"The K-Boys" 

I have a sneaking suspicion that the vapors rising from my coffee are intoxicating.  Through the haze, come thoughts of long ago.  A recent letter from Zack Zuber, a former resident of Lufkin, and now a retired teacher in San Diego, California, cued my memory processes.

Quoting his letter:  "Allen, I just happened to think of something I've always wanted to ask you about, but kept forgetting.  I think I remember your mother, Selma, telling a story abouta time when she was a girl, and there was a parade of Ku Klux Klan members in downtown Lufkin.  My recollection of the story is that she somehow recognized one of the hooded men in the parade and called out his name:  'Why, Momma, that's Mr.__________!!!'  Of course,

there was an embarrassed  silence from her Mother.   Selma was totally naive and uncomprehending about why there was such a fuss later.  My   question:  Is this something I just dreamed about hearing, or do you remember any such story from her?" 

Well, I advised Zack that he didn't just dream this one up.  Both my Mother and Grandmother have told the story many times.  In my seven plus decades, I've heard a few Klan stories, but have never seen them in action, except on television clips.

The last time I encountered their activity, was in a northwest Louisiana town around 1970.  I saw a large cross burning near the railroad depot. While making sales calls, a few days before, in that same town, I went into a store, and found no one there.  After a while, I heard voices from a back room.  In a few minutes, when no one came out, I left the store.    

I was drinking coffee later that afternoon when the storekeeper came over to join me.  He apologized for not coming out while I was in the store.  He said the "K-Boys" were having a serious meeting, and he felt obliged to remain in the meeting.  I muttered something about how it was always better to "call back  later" when my customer was busy.   Frankly, I do not remember ever calling back on that store.

 

 "Cop Com"       

 

The coffee vapors are rising from my cup, and I'm chuckling about one of my favorite memories of Lufkin.

You have to recall, in the late nineteen twenties, radio had not yet appeared on the local scene, and that includes police radios.  The only way for the police to communicate, was for the patrolman to find a telephone and call the station.  There were not a lot of phones to be found.  My home telephone number was two-five-nine, and I didn't know anyone with a four digit number at that time.

That leaves the question:  How did the police station get in touch with the walking patrolman?  And, the policeman did walk a beat.  There may have been one old touring car in use by city police, but not for regular patrols. And while the City Police Department solved their communications problem, I wouldn't exactly call the solution high-tech.

An automobile horn was attached to a telephone pole at the northwest corner of First and Frank streets.  The pole was just outside the Central Office of Palestine Telephone Exchange.  It is likely the horn was sounded

by a telephone signal from the police station.  It blew in a series of coded blasts.  The code directed the foot patrolman to either call the office by phone, or go to the area he heard identified in the coded signals.

This was state-of-the-art progress at the end of the roaring twenties, but it was a flawed remedy.  If your house was being robbed, and a neighbor called in a report, the police sounded their horn.  And, what do you think happened?   Well, the robber heard the alarm at the exact, same moment the foot patrolman did.  He calmly finished the job, and made his getaway.

 

''SOUTHERN NIGHTS''

 

 Sipping a cup and thinking of the old days in the town of six thousand, with a slogan borrowed from New York City, "The City That Never Sleeps".

Lufkin memories are a little hazy, like the vapor rising in circles from my coffee cup.At the age of 6, one of the most exciting events to occur at 314 Bremond, came just before sunset on a very warm summer night.  We were a family  of six, in a home owned by my grandmother.  In addition to this sweetest of hearts, was a gregarious uncle, my father, mother, younger brother, and this coffee-sipping old soul.  We filled a four bedroom house with the usual unattached facilities "out back".Around eight o'clock, "summertime suppertime" in East Texas, we began to hear feint sounds of music in the distance.  Take my word!  This was in indeed rare in 1929.  Radio was not yet available to the working class.

That's right!  No car radios, no jam boxes and no public address systems had been heard in those days.  On occasion, the high pitched sound of a neighbors phonograph could be heard, but, that night, the sounds we were detecting, were not those of the early record players.  The music was live, much closer now, and loud.

My little brother looked across the table at me, and we shot out of our chairs, and sent the screen door flying as we raced outside.  There, directly in front was a concert at curbside.  A mule-drawn wagon held a small piano, drums and two musicians.  Standing behind the wagon was a bass fiddle player and a chubby trumpet player.  Their style was, for the most part, Dixieland.  I had never heard music like this before, and perhaps they influenced my lifelong appreciation of jazz.  And, to be sure, I was impressed by the volume and clarity of live music.  It was loud.My grandmother said she had no trouble hearing the music as she re-entered the house to rob the cookie jar, our home bank. I remember asking her, years later, if she recalled how much she paid the band.  She knew exactly, saying she gave them every cent she had in the house, one dollar and twenty seven cents. To this day, I believe the longer you delayed finding money, the louder they played.  And, so, finally, you would ante-up, to send them on their way.  On return trips that summer, the band always stopped at the same houses on our street.  They knew where the music was appreciated, and where they had found money before.   

Joe Sent Me

 

Bootlegging was big in little old Lufkin. It was hard to know how the bootleggers made money.  Several men in our neighborhood made home-brew to supply all the beer they wanted.  I'm not sure whether home-brew is one word, or two.  I'll let Spellcheck deal with that.  But as big a home-industry as beer- making became in the early thirties,  home-brew should be one word, capitalized. Homebrew!  My gainfully employed uncle, insisting he would not  contribute to the Bootleggers, made his own beer at home.  This occupied a lot of his time, and nothing was spared to have the best equipment.  Since this was a time when refrigeration was not available, and everyone had "ice boxes", my uncle built a fine cedar ice box, and a fifty pound block of ice was added daily.  The iceman came each morning, with door to door delivery.  My job was to see that the ice was spread  evenly over the sparkling bottles of home-brew. I had another job to help with my uncle's nefarious business.  There were empty bottles to be cleaned, and I had all the supplies for this job in the back yard. The supplies included a small pile of builders sand and the lead pellets from 16-gauge shotgun shells.  That's a pretty intriguing combination, but each ingredient had its place in the scheme.   I was the one and only bottle washer.  The birdshot had been extracted from the shotgun shells by my uncle. These were in a small glass container.  I poured about three spoons of builders sand, plus the bb's, into each bottle.  After adding water, I vigorously shook thebottle to let the shot and sand polish and clean the inside.  Following a soapy wash and several rinses, the bottles were inverted in a wire rack and left to dry. 

My grandmother, our resident nurse, attorney, constable, and supreme court justice, did not approve of uncle's chemical experiments, much less his consumption of the catalyst. But uncle's defense, "everyone else is doing it", worked as well then as it does today.  I  recall her wry comment that the game wouldn't last long when Uncle found out that each bottle of beer was costing him twenty dollars to make. Anyone who consumed my uncle's home-brew, now has a legitimate right to sue for lead poisoning