Texas City Tales: My Youthful Adventures in the 40’s and 50’s in Texas City, Texas

By William L. Slager

This book is intended to describe in a humorous and insightful way, youthful life in Texas City, Texas in the 1940's and1950's. It is a nostalgic look at things we did, games we played, and lessons we learned when we were children and teens. It is somewhat autobiographical with little vignette type stories, with associated morals for todays children and parents. This book contains a lot of stories about all the wonderful things that children in those times got to do, which todays children hardly ever do, and illustrates how and what we learned about life, the universe, and everything .
Mostly we children learned that if we tried just a little bit we could easily do it ourselves, and if we used our imaginations and initiative we could solve just about any problem, and we learned in short, at an early age how to take care of ourselves.
Parents who hover about their children are actually smothering their child to death whether they know it or not. Sooner or later a child is going to have to learn how to interact with and deal with the real world on their own. Children are naturally a lot smarter than their parents think they are and can take care of themselves a lot, lot better then most parents can ever imagine, even in predator situations.
The sooner a child is allowed to figure it all out for himself , the sooner he will become the successful kind of child that every parent desires and will be proud to say "That is my child !".

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543970746

Book preview

© 2019 by William L. Slager - 29565 words

All rights reserved.

Print ISBN: 978-1-54397-073-9

eBook ISBN: 978-1-54397-074-6

No parts of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

Table of Contents

Forward

Texas City

Becoming Aware

Hurricane of ‘43

Playing Doctor

First Grade

Blue Norther

How I Almost Drown Bubba

The Sea Captains Tin Barn

Mudballs

The Mad Bulldog

Jimmy Menges Horses

Playing Games at Billy’s

Kick the Can

Cats and Kittens

How to Catch Crabs

Learning a Valuable Lesson

How to Play Knee Football

Stingray

Turtles and Other Pets

Fireworks

Presbyterian Church

Ice Cream Treats

Flying Kites

Texas City Explosion

Why My Sister Cathy Got A Spanking

Weird Plants

Childhood Diseases

Flag and Her Puppies

Tessa’s Easter Chick

Gulf Coast Weather

Halloween in Texas City

Saturday Matinee

Texas Rangers

First Kiss

Texas City Junior High

Galveston Restaurants

My Lost Model Airplane

My Confession

Little League Baseball

Listening to the Radio

Blue Suede Shoes

Inside the Eye

My Paper Route

The Great Spark Coil Caper

Ham Radio Fun

Family Vacations

Boilermaker’s Helper

Dickinson

Golf Clubs

My High School Girlfriend Marcella

Cruis’in in Dickinson

Working at the Nursery Farm

Real Deal Barbeque

San Jacinto Inn

Thirtieth High School Reunion

Parents Aren’t Pals

Forward

I had a wonderful childhood in Texas City, Texas . My parents were very loving, and took the time to guide myself and my sisters in the right directions while we were growing up. Perhaps more importantly they also gave us the freedom to discover as much about life as possible for ourselves.

I was born in Dayton, Ohio but during World War II my parents and a lot of other families moved to Texas City to work in petrochemical plants which were essential to the war effort.

In those days most wives, including my mother, did not have to work because their husbands made a sufficient amount of money so that they could stay home full time. They took care of us children and did all the other household chores like cooking, sewing, and washing clothes, and perhaps taking care of a small garden. They let us children do just about anything we wanted as long as we were not underfoot.

Mostly we were told to go out and play with all the other children in our neighborhood of which there were a considerable number. Just about every family had two or three children and they were all about the same age, because all the parents were also all about the same age.

This book contains a lot of vignettes about all the wonderful things that children in those times got to do, which todays children don’t get to do, but in my opinion should be encouraged to do.

We children learned that if we tried just a little bit we could easily do it ourselves, and if we used our imaginations and initiative we could solve just about any problem, and we learned in short, at an early age how to take care of ourselves.

Texas City

Becoming Aware

In Genesis we find that when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge their eyes were opened and they knew good and evil. Previously they were naked, like wild animals, but after eating from the tree they became aware that they were naked and clothed themselves.

This bible story is profound and tells us that humans were once innocent creatures, but we evolved and became self aware at some point in the past.

I was my mothers first child. My childhood nickname was Jiggy. My mother later told me she named me that because I was always kicking and jigging around in her womb as she put it. I guess, for some reason I must have wanted to get out of there in the worst way.

I still have memories of various events in my childhood starting at about age three or four. Perhaps my earliest memory is a Christmas in Ohio when I was about four and my parents told me that Santa was coming and that I had to put all my old toys in a bag so that Santa could take them away and give me new ones. They were teasing me of course, but I didn’t know it, and they put my toys in a white pillow case and took them out of the room . This upset me and made me cry. Then after we had opened all the new toy presents on Christmas day, we discovered that in fact Santa had not taken my old toys away but had left them behind because I had been a good boy.

Because of the war, my father, who worked for Monsanto Chemical company, was transferred to Texas City where they were producing chemicals to make synthetic rubber for tires. However, because of the wartime crush there was no housing available in Texas City at the time, so we had live at the ZigZag Inn in Galveston until some houses could be built. I was five years old then and remember the funny shape of the ZigZag motel building , which in fact was rather zigzaggy with every room at a different level than its neighbor and all the rooms went up and down in a funny way on the side of a small hill.

My parents finally got a two bedroom house at 718 13th Avenue North in Texas City and we moved there. Our house had modest furnishings but we had a nice radio. It was one of those fancy ones in a wooden cabinet and if you opened the top it also had a 78 rpm record player inside. The knobs and radio dial for the radio were outside on the top front of the radio cabinet.

I remember distinctly the day that Franklin D. Roosevelt died because I had been listening to a story on the radio, when they interrupted my program, and the announcer said that the President had died and they began to play solemn music. I ran in and told my mother who became upset. I was seven and a half years old at that time.

My strangest memory at about that time however, was when I was seven years old. I was standing in our living room. Perhaps I had been listening to the radio. I don’t know what triggered it, but I had the sudden thought,

This is not a dream. This is real.

I remember this very distinctly because it was sort of a surprise to me. It was as if I had suddenly realized what was happening. This event still surprises me today , because I wonder how a child of seven could have such a profound and unusual thought.

That is undoubtedly the day that I became self aware.

Hurricane of ‘43

During the war my parents and our family lived at 718 13th Avenue North in Texas City. In those days you could not get weather news on the radio , because the Germans who were operating submarines in the Gulf of Mexico at that time, would also get valuable weather information. So there was a general blackout on weather news.

In July of 1943 however everyone noticed the solid hurricane type grey cloud bands coming in from the south. Old-timers said, There’s a hurricane coming in.

At that time, my father worked at the Monsanto Chemical plant which was at the south end of town, and it had very strong brick buildings. My parents decided that they would just drive there and we would all stay at the plant until the hurricane had passed.

Mom covered up the stuffed furniture in our house with thick wool blankets to try and protect it in case the tar paper and gravel roof on our house got blown away and leaked.

The house we lived in was up on concrete blocks about twenty four inches above ground to protect it from hurricane flooding. By the time we started to leave however the wind was blowing pretty hard and the water was already a foot deep in the front yard. Dad pulled the red Mercury up to the curb in front of our house, and we all waded out and got in the car to go to the plant.

As we drove along to the plant we could see boards and long pieces of roofing whirling through the air. We drove past what had once been a small two story apartment, but was now reduced to a concrete slab with only a tub and toilet sticking up from the concrete.

To get to the plant you drove east until you reached Bay St. which was an elevated road right next to the seawall that was supposed to protect Texas City from hurricane flooding. But it didn’t