Tommy Thompson of the Thompson Sawmill

Tommy Thompson, long time resident of Wallisville, along with his childhood friends, Eugene and Don Langford, gathered round the library table at the museum a few weeks ago for 85-year-old Tommy to share his history with me.    Although the temperature was chilly outside, their genuine life-long friendship and camaraderie added warmth to the room.  As they chatted over steaming cups of hot coffee, recalling rich memories of days gone by, their infectious laughter set the cheerful tone of the gathering.   

“James Edward Thomson is my true name, but everybody calls me “Tommy,” Tommy began.   “I own 96 acres by Coldspring, but right now I’m staying with my youngest son about ten miles north of Dayton."   

“My daddy was always a sawmill man, and he had those old Tom & Jerry gloves,” continued Tommy in explanation of his nickname.  “My brother Jerry who was five years older than me said, ‘His name isn’t James its Tommy,’ after the Tom & Jerry cartoon.  The name stuck with me.”     

“My brothers and I worked in the mill for daddy, it was hard work.  He’d fire up about seven in the morning and shut down when he ran out of logs.  My dad had a 99-year lease for the timber on the land from Turtle Bayou and 563 up to the Gulf Sulfur plant.  I believe it was about 1,500 acres.  We hauled a lot of logs out of there.  Daddy started out using big ol’ horses and he really liked them, but when swamp fever hit in the early ‘50s it killed all the horses.  He had some beautiful horses; it was really a shame.  He went to using mules after that.  The lumberjacks that cut down the trees were called “flatheads.”  Two of them would get on each end of a crosscut saw to cut down a tree.  After they fell the trees, they would use mules to drag them out to the set, the set was the area where they would set them down and either a wagon or a truck would be waiting there to be loaded. Usually, the trucks had no doors or sides.  They had what was called a rolling chain they would hook to the bolsters on the wagon or truck and use the mules to roll them up on there.    One time daddy carried a load of lumber off and came back with a one-man chainsaw.  He got out of the truck and started it up and, oh, boy!  It was a McCulloch,” Tommy exclaimed with obvious appreciation for the equipment.  “I was a mule skinner and daddy told me to keep bringing the logs out, they called it ‘skidding’ them. Id’ bring a load out and cut ‘em loose then go get another load.  While I was skiddin’ the logs, I kept hearing that chainsaw and seeing the trees fall.  It was a big open prairie, and the trees were behind it.  I said, if I ever get my hands on that chainsaw ain’t nobody else ever goin’ to get it!” said Tommy with a laugh.  “Sure enough, he let me run it one time,” Tommy said of his dad, “and from then on, every time school let out for the summer, he’d buy me a brand-new chainsaw.  I would fall more timber than any of his old flatheads did.”   

Center of photo, Doug Bradford

“When we moved here from New Caney, daddy brought the gasoline powered mill with him, but he didn’t use it right away.  He went and built the steam one.”  “Did they use steam because of the gasoline shortage during the war?” asked Don.  “Yes, I believe so,” answered Tommy.  “I don’t believe he owned the steam-powered mill; he just built it and it shut down after about three or four years which was about when the war ended.  After they shut it down, he set up his gasoline powered mill at Number 9 Road.  It wouldn’t take him long to put a mill together.  They moved the mill several times.  Whenever daddy would get a big stand of timber, he would move the mill to where he was logging.  It was not an easy job to move it, it would take quite a bit of work to take it down and put it back together. 

Jim Thompson in background, William or Clarence Godfrey rolling log, Rusty to his right.

"The logs were pulled up a skidway then loaded one at a time on a carriage.  A cable would pull the carriage with the log through the saw, and then they would move it back and do it again.  I never did set blocks,” said Tommy, “my dad and brothers did.  Setting blocks is when they would move the carriage back and reposition the log for another cut, they would throw their hands up to let them know they were moving the log and to get it square for the next cut.  They generally cut 2,500-3,000 board feet a day.  He cut mostly pine and cypress but also hardwood.” 

William or Clarence Godfrey (They were identical twins), Jim Thompson, Rusty Thompson

Rusty standing, Jim, Tommy, and Sonny Thompson.

“We had salt kettles; do you know what salt kettles are?” asked Tommy.  I answered no and he proceeded to enlighten me.  “They say they used to have them down on the beaches.  They would fill them with salt water and cook the water until there was nothing left but salt.  We had one of those, it would probably hold 200-gallons of water and we had to hand-pump that thing full of water every day to water the 8-10 mules we had, that was right after the war."

"We always had lots of work to do and that’s one reason I was so dumb,” he jested.  “Prof. Riley was the school superintendent, and he wrote daddy a letter and gave it to Rusty.  It said Rusty wasn’t doing his homework.  Daddy wasn’t short-tempered but he said what he meant.  He went up to see Prof. Riley and he said, ‘Prof, what’s this letter about?’  Prof said, ‘Harold (Rusty) is not doing his homework.’ Daddy said, ‘That’s a dadgum lie, when that school bus comes by, we’ve got the sawmill warmed up and that’s homework for Rusty and he does his homework!’ said Tommy with a laugh.  “I’ll tell you something my uncle told me about Mr. Thompson,” added Eugene.  “We had a cousin, Lloyd who came down to work out there in the woods.  He couldn’t get the mule to do something, so he was cursin’ it.  Mr. Thompson heard him, so he walked out there and said, ‘What’s the problem?’  He said, ‘This blankety-blank mule won’t do what I want him to do.’ He said, ‘Well, why don’t you go get yours?’  He said, ‘Well, I don’t have one.’ Mr. Thompson said, ‘Well, don’t be cussin’ mine.’  Like Tommy said, he said what was on his mind,” said Eugene causing the others to laugh in agreement.  “Daddy was down there visiting one day with ol’ Felix Simon and Felix said, ‘Jim, your mules are all pretty and fat, how do you do that?’ Daddy said, ‘Well you pour their feed in the trough when you feed them at night and the next morning you go get a handful of feed from what they left in the trough and rub it between their eyes.’  Felix said, ‘Okay.’  The next time he saw daddy he said, ‘Jim, there wasn’t no feed left!’  Daddy said, ‘Well, that’s why mine are pretty and fat, I always have feed left in the morning.’  Ol’ Felix wasn’t feeding his mules enough,” they all laughed.        

“My brothers and I attended Eminence school up to the fourth grade, then we caught the bus to Anahuac.” continued Tommy.  “I graduated from Anahuac in 1959. While I was going to Eminence school it snowed and it was the first time I ever saw snow.  Of course, I was barefooted.  Carlton Miller said, ‘Tommy, take these shoes!’  They were his shoes and I said, no I don’t need ‘em.  He said, ‘Ya, take ‘em.’  I put them on and like I said, I’d never seen snow before, and I took off a-runnin.’ Going home, we just lived right down from there, I jumped a cyclone fence.  It probably wasn’t that high, I jumped it and hit the snow on the other side and slipped down,” laughed Tommy.  “Carlton lived down the road and rode the bus, so he didn’t have to walk in the snow.  He lived with us most of the time, though; he’d stay with us week after week,” chuckled Tommy.  “When did ole Carlton die?” Tommy asked his friend, Eugene.  “Maybe about 2007 or 08, he was my boss at TxDot,” answered Eugene, who was correct, as Carlton died in 2008.   

“Tommy and Eugene, of course Tommy is a little older than Eugene, used to ride the bus together,” said Don, “The bus would come from Anahuac to Wallisville then back up the Bayshore and Tommy used to save Eugene a seat on the bus.”  “Yup, Eugene was a pretty little boy,” added Tommy with a teasing smile, “he had his hair parted just right and I figured he was the baby and I saved him a place on the bus all the time. Richard (Don) was such a big ol’ boy.  Gosh, he was bigger than I was then, I let him fend for himself” he chuckled.  “I didn’t know Eugene was the oldest.”  "All I can remember about that bus ride,” added Don, “is Popeye Oldham’s sister Bavy Jean, don’t call her “Baby Jean” it was Bavy Jean with a ‘V.’ She was the boss of the bus in the back.  I remember one time I blew a bubble, and she went ‘pop’ slapped my face and my face stung.  I had bubble gum all over my face,” laughed Don.  “I remember one time I said hi Baby,” added Eugene.  “She said what’d you call me? I said Baby, she said it’s not Baby it’s Bavy!” chuckled Eugene.  “The bus would pick up at Lake Charlotte and Wallisville then what few there were of us on the Bayshore,” stated Eugene.  “We’d all have to get together,” added Don, “the Watts’ the Gordons’, all of us and wait in front of the liquor store, the “Doll House’ I think it was called.”  “Well, they had two liquor stores,” said Eugene, “The Simon’s had one there, side by side, but the Simon’s had a porch on it and we’d gather up there.  “It’s not like now,” added Don, “where the school bus stops at every driveway.  “You didn’t want to be late, or you wouldn’t go to school that day, they didn’t wait.”  “Mamma didn’t want us catching the bus over around that liquor store,” laughed Eugene.  “She told us to just walk across the road to catch it.  When the bus driver picked Richard and I up he told us to start walking up to the liquor store to catch it.  I told him my mother wanted us to catch it across the road and he said to tell her to come up to the school.  Anyway, we started catching it at the liquor store, which made sense, since they didn’t have to make so many stops,” surmised Eugene.  Whit Desmoreaux was the bus driver.  I don’t think he ever smoked but he’d chew on that old cigar.  When I’d get on the bus, he had his hand on the seat behind him.  He’d say, ‘You can’t sit there, that’s Larry’s seat,’ that was his son.  He had that seat all to himself,” said Eugene!  Then we had Mr. Clayton.  The one who told us where to catch the bus was Mr. Byford, he was a realtor.”    

Sonny Thompson, Joe McBride on his shoulders, Carlton Miller, Lydia Miller Otter, Harris Miller, Rusty Thompson, Lillian Miller, Front right, Melba Miller Smart

Sonny Thompson, Juanita and Rusty Thompson, Billy Thompson

“We used to ride horses all the time; in fact my brothers and I were “Range Riders” in Chambers County.  When Ike, President Eisenhower, declared the stock law in ’57 he shut down open range along the state highways, that’s when he bought all the property for Interstate 10,” stated Tommy.  According to state law, Texas is open range unless a county already has a stock law in place.  Chambers County voted for the stock law in 1906 and therefore was mandated to abide by it.  The sparsely populated areas of Wallisville and Double Bayou where they had a lot of cattle didn’t always abide by the stock law but used common sense and fenced where necessary.  The law also stated that any land in Texas that butted up to an interstate highway was declared closed range and fencing was mandated.   “We had to gather all the horses and cows around the area that were running wild,” continued Tommy, “and take them to the people who owned them, and they had to fence them in.  My brother, Sonny said I was a crazy son of a gun.  We had one old mare that was over by the sulfur plant, and we ran her all over the plant trying to get her.   We ran her across 563 and she was going down to the bank.  She was gettin’ after it!  I never was much of a roper and Sonny tried to rope her, however, he missed, and I didn’t want her to go down below the bank ‘cause they had a bunch of cactus down there.   I had a quarter mare and she was as fast as her.  I rode up beside her and just baled off and got her by the nose and pulled her back.  Sonny always called me crazy ‘cause I jumped off a perfectly good horse to do that, but I didn’t want to get down in all those dang cactus!”  he exclaimed with a laugh.  “That was fun, noted Tommy, “anytime we got to running the animals that was fun.  Anytime there was something to do on the weekend, daddy would have to get up earlier than us, or we’d saddle up our horses and we’d be gone,” Tommy declared with a grin. 

Tommy was 21 when he met and married Georgia Nell Woodral. “Georgia was from Hull, she was the sister of Cecil Oldham’s wife,” Tommy said.  “She was staying at Cecil’s and they lived just down the road from us. We had two boys and a girl.  Soon after we were married, I was drafted into the Army.  I was stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado and did my basics there. Boy, I like to have froze to death up there, I don’t like cold weather,” exclaimed Tommy emphatically.  “After basic training you go to talk to the Lieutenant, and he assigns what you will do.  The Lieutenant I had was the one who was over me and my company.  After I talked to him, I asked him, ‘Lieutenant, where do you think I’m going.’  He said, ‘I don’t know, but you’re not going into the Signal Corps.’ Cause my ears were already messed up.  I was sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and spent the rest of my time there. I was assigned to the 103rd Engineers, we weren’t under a battalion, we were just a little outlaw group.  The 101st Airborne was the only one we were affiliated with.  We loaded up our equipment three times onto flatcars, we were going to Thailand. It would stay loaded up a couple of days and then we would unload it, we never did go. They sent me out to put in a power line and told me it would take me two weeks to do it.  It was pretty hilly out there, but I had a good dozer, it was a Case.  They came out to pick me up and take me back in and I already got through with it.  I did it in one day.  The Company Commander called me and said, ‘Thompson, GOOD JOB,” Tommy stated with a smile.  “I had learned to run a machine with my dad.  He and his sawmill crew cleared a stretch of land along the river from I-10 to the Liberty County line putting in a power line.   Daddy had an old tractor on tracks, it didn’t have a blade, but I ran that.  That was how I started,” Tommy quietly noted. 

“My daddy helped run the Rufus Simon sawmill for a bit after Rufus died in ‘66,” continued Tommy.  “The mill was located about where Dos Vaqueros is now on 563.  My middle brother, Sonny and I were up there one day just messing around and Sonny was tripping the cant hooks, the big hooks used to move the logs around.  He pulled down the cant hook and hit the other log and knocked his thumb nail off.  Sonny looked around but he didn’t say a word.  Daddy was talking to someone, and the guy said, ‘Jim,’ that’s my daddy, ‘did he just mash his thumb off?’  My daddy just said yeah,” laughed Tommy.  “The guy said, ‘he didn’t say anything.’  Daddy said he knew better because he was messing around.  When Sonny was little, he was unloading a big load of logs.  He pulled the chain over and a log rolled off the top and hit him right on top of the head.  It’s a wonder it didn’t break his neck.  He was something else,” Tommy noted respectfully. 

“I went back to work for Austin Roads right after I got out of the Army,” said Tommy. “I had started working for them in high school.  We worked for the Menefee brothers out of Center, Dick Menefee, building the farm to market roads.  Then my brother Rusty and I started our own construction company and started working on state roads.  We worked all up through Center and places like that.”   

“I went to work for Buddy Alders I guess in about ’82 running a maintainer, yeah, I built a lot of roads.”  “Did you do Indian Trails,” asked Don.  “Oh yeah,” answered Tommy, “and Oetken subdivision and Harvest Ridge in Anahuac and all the roads in Woodland Hills.”  “I drove down to Harvest Ridge when Tommy was working there,” added Eugene, “he was an excellent maintainer operator.  Everything was so neat and perfectly graded.  Richard (Don) and I worked for the Thompson’s when they had Twister Construction, Tommy’s brother Rusty was the foreman.”   

The friends continued chatting together about all the old businesses in Anahuac and Wallisville, recalling fond memories as they walked down that oh so familiar memory lane.  What a privilege it was for me to be welcomed into their circle to witness firsthand their rich history and bond of enduring friendship.