Life At The Atchafalaya 2u1f1g

Life At The

Atchafalaya

Clarence J. Domingue

Copyright © 2013 by Clarence J. Domingue.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012923601 ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4797-6735-9 Softcover 978-1-4797-6734-2 Ebook 978-1-4797-6736-6

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CONTENTS

1 Journey To The New World

2 Change Of Occupation—Farming To Commercial Fishing

3 The Flood Of 1927

4 The Levee System

5 My Education

6 My GI Bill Of Rights

7 Sam’s Health Was Failing Fast

8 Cathodic Protection

9 My Duties Were Many, Lake Charles (1973)

10 I Returned To Erath, LA, And Tom Retired

11 Education Deficiency—International Correspondence School

12 Crawfish Season

13 Plans For Any Achieve Much, Eighty-Four Achievement

I dedicate this book to my wife, Delight, because she has been after me to put this information in writing for many years.

Also to my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, so they will know me better.

JOURNEY TO THE NEW WORLD

On October 28, 1778, the ship named San Ignacio de Loyola sailed from the island of Tenerife on its way to Louisiana and, on January 9, 1779, arrived at the mouth of the Mississippi River and settled at Barataria, Louisiana, in Jean Lafitte, the pirate headquarters. This is also the place where I was born—on either June 22 or 26, 1928—about 149 years later, the place where my people would return almost every year to trap muskrats, minks, coons, etc., and sell the furs. Also that year, my father, Jean Baptist (French for John Baptist), and his father made enough money to build a houseboat each; our dimensions were fourteen by twenty-six and cost $125, and it was made of cypress. I him telling the story many times. This was the winter of 1927/1928.

My mother’s maiden name was Louvian Adams (French for Adana), born February 2, 1901, at Gibson, Louisiana. Because she did not like the name Louvian, she translated the name to Lorena so that all her records would show Lorena. Her father was Theodore Joseph Adams Jr. My father was born on September 19, 1902, in Pierre Part, Assumption Parish, Louisiana. Mother’s people were some of the people who were exiled from Nova Scotia and placed in Maine by their people while others bought a ship and hired a captain to take them to Louisiana. However, he was not the best navigator because he sailed past the mouth of the Mississippi River and landed in Mexico, where they were arrested, kept captive for six months, released, and brought over land to Natchitoches, Louisiana. From there, they traveled by boat to New Orleans and on to Thibodaux, Louisiana. In fact, where the city of Thibodeaux now sits was the Malbroux plantation.

The name Malbroux is nothing like its origin name (her paternal name), which was Marcofif; today, Malbrough is spelled about four or five different ways. He went to Nova Scotia from .

Mother’s people were small farmers; however, all three of her brothers served: Uncle John-Howard and Horace. Horace and Howard were gassed while in and, I am told, received government pensions for the rest of their lives and also had small farms. Mother lost a brother, Simon McKenly, at age eighteen to a pullboat accident and named one of her children, Simon, after him. We were ten in number, not including one miscarriage and one stillbirth.

On the San Ignacio de Loyola were my ancestors, Manual Dominguez; his wife, Juana Francisca; and their three children: their son Antonia, age 19; their son Agustin, age 18; their daughter Marie Luisa, age 12; and their son Josef, age 5. They were settled first at Barataria; they were sent here as national guardsmen. had just won the war with Portugal and now owned most of America from the Mississippi West. They were issued twenty arpents of land, one mule, a shovel, an axe, and a few pesos. But because the land was not good farmland, they were relocated about seven miles downstream of Donaldsonville, Louisiana, and this settlement was named Valenzuela, both of which are tourist attractions today.

2

CHANGE OF OCCUPATION—FARMING TO COMMERCIAL FISHING

August Dominguez, my ancestor, used to own property bordering the Mississippi River (where the Earl K. Long Bridge to nowhere is located) in Donaldsonville. He also owned larger property at Raceland, Louisiana. That was around the time when the farms were getting larger; his descendants sold these properties after his death.

My father and grandfather started fishing in inland waters for their living. Their tools were lines: top lines, bottom lines, bush lines (these were used in the swamps in high-water season; you tied the line to a tree limb and hooked a live perch where it could swim to attract a larger fish), snag lines (these were used with tri-hooks), seines (these were long nets; maximum length allowed 800 ft, no limit on the depth, with floats on the top line and lead on the bottom line), and hoop nets (with controlled mesh size).

The first two of their ten children, Theodore and Laura, were born in Gibson, Louisiana, then I was born. Lawrence was born in January 1930 in Westwego, Louisiana. Our houseboat was right in front of Uncle John Adams’s house in Bayou Westwego. Father had gone to work at the Port of New Orleans with Uncle John. By this time, the Great Depression was on. My father had built him a boat (a Laffitte-type skiff) and installed a Model T-Ford engine in order to move the houseboat. We moved to Bayou Des Almond (French for “German Bayou”); at this time, Father was a fisherman. We soon were in the Atchafalaya River Basin. Life on the houseboat was no fun; at times during the high water season, we had no place to play because most land was flooded. The 1929 Crash and the Great Depression had a similar result on us fishermen; the fish were still there; however, you could not sell all you could catch. So Father worked in the timber harvest (cypress) until those were all cut down and hauled to sawmills, of which there were many on both sides of the lakes, many from the junction of the Atchafalaya where it branched from the Red River and the Mississippi at Simmesport, Louisiana. Downriver and to the west on US 190 is a small town

named Port Barre, which means “closed door” in French, so named because of the log jam. For many years before 1900, there was a huge log jam. The log jam was removed, and access to and from the Mississippi to the Atchafalaya was accomplished.

Back to the lower Atchafalaya River where Father worked in the timber and fishing industries along with other family . The logs were removed two ways: one during high water and one with a pullboat. The trees were sapped; that is, they were cut by hand axe to kill them. The pullboat was a boiler-operated spud or barge; the cable drum and the spuds anchored the barge in place. You would start at the bank and work your way into the swamp, and you used dynamite to remove the stumps, which would be forward and side to side, as you worked your way deeper and from both sides as far as the steam horsepower would allow. Then you would have to move the pullboat to a new location and keep doing so. The people who did this work would build themselves palmetto shacks with dirt floors using small tree limbs and twine; the windows and doors were made of palmetto as well. There were also mosquitoes like you would not believe. We used sulfur powder with small wood chips to set the sulfur on fire, then walked through the houseboat with the screen windows and doors closed. We would not go outside at night. We used a pochum (slop bucket); we emptied and cleaned them every morning. , you did not open the doors.

My father was known to be one of the best saw filers in the industry. He could file a two-man timber saw where as you could cut shavings as long as eighteen inches. However, fishing was his preferred occupation. He worked on and off in the timber harvest. When the Great Depression of 1929 hit, as I mentioned, there were hoboes all over, any place we went. (None in the river basin, just in the towns.)

I can when Franklin Roosevelt was president and he called in all the gold to finance his new deal and made it against the law for Americans to own gold. At that time, we were in Bayou Charaime, north of Morgan City, Louisiana, and Lake Palourde. Daddy had one of his brothers take him back to

where he had last parked his Model T-Ford and brought it to Lake Palourde. I was approaching five years of age, and it was beginning to get crowded in our houseboat. We children numbered 5 with the last one named Lorette, born on June 18, 1930.

As I mentioned earlier, the Depression that started in 1929 was not all that bad for the people in South Central Louisiana. There were very little industries here, and Father could not sell all the fish he could catch. What he did once a week was to fish for crabs; they were plentiful. Fishing at night made it easier to catch the crabs using top lines about two hundred feet long and with a headlight. You could fill an apple crate in just a few minutes, using green moss to separate the layers within the apple boxes. Using the fish he dressed the day before that he had put in the icebox (no refrigerator in those days). He would remove the backseat and load the crabs and the fish into the car; either I (Pete, nicknamed Clarence) or my older brother, Theodore, would go along into the countryside where there were farmers, along with other people, and there were many who kept gardens. A few would buy crabs and/or fish; others would trade chicken, eggs, ducks, winter vegetables, and summer vegetables. The headlight he used was a carbide light; it used carbide mixed with water to make flammable gas for the light. There was no lens over the reflector.

3

THE FLOOD OF 1927

The Flood of 1927 devastated South central Louisiana. I do not the Flood; I was born in 1928. However, I can a lot of the talk from people; it was said that you could hear the water coming from miles away. New Iberia, where I live, was flooded. Main Street, old Highway 90—known as the old Spanish trail—was under several feet of water. There are pictures in the downtown Evangeline Funeral Home showing this disaster. People were relocated to regions of higher ground to wait out the receding water. The levee was said to have failed upriver, close to where the Marganza flood control system now stands; however, it was later determined that the levee was sabotaged, blown up to keep Baton Rouge (French for “Red Stick”) and New Orleans from being flooded. It had displaced many, many families and caused a lot of destruction in South Central Louisiana. However, it did not cause any problems for us people living on the water. Not all houseboats were made with barges; many people had their houses on logs, which would float during the high-water season and remain in place as the water receded. They were tied to trees until the water receded to a normal level.

It took a lot of years to remove all the cypress and tupelo (the tree’s fruits look very much like olives). Squirrels love these like they do acorns, pecans, cypress balls, and many other tree’s fruits. While life was abundant, we lived pretty much off the land. As I mentioned earlier, there were many sawmills on both sides of the lakes; the biggest one was located at Patterson, Louisiana, about seven miles upriver from Morgan City and was owned by the Harry P. Williams family and was said to be the biggest sawmill in the world.

4

THE LEVEE SYSTEM

In the very early thirties the federal government started building a levee system to prevent another 1927-type flood (a devastating flood). This flood-control levee system went from Marganza through the Atchafalaya River, all the way to Morgan City. There were two suction dredges: the one on the east side was named the San Diego, and the one on the south was named the GA. When the GA reached Grand Bayou at Lake Fausse by Loreauville, Louisiana, in 1935, our houseboat was close by, along with Grandfather Henri, Uncle Albert, Uncle Boy Mayon (brother to my grandmother), and Ellen Eloise Mayon (wife of Henri). I believe it was in the spring of that year. Because of the current in the area where Grand Bayou entered Lake Faussee Point, the dredge could not pump the mud fast enough to block the bayou; the dredge boat was moved to the other side of Grand Bayou, and they built the levee a few hundred feet past the bayou.

Two wooden barges were brought to the location; the dredge GA moved back to the location, and one barge was anchored to one side of Grand Bayou. They moved the discharge to fill and sink the first barge, then did the same thing with the second barge to finish blocking the flow of water. There are two barges buried under the levee at that location. But before we moved to Grand Bayou, our houseboat was at Lake Verret, the nearest town being Napoleonville. The twins, Valery and Viola, were born here on August 8, 1934. (I forgot to mention that Loretta was born on June 18, 1930.) Our houseboat was crowded. Father was still fishing and picking moss before moving here. The reason for this move was that the government or Hollywood filmmakers wanted to make a documentary on us river people’s way of life, which was soon to become a bygone era.

So as mentioned earlier, Father had just what was needed—a boat that could move them around fast and quarters for living. So these people rented a big camp high on pilings, also big enough for us to live in. They rented our houseboat and our boat with the T-Ford engine (Mary) to move these people

around while doing their work.

I started school here at Napoleonville. My father, not having one day’s schooling, saw little value for an education. There were so few industries. People fished, trapped, shrimped, or had oyster beds where they would harvest oysters in the brackish water bays, well south of the basin where the Atchafalaya River empties into Atchafalaya Bay, downstream of Morgan. And this is discharged both to the south and to the west, and also some to the east. Most of the lakes upstream of Morgan City and to the west of it are almost all gone, filled in with river silt. I mentioned moss earlier; moss was abundant because of the high humidity in that part of Louisiana. Daddy also had a small barge with a derrick on one end to work from for higher reach. By the time I was twelve years of age, I was more at home in trees than Tarzan was. We (my older brother and I, that is) would strip all the moss up high that could not be reached with the derrick and poles. The moss was sold green or cured until black. We sold them both ways. You water the moss in order to cure it properly and make it black. However, you had to work the moss; that is, turn it over and water it every few days to prevent spontaneous combustion. I have seen that happen. Moss was used for many things. We made moss mattresses and pillows, and industries had many uses for it.

One incident that really stuck in my mind was the dynamite. Like I mentioned earlier, it was used to clear the stumps so that the pullboat could drag the logs out of the woods where they were boomed; that is, they were dog-chained (spikes on short chains) to hold them in place. The booms contained twenty-four logs, counting the four logs that formed the V on both ends. Dynamite was delivered in wood cases and arranged in stacks on the bayou close to where the pullboat was located. When Mother saw us climb to the top of these dynamite cases and jump off, she had a coon-ass shit fit. Made us stay inside until Father came home and demanded that they be moved away from there. She said to him (in French), “That much dynamite would kill everything around. They’re big enough to die.” We all spoke in French; Daddy spoke no English. Mother was bilingual; she spoke French and English. She had a fourth-grade education. Everyone in South Central Louisiana spoke French because this is where the people who were exiled from Canada (Nova Scotia, that is) settled.

5

MY EDUCATION

When I started school, as did my brother and sister before me, we were not allowed to speak French. We knew some English because Mother had taught us some. That was when the educators tried to eradicate French from our vocabulary. Many people became ashamed to it that they could speak French. I talking to many in French and they would reply, “I do not speak French, me,” with a deep French accent. I myself never feign to hide my South Louisiana French accent. There are some old people like myself who still get to use French. I have spoken to many people from , Belgium, and elsewhere. But at the border of Spain and , I have trouble understanding their French accent. All those from Paris, I can communicate with very well. They almost did accomplish their endeavor. But thanks to Mr. Jim Desormeaux and others, that effort failed. And thanks to the young of today, French is making a comeback. We were punished for speaking French in the classroom.

Like I mentioned earlier, I started school in Napoleonville, Louisiana, and my second year was in Loreauville, Louisiana, and I ended my education as a child without completing the third grade at Charenton, Louisiana, St. Mary Parish— for the benefit of those readers who are not aware, Louisiana has parishes in place of counties. I knew that I would have to find a way to educate myself. We relocated (moved) our houseboat to Peach Coulee on the east side of Lake Fausse Pointe. Father went to work on a pullboat job. At that time, the last of the trees were harvested from that area. My daddy also set hoop nets (not many) while he worked. He filed the two-man saws while fishing because that was the best time of year to fish with hoop nets. These saws were about six feet long with one handle on each end. No power saws in those days; this was 1939.

President Franklin Roosevelt put all the young men who were in the CC camps in the military. It was supposed to be for one year, thus the song, “I’ll be back in a year, little darling.” However, that year lasted for the duration of World War II. Hellen, Emily, and Simon, the last child born in February 1940. In total, we were

ten. Father moved us out of the houseboat into a house almost at the very end of the Chitimacha Trail. He and Mother separated; he moved out when Simon was six months old. Mother had a nervous breakdown and was sent to Pineville, Louisiana, a place where they placed people with mental problems as well.

Father found a live-in partner and moved her in with us children. I was twelve years of age. Theodore, the eldest, was sixteen years of age with our sister Laura between us. Father moved in his live-in partner, Celena; however, she was almost as mentally bad as Mother, so he and she moved out and left us to almost fend for ourselves. He would come by at first to bring the moss to the market. After something less than one year, Theodore went to work with Mr. Enick Jones in Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas. Labor was hard to find because of the war. They used a long net (800 ft. in length, max) with floats on the carkline and lead balls on the bottom line. On one end of the net, you had a pole with a wheel at the bottom and a box that opened; you would drive the boat with the net in the work barge. And when you arrived where you wanted to start, you would throw the pole into the water and drive the boat in a slightly larger circle than the length of the net. You drag that end of the net to the pole, place the pole into the box, close the box, place the net’s lead line under roller or wheel, and lower the pole to the bottom, anchoring the pole by tying a rope from the barge onto the pole to prevent the pole from leaving the bottom as you pulled the net into even smaller circles until you had all the net back at the barge. At the pole end of the net, the net was made with a bag to contain the catch. Now you would open the box and pull the pole and the caught fish into the barge. You needed a pirogue to get back to the boat so as to place the catch into the ice well. Winter was much harder on the men because they had no rubber gloves. Theodore was named after his great-grandfather and grandfather: Theodore Adams Sr. and Jr., respectively. However, his great-grandfather went by his nickname, Nute, so his grandfather was called Tee Nute, French slang for Junior. So Theodore’s nickname was Tute because he was a Domingue. Like “Daddy, you can blow your whistle. Mama, you can Tute your horn.”

I went to work on a fish boat with Mr. Jimmy LeBlane for four dollars a week. Mr. Jimmy was buying fish for Mr. J. B. Tally, who owned a fish-processing plant and also an ice plant in St. Martinville, Louisiana. There were several such

plants on Bayou Teche, but most are in St. Martin Parish and Iberia and also in St. Mary Parish. This boat was a flat haul with a Model T engine for propulsion and about twenty-five-feet-or-so long, with different wells for the different species of fish. Also, we had on deck containers or drums with gasoline, coal oil, and cans of motor oil. Inside the cabin were groceries, two bunk beds, and the steering and controls. We would leave from Charenton at about sunup and make many stops going upstream to some places like the community known as the Chaine, which was self-sustained. They had their school, with school boat-buses; that is to say some children rode to school in boats.

I must have been a pretty good hand because he gave me a one-dollar weekly increase in wage, from four dollars to five. We would leave Charenton after loading the ice, gas, oil, groceries, etc., and return on Wednesday in time to unload the fish, restock what was needed, and return on a shorter route and come back to Charenton.

At fifteen, I went to work for Mr. George Borris on a dairy farm in Metairie, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans, Louisiana. I soon wore out; it was just too many work hours. Had to get up before daylight, eat breakfast, go to the barn and saddle the horse, round up the cattle, drive them to the barn, milk them by hand, put the milk in bottles, place this milk in the cooler, remove the cold milk from yesterday evening, and load them into the delivery truck and drive them to our customers. We would eat dinner (lunch), take a short nap, then start the routine over. Needless to say, it was too many hours for me as I was not sixteen yet. So back to Charenton. I came to know Mr. Borris and others because he (with others) would come to Charenton to hunt ducks and geese.

At that time, all the lakes were from Loreaville to Morgan, silting up. And in the winter, large sandbars would be exposed, which made good feeding ground for all kinds of birds—ducks, coots, geese, mallards, pintails, etc. And today there are very few grand lakes left. You can say they are gone; so are Six Mile Lake and Flat Lake. To my knowledge, no one really lives there. However, there are many camps (for recreation purposes only) today; these lakes are excellent sport-

fishing grounds and have many boats’ launch places.

Theodore (Tute) was drafted in the US Army at age eighteen in 1942. He would not have had to serve. He could have had claimed head of household and gotten a dependence exception. He and I were ing the family. Of nine children, only Laura was married at this time. But before Tute left home for boot camp, he went to Pineville to get Mother and brought her home to be with the rest of her children. He claimed only Mother as a dependent, and she was receiving a check for thirty-seven dollars monthly from Uncle Sam. She was the only dependent, Theodore claimed, and as I mentioned earlier, I worked for Mr. Jimmy LeBlanc on his fish boat.

At sixteen, Mother emancipated me. I lied about my age and claimed I was seventeen years old and went to work on the US dredge boat (government dredge) named US Pullen. At that time, it was working at the Calumet Cut, a new waterway created to channel some water from Six Mile Lake to the East Cote Blanche Bay. That work was completed, but the water from the spring runoff was backing up where Bayou Teche was not blocked. So now this work was to isolate this backflow in Bayou Teche. (Teche is an Indian name meaning “snake” because of the Bayou’s characteristic.) At one time, according to geology, the Teche was the location of the Mississippi River. The river went from here to Bayou Lafourche, which ended at Grand Island, Louisiana, and from there to its present location. If you ask my father where he was from, he would answer, “Bayou Lafourche.” In reality, he was born in Assumption Parish, Louisiana, at Bayou Conn, close to the small town of Pierre Part.

Well, let me talk about my education some more. As I mentioned earlier, we moved again while I was in the third grade. I knew I would need more schooling than that, so I read only books I could learn something from. At seventeen, I ed the US Air Force and went to the Philippines. I was stationed at Clark Field. Because of my South Louisiana accent and very limited education, I was teased about my limited vocabulary. So I bought myself a dictionary and small notepads. I would pick five words a day (never more than seven), write them as

spelled in my dictionary, and I would master their spelling. I had to ask many times of someone, “How do you pronounce this word?” of the ones I had not mastered. I was in the Eighth Air Force, the Fifth Reconnaissance Squadron, which was mapping the said area because the old maps were not good enough. But later, Captain McCastle informed me that because China’s Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-Shek were at war, China was going to be a communist country, and that the reason for mapping was to see what was there now and what would be there later. When I enlisted, I claimed my seven other siblings as my dependents. I was offered a dependence discharge but refused. There was a civil war at this time in China: China went communist, and Chiang Kai-Shek, with his followers, evacuated to Formosa, now Taiwan.

Also, civil war erupted in the Philippines between the Huks (which were Filipino rebels) and the Filipino army. This conflict was still ongoing when I departed to return to the USA. They also attacked Clark Field on two occasions, killing the MPs at the base gate in attempts to raid our ammunition depot; we lost between forty to fifty troops in those two raids. However, they were unsuccessful. Also, another problem was the Japanese soldiers who were still in the Philippines and who supposedly did not know the war was over. On one occurrence, there were two personnel-carrier trucks loaded with Filipino girls at the MP gate when they were attacked by Huk guerilla soldiers; all the girls and the MP gate guards were also killed. At this time, the war was over, and the cemetery at Clark Field was much bigger.

We were not allowed to go to town without our weapons and never less than two people; the more, the better. I sleeping in a haystack one night and spending some hours in a carabao herd. Another time, I was at a Filipino brothel; while there, I could hear machine guns fire on and off, and it stopped after about ten to fifteen minutes. There were trees bordering one side of this field; I had to walk across some part of the field. I was about 100 ft. into the field, going toward the road, when a .50 caliber machine gun opened fire, hitting the water about three to five feet to my right.

I hit the water to my left, off the terrace, and crawled until I made it to the other side; from there, I headed to the road. I do not know if they came looking for me. I never looked back once I got traction. There was another time in the same general area on a dark night I had heard gunfire. When the firing stopped, I started walking; I did not get far down on this road, going up a hill in a curve, when I heard someone holler halt. I was led off the road to where the person in charge was located; there were people carrying dead bodies and throwing them into a troop carrier like they were handling sacks of potatoes—arms and legs were hanging outside the truck bed bars. I assumed that I had walked into a battle between the Philippine army (constabulary) and the Huks. The commander said I could wait there until they left, and then I could go. I said “Yes, sir,” and followed his instructions.

I made it back to the USA at the San Francisco Bay Air Force base, where I received my discharge in November 1948. I made it home the week before Turkey Day. I did not want to go out of town for work. My first job was with Phillips Petroleum Company; they had a geophysics crew running a line from the Bayou Salle Road State Highway #317 at the Intercoastal Canal to Willow Street at Franklin, Louisiana. I next went to work in the oil fields on a workover rig; that is, doing repairs to existing completed oil or gas wells. The workover contract company name was W. C. Fatzo.

The economy was almost dead; this was in 1950, and the Chinese had the Korean army pinned down where they could not retreat. America intervened by declaring war; when war ended, Korea was divided into two countries: North and South Korea. We were in a recession. Lawrence, born January 17, 1930, reenlisted into the US Army and was brought to Korea by air transport. I did not reenlist.

6

MY GI BILL OF RIGHTS

Back to my education—because my father and mother were divorced and my older brother was married with a family, I could not take advantage of my GI Bill of Rights to pursue my education. However, I kept working on that myself. I ordered from the International Correspondence School their petroleum engineering program and studied petroleum engineering. I married Theresa Blanchard on March 9, 1952, in St. Martinville, Louisiana. From this bond, we had five children: Donner Marie, born in September 1953; Micheal, born in September 1954; Joy Rite, born in May 1958; Velna, born in October 27, 1961; and Arthur William, born on January 9, 1967.

We separated because of her religious belief that the end of the world would be on January 1, 1975. And because I would not accept that as a truth, I would be cast into hell, and I would not be with them. I stood my ground because the children were not ready to go that young. She said to me many times when I would rebut her, “Mr. Domingue, there’s the door. Just go. You will not be with us after January 1, 1975.” I got to the point where I could not cope with her telling me, “There’s the door, go, Mr. Domingue.” So in the first week of March 1971, I accommodated her and filed for a divorce. Stayed single until May of 1973. I went to work in the oil fields of South Louisiana in 1951 on drilling and workover rigs and, in June of 1953, was employed by Texaco Inc. I remained with Texaco until March of 1987. My duties were many: oil drilling and workover until 1962. I had hurt my back two years before and had to get away from this heavy work.

I transferred to the production department and worked in the Tee Bayou field, Jefferson Island, Erath, and others. Then, in 1973, Texaco decided to venture offshore in a big way. This story follows the beginning of deep-water drilling. In 1973, Texaco Inc. and the Bank of Houston formed a company named Odex, then hired Mike, who was a graduate of the University of Houston with a master’s degree in electrical automation—thesis. Then they hired Wayne because

of his computer expertise in Texas instruments and employed them to install the computer equipment into the complex, which was being constructed at Henry, Louisiana, and the offshore oil and gas platforms at Tiger Shoals and Lighthouse Point. This equipment allowed complete control of the oil and gas production from the Henry facilities. It was possible to control the production on these platforms just as if you were on the location, and it was designed to operate in all weather conditions, 24/7.

Because Texas and Mississippi—on each side of Louisiana—had claimed twelve miles of territorial water, Louisiana felt if should be able to also claim twelve miles. However, probably because of the amount of oil and gas being produced in these waters, if Louisiana was allowed to claim twelve miles, it would have been cost-prohibitive to the federal treasure. The federal government said Louisiana would not be allowed to claim more than three miles. At this time, Louisiana State and the feds were in court over that issue, but over the years, all the major companies that were drilling and producing oil and gas were transporting their oil to their refineries for processing and were transporting some of the gas for heat to process their oil. They gambled that Louisiana would win. These funds were in an escrow fund. When the court ruled in the government’s favor, all the companies who had been using this offshore gas for process gas had to repay this gas to the interstate market (commit this gas to interstate) over a set time limit. This caused many different problems with our customers. The problem was that we were short somewhat because of the amount of gas that had to be sent through the interstate’s system.

When I say process gas, I mean the gas required or used to run the refineries and other operations such as Jefferson Chemicals, Natchez Butane, and others. I had to cut back on, say, one customer to deliver more gas to another, like some of our customers in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Pittsburgh Plate Gas Co., and Davison, the aluminum plant south of Lake Charles. All the gas produced in federal waters was to be transported for interstate use and thus replace a like number of gas, in billions of cubic feet in BTUs (British thermal units), the amount of heat required to heat one pound of water one degree The demand deliveries took some time to replace the deliveries.

7

SAM’S HEALTH WAS FAILING FAST

Then came the oil embargo of 1973, which caused the price of oil to reach record high, which caused an economic slowdown. During this slowdown, the US dollar was devalued from thirty-two dollars to thirty-four dollars per ounce of gold because Americans could not own gold since 1932, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made all Americans turn in all their gold to the government so he could finance his new economic deal. However, the US dollar was backed by gold for foreigners, so a person or bank or company in any other country could change their dollars for gold. And that is what happened in the 1970s. Also because gold was worth more in foreign countries, foreigners would take their dollars and go exchange them for gold; this was draining Fort Knox of its gold. So the solution to that problem was to make the American dollar replace gold.

So now the dollar is the preferred currency. (For how long?) The world is awash with dollars. And because of our huge national debt, people are starting to talk about the US dollar’s demise. It is anyone’s guess how long that will last. Some people are talking about China’s currency replacing the dollar in the not-sodistant future. We are almost buried in our financial debt with China alone. I am not a politician, but those who are, have their work ahead of them trying to restore the trust other countries once had in the American dollar.

From the Henry Hub, I transferred to the Sabine Pipe Line, a new company Texaco formed to transport not only its gas but also other companies’ gas as well. We made interconnections between the Sabine Line and most of the other companies whose lines we crossed or crossed us.

I made many hot taps to either transfer gas to the Sabine Line or from the Sabine to other transporters. Hot taps are so named because they are made without

interfering with the flow of the inline product. T. D. Williamson Inc. makes everything you need to make a hot tap, that is, the tools. But Texaco owned their own, purchased from T. D. Williamson. I did not keep count of how many taps I made, but they were well past fifty, from one-half inch to twenty inches. Taps were also made on other lines besides the Sabine to transport petroleum products like methane, propane, ethylene, and others. At this time, I was promoted to instrument technician, which included repairs, calibrations, and replacement of the instrument used. At about this time, the federal government required that all pipelines that gathered and transported petroleum products would have to be under cathodic protection.

8

CATHODIC PROTECTION

For the benefit of the reader, I will talk briefly about cathodic protection. When the cities started to use street cars as transportation, which operated or traveled on iron rails and used DC for power, the cities’ sewage systems and water systems were of iron pipes, so the direct current returning to the power station would take the path of least resistance. Thus it would jump on and off so as to follow a straight line as possible to return to the station, causing metal erosion where electric current left the metal pipes.

The federal government offered a reward to anyone who could solve that problem. MIT University solved that problem and won the contest. Cathodic protection was born.

Also, the ground has a constant current potential because of the clouds being electrically charged at about 0.7 volts DC. This charge varies but not by much. This was my next assignment or promotion. Texaco’s cathodic engineer retired. I replaced him. By that time, the government was involved and ed regulations for pipeline maintenance, and a government book was issued, requiring cathodic protection on lines that were not cathodically protected before. They also required different wall thickness and grades for lines in certain areas like residential buildings with a certain number of people, schools, and office buildings; the pipe walls had to be thicker at road crossings as well. At the road crossings and main roads, the pipes had to be in Caisson pipes; that is, you bore under the road and installed a bigger pipe than the line pipe and installed vents. The main line had to be insulated from the Caisson pipes. There are many other regulations besides these in the book.

9

MY DUTIES WERE MANY, LAKE CHARLES (1973)

In 1973, because of the Arab oil embargo, I was transferred to Lake Charles, Louisiana, and promoted to assistant maintenance foreman. (Today, this title is superintendent.) Then, in 1980, I was transferred back to work at the Henry Gas Processing Plant (that is to say our office was at the plant); these facilities are now the location where gas is priced for nationwide distribution through many other companies’ lines.

At this time, I was on monthly salary; also, I was on twenty-four-hour call. I did have one instrument technician working with me. I remained in Lake Charles until 1980. (This was when I was still in Lake Charles.)

The person who had replaced our maintenance superintendent had to retire because he had cancer in the advanced stage. This man was one person whom I respected and truly enjoyed working with. His predecessor was also one good man to work for. I saved him from killing himself on our first job together. We made a hot tap into a propane line to make an interconnection with a homemade machine. You had to crank the machine manually and work with a chain to hold it in place as you cut the hole in the pipe. I got the horse ahead of the carriage on this one; you first cleaned the area of the pipe where you wanted to make the tap. Then you would weld the fitting to the pipe, then weld the flang to the fitting, then install the valve, and then you would make the cut in the pipe. Well, when we finished making the cut, he told me to unchain the machine and turn it loose.

I said, “Boss, if you want to let go of these chains, you will have to do that. I will wait for you behind that tree you see over there.” He looked at me like a bull looking at a bastard calf and said, “OK, do it your way.” I thought, Well, he will

go to the office and try to get my ass run off. Well, I heard nothing else about that, but a few days later, I was told to go get a hot-tap machine from the warehouse and bring it to our shop: a brand-new factory-made T. D. Williamson one. I did not see that homemade one after that.

After that incident, I made many more hot taps; I did not keep count, but it had to be no less than fifty on pipes of many sizes and many grades and wall thicknesses. That man learned to respect me, and we were best friends. He retired in 1980 at the age of sixty-five and moved to Houston, Texas. One of his children was employed at the Houston Space Center. The plant superintendent had hired his brother-in-law some months before and put him to work with us. He had a degree in agriculture and was of no use and no value in our line of work at that time. I was an instrument technician working in sales, transportation, and measurement. This man was not interested in learning anything about this line of work. However, at about that same time, natural gas was discovered on his father’s farm property and made that family rich, so he resigned and bought a Jim. He died of a heart attack about one year later. When I had my annual evaluation (by his brother-in-law), he would always find something that I needed help with; however, I would ask, “Where can I go for help?” and “When may I go?” I knew what kind of game he was playing with me.

10

I RETURNED TO ERATH, LA, AND TOM RETIRED

When I retired on May 24, 1988, the then New Orleans Gas Pipeline Division vice president wrote me a letter telling me that when I transferred to that department from the production department, it was expected that I would be an asset to that department, but I had exceeded his wildest expectation and I had distinguished myself in the New Orleans Gas Pipeline Division. I have that letter hung on the wall at my home. I tried very hard to do my best with every position assigned to me. I learned when I was very young to do my best. When I was twelve years of age, I could knit a seven-hoop, three-throat, four-inch mesh net in one day. Commercial fishing (freshwater, that is) was not what I would do for my living, and none of us four boys chose that work for our living. All four of us worked in the oil industry. Oil drilling rigs is dangerous work. My eldest brother, Theodore, was hurt while threading the drill cable over the crown then over the next pulley; until you had at least four cable lines over the crow and through the travel block in order to do this, every time you got the snake to the rig floor, you would separate the snake by unscrewing the snake in its middle, moving it to the next wheel in the travel block and the crown block. This is seldom done nowadays; most drilling rigs are mounted on trucks or drilling barges or drill ships and are held in position with anchors or motors with GPS assistance. This technology is so far advanced from when I was working on drilling rigs.

Life on the houseboat was not fun as people believe it was. (No electricity, no hot or cold running water, also no cistern water.) We had two fifty-five-gallon drums—one on each side of the houseboat—and insects like you have never seen. When we were short of rainwater because we had had no rain for some days, we would take buckets and the empty drums and put them into the boat and go to the lake closer to the place that our houseboat was, along with this empty fifty-five-gallon drum and a number 3 tub, so water could replenish the other drum that had some water remaining. We would use bayou water to take a bath in the winter; in the summer, we children would take a bath in the bayou

most of the time—those old enough, that is.

11

EDUCATION DEFICIENCY—INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL

Back to my education—as I mentioned earlier, I knew I was not going to be able to make a living like I wanted to with that little bit of schooling, and I would have to do something about that on my own. So I read only the things that I could use to improve myself. I read or studied Economics 101-102 about the tuba production on the island and read enough to understand how that system works.

Then from there, I learned something about the stock market; however, I was not successful at that endeavor. I only lost money in the stock market. At present— that is, as of this day—I am still working (fooling with) and trying to make money in the stock market; seems to me that I will have to it defeat if my luck does not change soon. I will have to find something else to do to entertain myself.

I do drink a little beer about twice a week, but as I look around at the people in these watering holes, I am 99 percent of the time the eldest person in the t. At eighty-four, it is time to find something to do around the house. In South Central Louisiana, the city of New Iberia where I live—located about twentyfive to twenty-seven miles from the Gulf of Mexico—is some of the best fishing and hunting in this country. However, most of it is leased to hunting clubs. It does not matter; I have lost interest in hunting. My favorite wild meat is squirrel meat. They are mostly nut eaters. Now they play and feed in the trees and are more of pets than food.

Back to my education—I knew I had to do something about the educationdeficiency on my own, so when Texaco Inc. transferred me to Morgan City, Louisiana, in 1953 from St. Martinville, Louisiana, that gave me the opportunity

to begin on my goal to improve or further my limited education because nighttime class would be available.

The teacher, a Mr. Revete, gave me a test when I enrolled for the night class; after review, he informed me that I did not have to take the course. And he said, “Go to the courthouse and take the test.” I said, “Teacher, I want to study this because I want to study petroleum engineering through an international correspondence school.” He replied, “You have a lot of ambition.” I said, “That is my objective. Because I was in the industry, I learned a lot. The math I did master—algebra to fourteen and the trigonometry. After all, these are my favorite subjects.” With the will and determination to succeed, this was not an obstacle. I did not take the state test to be certified as such in Louisiana and never claimed to be a petroleum engineer. However, I was accused many times of lying about my education and never felt offended.

12

CRAWFISH SEASON

Back to us living on the houseboat—the people who lived in the towns did not consider us as their equals. I can one incident when I was about eleven years of age; we moved our houseboat at the end of Jeanerette Canal during high-water season (spring runoff), and the water had flooded the road at its end. The underwater property belonged to the SPB Plantation. We children were fishing for crawfish, which was abundant at this time of year. He drove up in his car, jumped out, and started running toward us, hollering, “Get off my property, you damned river trash.”

Crawfish at that time was considered unfit to eat because they lived underground and surfaced only in high-water time (spring runoff), so they were unfit for human consumption. But we river people loved them. However, there were many rice fields in South Louisiana, and some farmhands would eat them. As recently as the 1960s, you could not give them away most of the time unless they were ready to cook, and then at least half of the people did not want them. But today, they are a million-dollar industry, thanks to us river people’s contribution.

Because when the Levee was being built, people moved to the Levee and to the small towns close by, such as Breaux, best known for its crawfish festival once a year. People from many states and other countries came to Breaux Bridge, St. Martinville, located on Bayou Tech about fifteen miles or so east of Breaux Bridge, also the oldest settlement in Louisiana. However, Washington, a small settlement, claims the same title, so I will leave that for the historian to settle. Anyway, Louisiana is also known to have more celebrations per year than any other state. Kind of like when I was in the US Army Air Force—the little group that I hung around with would not go celebrate (drink beer) without a reason, so we celebrated our birthdays in rotation. So my birthday would come around about every two weeks.

13

PLANS FOR ANY ACHIEVE MUCH, EIGHTY-FOUR ACHIEVEMENT

I did my very best to make the most and the best of my ability to improve myself. I went from no class to river trash to middle class. Had I had the good fortune to be born in the middle class with the opportunity of a formal education, I do believe I could have made it above middle class. But I did make a very good living with what I had to work with. I know this writing will not impress everyone who reads this, but I do hope enough people will so as to make it worth my effort and be of help to those who do read it. Are inspired and make some use of my efforts to do so. ( Margaret O’Brien: “If at first you do not succeed, try, try again.”) Keep a positive effort, and you shall prevail. I did not take advantage of my GI Bill of Rights because I felt obligated to my little sisters and baby brother. You people who do read this will have to forgive me for the improper spelling and punctuation. , I am a third-grader.

I am now at the age where most people just sit and watch TV, visit the grandchildren, attend birthday parties, etc. However, at eighty-four (born in June of 1928), I felt I wanted to say something about the way of life we lived before departing on my eternal journey. If I do impress only a few and instill in them the will to try only half as hard as I have, I will have accomplished something with my efforts. Nothing inspired me, just the will to climb the ladder by doing my best at anything I tried. I instilled in all my five children to work for what they wanted. I mentioned the Henry Hub earlier—that was a one-man operation, and because of this, I was able to bring my children to work with me one at a time, and I did that on weekends and holidays. Their mother would cook the meals and come to my workplace, so we all ate at my work location. This was while I worked at the Henry Hub, which I talked about earlier. If ever a father loved his children, I certainly was one of them. When they were babies, their mother and I would play like were fighting over them. Like “Give me my baby!” “No, this is my baby!” and the baby just loved it. If life could only be so enjoyable nowadays.

I do have grandchildren and great-grandchildren; however, I do not see them as often as I would like to. And after all, they do not live next door.

I did not name the island that my people came to the New World from. It was the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. They went to this island after won the war with Portugal because the French spelled the name Dominguez, whereas the Portuguese spelled it Dominquez. Someday, I would very much like to visit there. Just maybe, if this writing gets published, I will be able to do just that. I shall keep my fingers crossed. Also, my great-great-grandfather, Eugene Autine, changed the spelling when he married a Canadian girl named Marie Elizabeth Oselet-Domingue. He dropped the z; that changed the spelling to the French spelling of the name.