The photography business was booming in the first few years after World War II because of the " baby boom ". Soldiers returning from the war were marrying the girls they had left behind, and the only business that could have possibly been better than the photography business was the business of delivering babies.

Lois handled the appointments, kept the books, helped mothers pose their babies, showed the proofs, and in general was the "front office" of Gazzaway Studio. I handled the camera and did most of the darkroom work. Lois helped out by drying the prints, and since color prints were not yet available, she tinted the black and white portraits, after they returned from the lady in San Antonio that did our retouch work. We called her our wrinkle remover, because that is what she did, literally, with a pencil on the backside of the negatives. Lois' tinted pictures were difficult to tell from color pictures that we processed in the years to follow.

Although most of our business was portrait photography, we did commercial photography as well, which included the reproduction of military discharges, marriage licenses, legal documents, and family records. Copy machines were unheard of then, except maybe in the largest cities. We shot pictures of weddings, funerals, family reunions, automobile wrecks, train wrecks, aerial views of farm lands and cities, and did free lance photography for the Dallas Morning News, Waco Times Herald, and Ft. Worth Star Telegram. We even found time to develop and print roll film.

I recall an interesting assignment I received from the Dallas Morning News in 1949. They wanted me to go to Centerville, Texas and shoot some pictures of a gentleman named Frank Dalton. I was told that he was elderly, feeble, and a little eccentric, and therefore, I should just tell him who I was, take the pictures, and let him talk. I was to send the pictures I took, along with a brief account of what he might tell me, to them. I was not to tell any other newspaper about my assignment.

Upon arrival at Mr. Dalton's house, located deep in the woods about five miles east of Centerville, I was greeted by a couple of hound dogs who announced my arrival to Mr. Dalton. He invited me to come sit on the porch and asked what he could do for me. I told him the purpose of my visit and he informed me that some "feller (sic) from Dalles" (sic) had already been there and asked a lot of questions but didn't take any pictures. He asked me if I knew who he was, and before I could answer, he said, " I'm Jesse James and I'm tired of living under somebody else's name." While he talked, I took pictures and mental notes of what he said. He claimed that the man killed and buried as Jesse James was an impostor that had been killed in a poker game. He claimed to have been hiding in the east central Texas woods for all those years and the only people who knew who he really was were all dead, including his brother Frank James, who had, in fact, died in Ft.Worth in 1947. I finished shooting the pictures and left, half convinced he was telling the truth. The story and pictures soon appeared in the Dallas Morning News, causing quite a stir all over the country and sparking a lot of investigations into the matter, but was soon forgotten. I'll never really know if I met Jesse James or not; I sometimes wonder.

Lois and I bought our first home in 1947. The house was an old wood frame home on the corner of South 8th Avenue and Poplar Street. It was in excellent condition and the payments of only twenty seven dollars a month fit our budget. Mother moved in with us and kept house while Lois and I ran the studio.

J.W. and Kate Rogers moved to Teague when he was discharged from the service. J.W. joined the " fifty two - twenty club " which was a name given to discharged war veterans who accepted twenty dollars a week for fifty two weeks in lieu finding a job. Many of the returning war veterans chose to draw the money while they looked for a job. Many drew all they could and then looked for a job. I never drew any of it.

J.W. sold insurance and Wearever Aluminum products while he attended Westminster Junior College in Tehuacana. We were always together in our spare time. He and Kate were like family to us and when Rothy, their first son was born, Lois and I were as happy and proud, as a couple of grandparents would have been. The camera was always out and aimed at Rothy when he was around.

I was approached by Weldon Owens, editor of the Teague Chronicle newspaper, and a group of members of the Teague Junior Chamber of Commerce, to run for City Alderman in the fall of 1946. My opponent would be the incumbent, Mr. C.A. Umberfield Sr. who had held the office for eighteen years. They convinced me, even though I was only twenty-one years old and had never even voted before, that I could win. I had a little axe to grind with our friend Mr. Umberfield, and beating him in an election would at least satisfy my bad feelings toward him.

On one of the trips Lois and I had made to Teague from Del Rio during the war, I had pulled up to the gas pump at Umberfield Sinclair service station and asked for ten gallons of gasoline, gave him two " A " ration stamps and a two dollar bill. While I was waiting for him to put the ten gallons of gasoline in my tank I went to the Coke box, opened it and reached inside to get a Coca-Cola. Now Coca-Cola and all soft drinks, which contained sugar, were rationed during the war, but all the merchants I knew were glad to sell one to a man in military uniform, especially if he was purchasing something from them. I was shocked, to say the least, when I heard Mr. Umberfield say, " Put that Coca Cola back, I'm saving those for my customers. " I obliged him; I got into my car and left, deeply hurt and embarrassed.

The campaign was rather heated and it looked as though I had a very good chance of unseating the incumbent. I went from house to house passing out my card and discussing the issues with the people. Almost everyone told me they were going to vote for me. Lesson number one," don't believe everything you are told ".

A couple of weeks before Election Day I received a phone call from Mrs. Perry, local manager for Southwestern Bell, asking what I thought about a rate increase for the Phone Company. My reply was honest and straight forward, " Mrs. Perry, I feel that the phone company is receiving a fair rate now, considering that we do not have dial telephones and all calls have to go through the operator. At such time as we are given dial telephones, I would vote for a rate increase if I were a member of City Council." That went over like a lead balloon.

A day or so later, I received a visit from Raymond Davis, the City Marshall of Teague. After exchanging a few pleasantries, he got right down to business and asked, " Jimmie, how do you feel about making the office of city Marshall appointive instead of elective? That way I would not have to run for office every two years and besides most people vote for a man because they like him and not because he is a good police officer. I just think it would be better for council to appoint him, don't you? " I blew it again by disagreeing with him. He informed me that I would not get a single vote from the West Side of the tracks because the black people voted the way he told them to.

Lesson number three came a few days later when Dr. Harrison, the local railroad doctor asked me to drop by his office for a cup of coffee. He was busy and wasted no time getting to the point. All he wanted to tell me was that he had been running the City of Teague for the past forty years and did not intend to let some young upstart come into town and start bucking him. He told me that if I would look to him for important decisions he could guarantee my election, because he controlled the votes of the men who worked for the railroad. If they did not vote the way he wanted, they would automatically fail the next year's physical and be out of a job.

The election came and went. I lost by three hundred and ten votes out of eleven hundred and fifty. Maybe I really should say I won, because I learned I was not a politician. A politician would have told all three people what they wanted to hear, and then would have done what he wanted, when he got in office.

In 1948 Lois and I took a short vacation, and spent it with her parents in Alabama. We brought Gene back to Texas with us, and as usual we drove straight through without stopping except for gasoline and food. Gene had never been out of Alabama and was wide awake until we were somewhere around Jacksonville, Texas, when he fell asleep in the back seat of the old 36 Chevrolet. The road between Palestine and Fairfield was concrete, and some of the slabs were sunken at the joints and others had protruded upward at the joints, causing a roller coaster effect at certain speeds. When I hit that stretch of road, I was travelling at just the right speed to toss Gene off the rear seat into the floorboard. Suddenly I heard from the rear seat, "&#$%, Jimmie, what the !$#% are you doing driving across a plowed field?" I am sure it felt just that way to him when he was awakened from his sound sleep.

A couple of weeks later he was sitting in the sales room of the studio, when a young black boy brought in a roll of film to be developed. When I asked, " What is your name, Son? ", the reply was, " Rdbruwerjunr." (sic) Twice more I ask his name, and twice more I got the same answer. Gene, taking note of the situation said, " &#$*, Jimmie, spit on the envelope, you'll know him when he comes back to get his pictures." His name was RD Brewer, Junior. RD became a very good customer.

While Gene was visiting with us, John Rife started building a new home for us on the corner of 6th Avenue and Poplar. It was to be the first house built in Teague with a loan secured by the veteran's Administration and the Federal Housing Administration. We paid one hundred dollars down and four and one half per cent interest on a twenty-year loan. John Rife hired Gene to help dig and pour the concrete foundation. It was his first job off the farm in Alabama. John told me later that he was one of the best workers he had ever hired.

Shortly after moving into our new home, business at the studio began to fall off and I took a job as a brakeman for the Joint Texas Division of the Burlington Northern Railroad and Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad, better known as the B. R. I. Railroad. I was on the " extra board ", which meant that I did not have a regular job and was subject to call. Lois continued to run the studio and I would do the darkroom work between trips on the railroad. Times were hard but we were able to survive and make ends meet.

The first time I remember seeing Jimmie Wood was at North Zulch where he was working for the railroad as a telegraph operator. He handed up some train orders to me as we went by at about fifty miles per hour. The operators had a cane hoop with a clothes pin mounted on it, which held the written orders giving the train crew instructions and authority to run on the rail to their destination. The operator would stand about four feet from the track and hold the cane hoop up for the brakeman to run his arm through and receive the orders. I was on the caboose as we went by him and I can see him in my mind's eye, small gravel flying all around him and the wind, created by the passing box cars, whipping his black hair.

Later Jimmie was moved to Teague as a telegraph operator and a friendship began between he and I, which would last until his death from a heart attack thirty-six years later. He worked his way up from a part time telegraph operator at North Zulch, to Chief Dispatcher, and finally Train Master in charge of the Burlington Northern Railroad from Ft.Worth to Galveston. When he moved to Teague to work as a telegraph operator, he attracted the attention of all the young ladies in town with his good looks and sporty Nash Convertible automobile.

I had the privilege of shooting the wedding pictures for Jimmie and Miss Lois Glyn Jones when they married. The first time that I remember seeing Glyn was in a picture I printed in a roll of film I developed for her. She was posing, in a white bathing suit, the same pose used by Lana Turner in a white bathing suit, autographed, and given to GIs all over the world during World War II. It was quite evident why Jimmie was attracted to her.

Jimmie was interested in photography, and because we both were working for the railroad, we had a lot of things in common to talk about and do together. He liked to fish and so did Lois and I. Glyn and Lois became good friends. We went places together and did things together. Jimmie was like a brother to me. We were to have a lot more in common in the years to come. Both of us were named James, but were called Jimmie, our wives were both named Lois, our daughters were born in March of 1953, both of our daughters married men whose first name is James, his son is named Mark, my grandson is named Mark, and both of our youngest grandsons are red headed.

The railroad was booming in the late forties and early fifties. The wheat from Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas panhandle was being shipped over seas under the "Marshall Plan ". My job on the railroad as a brakeman became almost full time and because business had fallen off at the photographic studio, I sold my equipment and closed the studio. Most of the train crews wanted to work the long haul freight runs, therefore I bought a brakeman's passenger train uniform and signed up for extra board assignments on the Twin Star Rocket and the Sam Houston Zephyr. The two trains carried passengers from Chicago to Houston and from Denver to Houston, respectively. The B.R.I. supplied crews for them between Ft.Worth and Houston. The trains ran a hundred and twenty miles per hour at times. I also worked on The DoodleBug, a passenger train, operating between Dallas and Houston.

A tragic event involving The DoodleBug started me to thinking about quitting as a brakeman on the railroad. The train consisted of a gasoline engine driven electric locomotive, the rear of which was also a baggage and mail car, and one passenger coach. The air horn could be heard in the passenger compartment at every road crossing, and signals were also passed from the engineer to the conductor and brakeman by the use of the horn. A series of short, rapid blasts of the horn warned of a possible application of the emergency brakes and also warned anything or anyone on the tracks of the approaching train. We were between Kirvin and Teague, north of Teague, running about sixty miles per hour when I heard a series of short blasts on the air horn. I was prepared when I heard the emergency brakes applied. I took flagging equipment from the rack, and prepared to protect the rear of the train from being struck by the Sam Houston Zephyr which was due to arrive at that location in about fifteen or so minutes. I would go back toward Kirvin about a mile and place two " torpedoes " (small plastic charges) on the rail. These small charges would make a very loud noise and alert the engineer to look out for a flagman to stop him ahead. As I stepped from the rear of the train, I saw a small baby lying between the rails. It had been playing on the tracks while its mother and father were washing clothes behind their house next to the railroad.

Working the freight trains was really hard work and when the wheat rush was over I was " bumped " from the passenger extra board and had to do freight work. We would sometimes work for sixteen hours, rest eight hours and work another sixteen hours with the routine being continued for as long as two weeks. On one trip from Teague to Houston, we had just about everything happen to us that could possibly happen to a train crew. First, our train was too heavy for the steam engine to pull up the steep grade into Flynn, and we had to take half the train to Flynn, then couple up to the rear half and take it to a siding and put the train back together again. While all this was going on, I was about a mile behind the caboose with a red lantern in my hand, waiting for any train that might catch up with us from the rear. It was a dark; still night and sound traveled well. I could hear the rest of the train crew working to get the train up the hill, and I could also hear something I could not easily identify. After a while I heard the gravel on the tracks being moved around and turned my white lantern on to see a big black bull all set to charge my red lantern and me. I left the lantern right where it was and vacated the premise. Luckily the crew had the train ready to go and there was another red lantern on the caboose.

After leaving Flynn, we ran low on water and had to cut the engine loose and run for water. I had to go flagging again. Then we had two hot boxes to set out (the wheel bearings overheated), and I went flagging again. As it turned out, we reached Houston two days later, and even though I had left Teague with a new pair of shoes on my feet, I was walking on my socks when I got to the rooming house on Milby Street.

A clerk position came open in the yard office at Teague in the winter of 1951. I applied for the job and gave up my brakeman seniority, to take it. I had been a part of the change over from steam engines to diesels. I knew the smell of oil burning in the firebox of a steam locomotive, the smell of grinding brakes, and the smell of a hot box on a boxcar. My adventures as a brakeman could be a book in itself, but I had made my last trip on the rail as a brakeman.