Tuesday, July 2, 2024
Damon Albus makes high quality custom hats and leather goods in Abilene. He has customers in several states and a few foreign countries. I asked him how he got started. He told me his story.
“I was homeless, I had no money, and I was confused, scared, and naked. Then my Mama took me home from the hospital.”
Obviously, Damon has a good sense of humor. He loves to tell stories about some of his experiences. “Mom and Dad were in the candy business growing up, the Tom’s candy distributorship. They had that here in town. Their area covered Stamford down to Winters and over nearly to San Angelo and Sweetwater. They put candy in convenience stores service stations, all kind of stores that sold candy. That’s a bunch ‘o candy. The old cheese crisps and Tom’s peanuts and all that.” Damon helped his parents in the candy business. “Being the youngest of three, I tended to get the jobs that were third on the list. I would shuck candy. All candy’s got an expiration date on it, but that don’t mean the candy ain’t good anymore. So, after the expiration date, it had to come off the shelf. All the route jobbers would gather up the stale candy, the out-of-date candy, and just dump ‘em in a big ole box. Those boxes were about the size of two hatboxes. So, what you were supposed to do is take that candy and throw it away. Mom, being a recycler, didn’t like the idea of throwing away the candy.
“One day, Dad got an idea, Let’s take all this candy out of the wrapper and feed it to the cows. So, my job as a very young child, four, five, six years old, is I got to shuck candy.
“I had three boxes. I’ve got the stale candy on my left. I’ve got two empty boxes, one right in front of me and one to the right. You take the candy, razor blade, slit the wrapper, dump the candy in the box in the middle, and the wrapper in the third box. Before long, you got a box plumb full of candy with no wrappers.
“We would load those boxes up in the truck, and I can remember that when we would show up, the cows would hear the pickup and see it. You didn’t have no trouble callin’ cows; they’d come a runnin’. Me and the brothers would get out and have to shoo them cows away. We would holler and wave our arms, anything to get ‘em away from the gate just so we could get in. We’d just pour that candy out like Collin cubes, and you talk about come to eat.
“They would attack that candy like nobody’s business. We’d dump out 300 pounds of candy once a week or so, and it saved on the cubes. So, we had the fattest, the best hair, the best-looking cows from anywhere around, and Dad would say it’s that candy, it’s what did it.
Those cows had a sweet tooth and they loved that candy.”
