Sterling Municipal Library. I'm having an oral
history conversation with Roy Long.
What year did you come here?
Nineteen and twenty-nine.
And you came as an employee at that time?
Yeah, I've been hired in Houston to go and work
in the engineering department of Maytown Refinery.
Who were you working for?
Mr. Unner, I worked under chief engineer W.P.
Willis. Incidentally, he's a member of our church.
Oh, I didn't realize that.
And then, what kind of work?
I hired in as a stenographer.
Oh, I didn't realize that. I thought you were
an engineer.
No, no, I worked in the engineering department,
but I got into somewhat engineering phase of it
in the inspection department.
Corrosion inspection under Charlie Kelly, and
who likewise is a member of the Methodist church.
Then I worked there. I should back up and say I
went to work in the engineering department,
and then the Depression came along in 1932. It
was necessary to curtail forces in the
engineering department.
One by one, Mr. Willis would call them in his
office to tell them the sad news that they got
to be let off.
And some of them took what they called a
two-bit-an-hour gang.
How long was that?
Twenty-five cents an hour, 10 hours a day, 4
days a week.
And you can see they didn't make much money.
Now, what had they been making?
Well, all of them had been making much more,
particularly one person I knew, an engineer,
who dropped from $375 a month to $4 a day for
$16 a week.
And he took it rather than go out the gate
because he didn't have nothing else to support him.
Oh, Goodness.
I forget his name.
And it went on and on until they had reduced
the engineering personnel considerably.
And I got a sign. I went in. Mr. Willis came to
my office where I worked
and motioned me to come out in his office.
And I'll never forget just before he started to
tell me I was going to have to let off.
I thought that was what he was going to say.
I said, Mr. Willis, let me see if I can guess
just about what you're going to say.
He said, have at it.
I said, due to having the cut forces, we're
going to have to let you go.
No, you're wrong.
You're lucky.
I got a place for you under Charlie Kelly that
pays 60, ¢50 an hour,
compared to 25, a big job, a big three.
And you go to work under him four days a week, however.
Well, that's six.
That's pretty good wages then, better than that
two-bit an hour.
But they had to work ten hours, ten hours a day.
So I worked for Mr. Kelly for about three or
four months.
The next door to Mr. Kelly's office out in the
field was Mr. C.D. Baines,
who was the head of the cracking cars.
And Mr. Baines told me, he took a liking from
me for some reason, unknown reason.
I don't know why.
He said, if you want to come over to work, it's
going to be temporary, maybe six months.
So it'll pay 67 and a half cents an hour, big raise.
And it'll be five days a week.
Oh, man.
And I worked there, oh, about three or four months.
And then Doug Snyder, Grace Seidler.
Grace Seidler had to take a vacation.
And Doug wanted someone to relieve her as
Secretary of State.
And I went and held our job down and then got
ready to go back.
Mr. Snyder, come around.
You done the job wonderfully, he says.
Any time you need to transfer to any department
of mine, we need you.
I'll be glad to call you.
Thank you very much.
Went back to my farm in the cracking cars.
And that worked till one day, old Tom Prudernad
Hall, one of the other, sent for me to come up
in the personnel department.
I went to work in the personnel department
until, and worked until I quit school
practicing law.
I had finished my law course.
The company was wonderful to me.
They allowed me to study when I wasn't busy.
I sure had a lot of spare time doing the depression.
What year did you start going to law school?
In 1931, one, two, three, yeah, 31.
I see. And you went into Houston?
Yeah, it was Norman D'Olive.
Norman had gone, had one year of college, law
college, when he begged me.
I worked next door. I'm at next desk, too, Norman.
And finally, I agreed to go and study in law.
I kind of, my wife kind of laughed at me.
How many days a week?
Three, three, we had to go into Houston three
nights a week.
Was that in downtown Houston, South Texas?
Yes, right on one block off Main Street where
the old YMCA was.
And near the post office, I'd say it was three
blocks off the post office.
And we went back and forth in Norman's car,
Chevrolet, four-door sedan, I remember.
And we traveled over a little old Shell Road
with a little tar over it.
And that was one lane, I mean, two lanes.
Now they've got 13 or 14 lanes now.
And Con Creek, I can't believe it.
How long did it take you to get in there?
Well, it didn't take, it was a fast drive.
It didn't take but about 45 minutes on average.
Now you can make it in 30.
When did they, you had mentioned earlier that
you worked with them
when they were developing the addition where
the State Streets are.
Oh, yeah.
Was that why you were an-
No, no, that started in 1926.
Mr. Roper was the safety department of Humboldt
Oil and Refining Company,
I believe that was called, had charges of
laying out of the subdivision
and he'd done a wonderful job considering what
he worked with.
Of course, they had developed a lot of trouble
and drainings.
But they put that on the market in about 1926
or 7.
They referred to it as the mosquito and
alligator swamp.
Prior to this, everybody talked about those
vicious alligators and mosquitoes.
And then they sold them on very easy terms.
Seemed like there was just practically nothing
down there in so much a month.
The company-
Yeah, and the house that Vallee and I bought is
at the corner of Michigan
and that street right over there.
Is that Nevada?
Yeah, Nevada, yeah.
And it was right opposite of the Christian
Scientist Church.
And that was Mr. Roper's head of that.
Do you remember him?
I know who he is, yeah.
Boy Scout.
Yeah, Mr. Roper, he was good.
He was the architect on the job in the
construction form
and that was a labor of love for him.
And he had a beautiful little edifice he put up there.
I liked it there.
Oh, he didn't.
And he was my boss one time.
He was head of the personnel department until
Tommy Moore stepped in the picture.
How much did you pay for that house, if you
don't mind? Twenty-
There was a balance of, I believe, $2,000 some dollars.
And I gave him, I think, $100 for his equity.
That made a selling price of $2,300.
And the payment was $14 a month.
And Valerie was, she was, bless her little
heart, she was going to keep me in law school.
She took in rumors and rented those apartments
and we had three apartments back.
And we got along fine.
You know, I looked back on, well, I looked
right then, I realized there was a blessing in Disguise,
getting reduced four days a week and all that
spare time to study law, which I needed very much.
I sat on that front porch studying law on my
off days.
My eyes went bad all of a sudden.
Went to Dr. Ham Davis and he said, well, he
understands this.
What do you do?
I said, well, what have you been doing the last
few days?
I said, studying law.
Where do you read, I understand?
I said, on the front porch.
He said, what color is that street in front of Michigan?
I said, it's a white shell.
He said, I'll turn around and face the wall and
think your trouble is over.
And he knew he was right.
Well, you, for a while, after you finished law
school, you worked?
I worked about two years.
And then I practiced immediately after I got
out, got my license.
I had a few cases, probate works especially.
A few divorces.
And I'll never forget, back in those days, if
they got 20.
Well, I know a lawyer here who got charged $2.5
0 to get you a divorce.
Old man, old man Myers.
And he was a smart divorce lawyer.
He was a family lawyer.
He was a top.
I can see him coming into the courtroom on
Saturday morning.
Saturday morning in the courthouse.
That's when you have divorce.
It's an uncontested divorce.
Here he comes with an armload of files, maybe a
dozen in there.
And he just walks up to the bench and starts to
question them.
Putting on his evidence.
And boy, he was an expert. $2.50.
But if I could get that kind of volume, I
believe I was charged $2.
Oh, he was a sight.
Well, you said you helped start the credit union?
Oh, yeah.
In 1934, Tommy Moore said, we need a credit union.
I said, what's that?
And he'd written into Eastern Corporation,
asking to be advised of the procedure to go
through with establishing a credit union.
Then you had to establish on the Farm Credit
Administration in Washington.
Now since then, I think you would then ask one
and put it on the federal banking.
And then we went to the state.
That's what it is now.
State, I think.
And so we called a meeting and Nat Pace, Tom
Priton, Ray Smith, all were red hot to put it in.
And we called a meeting, another meeting, and
drew up a bylaws.
So then we began to sell shares, share
accounts, five laws apiece.
And I was in charge of that.
Finally, they said, well, now, we need a
general manager.
They made me general manager.
I guess they done that to get me to work for
the chief.
Give me the title.
Were people enthusiastic about it?
Oh, yeah, real enthusiastic because a lot of
people didn't have any source of credit.
Black people and Mexicans and a lot of white people
would go down to the bank and borrow money in
those days.
All they had source of credit was a loan shark,
hip pocket financiers.
That's what they were loan sharks were.
I can see them collecting on payday, up to 240% interest.
Did they come?
You say they were collecting.
Where did they come?
Did they come to the refinery?
On the street, on the street, and generally
around the clock house after they get out,
catch them before they get home with their paycheck.
I remember one time, I won't call his name, but
he was a hip pocket financier.
He walked up to a big black man and told him he
wanted this money.
The black man told him he didn't have it.
He just pulled out a stick shoe and slapped
that big Fella upside the head.
Did the company allow these people to come around?
Oh, yeah.
I guess doing the credit union.
They probably wouldn't allow the company.
I would have jumped on this part.
Well, he was a facial media.
He had a good loan shark business. Yeah.
Did you help get some people out?
Oh, yeah.
I got my license to practice law, and I needed
to use it.
I needed to use it on these loan sharks, and I
went in there like I was going to tear them
all to pieces.
I remember going to Houston several times, and
I'd take my file with them.
I'd open it up, and I'd go into these loan
sharks offices.
I said, now, it appears that so-and-so owes you
a balance of so-and-so. Yeah.
Well, it appears to me that that's the interest
you charge is unlawful.
You're serious very much.
I tell them what I'll do.
I'll settle with Houston and pay them a
principal balance and take it or leave it.
Or else I'll sue for Houston.
I never had a face.
Then about that time, I took on a law partner.
That was way down.
After I'd quit and it had nothing to do with
the credit union, my law partner, he was just
dying to do some of that.
He hated a loan shark worse than I did.
Oh, he made them mad.
He'd have summons to appear in court on one
loan shark in Houston.
And every morning, he'd manage to have the
sheriff to serve him with a subpoena in another suit.
What year did you start practicing doing just law?
In May, I believe.
Before I was 37.
Where was your office?
It was in the old bowling building.
Douglas was there already.
You might know her.
Well, I practiced law a short while with him,
but I quit and went by myself.
Do you remember Mike?
I went out and had a cup of coffee.
He says, Roy, if you come over to my office
building, your rent won't cost you nothing.
I said, well, I'm not able to pay my rent over there.
So I went over and took him up, and I told him
it was bowling at over $30-some.
So I saw how she was a good old soul shadow.
She had this kind of reputation, you know, to
run the...
So I went over to Mike, and sure enough, I had
the insurance agency, too, started.
And he gave me all of his insurance.
I had lots of friends around, and they gave me insurance.
They gave him my little legal work.
And then one day, an old nathole called me and said,
I'm sending a woman over to...she needs a
little legal advice.
Her husband died, and take care of her.
So that's when I got a break in the way.
And she called me up to know when I could come
and see her, and I found out she...
She said, I can't come. I'm crippled. And she was.
So I knocked on her door that morning.
I heard a gruff voice say, come in.
Opened the door and looked through the house
there by the dining room table
with a whiskey bottle by four.
I didn't know whether to go in there or not.
So if I had much enough courage to go in there,
she told me that her husband had recently died,
and I guess she needed some legal advice on how
to go about her.
I said, well, I guess.
He needed to leave a will.
No, not she needed a will.
I said, where are we going?
Take the application for appointment with an administrator.
And I told her, there'd be a bond.
How much is the property worth? What did he have?
I don't know. I think about $10,000 a state.
I said, what does it consist of?
Well, some Exxon or General Motors, he said, first.
And then she said, how much you going to charge me?
I didn't know anything about it. I never had a estate.
I said, oh, I guess about $75.
Today it would be $1,200 at least on the base
what they charge me.
It would be one time more if you had any trouble.
I had plenty of trouble. I ought to charge
$2,000 or $3,000.
Then I began to go to work to collect the
assets of the estate.
And I talked to the personnel department,
and I knew it was the benefits department in
those days,
and found out he had an old $10,000 or $15,000,
as I call it,
in excess of an humble stock.
He had right smart a General Motors stock,
and he had this hotel in New Mexico,
and no real estate in Harris County,
and run about 40-some thousand.
Then I got to work, and I stepped for $75 to
handle this estate.
Before I got through, I had traveled all over
the state of Texas
and into Mexico to find out about what the
estate consisted of.
And so later on, though, she was fair-minded.
She raised my feet.
I burnt that much gas lean there.
Then she says to me, she was an alcoholic, the
worst kind.
And she says to me, after I got all those
assets collected,
I want to go traveling, and I'm going to go.
And before I go, I want you to draw a power of attorney
whereby you can do anything that I can do,
invest my money and reinvest in any way to make profit.
So she can't be steeped in liquor.
I should be careful about mentioning names.
Well, you didn't mention any names. You didn't
tell me what...
Well, this particular old gal,
she and her paramour, that's what it was,
they went traveling.
The first place they went to was Chicago.
No sooner they arrived there, she wired me,
sent me $500, and I just sold some property
and made a lot of money out of it.
The doctor had sold his home, and I resold it
and made a good money, a good profit for her.
I said, let me back up about this power of attorney.
I went ahead and drew a real good power of attorney.
I could just do anything except plait her hair.
So I called her up and told her I had finished
a power of attorney, and she'd come on down if
she could
and read it over and sign it for a notary.
She came down, and she read it very closely.
She got up, said, that's what I want.
And she went to the door, and before she told
me goodbye,
she says, now, young man, you've got a power of
attorney there
that you can do anything that I can do.
I want you to be on.
She said, so long as you, it results in rebounds
or results in profit to me.
She worked it out again some way or another.
So long as it's profitable to me.
And if you don't, bullets for you.
Oh, my goodness.
Did you know that was the most honest administration
that stayed through my part?
Of course, she said, well, yeah, I haven't told
you all that.
The reason I was, she had killed her husband.
Oh, no.
With a shotgun.
I forgot that.
What happened before I saw her,
she and her husband, both of them drunk,
got into a quarrel, and he ran her out of the house.
No, she ran out of the house.
And it happened that some neighbors called the
Sheriff's office.
And when she ran out the house, she had a gas
down her leg
where her husband had cut her with a butcher knife.
And when they called the eyewitnesses
and got to the front gate,
he had this butcher knife apparently trying to
stab her again
or slash her again.
And she had the shotgun.
And then he saw the shotgun evidently, they thought.
And he'd whirl and went to go back in the house,
and she turned and let him have it in the back.
No both barrels.
Poor old Bill died on the spot.
And he was a superintendent that came every finally.
And there was in the process of winding it up
and dismantling the equipment and junking it out.
And so when she said, and remember,
if you don't, bullets for you.
It just straightened you up real fast.
So the businessmen found out.
I remember one businessman found out about this.
I was representing that woman.
She said, what on earth you do? She'll kill you
for it so well.
I know I won't be honest. I'm going to have it.
Never had no trouble except one time,
she wanted to buy a brand-new Buick,
and she told me what she was going to pay for it.
I said, I can beat that all to pieces, go up to Lufkin.
She said, well, if you can, go ahead.
And in the meantime, she had contracted,
wanted me to build an apartment house.
So I could kill two birds, one stone.
I ordered a carload of lumber to be sent to Baytown
and went down the same day and bought the Buick
and drove it in, and she was satisfied.
She said, how much you going to charge me?
I said, oh, $75.
She says, well, that's high, but go ahead.
You got back, that's all the time.
She said, that's too much.
You done it all in one day.
But she said, she quieted down a lot.
She was our chief entertainer for years.
She'd come up to the office, sometimes on crutches,
and sometimes she'd be able to hobble up by herself.
And we all knew when she was coming,
you'd go, blump, blump, up the steps, blump.
One time she came in,
and Mr. Millot was in my office sitting there
talking about a case, and she came in her
severance room.
She didn't wait to be advised.
She just came in and flopped herself down
and jacked Millot's lap.
So after she left, I said, Jack,
before we had to have us putting down our fee
or whatever we charged for each thing we'd done
for her.
I said, when you make out that, post that ledger,
put down $10.
I said, what for?
What for? For sitting in your lap.
You keep mentioning Mike Catribe.
Mike, he was a good businessman,
and he had lots of friends, personality, good personality.
His brothers weren't that gifted.
They were nice people.
Jep was his assistant.
Later on, after Mike died,
he claimed to be a partner rather than an employee.
And he got him Vincent Elkin Wing,
the biggest law firm in the country, to contest
the estate.
So I gathered all the evidence,
and I had a landfall of evidence to the contrary.
There was no partnership with him.
It was strictly an employer.
Now, they would approve it.
I'd made out the payroll taxes,
and they were referring to him as an employee.
The insurance policy wasn't taken out on a
single proprietor.
But that lasted four years nearly before I
settled it,
and I'll never forget.
I called a conference in Vincent Elkin Wing's office
and told them I had an offer of compromise.
I said, I'll give you what Mike had told me
when he was living,
that if he ever died, he'd want Jep to have the haberdashery.
And he wasn't going to do it until he showed
the village to the hell of it,
and he'd improved a whole lot.
And when I got through and told them what I had,
they showed my hand to show they wouldn't have
no chance in the court.
They took my, and he was going to get it anyhow.
They took me out, and that was the best,
biggest fee I ever made,
and I invested right in land,
and most lawyers back at the next $19,000 fee
didn't go buy my golden Cadillac, but I put
mine in land.
I guess I sold, well, over a quarter of a
million dollars with that land.
I bought with that fee.
When you get a good fee invested, you can't get
rich in the other way.
You can't get rich working for wages.
Except that lawyer representing Pennzoil made
two billion.
When we talked earlier about the law enforcement,
you talked about the Citizens Committee.
Who was on that?
Well, that was the committee I presume was
organized by Exxon
because they had a need on account of that
impending strike force coming up.
Anyhow, overnight there appeared on our streets
six or seven deputy sheriffs.
All of them were guns, and they were leaving
the restaurant.
Oftentimes I'd talk to them and got around
where they'd come,
and all of them would come up to my office and
make income taxes.
You know, Dave Jack and I didn't charge nothing
for making them.
Well, it's different.
I know one woman who died two weeks ago charged
as much as $21,000
to make out of that income tax.
Well, she represents them on a fraud case too
before they had internal revenues.
Well, you can get rich, but I believe they got
income tax.
Sounds like it.
Well, Exxon paid for these deputy sheriffs?
I think that, yeah, I've had, I'm going to tell
you, that's where they got the pay.
And Exxon bought the car that they had?
I don't know about that.
I would think so, because they were poor people.
Was it the lawlessness that concerned them?
I really think it was the fear that the
strikers might resort to violence.
Was there a strike going on?
Oh, yeah.
Well, I don't know what was going on, but they
anticipated one.
Well, it looked, it was very threatening, very real.
It was going out.
But just before the deadline, they put up all
that cyclone fence over there.
In just a few days, they hired a vast army of workers.
And right along those sheriffs, whether before
or after,
they put up that fence around the refinery.
There had not been a fence there earlier? No.
No, I don't know.
It might have been around on the old section of
the refinery.
I don't remember.
But I do know around the tank farm and the
Methodist Church
and all that was fenced in overnight. Yeah.
I understand they once grazed cattle in the refinery
to keep the grass down around the tanks.
I was an old sheep.
I don't know about cattle.
My old man Roden used to be in charge of the
tank farm,
keeping it mowed and found it more economical
to use sheep, I believe.
I've seen them out there, walking over there.
Firewalls, and the firewalls can grow some
vigorous weeds, I'm telling you.
That's right.
You had mentioned also when we talked earlier
about the policemen in Goose Creek.
One man policeman, one man police force.
Ed Dickens in his.
He got to help them.