From the late 40s to 1964 Junior worked almost exclusively on the Farm at Paluxy. He and Cynthia had three children: Terry in 1950, Sheila in 1954 and Sharon in 1960. He and Cynthia worked to make a living on the farm, living in the old rock house on the place, built in about the 1860s. In 1963 they built the house where they now live, just up the hill on the 100 acres they had purchased a few years earlier.
I imagine it was when we were in our late twenties to early thirties when Mr. Wann mentioned finding a large oak tree with bees in it. There was quite a bit of discussion about how to go about robbing a bee tree like this one with its large amount of honey, without getting stung, or at least not much. Junior volunteered mesh fruit or onion sacks to go over our heads, and even had a large long bladed chain saw we could use. We were soon on our way. Just Junior and I, everyone else was busy. We arrived at the site, up on Pony Creek. First we built a fire to generate some smoke. Then Junior cut the tree trunk, dropping the tree in the Pony Creek channel. Junior volunteered to walk up the slanting tree trunk with the chain saw to about 8 to 10 feet off the ground, since he was familiar with operating the saw. Then he began to saw out a section of the tree trunk near the bees, bending over the running saw. When he lifted the running saw to move the blade to a new location, a tragedy almost occurred. The chain saw blade caught on the mesh fruit sack and jerked the blade up into Junior's face. Junior turned loose of the heavy (now stopped) saw, which fell to the ground and jerked Junior off the trunk and onto the ground too. Junior then grabbed his bleeding face, said "I’m hurt", and took off running. He later said he was trying to get away from the bees. I had to catch him down the trail a way before I could examine him to see the extent of his injury. All the time I was thinking that he possibly had his head partly cut off and I was sick, thinking how unnecessary this activity was. It turned out the saw stopped just in time. The blade cut Junior's chin, cheek, and a 1" slit in his eyebrow, which bled profusely. We were so happy it wasn't worse. I don't know who finished robbing the bee tree, but it wasn't us.
Finally, when we had one or two children, I was concerned about who would raise them if my wife and I were killed simultaneously in an aircraft crash, car wreck, explosion, etc. We went to Junior and Cynthia and asked them if they would take our children and raise them with proper moral upbringing, etc. And they said they would. How nice, good, and kind. I appreciate that --- then and now.
Jerry Barton, cousin
In 1964 Junior began work at Bell Helicopter in Fort Worth, where he worked until 1988. He sometimes claimed to be road foundered over the years of commuting 1 ½ hours each way for work. But usually he was in a car pool and he made some very good friends over the years. Every day for almost the entire time Junior worked at Bell, he played in the World Championship Domino Tournament at meal breaks, and the best domino players in the world were right there at Bell.
Junior may have saved the life of one of his coworkers who started to choke one day at work. The coworker couldn’t talk or breathe. He had recently seen a demonstration of the Heimlich maneuver on TV. He was able to successfully use it on his friend.
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