Stories of AgingHumanizing Aging through Shared Stories

“I grew up right here in Galveston. I was born at 5112 Avenue R ½ and born at home. 1933. It was totally different than it is now. There was a lot of room, a lot of empty lots and stuff, which everything is about filled up now.

My childhood wasn’t much. A nickel looked good, I’ll tell you that. Once in a while I found a nickel on the ground—man, buy me a candy bar about THAT big.

We didn’t have much. My mama washed clothes for people. She washed on them old boards—had the rub board and the big pot outside. They’d bring their clothes over and she washed them all by hand. We always had enough to eat, though. My mama could boil water and make it taste good. 

I had two brothers and two sisters. I got a sister that’s eight years younger than me, and that’s all that’s left; the rest have gone underground. My sister lives up in San Antonio. I hardly ever go up there but she comes down once in a while. She’s a lovely girl.

You have to understand, things were totally different then. You didn’t have much, but everybody was in the same boat. You don’t think about it as poor—you just lived, and you were glad for what you had.”

"I worked myself so many years, running around at midnight in the dark, all by myself. No light. And I’m still here to talk about it, so somebody had to be with me. I figure the good Lord took care of me. Sometimes you get lost in the fog. It gets pretty foggy in Galveston. You’d think you’re going that way but you’re going the other way, so you have to be careful. My brother, he was older than me, always worried about the fog. He’d say, ‘How the hell we gonna get home?’ And I’d tell him, ‘Don’t worry, brother, I’ll take you home.’ And I took him home many a time.

Making nets—you cut it out like fresh material, then you cut your pattern. It comes in the mail, comes in these pieces with two hundred twenty-five hundred meshes. You sew it all together. It’s a trick. I got a bunch of needles in there, plastic needles that gotta go through the mesh. You got to know what you’re doing or you ruin it.

Sometimes you hang up on a wreck and you can’t get it up. One time I let all the cable out, tied a buoy to the cable. I left just a couple wraps on the winch, put the buoy, let the rest of it out, and I started moving. Oh my goodness, we got loose. You do that a million times and sometimes you tear it to pieces. That’s how it goes.

I used to leave the house dark and come home dark, seven days a week.

A lot of people helped me. They taught me how to respect others. I watched how other people acted, and I was young but I could understand. I’d see somebody who was a nice guy with a good personality and I’d say, ‘I’d like to be like him.’ So I just kind of took a little on myself.”

“She was a lovely girl. Carol. She was sixteen when we got married and I was eighteen. She died about seventeen years ago. We were married fifty-six years. We had ten children. Twenty years difference between the first and the last. The first three were eleven months apart.

If it wasn’t for people giving us their kids’ clothes when their kids grew up, we’d never have made it. People would say, ‘You want these clothes?’ and we were glad to get them.

I’d leave the house dark and come home dark, seven days a week, whatever it took. These hands—they kept me going all them years.

Every Monday one of them cooks and a bunch of them come. They cook, and I’m always eating and drinking a few highballs. They’re good to me. I’m thankful I still got my head on pretty good. Some people my age—you see them all screwed up. But I thank God every day I can still get up and take care of business.”