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Freeporters remember hectic boom town days
Published November 16, 2009
Dan Kessner, who is a native of Freeport, remembers before Dow’s arrival, Freeport was a small town. Although it had indoor plumbing and other amenities, some streets were dirt, so “when it rained people left their cars and walked home or spun their wheels through the mud.”
When Dow arrived, businesspeople visited Freeport residents and asked them to consider renting rooms to the construction workers.
“I remember feeling a bit imposed on when Mother and Dad rented the living room and front bedroom to workers,” Kessner said in his “Memories of the Brazosport Area from the 1940s and ’50s.”
He acknowledged, however, that even if they were a bit crowded, his family’s situation was much better than that of some of the newcomers who were living in any shelter they could find that was relatively mosquito free.
Even so, “There were six of us plus as many as three or four roomers all using one bathroom,” he said. “Our family used one bedroom, kitchen and dining room.”
When the schools in Freeport filled to bursting with the children of workers who came here from other places, the youngsters took turns attending a half day, some in the morning and others in the afternoon.
The next fall, Kessner attended school “in the new little building with four wings on Fourth Street.” That building no longer is there.
He remembers when he was in one of the lower grades, teachers lined the children up and marched them down to the building in the 100 block of East Fourth Street, which later became the city hall.
“There we got vaccinations, for what I don’t know,” Kessner said. “We just stood in line and got ‘shot.’ Some of the young ‘tuffs’ were not so tough when they got poked with that needle.”
He remembered people came to Freeport from all over the country to construct the first Dow plant. The newcomers included a large number from Michigan, where Dow’s home office was located, as well as from East Texas.
“The little town of Freeport would no longer be only commercial fishing and sulphur oriented,” Kessner said. “It was indeed a boom town. Houses quickly sprang up on the west end of town where there had only been salt grass before.”
Some ill effects accompanied the changes. “On days when the wind came from the plant’s direction the chlorine gas presence would be very noticeable,” he said. “With the high humidity the gas made everyone’s eyes burn. People seemed to be crying all the time.
“There was really no way to escape it as there was no air conditioning, and the only way to get relief was to go in the house and lie down and close your eyes,” he said. “Fortunately that did not occur too often.”
He and his brothers waded in drainage ditches after heavy rains, swam in the big ditch on the levee at the Pine Street pump station and went crabbing in what they called “the crab hole” beneath a railroad bridge on Bryan Mound Road, Kessner said.
“There were hundreds of crabs there when it had water in it,” he remembered. “It seems there was always water. I think it rained more in Freeport in those years than it does now.”
Another of his recollections is of classmates bringing liquid mercury to school in bottles. “We would take the mercury between our fingers and rub it on coins and make them shine like new money,” he said.
“Today if … mercury is found somewhere, the men in the strange looking suits from Mars surround the area and quarantine everything until the ‘contaminated’ soil is removed.”
Freeport “was a great place to grow up,” where everyone knew everyone else and children never were afraid to be out anywhere after dark, Kessner said.
“Crime was low and families were close together,” he added. “There were after-school jobs for those who wanted one.”
Newcomers’ view of Freeport was not always so rosy. Roy Shiflett remembered moving there from Palestine in East Texas in the summer of 1946, when he was 10 years old.
He had loved the Piney Woods and hills of his former home, and when he got to Freeport, “I thought we had moved to a desert. There were very few trees and so hot.”
Even so, he loved growing up in Freeport and said he still thinks “of all the great times and things we did with all the great people of Freeport.”
Bob Tinsley’s recollections of living in Brazoria County in those days — like those of many, many others — include memories of the mosquitoes, which at times “were so bad the front wall (of their house) was black.”
Family members “soon found out you had to wear mosquito dope to go outside … especially down at the canals and beach,” he said.
His family moved to Freeport from West Columbia in the summer of 1944, and behind their house there “was nothing but what we called salt grass, as far as you could see.”
He also recalled seeing “all kinds of strange creatures wandering up into the yard,” including rattlesnakes, water moccasins, coons and once even a ’possum that had managed to get into the washing machine in the garage.
Downtown Freeport in those days was a bustling place with lots of activity, he said, mentioning two movie theaters, two busy cafés, two drug stores and other businesses.
“On the way home from school, we often stopped off at a place called Antonelli’s,” Tinsley said. “He made his own root beer and he would freeze the mugs. The ice cream was very good, too.”
He remembered sometimes, when he walked by the railroad overpass on Second Street he would find a cardboard box and slide down the hill from the tracks. “Seemed like a big deal then,” he said.
NEXT WEEK: Town, county come to welcome the changes.
Marie Beth Jones, a published author and freelance writer based in Angleton, is chairwoman of the Brazoria County Historical Commission.
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