Professor Elam

Monday January 14 2013

I took time out and spent the last few days with an old friend, Captain John Lee, former Green Beret, US Army, VIet Nam Veteran. I reminded the Captain that we had known one another some 40 years, an anniversay if you will. The Captain lives in Vidor, Tx now surrounded by family and new found friends. He
has lost the lower part of his right leg to maladies of Agent Orange. Rather than get depressed about it, he has re invented himself. The Mascot of the town is the Vidor Pirates High School, well he is now the Official Town Pirate. 

 Green Berets are  indigeous forces who are fluent in local languages. They train locals to resist outside forces. 

Special Forces, as John told me, are trained to be Burt Reynolds in Deliverance, survivors. Captain Lee was both a Green Beret and Special Forces Ranger. 

At any rate, we had a great time. One of the joys of being with someone who knows the area is finding out of the way places to greet, meet, and  and eat. 

 And believe me Peggy's on the Bayou is just that. 

 

 

I thought they screeened in the porch so taht the mosquitoes would not come in. It turns out the real
reason was to keep George the Gator off the porch.

 

Come on admit it, you thought I was kidding….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At any rate the story on Peggy's has gotten around. The Deputy Sheriffs were there that day. The Coast
Guard has a habit of docking their semi-inflatables with .50 caliber guns there, the safest place in Vidor to eat lunch when they are in port I would say. And no wonder, consider this gumbo. The tradition is to have gumbo with yes you see, it, potato salad, different but good. 

 

We moved on to the Spindletop Museum , next to Lamar University.

This is a very well done re creation of the town square of spindletop at the time of the oil boom. The
print shop was particularly interesting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Of particular interest to accounting and finance students was the equally booming market in shoares of newly formed oil companies. One building handily featured botha a law firm and a print and
photography shop. The print shop produced the stock certificates created by the lawyers for the new oil companies. Both Texaco and Gulf Oil were founded here. At right is a re creation of the quote board for the Beaumont Oil Exchange which eventually became the Beaumont Chamber of Commerce. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 At left are four examples of adding machines of that day. On the machine second from right, a handle is clearly visible on the right side. This means the machine was manually operated. After entering the digits, the operator pulled the crank. This moved the proper levers forward to print and add to the totals. Hey  no batteries required!

In the late 1960s IBM produced an advance, I thought, for the time. Othere typewriters used mechanical arms to press the symbol onto paper. At time a fast typist could cause the arms to be tangled with one another. The solution was a replaceable ball which eliminated the arms. IBM called it the  Correcting Selectric. One could change out the ball for a different type font. But  it turns out the Blickensderfer No. 6 had this idea way back in 1906. Once again there is nothing new under the sun. I suspect that was not a particularly catchy name for marketing the device. 

 Here  is a commerative plaque about the Exchange. All in all an interesting trip back in time.