By James Kimbell (Jim) Gazzaway

One trade, at which this writer is definitely not a master, is the trade of storywriter, but I would like to add story writing to my many pleasurable endeavors. Writing this series of stories could be one of the most enjoyable things I have ever done, because I am leaving to my grand children, and maybe a generation or two after them, a little bit of family history and humor. This series of stories is about a shoe shine boy, a paper boy, a printers devil, a cotton picker, a grocery sacker, a janitor, a boy learning to fly, a barnstormer, an airplane mechanic, an Army Air Corps Cadet, a soldier, a photographer, a crop duster, a flight instructor, a railroad brakeman, a railroad clerk, an executive airplane pilot, a DC-3 airplane Captain, a ham radio operator, a real estate salesman, an air traffic controller, a business man, a part time preacher, a husband, a father, and a grandfather.

This "Jack of all trades" started out pretty big. I weighed in at 12 pounds when I first saw the light of day. I am told I had a full head of black hair, big brown eyes, and a pair of lungs with enough power to produce a cry that could be heard "three doors down the street".

My father named me for his good friend, Judge James Kimbell, although my mother had wanted to name me for another good friend of the family, Earl Barnett. It was the custom then for the father to name the children and so I became known as Kimbell instead of Earl. My father had intended to give me three given names, but Dr. Leach failed to put "Luther" down before James Kimbell, and so Luther never got on the birth certificate.

Luther Govan Gazzaway, my father, was born in Redwine's Cove, near Dalton, Whitfield County, Georgia on March 26, 1874. He was the son of a Methodist preacher, Elsberry Almarine Gazzaway, who was the son of Berry Gazzaway, who stood 7 feet tall and weighed 340 pounds.

My father married Kate Elizabeth Walker in March of 1895. She had a daughter named Gladys, by her first husband, who had died. He and Miss Kate had two boys, Homer and Herman, and two girls, Mabel, and Loraine. Miss Kate died in 1920.

William Thomas Jordan, my mother, was born at Big Hill, Limestone County, Texas on July 5, 1886. Her father's name was John Bryant Jordan, born in Alabama in 1838. Grandpa Jordan had been so sure that my mother was going to be a boy when she was born, that he had picked out a boy's name, and never changed his mind, when a girl arrived instead of a boy.

My father and mother were married at my Grandpa Jordan's house on April 23, 1923. They lived with him, and took care of the farm and nursed him (he was terminally ill with cancer) until his death in 1924.

The news spread pretty fast, that Miss Willie and Mr. Gazzaway, the local cotton weigher, had a big bouncing baby boy. Of course news didn't travel very fast then, because on February 23, 1925, Thornton, Limestone County, Texas didn't have any telephones. Daddy sent a telegram to Homer, my oldest half brother, in Dallas, and he told my other brother and sisters about my arrival. My youngest sister, Loraine, was 19 years older than I was, and Homer was 25 years old when I was born; they did not live with my mother and father.

We lived in Thornton, on Bowie Street, I'll tell you more about that later.

Daddy gave up the job as public cotton weigher, which was a political office, and he and my mother opened a cafe on Main Street in Thornton. Business was good, and Mother needed to help at the cafe, but there was no one to take care of me; so they took me to the cafe with them. That worked out fine, as long as I wasn't big enough to walk. They could keep an eye on me as I crawled around on the floor and played in my play pen that Daddy had made for me, but I was walking by the time I was a little over a year old, and then it got to be quite a chore keeping up with me. It was hard enough for Mother to balance a platter of food on a tray, and look where she was going, without having to keep one eye on me, so Daddy came up with a terrific idea. He strapped a turkey bell to my foot, and as long as they could hear the turkey bell, they knew I was all right.

The turkey bell worked just fine until I was about 3 years old and learned how to take it off. I had a little help learning that, from some of the men that occupied the "buzzard roost" out in front of the cafe. The buzzard roost was a name for the wooden bench, that the men, who had nothing to do, sat on and whittled on sticks, and talked about people that did have jobs. They also smoked cigarettes, cigars, and pipes, and chewed tobacco, and some of them even drank whiskey.

Mother and Daddy decided that they needed someone to stay at home and keep me there when they caught some of the men giving me cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and even a sip of whiskey now and then. Daddy got busy looking for someone, and heard about this lady with a small boy whose father had died and needed some place to stay. She agreed to come live with us, and keep house for Mother and Daddy, and care for me during the daytime.

I don't know where I came up with the name I gave her but I called her "Hun", and before long everyone that knew her called her that. Her real name was Mrs. Kate Gour, and her son's name was Jesse. He was about three years older than I was and I learned to love him just like he was my own brother. He would play with me for hours on end and kept me out of trouble with the beehive in the back yard. I know one time; a honeybee stung him when he got it off of me.

I don't know just how long Hun and Jesse lived with us, but when they left, they moved to Corsicana, Texas, and because Hun could not get a job where she could keep Jesse with her, she put him in the State Orphan's home. She stayed in Corsicana the rest of her life. Jesse grew up in the orphan's home, and when he finished school, became a fireman. The last time I heard from him, he was living in Dallas and working for Texas Power and Light Company.

Daddy became sick along about the time of the stock market crash in 1929, and he and Mother closed the cafe. Daddy was not able to hold a steady job, because of his health, and also after the stock market broke, there was a depression all over the world and people were not only out of work, but many were hungry and homeless. We were lucky; we had a roof over our heads and enough to eat.

One of the few things I remember about my daddy took place while he was peddling fish that he would order in wooden barrels of ice. The barrels of fish would come to the railroad depot in Groesbeck, and Daddy would go pick them up in his pickup truck, and drive out all over the country side, and sell the farmers these great big beautiful fish.

Well, we had picked up the barrels of fish and were on our way back to Thornton with them, going down this gravel road, and the old Model T Ford was making a lot of noise, and the gravel was hitting the fenders and making more noise. We were moving along pretty fast, probably 30 or 35 miles an hour, and all at once the pickup started going faster and faster, and it was going up a hill at that. I looked at Daddy and he had a worried look on his face. He turned the switch off and killed the engine, but the pickup just kept on going faster and faster. He reached over and picked me up with one arm and said, "Hold on, Son, we're gonna jump". About that time, we heard a car horn blow, and the pickup started slowing down and came to a stop. This big black Buick car pulled up along side and stopped. It was a friend of my daddy's, the county sheriff, Boss McKenzie. He was doubled up with laughter, and I heard him say, "I had ya going there for a while didn't I, Luther?" Daddy laughed too, but I don't think he really thought it was funny. The sheriff had eased up behind us and had been pushing us with his bumper.

One of the other things I remember about my daddy happened just a short while before they took him to the hospital, in Wichita Falls, Texas. He had started to town, to see about the mail. We had a post office box down town, and I knew that if I went with him, I could usually get a piece of candy at the grocery store, next door to the post office. He almost got off to town without me, but I spotted him about a block away, and started crying to go with him. I remember him waiting for me to run to him, and he picked me up in his arms, and kissed me and told me how sorry he was for not thinking to ask me to go with him. I got a "Baby Ruth" candy bar that day.

I remember going to see him in the hospital and sitting on his lap, and then I remember going to the cemetery, in Thornton, when they buried him. That was in March of 1931. He had died of a disease know as pellagra. They found a cure for the disease in June of 1931. He was one of the last people to ever die of it.

I remember, after Daddy died my Uncle Jim Patterson and Uncle Will Childress would come to our house, in Thornton, and help Mother with chores about the place that she could not take care of herself. Uncle Jim was married to my mother's sister, Nancy, and Uncle Will was married to her other sister, Minnie. I don't know what would have happened to Mother and me, had it not been for them. They would bring in their teams of mules and plow the garden, fix the pigpen, patch leaks in the barn, and cut wood

for the fireplace.

Uncle Jim and Aunt Nancy had a large family and lived on a farm south of Big Hill. All of their children were married when I was born, and some of their grand children were older than me. The boys were named Jesse, John, Hardy, Ray, Jimmy, and Woody. They had one daughter, May. All the boys were close together in age, none was more than 2 years older than the next, so they did a lot of things together, and I was told, it was always like a continuous three ring circus when they were growing up.

To add to all the excitement around the Patterson house, the Brown family lived about a quarter of a mile down the road, and they had 12 boys. You could figure when the 18 boys in the Patterson and Brown families got together, something was going to happen, and it usually did. Things happened like, teaching the younger ones to swim by throwing them in the stock pond, and telling them to "swim or drown". None of them ever drowned; they all learned to swim, but no one knows why they didn't drown. Another favorite pass-time was locating bumble bee's nests and swatting the bees with a flat board paddle, which had a hole in the middle, so the paddle could be swung faster. Of course, now and then a bumblebee would go through the hole in the paddle and sting the paddle swinger, usually on the nose or between the eyes.

I remember one of the Brown boys, Woodrow, who was just a little older than me, daring Derwood, his older brother, to chop off his fingers when he laid them on the end of a piece of stove wood, while they were splitting wood for the cook stove. Derwood obliged him with a swing of the axe and off came the two middle fingers on Woodrow's left hand. Woodrow ran in the house and told his father what had happened. Mr. Brown said, "Go stick your hand in some coal oil, Son, it will be alright." Woodrow did get

alright, but he always had two fingers on his left hand shorter than all the rest.

As for the Patterson boys, they all grew up and went their separate ways. Jesse and Ray moved to Houston and became welders and machinists. Hardy moved to California and became an oilman. John was a moon-shiner and farmer; he spent a little time in federal prison for making and selling whiskey during prohibition. Jimmy was a farmer and finally a guard at Hughes Tool Company in Houston. He killed his wife, Nettie, and died in the electric chair in Huntsville in 1950, for her murder.

Woody was a farmer and always worked hard. He farmed my mother's land for her as a sharecropper. He gave her a third of the cotton, and a fourth of the corn, for the use of the land. He had real short teeth, and I remember asking him why they were so short; he said he wore them off cussing.

Uncle Will and Aunt Minnie had two boys and a girl. The boys were C.B. and Alton. The girl was named Una. I don't remember much about C.B. and Alton, except that C.B. stuttered, and Alton was a big man. They both farmed for a living and both of them died in their forties or early fifties.

I remember that C.B. cured his stuttering by starting off each statement he made with the words "Bless Pat". He favored Uncle Will and had his mannerisms, while Alton favored Aunt Minnie and had her ways about him.

Uncle Will and Aunt Minnie used to fuss a lot. They never did seem to get angry with one another, but they never did seem to agree on very many things. She used to fuss at him about smoking his pipe in the house. She said it smelled the house up. I remember seeing him tamp the tobacco in his pipe, while it was burning, and wondering how he kept from burning his finger.

Una was like a second mother to me. She had two girls and a boy. W. H. was the oldest, then Hazel, and Garnett. W. H. is a year older than I am, so I spent quite a bit of time at their house. Una's husband was Hugh Nichols, and he was like a father to me. They were sharecroppers and moved around quite a bit. I'll tell you more about them later.

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