Hide Article Text (OCR)
M.J. Rienstra’s early memories revealedTypescript of M. J. Rien-stra, Attomey-at-Law, June, 1991These are my recollections of Nederland. The K.C.S. Railroad was already there when I came. My arrival was by the only means that had not changed since time began -I arrived there on Jan. 1, 1915, via the stork.My recollections of early Nederland may be vague in some spots. When my recollection is vague I will attempt to so identify it, however, this is not to say that some things that I might set forth herein as the gospel truth may be wholly erroneous.I can remember little of Nederland before my par* ents decided to move to Arkansas in 1918. The attraction in Arkansas was that my mother’s father and step-mother lived there at a town named Ink. We moved to a farm near Mena, Ark., which was seven hills away from my grandparents who bore the name of Ballast. Grandpa Ballast and his wife were early settlers in Nederland. My grandfather was reported to have built the Andrew Johnson house (formerly at 303 15th St.), that for years stood at the head of Main Street. This house was tom down in the late 1950s, and Boston Avenue was then extended to where Central Middle School is located on Seventeenth Street.My recollections of Arkansas are faint. However, I do remember my mother crying, perhaps frequently. It did not take her long to get tired of the woods and hills, and her wishes were to return to the flat land of Nederland. After about 18 months, Papa decided to move back to Nederland. He got on the Kansas City Southern, went back to Nederland, and bought back the same farm that he had sold to C.L. Freeman when our family left Nederland. TheHometownHistoryW.T. Blockfarm consisted of approximately 140 acres, located at the most easterly end of what is now Helena Street, near the tank farm, and the farm would have been divided by a street sometimes called Rienstra Road or Street, the same being the cut-off to the Pure Oil (now Unocal) Refinery. Neither the refinery, nor the tank farm, nor any other improvements were there at the time, the nearest refinery in 1918 being Texaco at Port Neches.The family had not been in Nederland long after returning from Arkansas until the major part of our farm was purchased by a lawyer in Beaumont by the name of George Anderson, who was acting for Humphrey Oil Company. Humphrey later became Pure oil, and the refinery was built as a Pure OH Company refinery.The construction of the refinery commenced in 1922. Four bunk houses were built near the KCS railroad Jracks, with a kitchen and bathhouse in the center, as I recall. My family (the Dan J. Rienstra) family were in the dairy business, and we sold milk to the bunk houses, which housed people who were working on the refinery’s construction. In those days, motels did not exist, at least not in Nederland. If you wanted someone to work for you, you had to provide them with housing. This was true not only with workers at the refinery, but also with school teachers and other pepple who might have been in Nederland at the time only on a temporary basis. I do not recall how long the bunk houses remained, but I do recall that the best biscuits I had ever tastedup until that time were made right there, in the bakery or kitchen of the bunk.houses.I have no recollection of when I first milked a cow. It seems that I was bom with the capability. There were three brothers older than I was, and milking cows was an inherited chore, which to my mind, had no beginning and ended only when I left to go to college. We milked the cows in hot or cold weather - cooled the milk slightly - put it in quart bottles and delivered it freon a Model T Ford twice a day. This was raw milk, real milk, expensive milk, 10- cents a quart, except in winter when we sometimes raised it to 12 cents a quart because we had to feed the cows more in winter.I do not recall about the rest of Nederland, but we had no gas or electric stove. There was a wood stove in the kitchen and a box heater in the dining room. We had running water only if one of us boys would run for it, and that was seldom. On a cold night, we would take a hot brick, wrapped in a towel, to bed with us. The great part of this life was that we knew no better. We did not miss televisipn or radio because we didn’t know about television or radio (radio broadcasting, invented in 1918, came to Nederland in 1923 and television in 1952). The sewer system of Nederland consisted of outhouses and maybe some septic tanks right up in town. Later, as Nederland grew some, some entrepreneur bought a barrel-like wagon, employed a driver, and the waste from the outhouse would be emptied into this wagon and discarded somehow. I never knew how. (Ed.’s Note: The “scavenger wagon” operated from Port Neches, and the waste was .disposed of in the Neches River.)The Nederland, which Iknew as a boy, delivering milk in this great city, was bounded on the west by the “interurban right-of-way,” or interurban line; on the south by what is now Nederland Avenue; on the east by the tank farm and on north by Helena Street or the Humphrey Heights Addition. The center of town was Fred Roach’s Drug Store (Nederland Pharmacy), which was right across from the KCS Depot, which in turn was right across from Koele-may Grain Company. Across the track and across the side from the Koelemay Grain Company (now Set-zer Supply), there was the two-story E. P. Delong Garage and Service Station, with a hand pump in front where you could see the gas in the glass tank and you could pump either five or 10 gallons, but no more.Across from Delong’s Garage and Service Station, John Ware at one time constructed a building which housed the Post Office.Ware was the postmaster, and if I’m not mistaken, there was also a drug store and grocery store in the same building.Delong lived next door to his garage on Main Street, now Boston, and down the street a ways was the C. E. Gibson home on the comer.Then farther down Main Street was the George Willis home, and toward Nederland Avenue were the Horace Lemeur and Wilma Devries’ homes, both of them two-story houses.Many of these were my good milk customers.Editor’s Note: The second part of Rienstra’s notes will be printed in the Nov. 20 edition of the Chronicle.W.T. Block is a noted historian and provides a weekly column for the Chronicle.
Newspaper Details
Port Neches Midcounty Chronicle
Port Neches, Texas, US
Wed, Nov 13, 2002
Page 5
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 19 Aug 2024
Other Publications Near Port Neches, Texas
Port Neches Midcounty Sunday Chronicle Review
Port Neches Midcounty Chronicle Review
Port Neches Midcounty Chronicle
Port Neches Grove Chronicle
Port Neches Community Post
