An Explanation and a Bit of Family History
These are papers and photographs that I found in a trunk in that attic of my mother’s parents’ estate. They were stashed in a trunk that I my mother and I found when we were renovating a section of the attic in order to turn it into a second guest room after my grandmother passed away.
I didn’t really know my grandfather, he died of cancer in 1968. But, by that time, he was famous in the small Louisiana coastal town were we lived, and had amassed quite a fortune. My grandfather’s fortune grew from inventions and improvements in oil field machinery and (as I was to find out ) several items that helped the American victory over the Japanese in WWII.
According to my grandmother, he and his close, life-long friend George Fox, traveled the country from 1931 through the beginning of World War 2 before they settled in our town. My grandmother said that if hadn’t been for the "Beast" (as my grandfather called his 1930 Ford) breaking a wheel in her town in west Texas, things might have been very different. She was proud that she "settled him right down"; and given that she went from a family of 14 owning nothing, to the leading lady at the top of society, she legitimately felt that she had done the right thing.
"Red", as my grandfather was known to everyone, settled down and George Fox settled with him. Together they created the "Red Fox" machine shop. A creation that made them rich and moderately famous.
For all of his generosity and openness Red never explained what he and Fox did in their travels. My grandmother was fond of saying that every man should sew wild oats and it was his business to tell or not. That all changed when we found the trunk.
We would not have found it at all if it had not been for the rats eating the plaster and insulation. Because of their damage, the room had to be stripped down to the wall studs (fun work in the heat of the Louisiana summer) and it was during one of those hot, sticky days that my mother and I found the trunk.
It was a small travel trunk, one that could hold not much more that today’s large suitcases. The wall was actually constructed around it, and it took the better part of a day for us to free it. My mother assumed that it was placed in the wall when my grandfather was finishing the estate in 1951, a good 46 years ago, and it was in terrible shape.. The roof had been dripping on it for some time and it was covered in a deep green and rust colored mold.
As we wrestled it out of its tomb, the trunk collapsed in a puff of mold, rotted wood and paper fragments . Gingerly, we carried it over to the work bench in the center of the attic and sorted through what had survived.
What I am presenting on the web in the next several weeks is the result of those findings. Unfortunately, only a small amount of material survived. It is both tantalizing and frustrating, because I fear that the best has been lost. And with the death of George Fox just 4 years after my grandfather I fear that we may never know the entire truth. I have pieced together the fragment as best as I can, and have matched the survivng photgraphs with the text and set up corresponding links. Because these are JPEG scans, some are quite large and may take time to load.
C.W Crisman 3/1/1998