An Adventurous Life

By Pat Nobles

An Adventurous Life
(Collection of Tales from Daily Life)
Life is never easy but specially so when your born in a boxcar in the center of a railroad siding in the Great Depression. Add in the fact the Dust Bowl is flooding the air your can hardly breathe to survive each day.
Being from the other side of the tracks is hard enough, try being from off the tracks themselves. Growing up is a constant battle to be accepted and finding success.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781493103515

Pat Nobles

Axel Rail A child of the Depression, Axel began to write in Junior High School. His family were lifelong railroad people dating back to just after the Civil War. His education was Texas Public Schools and University Colleges. Newspapers were the first area of exposure to the public. The 1960’s were his magazine days working for the pulps. Western and Detective magazines received his stories. The people of this time period have been his interest. Collecting stories has been rich in subject matters that make his work especially acceptable to the public.

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Copyright © 2013 by Pat Nobles.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 11/19/2013

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER ONE

C hildress, Texas lies in the corner o f the Texas Panhandle, where the border turns from a straight line into one following the Red River toward the east, along the Oklahoma boundary. The Fort Worth and Denver Railroad also follows the river to Fort Worth, where the stock pens await the cattle being shipped points north and east, along with the tons of equipment and foodstuff being shipped by farmers and manufacturers.

On the western outskirts of Childress, occupying a site on the railroad siding is a boxcar that serves as living quarters of Clarence and Ida Mae Nobles, my mom and dad. Dad is a foreman of a steel gang that is in the process of being moved to Magenta, Texas, north of Amarillo. The gang is made up of Anglo and Mexican laborers living in boxcars furnished by the railroad. The car has stacks of bunk beds connected to the sides of the cars. There is no electricity, only coal oil lamps scattered throughout the car. When the need arises for a bathroom break, the man goes to one of the two three-hole toilets beside the tracks.

Their meals, two a day and a sack lunch at noon, is made by my mother and her helper. Mom is paid to cook for the crew, requiring rising at four, seven days a week to cook breakfast of bacon or sausage, ham sometimes, gravy, eggs, biscuits and jelly, and coffee or milk. While the Gandies, that’s what the crew is called, meaning dancers, eat, mom and her helper make the sack lunch for each of the men. The gang, made up of 50 to 100 men, requires helpers to hasten the completion of work.

The sack lunch is cold biscuits with ham or bacon, an apple or orange, cookies, and, during the season, a peach. Water is the liquid. Because the year is 1933, there is an abundance of hobos riding the rails. Mom likes to use her washtub, a large iron pot that she cooks our clothes in to get them clean, to cook a sack of pinto beans in it. She then gives out a tin cup of red beans to any hungry hobo along with a biscuit. This assures her of a continuous pile of firewood for the cook stoves and other needs for the cars.

We have two cars: one for Mom and Dad and one for Shirley, my sister, and me. The cars were about five miles from downtown Childress. They’re wooden and hot in the summer and cold in the winter. At times, Mom uses newspapers to fill in the gaps between the lumber on the sides to help keep the cars free of too much dust. The cars have a ladder to get in and out, having to experience a continued expectation of grimy hands when using the steps.

Clarence sent fifty cents and an ad to the Fort Worth Star Telegram newspaper in 1927 stating, Wish to correspond with woman of good manners and character. He used his address in Hartley, Texas. The letter was read by Mom in Ballinger, Texas, and for the next two years they exchanged letters. In 1929, Dad purchased a new Ford and drove to Ballinger to meet Mom for the first time.

The pictures can’t hide the excitement they felt, and it was evident that they were meant for each other. After three days, Dad said, You going home with me? Ida Mae replied, I don’t have anything to wear.

That’s no problem. I can buy you a dress.

They were wed in the courthouse by the justice of the peace. It was the best dress she’d ever had. She was the eldest of twenty-one children in the family. She spent her time taking care of the youngest of the children and expected to do the laundry and most of the cooking. Her world was work and seldom any play. Grandmother had eighteen children, and because of a wagon turning over on the way to a gin, she was the recipient of three other children from a cousin who died in the wagon wreck.

Ida Mae wore a pair of overalls covering the new dress until they got to Chillicothe, Texas, where John and Martina Nobles lived. Removing the overalls just down the tracks from the section house assured her she’d be at her best in her new dress when she met her new in-laws.

Years later, the day before he died, Clarence and Ida Mae were married for sixty years. Who said long courtships were necessary for a successful marriage? Dad knew Mom for only three days of personal contact with two years of letter writing.

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The day is the third of October and its six o’clock in the morning. Dr. Fox, the railroad doctor, has parked his new black Ford just at the edge of the track. The car is black because that’s the only color Henry Ford paints his cars. Dr. Fox’s a thin man with glasses. In his right hand, he carries his black bag. Dad holds the screen door and door open, reaching out to take the doctor’s bag as he climbs into the car.

Dr. Fox nods to Dad as Dad removes Fox’s overcoat. Fox rolls up his sleeves and turns to Mom who lies watching him carefully. Her face is covered with sweat, and she makes no attempt to hide the pain I’m causing her. Dr. Fox makes a blowing expression and breathes through his mouth. Mom follows suit and grips the edge of the bed as contractions come swifter and swifter.

Helen, one of Mom’s friends and helper, enters from the second car and sits a pan of hot water on the small table beside the bed where the coal oil lamp sits. She smiles and bends to wipe Mom’s face.

Dad occupies the rocker at the end of the car and holds Shirley in his lap. Shirley’s eyes are as large as saucers as Mom cries out and I appear for the first time in the world. Dr. Fox cleans Mom up, checks to see if I have all the right equipment, and, with a few strokes, turns me into a Gentile.

Dr. Fox departs, leaving us alone with the wind whistling around the car. Dad doesn’t go to work that day, helping feed the three of them. Mom’s helper leaves to start making sack lunches. The men have to make do with a cold breakfast of bacon and biscuits. Red Carnie, Dad’s helper, takes the men to work into the roundhouse where they have to replace some ties that are showing wear.

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John Nobles, my dad’s father, is a lifelong railroad man. His wife, my grandmother, Martina, came from Poland by wooden sailing ship. They live in a section house, proving he’s been around long enough to have seniority and a choice job.

Tillery, who they named me after, was a county measurer and minor political official. He’s a county man, people say when they introduce him. He’s well recognized because of his disability. The day he was born, the midwife dropped him, catching him by an ankle and pulling his leg apart at the knee. She left and never told anyone about the accident, leaving the baby to cry for hours with the pain of his damaged leg.

Tillery grew up in the presence of women because of his damaged leg. When they moved from Tennessee, a rumor followed saying the move was one of protection for the young man. His father, Will Tillery, was a Civil War veteran. People say the off spring got all the good looks from his dad. Will died in Arkansas in a Confederate veterans home.

Mom was welcomed with open arms by John and Martina. The two parents were in fear that their oldest son might be of the roaming persuasion and disappear again like he did when he was in the seventh grade. He dropped out of middle school and vanished for a year and a half. No one was ever exposed to those months, and he never revealed where he had gone and what he had done.

Clarence appeared one day, older and taller with a certain aura about him that said he’d grown in several ways. Father John hired him on the section crew, and Clarence had become Father John’s pupil in railroading, discovering how to lay a curve, building a line of track, and all the minor problems required to keep a train track in top-notch operating condition. Clarence soon came to the attention of the supervisor and the head office in Amarillo.

Clarence was what many women looked for in a husband. Number one, he had a job with the railroad, something that was looked upon as a sure sign of stability and success. Before the Civil War, most men were day laborers and handymen. The professionals were doctors, lawyers, store owners, etc. Family clans had many men employed by the railroad after the Civil War.

The railroads continued to be an opportunity for any man wanting to find employment because there was a need for more railroads. The country had rails running from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, and they needed limitless manpower for the railroads.

Dad made twenty-five cents an hour during the Great Depression. He didn’t work every day, just a day on and a day off. On Sundays, he walked the line searching for ties that needed replacing and rails that might be in need of something special.

Every freight train was a magic carpet for hobos looking for work and the chance to send money home if they found a job. It’s not common knowledge that hobos were mostly younger men, men in their teens and early twenties. Men who were most times sent out to look for work because it was one less mouth to feed at home. The Works Progress Administration soon found work and a place to sleep and eat for the hundreds of thousands who didn’t have a place to do either of those things.

Once Mom was sufficiently recovered from my birth, we hooked the car on a train and saw it being pulled west toward the setting sun. Dad, Mom, Shirley, and I climbed into the 1928 Ford, drove to the edge of the highway, turned north, and, reaching Highway 287, made a left turn and followed the train to Amarillo.

CHAPTER TWO

M agenta, Texas, lies about twenty-five miles northeast of Amarillo. Cheyenne Creek runs just west of the railroad tracks with a two-way bridge over Red River to the north. When we first arrived at the site, there were no boxcars on the ground, just a siding for the bunk cars, our two cars and the cook’s car, and two three-hole outhouses under construction.

Around the location lay the LS Ranch. I soon got to know the cowboys who worked the ranch because they were continually stopping for a cup of red beans and coffee from the cook’s car. My impression of what a cowboy should be was formed during those years, from 1933 until 1941. The years 1933 until 1938 left an indelible stamp on my mind. I began to gather memories when I was five, mainly because it was the year Shirley and I went to school. School was several miles away in Tascosa, Texas.

Tascosa was the site of Cal Farley’s Boy’s Ranch, dedicated to the development of boys with no home or badly in need of guidance from a responsible adult. Farley was a celebrity who lived in Amarillo. He owned a tire store and was noted for his professional presence in the world of wrestling. He was a big man with a big heart, deciding he could help those boys who were on the verge of crossing the line of honesty into the world of petty crime and all its environs.

He decided a working ranch would be the perfect tool to help guide the boys, leading him to the owner of the LS Ranch to get the use of the old courthouse and church located on the land. At one time, it was decided that Tascosa was destined to be the county seat. Two things happened that saw that idea go out the window. They discovered there was not sufficient water to support a town and the Fort Worth and Denver would not be building a depot there.

Farley told the LS owner he’d like to use the courthouse and church to build a ranch to help boys. The old church became the one-room schoolhouse with Mrs. Smith as the only teacher. There was a blackboard, two potbellied stoves, and a bucket holding the drinking water for the entire classes.

I was five and already knew my letters and could read simple books. My mother taught Shirley and me how to read. Shirley didn’t care for the time it took to read, and it was my greatest joy when we went into Amarillo for supplies and Mom took me by the Amarillo Public Library to check out as many books as I was allowed.

As the months went by, the cars were moved from the tracks to a location by the side of the tracks. We had no electric lights and no radio. With the cars on ground level, it made for easy access getting in and out of the car. I didn’t have to worry about getting the chamber pot out of the car without fear of spilling the contents or getting any of the stuff on me.

Those were the chores Shirley and I had to do every day. I mostly had to help clean the cars and take care of personal stuff. My least favorite thing was helping Shirley clean off the table and wash and dry the dishes. When I grew enough, I was given the chore of staking out the milk cow we had. That entailed finding good grass someplace near the cars but far away from the railroad tracks to keep from getting the cow hit by a train.

I looked forward to #3 coming from up north. #3 was a passenger train and supplied us with mail and blocks of ice we could put in our icebox. The icebox was our main comfort because it allowed us to have iced tea and extend the life of the meat we were given by the cowboys. Mom still had to cook for the steel gang, and when she felt like it, cook us a meal at our cars.

#3 would slow down just enough to drop fifty or twenty-five pounds of block ice onto a canvas. We had to help keep the block ice clean and prevent it from melting too quickly on the way to our cars. I had a red wagon we’d put the ice in, and I’d run as fast as I could to pull the wagon to the car where Mom would put the block in the tin-enclosed area of the icebox. My reward was the chipped ice broken from the ice when it had been dropped onto the canvas. My friends, the other families, had been arriving from time to time, enlarging my number of playmates and affording me to appear generous when I decided to share the chipped ice with them.

Dad spent from dawn to dark working on either the tracks or the bridge across the river. Mom was not only the cook but also did jobs to help Dad with his keeping track of hours, supplies, and other business required of his being the gang foreman. Mom and her helper, sometimes three women helped, were busy making pies or some special item for the meals.

Once Shirley and I completed our chores, I was off into the countryside along the sides of the railroad. No boy ever had such freedom. I spent hours without either sight or sound of another person. I had my books and my mind to fill the endless afternoons.

I’d come upon an animal and lie watching him for as long as he wanted my company or until he grew suspicious of my presence. I soon discovered that I knew what the track was, a rabbit, a skunk, an armadillo, a ground squirrel, or a coyote. My first experience with death was with a diamond back rattler and a cottontail rabbit.

The outcropping was small but large enough for the snake to be under it. Evidently the rabbit had been unaware of the snake and darted into the shade to discover the snake too late. The snake struck quickly, and the rabbit was injected with venom that quickly stopped its heart. Just as I found the site, the snake was slowly swallowing the rabbitt. The head of the rabbit was in the snake’s mouth, and the snake’s body was slowly rippling, pulling the rabbit a few inches at a time, into its stomach.

Because of my position, the snake was unaware of my presence. It took the snake over twenty minutes to ingest the entire rabbit. Once the rabbit was completely in the snake, a large bulge that was the rabbit gave the snake a deformed body. I thought it looked like a tube with a bulge in it that would soon cause the tube to burst. The snake wiggled back into the shade of the outcropping and was soon asleep. I left and met a cowboy who was looking for strays. I told the cowboy about the snake but he didn’t seem to really care. After we parted company, I came to the conclusion that the cowboy didn’t care because he probably had seen dozens of snakes eating rabbits or other such animals.

At supper I told Dad about the snake. His reply, You be careful with the snakes.

Mother— Shirley interjected with heat in her voice. Why don’t you just tell Pat he can’t go looking for snakes, she added with real authority, If they bite him, they’ll more than likely die.

That’s enough, Dad said with a smile.

I didn’t see another snake eating anything that summer. In fact I didn’t see another snake