Chapter 1

I was born in Port Isabel, Texas. You never heard of it? Well it's right at the tip of Texas. About as far south as you can go and still be in the USA. My father was Larry Wilson, a shrimp fisherman and my mother was Annie Wilson, she was a waitress in a small café. Me, I'm Levon Helm Wilson. Yep, I was named for the singer. It seems that my fathers favorite song was "The Weight" and when my mom was pregnant he was always singing "Take The Load Off Annie", yeah I know those are not the right words, but that's the way I wound up being named Levon.

My Dad was killed in a boating accident in 2001, when I was 9. He had a small insurance policy through his employer, which allowed mom and me to survive on her tips and wages from the café. My mom never remarried and she died in 2010 of heart failure as she pulled into the parking lot at work. I was 17 at the time. But, this story is not about them, it is about me, being poor, bad luck, and the will to survive.

It was the first day of summer vacation and mom told me that Leroy was looking for someone to sweep and clean at the boatyard. Money was always in short supply at our house, and jobs for 12 year olds were in even shorter supply. I think the population was around 5000, with most being of working age. There were two kinds of jobs, one had something to do with fishing and the other dealt with tourists to South Padre Island. I walked past the elementary school on the way to the boatyard and saw a lot of boys playing baseball, but I hurried on to Taylor's.

I had seen Leroy Taylor a few times in the café where mom worked but didn't really know him. As I entered the shop, he spotted me and asked, "What you needing?"

"I'm needing a job"

"What makes you think I need anyone?"

"My mom said you did"

"Who is your mom?"

"Sir, my mom's name is Annie, she works at the café, and I really do need a job."

"So you're Annie's boy? Well ... I guess I do need a little help around here. Go through that door, it's the woodshop. Tell Lopee that he just got promoted and you're taking his place. And send him out to see me."

When I went through the door. it looked like a bomb had gone off and the air was filled with sawdust from what I was to learn was the router. The guy running the machine turned it off and walked over to where I had stopped and I explained that I was looking for Lupe.

"The name is Lopee like Low Pee, now what do you need?"

"Mr. Taylor told me to come in here, and tell Lopee that he had been promoted, and I am his replacement, and for him to go see him."

"Hey Rivera, guess what? I just got promoted and here is your new ass-sis-tant. Adios MoFo I'm outta here."

Rivera came out from behind a row of shelves with a template in his hand and said "Bull Shit, Leroy might have fired you, but I don't think you got a promotion. Maybe you better take your lunchbox with you amigo because something does not sound right."

"Yeah I better go see what the hell?"

As Lopee turned to leave, Rivera asked "What's going on kid?"

"Mr. Taylor hired me, but he did not tell me what to do, what do you want me to do?"

"Well, Lopee's job is to help whoever needs it, and sweep up. Can you handle that?" and he pointed to a push broom. Start over there behind the last row of shelves and work this way. Lopee should be back before you get that done then we'll get together and figure out what's going on."

As Lopee crossed the boat shop, Leroy waved him into the office, and sat down at the coffee table pointing to the chair across from him. As Lopee sat down Leroy said "I called you in here because you are probably the only one who will jack with that kid and I'm telling you right now, don't even think about it or I'll fire your ass outta here. You got it? Good, now here's the story on that boy. His dad was killed when the nets caught him and drug him under on a fishing boat a few years ago. His mama is Annie, down at the café. He needs a job because they ain't got a damn thing. He's going to be working with you and Vera mostly because he is not big enough to work in repair or engines. Give him a job and let him do it, don't make it hard on him or you're gonna be on your hands and knees cleaning the whole damn shop for as long as you work here. Send Rivera in."

Leroy then explained the same thing to Rivera without the threats. "Vera I want that boy to learn every job in this shop. As soon as he can do everything in your shop send him to assembly. If you see anyone mistreating him let me know. I care a lot for his mother and if I were a lot younger I would tell her so and I'm not going to let anyone cause him any problems."

When Rivera left, the secretary looked at Leroy and said " I didn't know you had the Hot's for Annie, Boss Man."

"Shut up Tina and don't you give him no shit either."

"Right you old asshole, now how do you want to handle his pay?"

"I don't know, he needs to work all the hours he can, but I think it's against the law for a kid to work over so many hours. Check it out and if I have to I'll just pay him in cash. Better fix him up with a time card, then go get him and show him where the clock is. Start him at a dollar over minimum wage just like any other worker with no experience. Show him where the bathrooms are and tell him I want them a whole lot cleaner than they have been. Then call the uniform man and tell him we have a new hire. I'll be out back of the engine shop somebody tried to get through the window last night."

I was almost through sweeping under the shelves when a lady named Tina came in to get me. She showed me a time card, the card rack, and how to punch the clock. Then she showed me the bathrooms and told me that Leroy was not happy with the job that Lopee had been doing and wanted them a lot cleaner and kept that way. I asked about cleaning supplies and we looked in a closet to find it out of most everything. She just shook her head and said she would go get us some.

I went back to the woodshop and learned that we were making parts for a 28' X 12' catamaran with a flat deck that was used by lobster fishermen. I had to lay the templates on plywood and draw around them, then cut just outside the lines using a band saw. Then I screwed the template to the plywood and Lopee ran them on the table router. The template rode against a roller bearing on top of the cutter which let it cut the plywood to the exact size of the template. Any inside square cuts had to be done with what they called a Jap Saw. It looked like just a small hand saw to me.

After a few weeks I had learned how to run all the equipment and make all the parts. The woodshop was clean, the bathrooms all clean and neat and I was on my way to assembly. Lopee was informed that he was back on bathroom duty and he better get it right this time. I don't think he liked me much but it went both ways. The guy was just lazy and always wanted to take a shortcut.

I got a real shock when I got my first pay envelope, I just took it home unopened and gave it to mom. A few minutes later she came in my room and asked me where I got all the money. I told her Tina gave it to me and it was my pay. She told me that I must have got the wrong envelope because this one had $364 in it. She called Tina and Tina told her that it was for 48 hours and Leroy had set my wage at $7 an hour and told her to pay me in cash because they had found out it was illegal to work a kid under 14 years old. Tina told mom that she had better keep it quite because nobody at the shop knew how much I made and Leroy would get in a lot of trouble if the state found out I was working there.

I liked assembly. I worked with Miguel Herrera everyone called him Mono which meant monkey. His daughter was a year behind me in school. We put the parts I had made in the woodshop together using a few screws and a lot of epoxy. We set the bulkheads up in slots cut in boards on a long table sort of thing. Once they were set up we attached stringers to them using a cement type glue in tubes. You put the glue in the notch, placed the stringer in the notch, made sure the bulkhead was straight up and down, then put one small nail through the stringer into the bulkhead with an air nail gun. Mono said it was a lot easier with two people. One bulkhead had to have several notches enlarged by hand so the stringers would go in. I was asking Mono why they didn't just change the router template, when Leroy came in. Mono said he had shown the bulkhead to Lopee several times and had marked the changes for him but nothing ever happened. Leroy asked if he had shown it to Vera. He said he didn't, he had just shown it to Lopee when he was sweeping.

Leroy left and came back in a few minutes with Lopee and he asked him if Mono had shown him the bulkhead. Lopee said yes that he had just not got around to it. Leroy just looked at him for a few minutes and then told him to go get whatever belonged to him and stop by the office on the way out and he would have his final paycheck ready.

After they left Mono and I talked about what happened. We were setting up the bulkheads for the opposite hull when Leroy came back. He was still mad and told Mono that in the future if something did not fit, to give it to me. He then told me it would be my job to make the changes on the template and make sure the part fit right. I was to get a notebook from Tina and write down the part number of the template and the change that I made. I was to keep the notebook locked up in my locker and to make damn sure it was accurate.

The next morning at the coffee table before work Leroy told everyone why he fired Lopee, and no one had anything to say in his defense. He then told Vera and Mono that they would both have new helpers as soon as he could get some hired. He told me to stop what I was doing and make a complete set of templates and mark them as the master template for that part then to route a set of parts from them and check the assembly of them and make sure they fit to suit Mono. He then told Mono that he wanted the parts to fit perfect and not to accept anything less. Nobody makes a change to those templates except Levon and then it will be his ass if the parts don't fit. A week later I had them done and checked and put on the top shelf. They are only to be used if a problem comes up with one of the work templates

Mono and Vera gave me a bad time, Mono said "Damn Levy, you only been here two months and you got two promotions. You'll be working on the big boat before long." I said "Yeah, I think he's still trying to find something I can do."

A few days later, Leroy came through the shop, and handed me a key, telling me to open the back gate. Then he yelled at Maris, and told him the engines for the big boat were here. I opened the gate and saw everyone headed to the building at the back of the lot. That was the first time I saw the big boat. It was a 46' long by 22' wide catamaran built to be a salvage boat. It had a large "A" frame and overhead rail down the center that allowed you to lift heavy loads and place them along the center of the deck. It made the 28' cats that I had been working on look very small. Mono told me that it was suppose to be able to pick up a complete 28' cat and self load it on the deck for delivery, or to bring one in for repair. It sure was a pretty boat. Oh well, back to work.

My next stop was working for "DJ", Duane James, in what was called Fill and Fair. I learned real quick that the Fill was a hell of a lot easier than the Fair, and that the length of time you spent sanding was directly related to how even you put on the filler. It also depended on how smooth Mono put the fiberglass on over the plywood skins.

School started and my hours went to 16 to 18 a week. Saturdays I would still work with DJ but through the week I was to help sweep and clean up in all the different areas of the shop. I was also given a set of keys to all the buildings and gates. It then became my job to check every gate and door to make sure it was locked. Walking back through the main shop Vera and Mono caught me and gave me the "Damn Levy, you got another promotion? I been here 15 years and I never got no keys"

Payday came and I took my envelope to Mom, she would take it to the bank with hers. I never looked at the amount of money I had and I never asked what my mom did with it. I got new clothes and had a few dollars in my pocket so I was happy. It turned out that I was paid $200 for 17 hours of work and my mom asked Leroy about it the next morning when he went to the café for breakfast. She told me he said it was a damn shame that the smartest employee he had was a 12 year old boy and it was none of her business how much he paid his employees and he didn't want to hear any more about it. That settled it and I was paid the same amount through the school year.

Saturday was another Fill and Fair day. There is one place on the left and right hulls that always takes a lot of fill to make the curve look right, I asked DJ how come and he told me that if there was something inside to hold the plywood skin out it wouldn't need so much filler. "Well why don't you have Vera add a stringer slot and they could put another stringer between those two bulkheads that would hold it out". He just mumbled something and then left the room. When he came back he said Vera was checking on it. Later Vera and Leroy came in and asked what I wanted to do to the hull. I explained the problem and added that the skin templates would probably need some adjustment also. He just said fine and pointed to me and said get on it. It took a bit of playing with but I got the stringer and the skin to the point where it took very little fill.

That night when I made my round checking the gates I saw where someone had pulled some old pallets from between the back of the building and the fence. You could see where they had walked back and forth moving them and the prints in the wet dirt looked just like those Mexican boots that Lopee wore. I found Leroy and told him he might oughta take a look at it. He said "That son of a bitch is trying to get through that window. No way of knowing when he'll be back. I was thinking about what a friend in school had said about helping his father install security cameras. Leroy looked at me and asked "What are you thinking Levy? I told him he needed to call my friends father and get a few cameras installed around the buildings. We decided it was better not to say anything to any of the other employees because we had several new guys and didn't know if they could be trusted. A week later Lopee and one of his friends were in jail for breaking in and a lot of supplies were recovered at his house. Leroy said it more than paid for the cameras and recorder.

Thanksgiving came, mom had to work but Leroy and I went to the café for dinner. I helped mom wait tables for a few minutes and then went and set with Leroy. We started talking about the shop and he asked me what job I would choose if I had the choice. I told him I wanted to drive the big boat. He laughed and said he wanted to drive it too. He told me he had been building it for 4 years as he had the money but, it was getting close and we would all be working on it through the winter slowdown. December, January, and February are our coldest months. It does stop the tourists and the pleasure boats but the fishing goes on year round, rain or shine. The 28' cats were slowing down as all the fishermen that used them had one and the dealers elsewhere were not moving many either. I told him he should give a drawing of it to Mono's oldest daughter and have her change it into a pleasure boat. Then I explained that she was an art student and a senior in high school. Her whole class might take it on as a project, I know they do a lot of design work for the Isabel Chamber of Commerce. He was shaking his head yes but he didn't say anything. Mom came and set with us for a few minutes and I got up and started cleaning tables.

I caught a ride home with Leroy and he told me that the Cat 28 was a really good boat in the rough water and that was why the fishermen used them. It works really well for the lobster guys because they can stack those wire traps all over the deck and haul more than on a single hull boat. If it works well for the fishermen, it will make a hell of a pleasure boat. I'll ask Mono if he has any problem with me asking Anita about a re-design. I asked if it would change anything from a point of safety. He said, "No, that it was rated for two 75 horse engines, but the fishermen just used a pair of 20's on it, because it would run about 20 mph with them and they didn't need to go faster." He told me that right after he bought the design they built one with two 50's on it and it was a rocket so they tried it with two 20's and it was plenty

Anita's class went all out on the boat and we had 7 different configurations of it. Some were exotic but some where nice and would not cost a lot to produce. Leroy said he was going to get some brochures printed up and let the dealers tell him which ones to put into production. He gave Anita's class $500 and I know he gave Anita a couple of hundred. He said it was the cheapest design work he had ever had done. I asked what it cost for the big boat design and he said, "A round $10K, and it was designed buy the same guy that did the Cat 28.

A week later we started working on the big boat. We had to move a lot of things around to get it up to the back of the shop. The cradle it was setting in had standard pickup wheels and tires on it. It had three axles in the middle and stands under the ends. One of Maris' people had welded it up using square tubing. I got assigned the project of cleaning the whole boat with the little pressure washer and was told not to open the doors on it until I had all the dirt and bird shit off of it. I got my first look inside; it looked like a house with a kitchen, supply room, bathroom with shower and storage on one side and two bedrooms and a bathroom on the other. There was a small storage area on each side, in the very front. I was in love with that boat. Maris said the fuel tanks were just in front of the engines, which were at the very back of each hull, and it would take around 400 gallons to fill them. Getting the engines in there, and running, was several weeks in the doing. I would bet that I made a million trips up and down the ladder. Every time I got back, somebody needed something else. The middle of April, we got a crane from Brownsville, to set it in the water. We hoisted two 55-gallon drums of diesel up, and put a barrel in each tank. Leroy, Maris, and a few of us rode over to fuel it up. The wheelhouse was full width of the boat, and connected the two hulls. It reminded me of a huge flatbed truck. We each got a turn at the wheel, and I loved it. I asked Leroy how much he would charge me to be on the crew. Nothing else in my life had equaled this. It took another month to get the Coast guard inspections, sea trials, and all the certifications. Leroy had named it "Queen Isabel" ... I loved it.

The end of May came and I had been working a year. I had one week of vacation coming, but I had nowhere to go, so I sold it back to Leroy. We were selling more Cat 28's than we ever had, and I got moved to final assembly, installing whatever deck configuration was ordered. I learned to install the engines, gauges, fish finders, radar, radios and all kinds of trinkets people wanted on their new boats. Of course, I caught hell from Vera and Mono, "Hey Levy, you get another promotion? We heard Leroy's gonna make you supervisor over the whole Cat department." About that time, Leroy walked up behind them and said, "Yes I am, and you two shit heads better keep in mind that he can fire you." You should have seen the look on their faces. It was funny as hell. As they were walking, off Leroy said, "Levy, what were those changes you wanted to make to the department?" I was still laughing and I told him," The first thing I would do is hire Mono's daughter, to put the graphics on, because they were a pain in the butt." Ole' Leroy could pull some good ones, as he walked off he said "She has an application on file, I'll have Tina call her in, and you can interview her"

I looked over at Maris and asked if Leroy was bullshitting me. He said "I don't know Levy, I don't think so, you better wait a little bit and go check with Tina." I waited a while, and went in the office to check with Tina, and she told me that Anita would be here at 9 o'clock tomorrow, for me to interview. By then I had decided that everyone was in on it, so I said, "Yeah right, I'll believe that when I see her." She said "I thought Leroy was shitting me too, and he told me this was his company, and he would make the decisions as to who was supervisor and who would do the interview, and he told me he was training his replacement." I said "Tina, he's lost his 'god damned' mind. I'm 13 years old not 40" she said, "Well, just come on in here in the morning, and sit here at the coffee table, at least you know her, just explain the job she'll be doing, the work hours, and tell her that she will be making $7 an hour. I mean, how hard could it be?"

When I got home I told mom what had happened she said, "Listen to me Levon, I have talked to Leroy, almost every morning, for at least 15 years. We have a lot in common, and if he were a younger man, I think he would ask me out. I would go out with him, despite the age, but he won't ask me. He is like us in many ways. He has no relatives and all he knows is hard work. I think he considers us his family, and he says that you will do a great job running the shop someday, and if that makes him happy, why can't you just accept it, and do the best job you can for him. We needed help and he gave you a job. How many people would hire a 12 year old boy to do a man's job? The only advice I can give you, is just step up, be a man, and do it. It makes him happy, and it makes me happy. What were your plans for life? Work on a fish boat? Wait tables in a café? No Levon, you do whatever he tells you, and you will always come out ahead."

And that is how I wound up sitting at the coffee table, looking at her application, when Anita came in, followed by Leroy. I was wondering if the joke was over and it was time for me to leave, when Leroy told Anita, that since it was my first time interviewing a job applicant, that he would sit in and help me, if I needed it. I don't think Anita was nervous, but I sure was. I explained the job in final assembly, and that she might be needed to work in other areas. When I said it, it didn't sound all that wonderful to, me so I told her that if any design or art work came up, if she could do it, it would be hers. I then told her she would start at $7 per hour, that the workweek was 40 hours and that in the summer we worked almost every Saturday. I then asked Leroy if he had anything, but he said I had covered it. At that point I didn't know what to do, so I just said," OK your hired." She thanked me for the job and promised to work hard, and I knew she would. She then looked me square in the eyes and said, "Never forget that I was your first." and then she, Leroy and Tina about died laughing. I said "OK, but I do wish my memory was better." I told her that Tina would get her a time card and show her the clock and restroom and where to find me.

Anita was a hell of a worker. She could put the graphics on, by herself, before I could figure out which side was up. It never got too hard or too dirty for her. She knew everything about final assembly within two weeks. She always had a smile on her face, and cheered up the whole shop. I told Mono I would send her over to wood assembly and maybe she could get his ass straightened out. Everyone in the shop just had to ask Mono where she had learned her work habits because it sure wasn't from him. And did I mention that she really looked good in a shop uniform

The fenced in area down to the water had junk and trash scattered from one end to the other and the old dock looked like hell. We needed to clean it up, but couldn't afford to lose the shop time. We wound up with half of the High School working for about 6 hours. It was picked up, mowed, cleaned and raked. Nobody could remember it being so clean and neat. We had quite a few part time people, working all over the shop, and 2 of them were fair carpenters. They were put to work replacing boards on the dock. Leroy hired a company to dredge our water front. Along the back of the lot there was a short canal type thing that ran the length of the lot, they brought in a barge with a pile driver on it and hammered in posts, for a special made dock, for the Queen Isabel, which brought it right up to the building. I wondered if we would ever get to use the boat, but Leroy said we needed to stay on the Cat 28's, as long as they were selling so well. We did get everything fixed up, and painted the building, inside and out. By the end of summer, things had slowed down a little, and most of the part timers were laid off. They knew when they hired in that it was just for a few months but it still was not a happy occasion.

Leroy and I took two cats to Port Lavaca. We hauled one, and pulled one, and brought back an old shrimp boat that somebody wanted fixed up. I got to drive the boat most of the way. I thought there would be more boat traffic around Corpus Christi, and was a bit disappointed. I had never been there, but then again I'm not sure I had ever been anywhere that was over 25 miles from Port Isabel. Over the next few months, we picked up, and delivered, several boats, and Leroy bought a couple at a boatyard near Houston.

The summer went by in a flash, and the school year almost over, and my birthday was coming up. I wanted a small motor scooter or motorbike to get to school and to the shop. I traded a 50 hp Honda motor, that I had bought, and rebuilt, to a shop in Brownville. I only had $400 in the motor, so I got a bargain. I could cut a lot of walking time from what I considered wasted time. I almost lived at the shop, and would have if mom would have let me. Leroy gave me a set of books for a Captains license. The guys were giving me a bad time and telling me that it might be a close thing as I had four books, and four years till I was old enough to get the license. Tina told Vera, that if he didn't leave me alone she was going to show me where he had made an "X", where his signature went on his job application.

We hired on the summer help, and I asked Leroy if Anita could supervise them this year, as I would like to work with Maris in repair a bit more. I could tell he was not totally behind that idea, and I asked him about it. He told me that he was afraid that the part timers might not listen to her, because of her happy go lucky attitude. I told him, that if anyone gave her a problem, he would have the whole damn shop on his ass. That girl does not tell anyone what to do, she just smiles and asks and they do it. He said," Yeah, I've noticed how she plays you like a fiddle." I said, "Not really, I just have the same problem that you do." He wanted to know what that was and I said "My Mom and the age difference." He just ignored me and said,"Don't let it stop you." I replied, "Don't let it stop you either."

Well, my heart was broken, Anita has a boyfriend in the Coast Guard. Damn she is pretty. Mom told me there was a bigger difference between 14 and 19 than there was between 38 and 67. I'm going to have to think about that for a while. Mom did suggest that I might start thinking about her little sister, as she was just a year younger than me. "Ain't no way, she's the 'whine bag' from hell. Pretty, but still a 'whine bag'. Maybe I better stick to boats."

We had the part timers tear down an old wood building next to the street. It didn't take a lot of effort, I think they pushed it over, and then picked up what was left. I don't think there was a 6" square anywhere on the concrete slab that wasn't cracked, so we got a local guy to bring his Bobcat and a dump truck, and haul it off. I was surprised when a crew of builders showed up and started building a new building, which turned out to be two apartments, both had two bedrooms. I was still wondering about it, when mom told me we were going to move and that she was buying a car. Dad had an old truck, but we never had a car, that I could remember. Before school started again, we had moved into the apartment, at the boatyard, and mom had a car. I didn't even know she could drive. It didn't come as much of a surprise when Leroy moved in to the other apartment. He told us he had sold his house for more than the two apartments had cost. Living at the boatyard? Hey! What could be bad about that? Now I could work on whatever I wanted to on Sundays. The guys gave Leroy a bad time about, it and he told them he had checked into what 24 hour security would cost, and the apartments had cost about what a year of security would, and it would keep me out of trouble.

The years passed by, and I was thinking that I was probably the luckiest person in the world. I wouldn't trade my life for anyone I could think of. I had bought and sold a few boats of my own and had made some good money on them. Right after Christmas, when I was 17, my mom got sick and didn't work for a few days. When she did go back to work she had a heart attack and died. I was pretty tore up, but it almost killed Leroy. I was a senior in high school and having to run the boatyard, because Leroy just didn't seem to give a shit. I took off a day from school, and called everyone in the shop in for a meeting. Leroy was still in his apartment and had not come out yet. I told them that they would either have to run the place, until Leroy decided to take control again, or look for jobs, because I was going to finish high school, and I had 4 more months. They all agreed, and I put Anita in charge of production, and Maris in charge of service. Tina still had the office, purchasing, and sales. I'll get Leroy to go to the bank with me and get it where I can sign the checks.

Chapter 2 »