Kermit Reid
Kermit Reid and family.
You could say he was a man of many trades. He was, at various times, a farmer, factory worker, shipyard worker, pipeline worker, cut and hauled pulp wood, owned his own garage, grocery store, restaurant and laundromat.
My first memory of him was when I was five or six years old. He was always bringing me presents -- a pedal car, a BB gun which got me in trouble... When he hooked up the dog to the wagon he bought me and then put me in it, I had a fun ride until the dog went after a hog across the road. But I'm still here so many years later, so no harm was done.
He drove fast. I always liked to ride with him. When we lived in Mobile, we'd sometimes go back to Mississippi for the weekend and it was a fast trip. When he farmed the place Mama and Aunt Ned had bought, he put me behind the mule and plow. I enjoyed that, but I didn't like the hoe in my hand or a cotton sack on my back. I don't think he liked farming, because he only did it one year.
In the summer I went with him every day when he was cutting and hauling pulpwood. I only watched and passed water and tools around. The best part of the day was when he hauled a load to town and we stopped at the store and he bought me a moon pie and an RC Cola.
Next he built this big shed and opened a garage where he repaired cars. I learned how to use hand tools and how an automobile worked there. After the garage, he worked at a shipyard in New Orleans. While he worked there, he lived with us. My mother was working in the evenings and he watched me sometimes. He loved to gamble. At that time, there were casinos in St. Bernard and he would go there and was taking me. It was fun while it lasted, but my mother caught us and that was the end of that. The job he was working on ran out and he returned to Mississippi and worked at the box factory and in his garage.
I finished school and joined the Marines. I was home on leave before going to California and he was working on the pipeline around New Orleans. On a Friday afternoon, I went over to the place where he was working. I got there right at quitting time and they were all shooting dice. He told me he would race me to his house in Mississippi. So I took off. I got there in an hour and a half and thought I did real well, but he asked me what took me so long. He had eaten supper and said he had a flat on the way.
His next endeavor was his grocery store. I didn't see him much any more except when I took leave and passed through Mississippi. He was always saying that someday we were going to go fishing.
When I retired from the Marines, we were staying with Aunt Ned in Mississippi until our house was finished. He had lost the store but still had his cafe. Somehow, he had forgotten to pay Mississippi all the sales tax he had collected over the years and they frowned on that. They sold his store to pay the taxes. He would come over and want me to go somewhere with him. By then he was almost blind in one eye and couldn't see too well with the other and he still drove fast. One trip was enough for me, maybe I'd gained a little wisdom, I told him I would go where he wanted but I was driving. Almost every one in the area made it to the cafe sometime during the day to drink coffee and talk. He had the best hamburgers I have ever eaten. We finally made that fishing trip and caught lots of catfish.
We moved in to our new house in Kenner, Louisiana, and visited Mississippi often. They would have fish fries and he would pick all the time the stuff was cooking and then when everyone else sat down to eat Uncle Kermit would say "I'm not hungry" and my mother would say "No wonder, you ate all morning". When we came up on the weekends, I would spend time at the cafe. Again, we were always going on a big fishing trip, but this one never happened. He passed on and I miss him. He was a hero to me when I was young and he still was when he passed away.
Written by Walter Singleman Jones, December 1999, Kenner, Louisiana.