return and ambushed him. There were no other siblings.

Thomas was just a young man when he was thrown off a horse and became disabled to the extent that he was semi-crippled. He could walk but it was with a limp. Most of the active work then fell to his wife Georgia and she managed it well even with six children. She died suddenly at the age of 53.

Harvey Sr. was a hard working man but the times weren’t right and no matter how much he did there just wasn’t a chance based on hard work. His education level was about third grade. He married Ola Josephine Harris and they had an additional 3 children to go with her one from a previous marriage. The children were Rose Marie Vest, Patricia Louanna Nolen, Harvey Albert Jr., and I was the baby of the family. Mother has told me many times that Daddy sometimes had me to fill and light his pipe so he could relax and smoke. I don’t personally remember that but I don’t doubt it. I started smoking at the age of seven when Mother was married to Marvin Pennington and his two sons both smoked. I didn’t quit smoking until age 32 at which time I was in college and heard some gruesome descriptions of the human anatomy after smoking. At the age of 35 Dad succumbed to what was referred to as stomach trouble. He was buried there in the Post cemetery. I can recall the day of the funeral even though I was only three at the time. His casket was in the living room of the small house in Post. The house was located next door to a grocery store owned by Roy Baker. There was a Roy Baker in the family but I don’t know if it was the same one. One day while playing by the store I saw a wagon approaching the store loaded with sugar cane. I knew that sugar cane was good for munching on so I went over to it and got one of the stalks that fell to the ground and peeled it and chewed the pulp for a delicious sweet taste. I later learned that the person driving the wagon was my uncle (by marriage of his brother Mick) Ardell Clarkston. That was the only time that I remember seeing him. Another memory of the house by the store was when Granpa who lived with us was left in charge of a pot of beans (one of the more frequently served meals of that day) and whether by mistake or lack of knowledge I don’t know but he allowed the beans to overheat in the pressure cooker and the pressure rose to a point where the cooker exploded and there were beans imbedded in the ceiling of the kitchen.

From the little house next door to the store I remember we moved to a big two-story house still in Post but across town. The move was accomplished in a wagon and team of horses driven by a man called Mr. Lee who made a living out of delivery and moving people with his wagon.

My memories of that house have dimmed over the years but I remember that I didn’t like the big old thing and I refused to go up the stairs. Although it wasn’t a modern house by any stretch of the imagination, it did have sidewalks in front of it and since it was near the grammar school the children passed by on the way to school and home. I remember there was a little boy next door who complained to me one day that he had a piece of gas in his foot. I certainly did not know how to remove a piece of gas so I just stood there. I later found out that he was saying a piece of glass but couldn’t yet speak clearly.

We didn’t live long in the tall two-story house but moved soon to what we referred to as the tincannon house. I don’t know who Tincannon was but the name stuck I remember that this was a modern house in that it had an electric light, although it was only in the kitchen, and only one was there. It had gas piped in and a cook stove that ran off gas. I was unfamiliar with using gas and one day I turned on the gas while there was another burner turned on. The gas filtered over to the burner that was lit and there was an explosion and I was burned but not badly. Mostly I was just scared and my hair was singed. It also had gas heaters in at least two of the rooms but in spite of the amenities it still had an outside toilet. One day I had gone out to the toilet and was returning to the house when I noticed a cow in the back yard. I attempted to chase it out of the yard and in doing so I stepped into what I thought was just a hole in the ground. When I removed my foot from the hole it was covered with blood, the hole was lined with a tin can. I had thirteen stitches in it