THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: Railroad Worker
INTERVIEW WITH: Anna Claire Rice (Tape 1 of 2)
DATE: 7 June 1999
PLACE: Houston, Texas
INTERVIEWER: Fern Burke
TAPE 1, SIDE 1
B: It's June 7, 1999, Monday, and I'm in Anna Claire Rice's home in Houston, interviewing her in regard to her life, which has been real interesting. So Anna Claire would you start with your...where you were born and when and give us those things?
R: Okay. I was born in Houma, Louisiana, which is Terrebonne Parish in southern Louisiana, on October 27, 1921, to Clara Jackson Rader and John Trout...[Spear?], Rader Sr. My father worked for oil companies. When I was ten months old my parents moved to Burkburnett, Texas, north of Wichita Falls.
B: Well, where did you start your schooling?
R: Oh, okay. I...the first school I started was at Crockett School in Wichita Falls. We didn't stay out at Burkburnett very long; we moved to town. My father was the superintendent of the oil company there. And, anyway, I was two years at Crockett School - I attended the first and second grade. And then I attended Alamo School to the sixthAnna Claire Rice 2
grade, and then I went to what they called Z...[sounds like
R: Zumperwoods] Junior High School which was the intermediate school. And then I attended Wichita Falls Senior High School. And after graduation I attended Hardin Junior College for one year.
B: Did you go to work then?
R: I worked at the college for my tuition that year. We didn't have a lot. Things, you know, were pretty tough.
B: Well, what did you do after college?
R: Well, I have...I'll have to go into some more detail. I had two older sisters, and they were always wanting us to come see about them. They were always afraid to stay by themselves. They were married!
B: No.
R: Anyways, and so I went to Houston for a while and I worked at Levy's Department Store fitting gloves. And then I got tired of staying in Houston and I went back home and I got a little old job at a - I think it was a Kress' or something like that - and stayed there a while. And then my sister that was living in San Antonio, she was scared to stay by herself at night, so she came up and kept begging me to come. And I didn't want to go to San Antone and 'cause I enjoyed being at my own home. And so finally I went with her down to San Antone and so that's - she lived on Avant Street. And then I got a job with a cleaning company for a Anna Claire Rice 3
while. And it was driving one of their trucks, 'cause they didn't have any men to do that, and I liked being outdoors.
R: And then later I got a job with the Jewel Tea Company. You know what that is, don't you? And I worked a year with them and then I went back to my hometown, Wichita Falls.
B: When did you start working with the railroad?
R: Okay. I was in Wichita Falls and that was...I married and my husband was...I was at...we got married in Muskogee, Oklahoma. I had to go up there. He couldn't get off to come down because they wouldn't let him off the post. Anyway...
B: He was military?
R: Yes, he was drafted.
B: Oh, okay.
R: We were out at the college and he was drafted when we were going out there. I knew him at my school. Anyways, then he was transferred to Camp Stone in California. And so I went to California. And I was...the people out there were real, they were really nice. There was a little town, Antioch, California, and there was a couple, Mr. and Mrs. ...[Mott?] Pridgen, and they rented rooms to military couples, young people, and I stayed with them. I had to walk back and forth to town every day, fifteen blocks, to go eat. I didn't have anything. I had my feet. Anyway, Mr. Pridgen worked at the railroad, and he and I got along real Anna Claire Rice 4
well, and he was begging me to work for the railroad and I was really wanting to work for Crown-Zellerbach 'cause I had the experience that I could do the, you know, different R: things. And finally he talked me into going down, going to work at the railroad. It's...I worked for the Santa Fe Railroad Company there. The Atchison-Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, and that was about 1942, I guess. And the war was really hot going, you know, and my husband shipped overseas very soon after that. And he was on a hospital ship and was supposed to be coming back and forth to Camp Stone. They were going to go over and bring back injured soldiers, but he didn't get back for two years. Anyways, I finally hired out at the Santa Fe Railroad as a weigh-billing clerk. And I worked about six weeks, and then they gave me a promotion to a, more-or-less, a chief clerk billing/expense billing clerk. I stayed out there a year and I, you know, I was out there all by myself. I was only twenty-one when I went out there. And then I moved to...then I...I wrote them a letter and told them that I wanted to resign and go back to Texas. And so they never did say anything, and I told them the date I was going to leave, and anyway I returned to Texas. On my way back I decided to go to Salt Lake City on that train across the Great Salt Lake. And then I stayed in Salt Lake City two or three days sightseeing, and then Denver I did the same thing. And oh, Anna Claire Rice 5
yeah, I was in Nevada too. There were a lot of trains ran then. But, anyway, then I finally got back home, back to... my mother and daddy'd finally moved to San Antone where my sister was. And my dad was drilling a well on the top of the R: Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas?
Did you know that?
B: No. Tell us about it.
R: My dad was...they had this well on the - I don't know what you call it - where they sit at...it was in the open part and they...
B: Roof garden.
R: Uh?
B: The roof garden.
R: Yeah, the roof garden. But it was a regular drilling rig, like oil drilling rig. And they were drilling for a water well, an artesian well.
B: Oh, was it successful?
R: Oh, yes, it was very successful.
B: What year was that, about?
R: It was about 1943 and '44.
B: Okay.
R: When I was in California the trains just ran constantly by the depot. The depot was right against the tracks. In fact, it kind of got on my nerves. It was just one troop train after another - really kind of gets to you. And when Anna Claire Rice 6
I was there, well, we had handled Western Union telegrams and delivered to people, and that wasn't too happy a job, you know - to the service people. And I remember one lady came in there one day, in California, and she was so happy and everything, she...we'd called her to come and pick up
R: the telegram, and she came down there and had to receive a telegram of her son's death. Isn't that awful? See, they didn't...
B: But the railroad clerks did that, right?
R: Yeah, the railroad clerks did that. We handled Railway Express and Western Union, at practically every station I ever worked at. Then when I came back to Texas, to San Antonio, I was really kind of unnerved about the, you know, the... I was right in the middle of all that war movement. And, fact is I was on the San Joachim River there and they did all the landings and things like that - practicing. You'd see all those soldiers land - on those big landing things there. And because that was a port of embarkation and debarkation there. But anyway, when I got back to San Antone I went down to the railroad, to the board, to get a job - I forget what they called it - and they told me I had to go back to California because I had a job in California Railroad and they needed me out there, and I told them I didn't want to go back to California, you know. Now I liked California all right but I didn't want to go back our there;Anna Claire Rice 7
my family's all in this area. And so they wanted me to...I told them I didn't want to work on the railroad. So they said, "Well, you just...you're frozen on your job and have to be off for three months," or some such thing as that. I forget exactly what they told me. So I said, "Okay, I'll just go on and stay." And so finally they called me and
R: asked me. I hadn't even more than got to the house, they asked me would I go to work for the Railway Express Company, down there at the International Great Northern Railway - you know, where that's...you know where that station was there?
B: ...[inaudible].
R: Okay. I know it is. That was a beautiful building. And they just let people tear it up.
B: Yes.
R: I worked there for the Railway Express Company and I was a freight rate...I was a rate clerk for the Express. It wasn't freight, it was... Anyways, then they promoted me to a senior rate, and I didn't stay there but six months because it was such a really a boring job. Now there was a lot of trains and a lot of things going in and out of there, but that didn't bother me, but it was boring, you know. They were too simple, because the work that I had been doing was a little more complicated. And Southern Pacific Railway Company, which was the Texas and New Orleans Railway CompanyAnna Claire Rice 8
in San Antonio, had been calling me to go to work for them for a long while. So I quit and Mr. Warrell was the boss at Railway Express Company, and he got real upset because I was quitting. And so, it was funny, the San Antone office sent me to Houston and I came to Houston and then they sent me back to San Antonio to be assigned, you know. They wanted me to work the San Antone Division which was between Houston R: and El Paso.
B: Right. Well, did you stay there long in San Antonio?
R: I beg your pardon?
B: Did you stay in San Antonio very long?
R: I didn't stay in San Antonio very long, but they assigned me to come back down to Rosenberg, Texas. You know, I had to be just going, going, going all the time. But I rode the train most of the time. After I got back home, I did get a car, but it was not, you know, it was hard to get tires then.
B: Yes.
R: So they asked me...they had me come to Rosenberg. It was such a busy station. They had trains going - it was a joint Santa Fe and Southern Pacific...well, Texas, New Orleans Railway Company. It wasn't called Southern Pacific then. It was part of Southern Pacific, but they had trains that went to...the freight trains went in to Houston on the Santa Fe, and passenger trains came in from the north and Anna Claire Rice 9
went to Galveston on their own tracks. And they used Southern Pacific tracks on their freight trains. And then they had - that's the Southern Pacific's main line - then it went out to San Antonio and on out west. But they had lines that went down to Victoria.
B: Oh, really?
R: Yeah, there was Victoria and down the Valley - Alice, Texas, and all down through there.
B: ...[inaudible].
R: Uh-huh. So I was supposed to be there six...at least six weeks, because I had to work with a telegraph operator, and get training and learn how to handle all those train orders and memorize those books that we had.
B: Did you do telegraphy?
R: Yeah, well, not at that time, but I had to learn that. Okay, I did, I was a telegraph operator. We were...I was a telegraph operator, and we did train orders and things like that. I stayed there five weeks and the superintendent... ou had to go back to San Antonio to take a written examination of their book - it's the same thing the trainmen had - because we had to know every detail of the tracks and all the signals and that type of thing, and the movement of trains, and what colors, and things like that.
B: Jeepers.
R: Anyways, but I got...I learned enough that in five Anna Claire Rice 10
weeks that they made me go back, and I really liked it at Rosenberg. Oh, let me tell you, when I arrived at Rosenberg, they were supposed to have reservations at a hotel for me, you know - came in on the train. Well, you know, it was war time and you couldn't hardly get a place to stay. Well, there wasn't any place for me to stay. They... some...well, there'd usually be some railroad person meet you, you know, and they'd take you around and try to find a place. And finally this hotel, that lady said, "Well, I'd let you stay in," some man's room upstairs, "but sometimes he comes home in the middle of the night and you'd have to get up and be moved somewhere else. Sure enough the man came home in the middle of the night." So the lady in charge of the hotel came up and got me out of bed, and she said, "I'll tell you what, you can sleep with my little daughter, she's about four years old." So I slept there.
B: Oh, isn't that interesting.
R: Yeah, you know, you just...you just had to make do during the war.
B: People took care of you, though.
R: And I had to make a living.
B: Yeah.
R: And, so, then when I went back to San Antonio, I spent three days writing that book of rules - it took three days to write it, but you had to write it verbatim.Anna Claire Rice 11
B: By hand.
R: Yeah, write it out by hand, not look at the book. Well, what they'd let you do sometime, you could write a few hours and then you could go back and review your book some more. I'll show you the book if I can find it. Anyways, then after you write the book and you pass it, then you go ...the superintendent brings you in, plus he brought a fireman and somebody else - they was wanting to be a fireman - and they give you an oral examination to be sure that you know what you're talking about. You don't look at the book R: then. And then they'd make you handle, like, movement of trains clear across the state, you know. And that fireman he just...he didn't pass it, and I passed the test. And so they sent me to Langtry, Texas - you know where that is, Law West of the Pecos?
B: Yes.
R: I'd never been out there before. Anyway...
B: Where'd you stay?
R: Well, that's another story. The lady that was leaving, she met me at the train that night. It was midnight when I got there. It was dark, and I went in the station and all they had was coal-oil lamps, and I wasn't used to that. Well, I didn't mind it but anyway... And she says, they had a little old motel up on the highway, she said they don't have a room for anybody, but we'll - if it's okay with you -Anna Claire Rice 12
we'll let you sleep in the Roadmaster's room, Mr. Corley,
C-o-r-l-e-y. He was a nice man. I didn't know him then. Then they said, "Well, if he comes up in the middle of the night, well, we'll have to move you somewhere." This is awful. But it was war time and there were a lot of trains and they needed the ladies to fill in because the men were all going off to war. Well, anyways, I was...he didn't come home that night and that was lucky. And the next day, I stayed at this little old motel, and it was so crummy, I didn't even unpack my suitcase and they didn't even...you couldn't even iron or iron clothes and anything like that
R: because they didn't have enough electricity. You could barely have enough electricity to see by.
B: ...[inaudible].
R: And there was a lady that didn't have a place to stay and they asked me if she could stay there. But, you know, there was people on that highway; they'd prowl around that motel all night long and you couldn't sleep very well. So and there was...
B: What railroad was Langtry?
R: It was Southern Pacific - Texas-New Orleans Railroad - Southern Pacific Company.
B: Oh, okay, okay.
R: It was all on Southern Pacific because, see, I was on a joint job at Rosenberg, but out there it was a straight Anna Claire Rice 13
line. And I mean there was one train after another out there - troop trains, freight trains, whatever.
B: Yeah.
R: And anyway I ate...they had a restaurant there and about the only thing you could get was - what do you call that steak?
B: ...[inaudible].
R: Fried steak, you know.
B: Chicken fried steak.
R: Chicken fried steak. That was about all that you could get and fried potatoes. And then the - oh, shoot - Brown and Root Company was building that new bridge there, that
R: high bridge, because every time they'd build a bridge over there it'd washed away, and they was building a new one on the river there. Anyway, they had some freight cars - they had some railway cars, like box cars, like, they were made into sleeping cars. And they had one for a dining car. So sometimes I'd go eat with that bunch, the men, and it was really heavy food, I mean really heavy. And I just stayed out there a little over a week because I didn't like that too well, being out there. And one of these girls - we had telephones - besides the telegraph, we had direct telephones to San Antonio for the dispatcher, because that's the way we worked with the dispatcher in San Antone. And they were the ones that gave us the train orders to give to the trains. Anna Claire Rice 14
Anyway, this girl...and then we had another line was called "the message circuit", and sometimes we'd get on there and talk at night when we was - catch up with our work, get the train out of the way - and all this girl'd ever talk about was going dancing. And I wasn't very nice, but I was wanting to get away from there because I hadn't even unpacked a suitcase. And when you got off at - I had to get off at midnight and walk up the hill. It was just nothing there, you know, to that little old motel. And lots of time you'd have drunks come in the office and everything; you had to be real careful.
B: Yeah.
R: And one night a drunk lady was in there, and I had
R: fifty dollars in my purse, so I...when the agent came and relieved me, I told him I was going to leave my money there; I didn't want her to hijack me up there on the highway.
B: Right.
R: It was really bad out there.
B: ...[inaudible].
R: I was there just a short time, just a little over a week. But anyway, I was talking to this girl and I told her, I said, "There's a dance hall down there on the Rio Grande River," and I wanted to get out of there, you know. She had...she was going to get bumped off and I was going toAnna Claire Rice 15
let her bump me. You know, we'd go by seniority and they'd bump you around. And she bumped me and then I got to go to Sugarland, Texas.
B: Wow.
R: And she called me on the phone and she gave me the devil when she found out there wasn't any dance hall out there. Well, she could always go somewhere else. That's one way to get out of a place.
B: Yeah.
R: But anyway, I worked at Sugarland - I don't remember how long, but I worked right there by...they had a crossing right there near the sugar mill on the creek there, Oyster Creek, and we had a tower, you know what a tower - a railroad tower is?
B: Uh-huh.
R: And up in that tower they had an interlocking, and you had to handle the trains on the crossing there. This Sugarland railroad crossed main line of Southern Pacific's line - Texas New Orleans Railroad.
B: Oh.
R: But - well, another story - when I arrived at Sugarland, I went through the same thing. The man that handled the mail for the trains, met me at the train. I didn't know who it was, you know. Back then you could trust people better. But I didn't know who was going to meet me Anna Claire Rice 16
because I got there in the middle of the night. And so he took me over to Mrs. Smith's boarding house, and she says, "I don't have a room for just one person, but I have a dormitory room." She said the men come in during the night there and she would, you know, I was young and sometimes they liked to kind of kid you. So, anyway. I said, well, I had to have a place to sleep, she said, "I'll move you to another room tomorrow." She said, "There probably won't be anybody to come." But anyway, I spent the night in that big old room, that dormitory room at Mrs. Smith's boarding house. And so then the next morning she moved me to another place. And anyway, I worked there for...being I was young I had to move around a lot you know - the seniority. But anyway, we...I had to handle those trains that came to the sugar mill there to unload all that sugarcane that was
R: coming from down south of Rosenberg. They used to raise a lot of sugarcane down there.
B: Oh, they did?
R: Uh-huh.
B: Uh. Sugarcane.
R: Uh-huh. And then I went to a job in - God, where did I go after that? Okay, I worked that job and I liked it fine; but they transferred me to Wallace, Texas, because I had the experience of handling trains by remote control. We had... when you handled these trains you had to set the switches Anna Claire Rice 17
and set the line for them to go on. And it was called "the interlocking plan." And they had a big, a pretty good size interlocking plan over at Wallace and they had - it was the branch line of Texas and New Orleans Railway Company - it was called La Belaire Subdivision. It ran from Houston out to Wallace and Eagle Lake, Sweet Home and I don't know where - all down on through that area.
B: ...[inaudible].
R: Anyways, after I'd been there awhile, then, I was promoted to be the agent there. And I had to handle the trains, plus handle - well, we always sold tickets and things like that. And at that time we didn't have any Western Union available to us, but a lot of those people out there in the country, you know, that was very, a really rural area, and they'd come in at night - maybe their kids would have accidents or something, they'd have to...or
R: something would happen they'd have to send money, and so I would always call that Rosenberg office, and they would let me take the money in and then I'd send the money to them. Now that's how trusting everybody was.
B: It's different now.
R: What's that?
B: It's different now.
R: Oh, yeah. And I did that all the time for people. That way they didn't have to go down to Rosenberg to send Anna Claire Rice 18
the money. Which it really wasn't very far but back then...
B: It was...[inaudible].
R: It was for them. But on this job, it was out at Belaire Subdivision, went through...[town name?] and back through there. You know where I'm talking about? And when they didn't have any communications between Wallace and Houston, which is about fifty, sixty miles on that line, they had to give them the train orders in Houston and then we'd give them train orders at Wallace. And one day their train broke down out there, and they had to have some new orders so some trains could move because you'd always have opposing trains, you know. So they asked me if I'd drive out there, and I had to get permission from the Santa Fe, because it was a joint Santa Fe - really was a Santa Fe main line. Anyway, I drove out there, and it was just a...it was the roughest road out that way then. It was...it was awful - went bump, bump, bump - did about tear your car up. But
R: anyway, I took the train orders out to that train and then I came back to the station. And this is the type of work I did. We handled...you had to know the signals and everything, and we had a speaker and the trains when they would get in a certain area, well, then they would whistle certain whistles, and we had to know what they wanted, you know, so we'd put them on the tracks they wanted to be on. But anyway, before I could...Anna Claire Rice 19
B: Turn this off for a minute.
R: Well, let me tell you this. Before I could work for the Santa Fe, I had to go to Galveston to that Santa Fe Building down there where they have the museum. You know where I'm talking about?
B: Yeah.
R: Well, I spent Thanksgiving, 1944, down there taking their Book of Rules, which was similar to ours but the colors were different and there was a few different rules. And then I spent three days down there and - the same thing - I had to write the book and then when you got through you had to take an oral examination from the superintendent of the Santa Fe. It was called the Santa Fe Gulf Coast Railway. The Santa Fe and California was called the Atchinson, Topeka and Santa Fe. Well, they came to Texas, then they had to have a different name. Anyway, they were real nice to me down there. And the superintendent was Mr. Van D. Anderson, and he was really nice to me. And you
R: know, everywhere I went - it was surprising - I got treated pretty well, you know, I really did. It seemed like everywhere I went the superintendents, they'd always be sure you had money or whatever - you know, when you're pretty young with the railroad.
B: Yeah. Well, you were safe.
R: And so I passed that test and then, that's when I went Anna Claire Rice 20
to work at Wallace, 'cause I had to do that before I could work out there. And...
B: ...[inaudible].
R: Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, at Wallace we had to put the mail out on the hoop. That's right. Well, the mailman would come and usually do that. But see, we handed up train orders with a hoop - it was a v-shaped hoop, like that. The first one that we had was - no, I take it back - the second one we had was v-shaped, the first one we had was a loop like with a stick on it, like... I hope I'm explaining it. But you had to...they had a little clip up there and they'd grab that hoop with their arm and then they'd pull the train orders off. And then they'd throw the hoop back down; we'd pick it up.
B: Oh. That's how they did that.
R: Yeah. And we had to...we had to get...have the stuff on the baggage cars and things like that and out...and out to Wallace they'd ship a lot of cream out of the station there.
B: ...[inaudible].
R: So the - oh, I didn't pick those things up - but anyways, they...we had to be sure the cream got on the train. And one day I forgot to get somebody to put one of 'em on - it was out in the warehouse...
B: ...[laughter].Anna Claire Rice 21
R: And I and the signal maintainer...see, you had a signal maintainer, 'cause all this stuff was electrical that we did and he had to come in there. When I went to work out there you always had to get approved by the signal maintainer on an interlocking job like that. But anyway, I discovered it and all that, sittin' in hot weather and that's ...[inaudible] out in the warehouse, and I didn't know what we was going to do with it. And so, we...he said, "Here, take a broomstick, work it down..." He took...
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 1,
SIDE 2
R: We put the cream on the next train - it was either the next, that evening or it was probably the next day, because it was really bad. And so the farmers would come into the station all the time and talk to you, and the farmer that had shipped that cream, he said, "You know what?" He said, "I got more money for the last shipment of cream than I've ever gotten." I didn't tell him we stirred it up with a broomstick.
B: ...[laughter].
R: I really liked working out on the line like that, 'cause I really enjoyed working on what we called 'on the line.' Because you'd meet the public and, well, sometimes they were kind of nasty, but anyway, we sold tickets and handled Western Union and did our telegraph work with the Anna Claire Rice 22
dispatchers. And we had telephones. It got where we didn't have to use too much telegraph, but...'cause they had telephones everywhere now. But you had to be able to do the telegraph, in case the telephone wires went out. But anyway, I worked there at Wallace for two years. We had a hurricane there, and I'd never - well, I had been in one hurricane in San Antone. Do you know they had one there? Came through there one time - oh, gosh, it was when I was, about 1941 or '2, something like that; it was just before I went to California. But they had this awful hurricane down there when I was at Wallace and I had to park my car out on a bridge and walk to town. I had one of those black rubber raincoats like the section foremen wore. And I mean it was shredded. And I had long hair then, curly, and my hair was so twisted, it was awful. It took me forever to get my hair straightened out. But I had to walk to town; I had taken my shoes off and walked, and I'd put the shoes back on. It was so much water, you know. So I said I didn't want to stay down there anymore through a hurricane. So I asked the company to transfer me out. So I was there two years. And I enjoyed the work, really. Then they sent me to Del Rio,
R: Texas - it was a temporary job. And the lady there had to go to hospital or something. And so I went to Del Rio, and it was a busy, busy station then. And they...oh, you know, they had trains - well, see, that's the main line of Anna Claire Rice 23
Southern Pacific, Texas New Orleans line. They had trains just one after another every five minutes practically, just one right behind the other, going out West and coming from the West, coming this way. And it was a busy, busy job there. They had telegraph job and then they had the ticket office building there - have you ever seen that building?
B: No.
R: It's a real nice building; they had a nice brick building. And they were busy with people. Passengers were there all the time; there was always a bokoo [beaucoup] of passengers there. Anyway, and then there'd be people selling food to the people on the trains, and they'd be there at the station, you know. And they'd have hotdogs or whatever they sold - I don't remember.
B: Tamales.
R: But they sold food on the train, too. But especially when those troops trains would go through, just one troop train...this was back in 1946, but you know, the war was winding down, you know, it was...and...but they still had so many troops moving, and some of them were coming back from overseas.
B: Right.
R: And one night they had a troop train come in there and they had to get the sheriffs and the state officers and all kind of police to come down there because it was a bunch of Anna Claire Rice 24
Marines that were coming home. They'd gotten so drunk and mean, and they was threatening everybody and fighting on the train. So what they did, they set that one car out there, and they had it surrounded by the police so they couldn't leave.
B: One car?
R: One car off of a train. It was a troop train, but they separated that one car from that train and just left it there. And they kept it there about two or three days, until those guys settled down. We had special...the railroad had some special officers too. You know, men... they had their own police force, but they had to have assistance from outside for something like that. And some of the unions were threatening to strike. And, see, I was working and we had teletype machines, plus the telegraph, plus the train orders and all that type of thing. And I copied this message from the President of the United States, Harry Truman, and he was...sent a several page message, and I never didn't even keep a copy of it. That's how much I cared about that stuff. He told these...these union people that if they didn't work - 'cause we were still in a sort of a semi-war situation - that he was not going to allow them to go on strike, that if they went on strike, that he'd have
R: people come there with bayonets and get them back to work. And I'm going to tell you, they didn't strike.Anna Claire Rice 25
B: Oh.
R: And so - let me see - I had a fairly decent place to stay in Del Rio. I stayed in a room, and then I got a little apartment there. And I...my mother and dad, my dad didn't...he lost his eyesight after they went to San Antone. You know, they had cataracts.
B: Oh.
R: And back then, you know, there wasn't much they could do. They operated on him once, there in San Antonio, and he could see out of one eye fairly well. So I went down to San Antone and picked them up, brought them back. And...
B: ...[inaudible].
R: ...[inaudible] Southern Pacific Company...back to Del Rio, on my way back to Del Rio I had a flat tire, just before I got to Uvalde. And then I got that changed and, I swear, if one of the other tires didn't go bad. See, back during the war, you had all these real bad tires. They usually didn't last; the tubes were terrible. I mean, you never knew, sometimes you'd stop at a stoplight and the tube would break.
B: Yeah.
R: So, it was better not to drive a car too much. But anyway, I had to...after the second flat, well, I didn't have any alternative but to leave the car out there. And
R: some people stopped and helped us, that lived there in Anna Claire Rice 26
Uvalde, and they took my mother and daddy to a motel and they spent the night at the motel and I caught the train. They ran that often. I went down and caught the train and went to Del Rio, and the next morning I went to the Office of the Price Administration, 'cause you had to get tires through them, with special things.
B: Ration.
R: Uh-huh. It was rationing coupons. But they had to be issued special. So I got them...they sold...they let me buy two tires at Montgomery Wards there, and then Montgomery Wards delivered them to the next train. I came back, it was the next morning, and then somebody at the station, I forget, they took the tires and put them on my car down on the highway. Isn't that...
B: Oh. Nice people.
R: It was, yeah. That's what I said, that people were nice to you during the war. They...and like I said, when I was in California, the service people they were real nice. The service people out there in those small towns.
B: Yeah. Right.
R: Anyway, I got the tires on, and then I went on back to ...well, that - I had to work all night, you know, before I could go back and pick up the car, 'cause they didn't allow you not...to miss your job, if you had to walk back. 'Cause it was so critical, you know, that they moved all those Anna Claire Rice 27
R: trains. So after I got off duty the next morning, I got back to Uvalde. And then I don't remember who I got, but somebody to put the tires on for me. But they'd stick them on the train for us and they would never charge us for handling anything on those trains. That was nice, too. And anyway, so then I drove on to Del Rio. And while Mother and Daddy were there, I had appendicitis.
B: Oh, my.
R: I had it real bad. I had had it before, and I had to go that little old hospital up there and I had an emergency operation. And then I, I was in the hospital - they kept you about a week or ten days, I forget how long. Then I went back home and...well, while I was in the hospital the Book of Rules Car came to town - see, every year you had to take that Book of Rules over again, every year. And every year you had to have a physical. They'd have a car - a special passenger car that went on the passenger trains - and they'd set it out and they'd have the Book of Rules at all these stations, 'cause they couldn't...they had to take the car to you 'cause you couldn't leave the job.
B: Right.
R: But anyway, they came to the hospital and wanted me to take that Book of Rules up there, and I said, "Well, wait until I get home." So the first day I got home, and I was in bed, you know - back then you had to stay in bed a long, Anna Claire Rice 28
several days. And the Rules examiner sat on my bed and he
R: asked me questions. I had to take the oral examination and do that whole book orally, you know. And I got through that okay. I was always taking the exams.
B: Sounds like it.
R: Yeah.
B: It kept you up-to-date.
R: Every year. You had to have it or they...you couldn't work, 'cause you had to know how to handle those trains.
B: Yeah.
R: And...but I was only there about six or eight months -I've forgotten exactly how long; it was temporary. And then I bid a job in at Marfa, Texas, - that's 'way out in West Texas.
B: Wow.
R: And the first night there, well, it was just a regular ...I didn't have the interlocking there, it was just regular train order, and then we handled express. We even had to put...they even had bodies on the cars. You know, they'd put them on those express cars, and we'd make 'em put those bodies outside sometimes. Once in a while they'd have one back in the warehouse, but we'd have to get somebody to come in there and pull those carts out, you know, those big old carts. And they loaded ice on there at night. You know, Anna Claire Rice 29
the superintendent of San Antone, he'd have the women loading ice if he could. Well, I told him I wasn't going to R: load any ice. ...[inaudible].
B: ...[inaudible].
R: Mr. Mann, M-a-n-n was his name. And I forget what - they had a funny name for him, 'cause he was really bad. And back...there was such shortages of paper and forms that you'd...they'd send you just exactly what forms...if you made a mistake on it, it was just tough, you know. Well now, trains orders, that was different. But I'm talking about on station records, like when I was agent and all like that.
B: How long were you an agent?
R: But they were real skimpy and..."Boogey Man" they called him.
B: Oh.
R: You know, they spied, they...and they would test you all the time. They...you never knew when you was having a test on the telegraph and dispatching lines. And I mean, you listened. I never did get caught on there.
B: Boy.
R: But, anyways, the first night I was there and the next morning I went out, and I'd always left my car open and there was a drunk Mexican on the back seat of my car. And I had to get the sheriff to come down and get him out of thereAnna Claire Rice 30
- you know, it's just a small town. So I started locking the car. And, you know - and I like the Mexicans - but out there they'd drink and then at midnight they'd come and hang R: out at the depot.
B: Oh.
R: And they'd get drunk. Yeah.
B: ...[inaudible].
R: Well, it was mostly Mexicans out there, anyways.
B: Yes.
R: And I hope this doesn't go...sound derogatory, but they'd get out there and fight on the platform, chase each other with knives and that type of thing.
B: Oh.
R: And then one night - and it'd be always after midnight, 'cause they'd get out of the bars, you know, and they'd be drunk and they...I'd go over to the hotel. There was a man that came down and handled the papers and ice on the train - they had to get somebody to handle ice - well, I told them I wasn't going to do it, and three-hundred pound ice blocks - ...think I...[inaudible]...stupid, you know.
B: Right.
R: So, I didn't mind doing the other work but I didn't want to do that. But I went over and got - I'd always drank tea then and we went over to that Kruse' Hotel right across from the depot - it was a nice little hotel. And there was Anna Claire Rice 31
this drunk guy in there, and he followed me out. And this old man that handled all the ice and papers on the train, he gets to talking - he wasn't paying attention to what was going on - and that Mexican took a dive and tried to tackle R: me. You know, and I'm pretty strong and big-boned and everything. and I had to beat that guy off like that and that man never knew that Mexican did that. And another night I...we went over there and we got...and they was fighting over there, and so I got in the office and one of them shot the other one out there. It just got...I spent a year out there and I finally decided to go further west. But...and one night, well, it was wintertime and they had real heavy snow there - it was fourteen below zero.
B: Really?
R: Yeah. You know, it used to get cold out there, and it used to get cold in Wichita Falls like that.
B: Yeah.
R: But we had a lot of snow, and a lot of cold weather, and we had...we had to sell tickets to people on those trains at night.
B: Yeah?
R: You getting tired of listening?
B: No, unh-huh.
R: And, anyway, we had those Dutch doors - you know, it was a half-door - and we'd lock the bottom half.Anna Claire Rice 32
B: Uh-huh.
R: And this big tall Mexican and this little short one came up there and said something. I thought they wanted to buy a ticket, but I couldn't understand what they were saying. And then they finally said we're going to come over R: There and get you. And I said, "You said you were going to come over there and get me?" And he said, "Yeah." And I had gone - after I had found that Mexican in the car - I had gone back to San Antone and got a little old pistol that my mother had, and brought it back and kept it in the desk drawer there. And I said, "Okay, you come get me." And I walked back to my desk and I pulled that gun out and I stuck that up there and that fella said, "We're just trying to be friendly." And the little short one, he took off running. So then the big one left, and I called the sheriff - you had to call the sheriff there - and come pick 'em up. And you was always having to call the sheriff to pick them up at night. So they did a lot of bad things around there like that. But that's the only time I ever had one tell me he's going to come get me. So I was glad I had the gun. I didn't have to do anything; I just pointed it.
B: Yeah.
R: I told him, "Come on."
B: That scared him.
R: Yeah. If they know you have a gun, they tell every Anna Claire Rice 33
Mexican in town.
B: Uh-huh.
R: 'Cause this friend of mine worked at a jewelry store and there was a Mexican lady in there, and she knew about the gun. She told her...said everybody in town knows she has that gun.
B: Oh.
R: And so, anyways, I stayed out there a year. You know, they talk about the men...they kind of resented sometimes when a woman would bump 'em, you know, off the job - you had seniority or qualifications. But these two ladies came down there, their husbands were working there, and I had to bump one of 'em when I went to Del Rio...when I went to Marfa. And at some later time, they came down and said we want to talk to you and tell you something. And I said, "What's that?" And they said we were mad because you bumped my husband, and we said that we were going to come down here and beat you up. She said, "But when we saw how big you were, we decided we couldn't beat you up. This is crazy, you know." And we laughed about it, you know.
B: Uh-huh.
R: I don't know if they'd really done it, but they felt like it. But this happened every once in a while. When you'd bump a man, they didn't like it.
B: Yeah. Right. Anna Claire Rice 34
R: Anyways, and then I moved out near El Paso, at Ysleta...at...I worked at what they called Fabens and Ysleta job. You worked three days in Fabens days and three days in Ysleta - and they were just about seventeen miles apart and it wasn't bad. But I had to stay in a motel until I could get a place to live, a little old motel.
B: Oh.
R: And it was hot out there. But anyway, I finally got a ...I got a apartment, I got a big apartment with...there was a Mexican lady there, she had a real nice place and it was a nice, big apartment. And I'd brought my mother and dad out there. It was comfortable, big rooms. And it was cool there, too, because it was adobe. They have those adobe houses there at Ysleta.
B: Really?
R: And later, then, I got a chance to get a house not too far away. But that's completely a Mexican town; very few Anglos were there then. And, anyway, I got a house and that was...and it was adobe. It was just a regular house, about the size of this one. Maybe not quite as big, but anyways, it was cool. You didn't have to worry about a fan or anything in summertime there in those adobe houses.
B: Wonderful.
R: Yeah. And anyway, I worked at that railroad depot down there at Ysleta, which is eleven miles south...southeast of Anna Claire Rice 35
El Paso. But they hadn't...they had a Mexican man that handled the mail and things to the train, and did whatever needed to be done down there like that. But...and then he'd talk to me and he told me that, right outside the station, that was the hanging place. They hung people there - you know, who were meanies. Yeah, they had gallows, or whatever they built there; said they'd been there a long time, they hadn't torn it down and just recent year 'fore I went there.
B: My word. The real thing.
R: Yeah, it was the real thing, really. But that's...you know, back then things were...so many small towns were pretty well isolated. And on that Mexican border it was a different world, completely different world, working Mexican border. I got where I figured I was half-Mexican. You get, well...and what was lucky, I had three years of Spanish in high school and college. And at that time I could read or write Spanish real well. I never could speak it real good... I could, well, I could say words but I wasn't what you'd call a linguist. But it really helped me out there to work with the Mexicans, and I was glad.
B: That's good.
R: But they used what they called a Tex-Mex language out there.
B: Uh-huh.
R: It was half English and half Spanish. Like, a ticket Anna Claire Rice 36
in Spanish is boleto, and they called it tickatti, a tickatti.
B: You learned another language.
R: Uh?
B: You learned another language.
R: Yeah, I know it. That's why I said, I got to be a half-Mexican out there with them. But I didn't mind. I enjoyed them; I enjoyed them.
B: That's interesting.
R: Well, I finally, after I was working both those stations - and I worked full-time at Ysleta which made it better, you know, not having to drive back and forth any distance. But you had a double track there; you had...and that track out of El Paso to Sierra Blanca, Texas, which is about eighty-some-odd miles out of El Paso, going back towards the East and the South. And it was...the Texas and Pacific Railway ran on the Southern Pacific lines from El Paso to Sierra Blanca, and then they cut off to their own lines going towards Fort Worth and Dallas. They went through Big Spring and on out that way. But we handled the Texas and Pacific line trains there on our own lines. We didn't have to take...they had to go by our Rules, so I didn't have to take that Rule. Anyway, we had a double track there; one for going East and one going West. So the double track was from...[Baleen?], which was south of Anna Claire Rice 37
Ysleta, not very far, on in to El Paso - that way the trains could move fast. faster that way. But you were supposed to observe those trains, and if there was anything wrong with those trains; you had to observe them, if something went wrong with them and you'd let it get by your station, you'd be, you know, have demerits. They called them brownies - the demerits were called brownies on the railway. And I saw a train coming, going West, which I actually didn't give train orders to the Westbound, just the Eastbound there. And I just dropped my headset and got my flares and stopped
R: that train because it was on fire at the wheels. And the dispatcher in El Paso he just threw a fit! He said,
"You're not supposed to handle trains going Westbound." I said, "Okay, you tell me that I'm not supposed to stop a train when it's on fire?" And he didn't say any more.
B: Um.
R: Anyways...
B: That's pretty dangerous.
R: Well, yeah. You're supposed to stop 'em. That's what they...that's what we had...that was part of our Rules, that if a train...you had to observe and if anything's wrong with it and you couldn't get it stopped, you had to call the dispatcher. And back when they had those hoops, when I was back at Wallace, we'd...the guys, they'd cut up sometimes and throw their arms around and grab that hoop, you know, toAnna Claire Rice 38
get those train orders, and the guy missed the hoop, and he hit the edge of it and knocked...hit it in my face and broke my glasses. Can you believe that? And they had to stop that train to get their train order; he felt so bad he didn't know what to do. 'Cause you had to hold that thing up and they'd grab it and they'd release it. Anyways, every time they'd pass the station, they'd apologize to me. It didn't hurt me except it broke my glasses. And they was... there was black children down there at Wallace, and they'd cross the track there...they'd...you know, people always hang around depots, and these kids grabbed my glasses up and
R: ran off with them - they was broken. The signalman there was up on the signal pole, and he had to climb down and chase the blacks to get my glasses back. And so you have a lot of experiences like that. But anyway, this letter - when I got that house it was right across the street from that...that old church out there. It was one of the...it was the oldest mission, really, I understand, in the state or maybe even the United States. Now I'm not sure about that. But that's what they...and they had a lot of activity going on out there, you know. Anyway, later on I took the test to go in to El Paso. So, anyway, I had to learn the teletype and teletape code. I had to learn that teletape code. So I learned that code, and then I had to pass that examination. And then you had to get where you'd Anna Claire Rice 39
type on those teletype machines certain speeds. I never had worked them before. But this is the way they...we had just strictly teletype for what they called the...[inaudible]. Every train had the, you know, the boxcars and all that - it showed the contents - so the clerks would get all that, they had...it was a big operation there. And then they'd give you this information on a sheet, and then you'd copy it on teletype to whatever - whether the train was going East, ones going to California or back to Chicago or back to Houston. Right there in El Paso, the westbound trains...we had the ones going West; they had the one that went to Douglas, Arizona, which was South line. And they had the
R: North Line, which was actually the Main line of the Southern Pacific. It went through Lordsburg, New Mexico, and on out to Phoenix and that way. But they met ...[inaudible]distance, but anyway, we handled trains on both those track. And then we handled a train going East to Chicago - it went up to Tucumcari, New Mexico. And that was ...and then we'd have to handle their train orders as far as Tucumcari. And then from Tucumcari, somebody else tended to that. And then we had the Southern Pacific trains at our stations and the T-P trains, had the T-P freight train, would get their orders at our office. And you had to handle trains all those different directions. And you weren't really allowed to leave your job; you had to get permission Anna Claire Rice 40
to be away from your desk, you know, any length of time when you were handling train order. But I handled those teletype, and later on I got in the teletype and the telegraph - they combined them together. And then they started those IBM things, and then I went to the school to learn how to program those IBM machines. And then we had what we called the cards, those IBM cards - you remember what those looked like? They had a code on them, and I learned to read those codes too. And we had, we...they had the clerical department would punch those cards up on their machines, and then they'd bring them in to us and then we had a machine we'd run the cards in to one of our machines, and it would make a teletape, you know. And I had to learn
R: that teletape code. Then you'd put that on your machine and send it out wherever that information went out to. Besides that, we handled train orders too. And then they had this...they sent...sometimes your machines would break down, or something would go wrong with those IBM machines, and so they'd send a man from White Sands, New Mexico. 'Cause otherwise they'd have to send somebody from Houston to work on them, that particular type of machine. So he'd come out there, and I learned that code, and I could tell where it dropped out, you know, where it went haywire.
And then I could tell that man that came from White Sands - the one that handled...they handled those with...this is Anna Claire Rice 41
what they did with those rocketry...that's the way they started out with those rocketry, was with those cards like that. Anyway I could always tell him where the problem was and he could usually fix it pretty fast. Otherwise they'd have to practice on it, you know. And then the company... then they cut some jobs off down there. You know how they do; they cut jobs. And so I had to bump a man up at Tower 96, which was at the downtown railroad station, where they handled all the passenger trains and freight trains. And it was an interlocking, a big interlocking plant. And you handled the trains that were coming in from Douglas, Arizona, Lordsburg, New Mexico, that way. And the ones - yeah - and then you had to handle them when they was going West. But they had another interlocking plant at the other R: end; but it was really a nerve-wracking job. But I had to bump a man down there, a young man, and he had a girl friend who was a telephone operator and they'd...and I had to go down and be trained for that plant. Usually it takes three days to train for one of those interlocking plants, because you had to know every signal, every thing. And 'cause each plant was different, you know. And what they had was like - above your head, they had a thing up there that looked just like the tracks. It was all in lights, and some stations that you'd have the lights would go off when the train would hit and some of them would go on. So it Anna Claire Rice 42
wasn't the same in all of them.
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2Anna Claire Rice 43
TAPE 2, SIDE 1
R: ...I was training to take over the Tower 196 from one of the men. And he, after my first day training, he reported sick the next day. And he thought that way I wouldn't be able to qualify for the job. And so that's why he took off sick...and he and his girl friend up at the S-P Building, this was the Southern Pacific-West Line City that she worked for. And, anyways, they dreamed that up and so the signal maintainer came down there, and he told me that and he said, "I'll give you a test." And I took the test and passed it. So he called the chief dispatcher and told them that I had passed the test and I'd go ahead and go to work that day. So that guy got out of a job real quick. So really I wasn't too...I liked that kind of work, but that was too nerve-wracking, you know. It was really nerve-wracking. So when I got a chance, I went back to the telegraph office, where they handled the train orders; I didn't mind that. And then I worked there - I don't remember how long, but quite a while. I was in El Paso eleven years, altogether. Back to Ysleta. One day they
R: called me, that every operator, telegraph operator at Valentine, Texas, - that's out near the...that's where the trains change - the freight trains changed all their conductors and trainmen, you know. It was a division point. And everybody got sick. And they told me to get ready and Anna Claire Rice 44
meet the Southern Pacific Sunset Special; they didn't allow just anybody to ride it. And they stopped it over there at Ysleta for me to be on it.
[Break in tape]
B: Go on.
R: But they...I went down and caught the Sunset Limited, like they said. They had it stopped out there at Ysleta, and they never stopped that train at Ysleta. But anyway I went to Valentine, Texas, which is way out...it's in the middle of the desert. But anyways, as soon as I got there, stepped off the train, I had to go to work. And they had a place for me to stay at a lady's house, but the lady was out of town. And I stayed down there, oh, a little over a week, I guess it was. That lady never came home. And I was supposed to pay her for the...staying there. But I wrote, and she never did answer, you know, because I wrote several times trying to find out how much I owed her. Anyway, it was always real interesting. Her whole house, wide open, see, out there in that little town. And Valentine, Texas, has got the best water of any place in the United States, really. And the trains, they, you know, for...they'd
R: furnish water to their people that work all up and down - the track people.
B: Oh.
R: The S-P...you know, railroads always did that, see. Anna Claire Rice 45
They had water cars and they'd send them out to where their people were working. And they always got that water from Valentine, Texas...
B: Wow.
R: ...because it was really good water. But that lady had a bunch of chickens. I don't know who took care of the chickens while she was gone. But I was there all by myself in that big old house. It's...well, it wasn't real big, but it was about the size of this one, or bigger. And I'd go out and get the eggs and fix me an egg every morning. Eggs.
B: Fresh eggs.
R: Yeah. It's quite an experience to go to those places and work, you know. But finally...they finally got a couple of their operators back where they could come to work, so then they had me go back. They sent Sunset Special to take me back to Ysleta for my regular job. Even if you were on a regular job, and they had a crisis, you had to go. Either that or you'd get fired.
B: That's interesting.
R: Yeah. Well, they...it was...they needed to keep the trains moving, you know.
B: Yeah.
R: But, anyway, I went back to the telegraph department there at - they called it VA Telegraph Office on Cotton Avenue. And it was a big telegraph office and a yard officeAnna Claire Rice 46
there. It's where the...all the freight trains came in there and...to get their orders and get all their information on their trains and that type of thing. And I worked that job for quite a while. And then I got...they transferred me to Houston. And I really didn't care for Houston too much, but they sent me to this big teletype office and communications office here in the Southern Pacific Building down on Franklin Avenue - Franklin and Travis. But it was such a different world - going up there in that building after being out on the line, you know. And I mean, you had to punch that coded tape. And they had over a hundred pieces of that teletype equipment in there - teletype, teletape and all that equipment. And, anyway, you really had to work fast; you didn't dare miss a lick. And you know, the railroad always...when you were in that type of job you only had twenty minutes for lunch. We never had any time for lunch. And then I worked in that office for two years, and I got a chance to go back to El Paso. So I went back to El Paso to the telegraph office there. And then I stayed two years and then they transferred me back to Houston. And so then I worked that telegraph-teletype job at Houston. And they combined the crafts, you know - it was union jobs. And it used to be that the telegraph operators R: were not with the clerks. They weren't in the same unions. And the combined them - it was about 1970 or Anna Claire Rice 47
something like that. So when they combined the crafts - I had done agency work you know, freight rates and that type of thing. And so I decided to take the freight rate course and transfer into - I did it temporarily to see if I'd like it - to transfer into the freight rate department. It was...they called it zone accounting, because you did accounting plus the rates. You handled with the shippers. So they hadn't made up their mind if they'd give us permanent status, and I wasn't about to give up all those years seniority, twenty-seven years seniority or so, to take another job. And so I told...the boss wanted me to bid on one of those jobs permanently, and I said, "No, I'm not going to bid on a job, permanent. I'll work down here temporarily until I get a message that I'll have all my seniority." Because some of the people that'd made some transfers had lost their seniority.
B: Oh, really?
R: It was kind of...it was kind of a bad situation, them not protecting your seniority, you know. So when they did protect my seniority, then I bid on a regular job there. And then - it was called a junior rate clerk - and then I got promoted to a senior rate clerk. And how...they started what they called the piggybacks - you know, they carried those shipments in those containers. And I got to learning
R: about that. And one of...the man that had charge of Anna Claire Rice 48
it, he was getting ready to retire. So he taught me all that stuff. And then I was learning divisions of revenues and all that type of thing - it was some kind of special calculation - nobody liked to do those because you had to figure out how much each railroad got for their shipments, you know, when they went to different roads. And, anyway, so when he retired, well, then I got his job. And that was a promotion for me. And then I was there - oh, I don't remember how long - but anyways, then I was there quite a while. Later I got promoted to assistant head rate clerk. And then later I got promoted to head rate clerk. And then they changed some jobs around, and then the superintendent of the zone accounting department, he called me in and he wanted me to take the promotion to an assigned position, which wasn't a bid position, but it was an assigned one. And I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it. So then he went ahead and appointed me to chief clerk, and I didn't even know he was - to chief, yeah, chief clerk over all the office - about eighty people in the office there that did freight rates - and you had secretaries and that type of thing. So then I was there until 1982, when I retired.
B: Boy! Wow!
R: So it was what they called a low-management job. But if you were on a management job and you had thirty years service and you were sixty years old, I believe it was, Anna Claire Rice 49
R: yeah, sixty years old, you could get a full retirement. Well, it was a special, you'd get full retirement with your railroad retirement plan, plus they would give me a small pension for my service as an officer of the company. So I got to thinking about it. I had never thought I'd ever retire that early, but I was sixty - let's see I was sixty in '61, I guess, something like that, sixty or sixty-one. I thought, you know, I didn't have...it was just me to eat, feed; I didn't have anybody to take care of but myself. And I thought, well, I ought to go ahead and apply for that. So I did; I applied for that. And a man from San Francisco came down. They didn't want me to retire, and 'cause they...we were under the San Francisco office.
B: Oh, you were?
R: Uh-huh. Main office was San Francisco. They were the ones that called all the shots.
B: Oh.
R: They'd come down there and if they'd...they pretty well told you what to do, you know. We had a superintendent at our building but he'd could do some things, but some things he couldn't. So one time they came down there when I was on that chief clerk job, and you had...[inaudible]. One man couldn't do his work, and they told me that they were going to fire him, and that I'd have to talk to him. Either he'd quit - he was old enough to get a retirement on his railroadAnna Claire Rice 50
pension. He was just a clerk, but he had come in there and
R: he didn't know doodley-squat about our office, and they shouldn't have ever allowed it. And so I had to call him in and talk to him. I told him, I said, "You're not able to do this job and San Francisco told me that if you don't retire, like you've been talking about, they're going to fire you." So he said "I'll retire." I said, "Remember, you promise that you're going to go ahead and retire right away." And he said, "I will." 'Cause I didn't want the Company hopping on me, you know. And anyway it wasn't my fault that he even got in there anyway. But this is the type of things that happened, you know.
B: They didn't talk you out of retiring?
R: No. And my boss, my immediate boss, told me, said, "We're going to get a raise pretty soon." I said, "I know, but I don't want..." I didn't want to work anymore. I decided I, you know...and by the end of the year then, well, it was several months before I ever...before they ever sent me the paperwork that I was...because they kept stalling, you know. And the fact is, it was about six months before they actually set a date that I could retire. But they were real nice to me. I was lucky, you know. I had a boss there - I hate to tell you - at...in the zone accounting and a lot of those clerks couldn't get along with him; nobody could get along with him. Well, I'd do my job and I got along Anna Claire Rice 51
with him fine. And I just...and he helped get me a promotion, but it was a man that was over him that gave me
R: the low-management job. But I got along with him because some of the - this was back when the hippy-movement was on and, you know, and the unions. They were telling those people they didn't have to do this, and they didn't have to do that. You know, they'd say, "All you have to do is go and sit down." Well, that's not true, you know. And some of them were just goof-offs.
B: Um.
R: And this was during that hippy-movement and the change in the situation there. And some of the people just took advantage of companies, you know.
B: Uh-huh.
R: And if you did your job, well, they'd treat you right.
B: So you retired?
R: And - Mr. Barris, was his name, and he's quite a bit younger than I was - was my first boss. And anyway, he... later on he got hurt. He got injured by a car accident; he got hit by a car. But they transferred him to San Francisco, and he was on crutches all the time. And, well, after he was on crutches and he was still in Houston and I went down to see him, I said, "I can't understand; you're fifteen years younger than I am and here you are hobbling around on crutches." And I said, "I'm going strong." So Anna Claire Rice 52
they...anyway, that was the job that I retired from.
B: Oh, okay.
R: So...
B: And since your retirement, you've been busy with politics?
R: Yeah, I've been political...well, I was busy with politics since 1960.
B: Yeah.
R: Yeah, when I first moved back to Houston, I got into the political scene.
B: Okay.
R: 'Cause the last time I came here, it was the latter part of the year, in 1959.
B: How long have you been on the Texas Federation of Republican Women's Board?
R: Oh, I guess, you want that on that recording?
B: Uh-huh.
R: I've been on it about six years, I guess.
B: Okay.
R: I believe that's about right. I forget what year; I wouldn't know. But, you know, I was...I did about everything, you know. We didn't have too many people working in the field, the... There weren't too many Republicans around then.
B: Yeah.Anna Claire Rice 53
R: And the first precinct meeting I attended, there wasn't about three or four of us there. And so when things were done, when anybody ran for office, you helped everybody.
B: Yeah.
R: Well, you probably know about that, don't you?
B: Yeah, a little bit, yeah.
R: And...
B: But you've had a good retirement. You've enjoyed it.
R: Oh, yeah. And then Beverly Koffman called me and wanted me to go to work for Harris County doing absentee voting, and I told her I didn't want to work.
B: [Laughter]
R: So I got one of the ladies down the street here that's a Republican. They needed a Republican over there at Pasadena to work that absentee voting...
B: Yeah.
R: ...which she worked over there about two years, I guess; and she and her husband transferred to Florida. And so Beverly talked me into going over there and working. I worked twelve years with Harris County for the absentee voting. And it was the most degrading job I ever worked, when I went over there, 'cause it was all those - I hate to say it, but Democrats. They, you know, it was a bad situation. You know, and they abused where I was. Now I'm not saying all Democrats, but there was people over there Anna Claire Rice 54
working those elections, they'd let all those candidates come in there in the office there where we had the voting going on. And, you know, that's against the rules. And I had to call them down on it several times. You know, it just got outrageous. Anyway, I worked twelve years for them R: and then I kept telling them every year I was going...I didn't want to work anymore. And they'd talk me into it. So I stayed through the last presidential election, and I told them, downtown, I said, "That's the last one." I said, "I worked twelve years with Harris County; I worked forty years railroad and I've been twenty-seven years with the Coast Guard." You know, I worked with them too. And I said, "I'm tired of all this; I want to just have some free time." You know.
B: Right.
R: And Bonnie, one of the officials downtown, I told her that same thing about three or four times. And she said, "I'm tired of you telling me that." I said, "Well, I'm not going to work anymore." And they called me and tried to get me to come back down there - they were short of help- and I said, "No way." Beverly Koffman called me and said they'd transfer me to another office if I wanted to go. And I said, "No, I didn't want to work anymore."
B: Okay. Okay. Thank you very much, Anna Claire. That was great; loved every minute of it. Anna Claire Rice 55
R: I hope it wasn't too...
END OF TAPE 2, SIDE 1.
SIDE 2 - BLANK.