Freezer

My freezer is almost empty. Yessss! I have worked hard on eating all the stuff in it. I can’t throw food away. When you open a can of Cream of Mushroom soup and only use half of it, do you throw the rest away? NOT. How about black olives, tomato sauce, or enchilada sauce?

I label the keepers with a Sharpee. My Cool Whip containers look like graffiti. For example, on one I wrote “Soup” and drew a line through it and wrote “lasagna” and drew a line through it and wrote “squash casserole.”

One day I looked into that over-stuffed mystery hole and thought, “What’s in there?” I pulled it all out and inventoried it. For several weeks, I kept up with what I took out and what was still in, noting it on a legal pad. I found recipes that let me cook my inventory - and now there is one bare shelf!

My sister told me that when I’ve begun inventorying my freezer and working on a Quality Control system, it’s time to get a life.

Tomato Spatters

White clothing attracts tomatoes like sirens lure sailors. Even for careful people. But I’m not one of those, so I really shouldn’t speak for them.

Whenever I get near anything with a SMIDGEN of tomato in it, my clothes send radar that unlocks a force field that sucks up tomato sauce. You can bet the farm on that. The whiter the fabric, the stronger the suction.

If I could just patent that, I’d be a rich mouse. I would design a force field that pulls cheese to mouse fur. Or snow to hot playgrounds. Or rain to parched lawns. Or tape to politicians’ mouths. 

BOILERMAKERS UNION

I was working at the shipyard making liberty ships in Brunswick, Georgia. Then this fellow that I got to knowing that was working in that yard got to talking about going to Oakridge, Tennessee. They were building something up there. Nobody knew at that time what it was, but they were paying humungous wages. I didn’t have any ties, and I was ready to go anywhere. So we went to Oakridge, Tennessee.

We left Brunswick, Georgia, and drove on down to Oakridge, Tennessee, to look for work. They were building the atomic bomb at Oakridge. The only way you could get out there to the project was to ride a bus. The security was so tight they wouldn’t let you drive. So we rode out there. They wanted to charge us something like $350 or $450 to join the boilermakers union. It was a closed shop.

I told them I hadn’t ever heard of a union in my life, and I didn’t know nothing about paying nobody to work. All I knew how to do was work, and if they wanted me to work I’d go to work, but I wasn’t paying nobody nothing.

He said, “Well you ain’t going to work here then.” So we left.

DOWN THE WAYS

Another of Grandpa's stories from WWII:

They were building liberty ships on the river at Brunswick, Georgia. I signed up for the welding school, and I came out as a steam pipe welder. Then I got on the ship and working. Each place where a ship was built was called a “way.” There were six ways - six ships. You had six way foremen, all under one superintendent. They were real conscious of manpower hours that it took to build the ship. There was an incentive for each foreman of a way to get his ship built for less manpower hours. They had a great big sign in front of each ship - and a scoreboard with a big tabulation of the manpower hours every day. We were building Liberty Ships for the war - 576 feet long, and I believe it was sixty feet wide and forty feet deep.

I did well with welding. They made me a welder foreman of a crew, which consisted of twelve to fifteen men. I had worked on this one ship to completion. The last thing you do on one of those ships is weld the drive shaft just inside the fantail, which is just a few feet from the propeller on the inside. You take two brackets and weld them to the crankshaft and weld it to the shell, so when that ship hits the water it won’t screw that crankshaft backwards and twist the drive shaft. So you had to weld it right inside the fantail.

And so the quarterman, which is next to the foreman on the ship, told me, says, “Send your crew on down to the front and you do this last welding. Weld these brackets in yourself,” because he knew I was the best there was. And so I stayed on and welded it in.
When I got through, I cut the lead loose and threw it off the side. That was the last thing to be done, and I was making preparations to get on the platform and get on off the ship.

Well, they were having ceremonies up front to launch the ship, and the quarterman and foreman were still on there. The foreman told me, says, “Why don’t you just ride the ship down the ways with us and get off at the dry dock.” And I said, “I ain’t got any permission to do that. My crew is down front.” I was supposed to go down and pick that crew up and go to the next ship. Those manpower hours would be charged against that ship then, you see. But the quarterman was there and he ought to have known.

But he told me, “You might as well stay on the ship and ride down there. Just as soon as we hit the water, the tug will pick it up and push it to the dry dock. You’ll be off in a couple of hours or an hour. And you can come on back and move your crew over and pick up your orders. Ain’t nobody going to miss that. You might as well ride down with us.” They had permission. I didn’t.

So I rode it down the ways. Of course, by the time it got down the ways and got in the water, it was getting dark. It sat out there and it sat out there. I didn’t have a flashlight anywhere, and it pitch black dark. They had live speakers over the yard you could hear ten or fifteen miles. In other words, when they made a page over the loud speaker, you could hear it in every part of that yard, every building, every inch of that yard, you could hear it.

After a couple of hours they went to paging my name. “G. W. Clark report to the foreman of the foremen immediately.” Every damn fifteen minutes it got more urgent. I was out there on that ship and couldn’t get back to shore. It was way into the night when they finally docked that thing.

They finally docked it and I got off in a dead run. Back then I was in perfectly good shape. I could run ten miles if I needed to without stopping. I ran into W. C. Dobbs’ office. He was supposed to have done been off of work. And he was steamed, boy. I’m telling you.

Of course, I’d told the foreman over on the way, I’d said, “What in the hell am I going to do?” He’d pumped me up, you know. Said, “Well, whenever they dock this thing, just go over to W. C. Dobbs and run in the office. Jump right up in the middle of the desk and have a damn fit. That’ll cool him off.”

Of course, I didn’t do that, but I went in the office and God almighty knows! He was madder than a damn junk yard dog. He lit in on me. I want to tell you, what he told me won’t fit to tell nobody. He said, “I’m going to suspend you for ten days. I’m going to learn you a lesson. You weren’t supposed to go down that way.”

I tried to tell him, but he didn’t want to hear nothing. He was boiling to the rim. So I finally got a word in to him. I said, “Mr. Dobbs, if you suspend me ten days you might as well suspend me ten damn years, because you won’t never see me no more.”

He said, “You get your ass out of here. I don’t care if you never come back.”

So that was the end of that game. The next morning I went right over there to the auxiliary yard. They were building auxiliary tugs, and they needed welding bad, and especially with the qualifications I had. I just walked right in the office the next morning and told them what I wanted to do and they gave me a badge and signed my card. And I went right on out there and went to work, just like I had been working there all the time.

CHURCH CAT

A story about a church cat is going around on Facebook. No, it’s not Mojo! He’d be more of a cat from hell! It needs a home. Here’s the prayer Pastor Heather posted:

“Dear God, You dropped a kitten into our laps today at church....well...ok...not our laps but a window well is close enough! This beautiful, clear-eyed baby needs a home! Send someone quick before she thinks the lady's bathroom at church is her new abode. Cell phones work well, Lord. Have them call me. .... Amen."

Being a church cat, the kitten was named John Wesley. But that’s a guy name. What if it’s a girl? Pastor Heather wrote, “He is so adorable (or maybe she, but I think he).”

The church secretary responded, “We did the flip over for a label trick - this is a very small kitten yet! The label was in pretty small print for these old eyes to read with any conviction!” Hey, this is starting to get deep!

I have a feeling the kitten didn’t have good potty habits, in spite of living in the lady’s room, because the next plea on Facebook was: “Cat adoption - one in particular - please God send someone who can take Wesley to raise …. He is crated and living in the church office hallway today.”

I do hope someone leaves church Sunday with this kitten. I’m curious to hear the sermon!

MAD CAT

Yes, he's very mad at me. Just now he came and rubbed my leg, so I went to the sofa, gave him some treats, and invited him to jump in my lap. Instead, he turned his rear end toward me, jerked his tail into the air a few times, then sashayed to the window and sat down with his back to me. I think I’ve been mooned by a cat!

CAT FOOD REVISITED

There it lay on my white carpet. Gross. Why oh why do cat food manufacturers put dye in cat food? They either don’t have cats or don’t have white carpets. This time it was a very wet hairball!

After a brief discussion with the cat, I rounded up my cleaning fluid, brushes, paper towels, trash bags, and dust buster.

After round one, I left the supplies on the landing of the stairs where the object of my wrath lay. (No, not THAT object of my wrath. He was lounging comfortably somewhere else in the house. This object of wrath was the stain itself.)

The landing being directly in Mojo’s path to his litter box, I was hesitant to leave the stuff there. He’s terrified of things that look peculiar to him. I didn’t want to haul those supplies back and forth on the upcoming scrubbing rounds.

Praise the lord! It worked out fine. Mojo carefully snuck up on the cleaning tools, sniffed around, and squeezed past them. What a trooper!

GOOD PAY IN GEORGIA

GOOD PAY IN GEORGIA
LEAVING FOR BRUNSWICK, GEORGIA

Story told by Pop about leaving home at age 15 to work in the shipyards in Brunswick, Georgia.

While I was still in high school, I started living in an old house that belonged to the state. I stayed with Luther Glen. He was a bachelor and he was a state dairyman. The state gave me a hundred percent maintenance plus I think it was $25 a month or something like that - which was big money then. And it was great to even have a job.

Things went to changing. The war came on, and that put everything to moving. The farm superintendent at the blind institution, Mr. Boone, lived next door to me. One of his sons, Roy Boone, had gone to Brunswick, Georgia, to go to work with J. Jones Construction Company, which was building Liberty ships on the river there that came into Brunswick. He came home one Christmas talking about the opportunities that were down there and how much money they were paying and all that. He and his wife were going back after Christmas.

There was a big demand for people. I was small, you know. At that time I weighed about 118 or 120 pounds, real slim and trim. And there was a big demand for welders working on ships because they had a tremendous amount of close places to get that bigger people just could not get. And you had to have a whole lot of skill at the same time.

I didn't put any significance on being the assistant dairyman for the state. So I asked him, I said, "I'll just go back down there with you."

He said, "You'd be a natural. They've got a welding school down there."

I told him, "I don't know how to get down there or nothing."

He said, "You can go back with me." He and his wife had an apartment down there.

So I went home and told Mamma just right off the bat from one day to the next that I was going to Brunswick, Georgia. She had a pure damn conniption, and said I wasn't going. I said, "Well, I am going."

So I rode back down there with Roy Boone. In fact, I drove down there. I drove the whole way. That was part of the deal. And the furthest I had ever been away from home was the distance I could ride on a bicycle. Other than going to Wake Forest to visit my aunt and uncle. And once I rode with my cousin's husband Jeff to Greensboro.

Lord, I thought I'd gone slam to the other side of the world. Wrote Mamma a letter trying to remember all the towns we'd been through. I thought it was something great. There was umpteen of them or more, and I finally gave up on that part of it.