EDUCATION OF A TEXAN
Joseph Wilson
You
SEE, IT ALL STARTED
away back when us unemployed
in San Anglo was working on a Flood Control project for boxes
of groceries. Some of you fellers reading this will remember
those days and maybe so some of you are still getting them lousy,
wilted carrots.
If
you are, it's high time you organized and got
cash. That's what we did.
The job hadn't started more'n a few days when a young
whipper-snapper called Jimmy Gillard started talking union.
Now, some of us older heads knowed a little about unions, but
blamed if we could see that we could get anywheres on a
relief
job. Besides, we
d~ dn't
think much of this young squirt because
he talked about 'crises' and 'unemployment insurance' and such
all, which was a mite over our heads, I reckon. He turned out
to be a Communist, and, being's he was the first one we ever saw,
we went slow with him and his ideas. We didn't see but what
we was lucky to be getting the work, let alone organizing a union
and raising all kinds of Hell.
But one day at dinner, after we'd been on the job a couple
of weeks, Jimmy came over to eat his snack with some of us old
heads. We didn't pay much attention to him and he didn't say
anything until somebody started kicking about the water. Then
up he spoke.
"Fellers," he said, "How about us getting together and
seeing if we can't get some decent water on this job? I'm getting
sick and tired of drinking out of a dirty canteen everybody
slobbers over!"
Looking back, I can see where Jimmy sure knew his stoff.
This water business had sure got our goats. Now, I'm no
nasty-nice feller myself, but I hated having my drinking water
mixed with somebody elses tobaccy juice all the time.
Old Billy Watkins drowned a fly ten feet away and looked
up at the kid. "\Veil, youngster, what are you going to do? Pipe
a fountain up from town and run beer through it for us?"
72
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