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2 Coming to Orange “The most people that we saw . . . were all coming to Orange to try to get a job. What little bit they had was on that Model A or Chevrolet , or maybe it was in a homemade trailer.” A. P. (Jack) Fuller “I didn’t want to come to Orange. No sir! . . . I’d made arrangements to stay in Nacogdoches, [but] I’s a twelve-year-ol’ boy talking. Daddy came in and said, ‘No, you’re not staying!’ We had a big fuss, but I come to Orange.” C. W. Waggoner “December 1941, I first came to Orange, shortly after Pearl Harbor day. I came down job-hunting. . . . The first morning I came to town, at four o’clock in the morning, we hit the Strand Restaurant, and the jukebox was playing ‘Milk Cow Blues.’ It was cold outside, but it was so warm inside the restaurant.” Russell L. King They were everywhere, these newcomers: in the schools, out in the yards, among the blacks, downtown. They were even slipping into the churches. And although naval officers and the managerial, supervisory types seem to have been welcomed, at least initially, without serious reservation, some of the working class encountered rather harsh receptions. “Orange was a little bit different than any other town I’d been in in EastTexas,” Copeland Ward concluded, “and it was pretty much of a closed-society town. The old-timers in Orange had nothing to do with the war people. I mean, if you weren’t part of the ol’ bunch of Orange, don’t tread over in our area because you weren’t wanted in that area. So you were kind of looked down on.”1 Newcomers could sense the chill. Expressions like “poor white trash,” “scum of the earth,” and “shipyard trash” were not unknown.What could a bunch of “country hicks”and“barefoot rednecks” 53 Coming to Orange possibly know about building ships? Of course, there were also the “sophisticates,” those from urban parts of the country with their L.A.-bloated phone books and lifestyle a bit too liberated for the staid traditions of a southern community. The boomers, or “boomrats” as some called them, were there to get their share of the prosperity and then go back home or be off to other postwar parts as soon as possible . What did they care about this small town? Most workers were seen as temporary , so “drifters” was a popular tag—sometimes “suitcase guys.” New arrivals who chose to put down roots in the community might have sensed difficulty in establishing permanence. Even after being in Orange for several years, they were still transients: “To these old folks, we’re [still] just passing through.” Depending on who was using them, these epithets may or may not have been derogatory, but they did underscore the rural, deep East Texas-southwestern Louisiana origins of so many of the newcomers. They were “pea pickers,” “farm boys,” and “country boys.” Recruiters, Vernon Peveto noted with humor,“went up there [Shelby County] and advertised for 10,000 pea pickers to build ships.Then after the war was over they advertised for 10,000 shipbuilders to pick peas.”2 George Craft had a cousin come down looking for a job, “a hayseed from way back. Papa said, ‘Boy, go get a haircut and some clean clothes and come back and I’ll give you a job.’”3 After all was said and done, many, if not most, Orangeites would probably have agreed that the majority of these people were ordinary citizens—“just good country people.” Maybe some of them did need a haircut and clean clothes and decent shoes. But as one qualified observer remarked, “They’s pretty good, I thought. They got ships out.”4 And after all, that’s what it was all about.  i just thought it was the bright lights Laquata and Ellis Landry Laquata: We lived on a farm about twelve miles out in the country from Timpson [Texas]. We were real poor—poor-poor. I’ve eaten flour and water gravy with water biscuit for breakfast— or either fried potatoes. We didn’t have a icebox. Didn’t have a toilet. Just nothing. And trying to go to school and didn’t have a penny. Really, you wouldn’t believe this and you’ll probably think I’m lying, but didn’t even hardly have a penny to buy a pencil and a Big Chief book. I chopped cotton...

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