And so it came to pass that, on Saturday nights a lot of lights needed fixing so that a lot of hard-working boys could do a lot of stepping out with a lot of girls. Most of them didn't need lights during the week. But Saturday was payday, time to celebrate and have a good time. And besides, the next day was Sunday, a day of rest. No one picked cotton on Sundays.
I usually made quite a few quarters on Saturday nights after my regular hours. As a matter of fact, I often made more money after my quitting time than I had made all day, because after that time, all I took in for labor was mine.
But even this filling station work wasn't all rosy. One night a burglar broke into our station. He came in through a back window and took a few little things, including some money. The next day I made a switch that would turn on a light when the window was raised, and I slept in the back room. We knew he would be frightened away by a light switching on, so I hid the bulb down in my pajamas so it would wake me up but not light up the room. The burglar came back one night and raised the window, but he didn't come in. He left the window up and ran. We didn't catch him but he stopped visiting us.
Another burglar visited me while I was working at another filling station. I was sleeping in the station, way up on top of a tire rack. The kid woke me up prying up the back window. I watched him come in and go to the cash register. He had his back to me and didn't even know I was there. I had no gun or anything, not even a ball bat. We were not expecting burglars. Rather, we offered all night emergency service and I slept there to serve anyone who was caught in an emergency.
Well, since I had no gun, I reached up on a shelf and got a bottle of shellac in each hand and told the boy to stay where he was and raise his hands. He obeyed, which was both a surprise and a relief to me. Then I climbed down, turned on all the lights inside and outside and waited for the nightwatchman to come by. The boy was about 16, and well behaved. I didn't have to capture him—didn't even touch him. We talked and he waited patiently. We learned later that he had broken into three stations that night in Hamlin and had gotten less than fifty cents, poor kid.
We were living in town but we still liked to go hunting out in the country once in awhile. One day Earl, Joel and I had been out shooting rabbits and prairie dogs with our 22 rifles. When we came back, Earl got out of the car downtown and asked Joel to take his gun in the house when we got home. His gun was the hammerless type; you couldn't easily tell when it was loaded or unloaded. When Joel carried his own gun and Earl's gun into the house, Mama said, "Oh, I'm so afraid of guns! Are you sure they are unloaded?"
Joel told her that he was sure about his own, but he didn't know about Earl's. Then he aimed Earl's at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. It shot a hole through the ceiling, and Joel turned to Mama and calmly said, "Now it's unloaded."
Do I always have to tell you what Mama said? Can't you just imagine?
Now, Joel didn't only shoot small holes through ceilings; one day he was sitting in his room with his pump shotgun lying across his lap. He had finished cleaning it and was throwing shells in and out of the barrel, distributing oil to all working parts. He must have gotten some of the oil on his thumb, because it slipped off the hammer accidentally and fired one of the shells, and it made the prettiest little round hole—about an inch across— through the inside window facing, the shiplap wallboard, the outside weatherboarding and the outside window facing. Fortunately, there was no one out in the yard at that place at that time. Joel argued that the added ventilation would contribute to his better health.
Joel also had his fling at truck driving for Papa. On one particular day he was driving on a dirt road, and I really think the road was wet and slick, but rumor has it that he just might have gone to sleep. Anyhow, his truck wound up in a ditch. It didn't roll all the way over, but it leaned over against the far bank with two wheels up in the air. His cargo was scattered along a farmer's fence and some of it went through the fence into the pasture. But Joel was lucky. The only damage suffered was loss of time, a lot of work, and one torn sack of flour.
We owned a lot of trucks through the years, but Papa's first truck, which he had let Frank have, and which Frank had let Papa have back later, was a Master by name. It really was a good truck in its day. It had no battery; a magneto fired the plugs to make the engine run and a presto gas tank on one running board furnished gas for the headlights. When night came, you pulled over and stopped, turned on the presto gas, and lighted the headlamps with a match.
Now, presto lights were not the best lights in the world. They were not so much for lighting the way to see where you were going as they were to let others see that you were coming. At today's speed it seems that presto lights might not show more than a few feet ahead. A fast driver of today might have to slow up to allow the light beams to get on out front a little way.
Anyhow, that's the way it was one night when Papa was driving and I, too young to drive, was keeping him company. We were in a little town somewhere in Texas and as you know, every little town has a river running through it, or at least a small creek. I have never been able to understand why people want to run a stream through their city. They know that when the city grows larger, the mayor will have trouble getting enough money to build bridges over it. And each and every bridge is going to be a traffic hazard. Now, this bridge in this little town was not much longer than our truck but it served its purpose; it was a hazard.
When a car with electric lights turned a corner and faced us, we were blinded and our presto lights seemed to go out altogether. They didn't even shine down as far as the road at our front wheels. Nor did they show us the bridge with its little wooden banisters. Well, I did see one banister a little—not much—but Papa didn't see it at all. He didn't even know there was a creek nor a bridge ahead of us.
As a matter of fact, Papa couldn't see the road or anything. But he figured that was not reason enough for him to stop and let the car with bright lights go by. He wasn't going more than ten miles an hour and he was reasonably certain there was nothing in the road to run over or bump into. All would be well just as soon as those bright lights got out of his eyes.
But the bridge got to us before our lights showed it to Papa, and our two right wheels didn't even touch the bridge. Our bumper took the entire banister and laid it out in the road ahead of us. Our front axle skidded all the way across the creek, riding the edge of the bridge. Our right front wheel went sailing across the stream in mid-air and rolled onto solid ground before our truck had time to turn over and fall off the bridge into the creek. So there we were, the two front wheels on solid ground, the left rear wheel on the shaky bridge, and the other rear wheel dangling in space over a creek of running water.
As we came to an abrupt stop, with the truck leaning and rocking right and left, Papa asked, "What was that?"
I told him, "You missed a bridge."
He said, "I didn't see a bridge."
By this time the car with the bright lights had gone away and we were left alone hanging over the side of a small bridge over a small stream in a small town.
The truck was leaning sharply toward my side. It had no doors, only curtains for bad weather. And since the weather was good, the curtains were stored away under the seat. Papa could get out easily on his side. I climbed out on the running board on my side, then up over the front fender, and jumped down off the front bumper. By this time our presto lights had gotten out front again and were shining their beams to show me where to jump.
We got a man to try to pull our truck off the bridge with his truck, but his truck couldn't drag ours. However, he finally got our truck off the bridge by lunging against the chain six or eight times, moving our truck a few inches each time.
Nothing was damaged except the bridge banister. We had already pitched it out of the road, so we paid the nice man for his services and drove on our way. I never did learn who repaired the banister. It couldn't have been the mayor; the town wasn't big enough for a mayor.
Joel was not alone in this business of turning trucks over. As I have just told you, Papa tried hard to turn one over into a creek, but failed. Then he got another chance some time later and made it okay. Dode and Albert also contributed their bit toward making it a family affair.
Albert was driving down a dirt road with a full load of freight. He didn't know that a rain cloud had crossed the road ahead of him, dumping its water on the road. No cars had driven over the wet road since the shower, so it didn't show to be anything but a nice dry road. But the road was slick and it came as a surprise, and Albert found his truck skidding out of control. It turned sideways and scooted until it had almost stopped, then it lay over on its side very gently, so as not to damage any of its cargo as it poured it out onto the road. The truck was not damaged either. There was only one little bit of damage. Included in his load was a small mirror which he placed on the seat beside himself for safety. It got broken.
A part of the road between Roby and Rotan was graveled, and along the graveled part were two rounding curves which were quite an improvement over the sharp turns so common in those days. You could sail right on around the curves without slowing down much, since we didn't get up an awful lot of speed any time, even on straight roads.
One day a fellow who was riding with Dode bet him he couldn't go around both curves and not get under 25 miles an hour. The bet was on—perhaps a dime or maybe a cold drink. He made it around the first curve okay, but the gravel was heavier on the second curve and the truck lost its footing, skidded, and turned over. It just lay over on its side and didn't hurt anything except maybe Dode's pride, and of course he lost his bet.
When Papa was just getting into the trucking business, he had two trucks, and one of them was a Maxwell. I think he bought out a truck line from somebody and inherited the old truck, or maybe the man gave it to him. I can't really believe Papa bought it. If he did, anything he gave for it was too much. It didn't have enough power to pull the hat off your head without getting a run on it. Anyway, one time Papa had it loaded with something and was hauling it to somewhere. Now, on this road to somewhere there was a hill he was supposed to go up. But the old Maxwell just couldn't make it up; it went as far as it could and stopped. That was when Papa learned that the brakes would hold better going forward than backward. Going backward the brakes were as weak as the motor. They simply wouldn't hold it. The brakes and the gears together wouldn't hold the Maxwell and the load. The truck, the load, and the driver all went slowly backward down the hill.
Now to keep from backing off a bluff on one side of the road, Papa steered the truck toward the mountain on the other side. When it backed up on the side of the mountain a way, it leaned so much it turned over and dumped the load right in the middle of the road.
As I said, the old Maxwell was not powerful. When you got it loaded, it would take a mile of straight level road for it to get up to 25 miles an hour. So when we got up a little speed we sure hated to have to slow down for anything.
So it was one day with Joel or Albert driving and I was co-pilot. I really believe it was Joel driving because there was a time when Albert was too little to drive, not for long, mind you, but for awhile.
Anyway we had just gotten up speed when, way down the road ahead of us, one farmer in a Ford car and another one in a wagon stopped in the road to talk with each other. They were stopped with their front ends—their vehicles that is—headed toward us and outward, one toward one ditch and the other one toward the other ditch. Their back wheels were about far enough apart for a truck to go between, or was there room? As we came nearer, it looked doubtful. But then, they could see us coming and they were still in their vehicles and ready to drive on. We thought surely one of them would drive forward a step or two and that would make plenty of room for us to go between them. There was certainly not room to go around them on either side.
With the two rigs aimed outward, they were like a big funnel, with us heading into the big end, and their two hind wheels forming the little end of the funnel. By this time it was plain to see that neither man had any intention of moving his rig. Also, by this time, other things became obvious. First, it was too late to stop; our brakes were not that good. Second, there was not room to go between them without hitting. Third, there was enough room to go between by hitting both vehicles just the right amount. So my driver said, "Hang on." Then he aimed at the center of the funnel and kept the gas feed down to the floorboard.
The fenders on the old truck, just in normal driving, flopped like a crow's wings trying to fly upstream in a sandstorm. The engine hood had the sides removed to let more air through, and the top part of the hood was tied on with haywire. Now, when our front fenders came in contact with the Ford car and the wagon wheel, they went way up and came way back down, and their flopping broke the wire that held the hood on. I thought sure the hood would blow up against the windshield, but it didn't.
The old truck had no doors, just curtains, and they were not in use. I grabbed a left hand full of windshield post, stepped my right foot out on the running board, leaned out over the hood and wrestled it back down into place. I was the main reason it didn't blow up against the windshield.
We didn't lose any speed, so by the time I got the parts of the hood back into place we were too far away to see whether the farmers were angry, disgusted, or just plain surprised—more than likely all three.
This little incident took place a couple of miles out of Stamford on our way to Hamlin. This was Earl's daily run, but on this particular day Earl had more freight than he could haul and had phoned for us to come to Stamford for the second load. Joel and I had driven over and got it.
When we got to Hamlin with our load we told Earl what had happened. And the next day, Earl was stopped and confronted by two not-so-happy farmers. They seemed to think that he was the one who had done unto them what Joel and I had done. But Earl convinced them that it couldn't have been him, he was in Hamlin at that time of the day, and he could prove it. Moreover, he drove a Dodge truck, not a Maxwell. Thanks to Earl, they never did learn who ran their little roadblock.
On another occasion, Earl and I were going back home from somewhere in an empty truck and Earl was driving. But then when he discovered a bumblebee in the cab with us, it only took Earl about two seconds to quit driving. In that two seconds he pulled the emergency brake lever back as far as he could and the ratchet held it there. Then he opened his door with his left hand, stepped his left foot out on the runningboard, his right foot shoved the brake pedal down and his right hand steered the truck while it hurried to a sliding stop. Neither of us got stung and the bee got away. But the big surprise was the sudden appearance of a whole flock of red apples rolling along the road from behind us, some of them continuing on their way down the road ahead of us.
Then suddenly there was this stranger getting out of his pickup truck—the pickup that had bumped into the back of our truck, the pickup that had been loaded with big red apples. The stranger came up to Earl and asked why he had stopped so quickly right in the middle of the road without any warning. Earl seemed to be completely out of good answers at the time. So he sort of hesitated and sheepishly looked around as if searching for some kind of an answer, and there it was as big as day—a railroad across the road in front of us with the usual sign reading, STOP, LOOK, and LISTEN. Earl pointed to the sign and told the man he was obeying the sign. The stranger calmed down, and he and his boys began picking up apples.
We would haul just about anything in those days if it wasn't against the law. One time Earl and I loaded a truck with East Texas ribbon cane molasses from a railroad car in Hamlin and helped the owner peddle it from town to town. He didn't sell it all the first day so we stayed over in Throckmorton that night. Earl and I slept in the back of the truck on the cases of molasses. We spread a couple of quilts under us and a couple over us, then we spread a tarp over the quilts and molasses and all. Next morning we also had a couple of inches of snow on top of the tarp. Rough, you say? Sure, a little, but it sure beat hauling maize all to pieces.
While the others of us were doing all this hauling, Frank had opened a garage in Hamlin and was doing mechanical work. One day Frank was going to be away and he asked me to take over for him that day. There was only one mechanical job to do, unless others showed up. It was an Overland Whippet with a loose timing chain. The loose chain had let the camshaft get out of time with the crankshaft. Frank asked me to fix it for the man.
He explained to me that the way to do the job was to take the radiator off, take the front end of the motor loose from the frame, jack up the motor, take off the timing gear cover, put the sprockets back in proper timing, and then replace all that stuff I had taken off.
Now Frank knew there was no need to tell me how to do the job. I already knew how. And he should have known that I would do it my way as soon as he was gone. His way was a long drawn-out bunch of foolishness, involving a lot of work. And that work would cost a poor man a lot of money which he didn't have. The man was a stranger to me but I knew he was poor, because he owned a Whippet. No man could own a Whippet very long and not be poor. So I did the job the easy way.
I unscrewed a small plug from the timing gear cover, stuck a screwdriver through the hole and jumped the sprockets back into proper timing. Then I screwed the plug back in and charged the man a dollar. When Frank returned, he was not at all happy with what I had done. He said, "That's not the way to time a car."
I said, "Maybe not, but it makes happy customers." And that's the one thing Frank needed a lot more of.
A year or two after I quite high school I got married. It was either in 1928 or 1929. The stock market crash came in one of those years and I got married in the other one. I keep getting them mixed up. I know we got married June the second, and I believe it was in 1928.
After our honeymoon Ima and I became sadly disappointed. Things were not as we had expected them to be. For years we had been courting and seeing a lot of movies. And every love story we ever saw ended by showing the couple getting married and living happily ever after. They didn't say one single word about the husband having to drive a truck six days a week, and sometimes on Sundays, nor the wife having to wash and iron and cook and keep house. Those were our big disappointments. We got married and had to work hard ever after.
After we married Ima and I lived in Hamlin in Papa's rent house west of the truck warehouse. I was driving a truck on a daily run to Abilene and back to Hamlin. That was when I learned that a truck driver could live on two meals a day. I didn't have time to eat three meals.
The rule of command, mentioned earlier, where the oldest in the group had authority over, and the responsibility for all the younger ones, proved to be a poor ruling after kids become men. So I began to drift way from doing any and all things whatsoever Earl told me to do. After all, I was a big boy now, even big enough to drive a truck to Abilene, which was twice as far away from Hamlin as Earl drove his truck. His regular run was only to Stamford.
At times I even hauled a lot more freight than Earl did. I had to deal with people he didn't even know and I had to conform to trucking methods which he had not been exposed to. Why, I saw trucks on U.S. Highway 80 headed for California with greater loads than Earl's truck and cargo combined. I saw those same trucks return with more miles added to their speedometers in one week than Earl might drive in ten weeks. I witnessed the advent of balloon tires on front wheels of large trucks and I saw them run as many miles as heavy duty, high pressure tires had been running on front wheels, and at half the cost—this before Earl realized that balloons were even being used on trucks.
Conflict between Earl and me was inevitable. I realized that he was not just trying to shove me around—not trying to be bossy just to see if he could be. Rather he was trying to do what he thought was best for the company. But he didn't always know what was best for the company. Progress had gotten way out ahead of Earl and he had not realized it. What was good for Earl and the truck line to Stamford was not necessarily good for me and the truck line to Abilene.
So, one day I thought it was time to disobey Earl and make some decisions of my own. I fought back. I was tired of listening to him and doing all the things his way. But he didn't think it was time for me to be weaned as yet, so he fought back also.
We didn't take time to put the boxing gloves on; we just went to slugging, bare fisted. I wasn't mad at him, just tired of taking orders which didn't always fit the occasion. However, I was glad he remembered Papa's old rule of not hitting each other in the face. That could have hurt; noses bleed and teeth cost money. Our chests took a terrible beating—at least mine did. I'll admit he hurt me, and I tried to hurt him. It was not that I really wanted to hurt him, I just wanted him to get the idea that I was driving my truck and he was driving his. He was too small to drive both of them.
Finally I said, "Boy, I'm tired and sore. How about you?"
He said, "Naw, I'm not tired."
I told him, "You sure jarred me. Did I hurt you?"
Again he said, "No, I'm not hurt nor tired."
Anyway, we stopped hitting each other, We rested awhile, got us a drink of water, and went on with the business of getting our trucks and cargo ready to roll. All this took place without a cross word from either of us—and without a witness. And with no witness, I can tell it like I want to; it's my word against his.
About this time, Papa needed a good used tire for his Hupmobile. Earl was unable to find a suitable one in Stamford, so I was asked to pick up one in Abilene. And Earl warned, "Be sure you don't get a Goodrich."
Well, I looked all over Abilene and the only tire I found that I would consider buying was a Goodrich—a half inch oversize. It only cost $4.50, so I bought it. Of course I didn't buy a Goodrich just to bug Earl, but when I showed up in Hamlin with it, you would have thought I had set fire to another keg of powder—with Earl sitting on it. He was sure the tire would break and blow out. Besides, he had told me not to get that brand.
I told him that if it blew out, I would pay for it. But it didn't blow out; it gave good service. This was another case where I had to make a decision without Earl's presence. It proved to be a good decision. It was another step toward my independence from Earl.
During this time I'd had experience with oversize tires and low air pressure on my own car, and it worked well. I had also seen trucks running through Abilene with low pressure in front tires, and it worked there also. So, I wasn't surprised that it worked on the Hupmobile.
One year Papa bought a new Dodge truck with all four wheels and tires the same size. Up until that year they had used much smaller tires on the front wheels. But this truck had heavy-duty wheels and tires in front just like the ones on the back.
I told Papa that, if he had the money and wanted to invest in two balloon tires for the front, at $30 each, he could save the $60 heavy-duty tires to use on the back wheels later when needed.
Earl told Papa that I was crazy to think that a $30 tire would run as far as a $60 tire.
Papa listened to me and bought the balloons, and they did run as far. This pushed me a little further away from my big brother. Of course, I though it was time he should review some facts and notice that I might have a little more sense than he was giving me credit for. If Earl had been willing to follow a leader, who knows, he and I might have worked happily together ever after.
Other problems came up in Abilene, the likes of which Earl neverhad to face in Stamford. One day the shipping clerk at Wm.Cameron Company told me he had a shipment of windows going toStamford and he wondered if I wanted to haul them. I told him,"No, Earl told me to let Rountree's truck haul all shipments toStamford."
The clerk asked, "Clarence, when are you going to stop listening to Earl and start telling Earl?"
Well, Earl was the acting manager of the truck lines—not authorized, but acting, and he had told me not to pick up any Stamford freight.
Then the clerk told me that the man in Stamford ordered the windows shipped either by Johnson or by rail. Then the clerk added, "By law we can force you to haul them, but we wouldn't do that. We'll just ship them by rail."
Now, I never did enjoy holding back when there was something to be done. I had always been a "go-getter." But now I was being held back by an invisible force 40 miles away, Earl. And I was beginning to feel about as useless as a knot on a stick, and I was being treated as such by big freight men who were beginning to wonder why W. F. Johnson didn't get a driver with the ability to solicit and haul freight. Competition was the name of the game and I wasn't competing.
Anyhow, in this case, if I hauled the windows, I wouldn't be competing with Rountree, it would be with the railroad. I reasoned that Earl shouldn't be opposed to that. But my Stamford freight had to go by way of Hamlin, and Earl would have to take it from Hamlin to Stamford the following morning.
I made my decision, loaded the windows, and took them to Hamlin. But Earl was very unhappy with me. He was never one to calmly ask, "Why?"—and then listen to reason. He had one uncompromising attitude, "I told you what to do. You must do it."
Naturally, Earl was upset toward his little brother. He even refused to haul the windows, and went to Stamford without them. Finally, after two or three phone calls from the consignee to Wm. Cameron Company and then to Papa, Earl delivered the windows, reluctantly and under protest, and only at Papa's order. And Papa told me to get all the Stamford freight I could, and he told Earl to deliver whatever I brought to him.
Although Papa was owner of the truck lines and was supposed to be in full command, Earl had ways of making life miserable for both Papa and me. And as time went by, our relationship didn't improve.
Remember now, this is my version. If Earl were writing this, I'm sure it would read differently. And actually, it wasn't all that bad. Earl was a good boy, and he still is. He's my brother. I loved him then, and I still love him. That was a long time ago. I don't hold any of this against him. I'd do anything I could for him. And I don't think he holds anything against me, except maybe my writing about it like this. But then, we are big boys now and we probably don't have more than forty years left to enjoy living and reminiscing. Why not enjoy it while we can?
I was a Jonah to Earl and perhaps to Papa also. At any rate, Papa found a way to throw me overboard. In 1931 he asked me if I would like to farm. He said he would invest money in a farm for me like he had invested in a truck for each of the other boys and I could pay him rent from the farm.
I agreed and he made a down payment on a farm nine miles southwest of Roscoe, Texas. That is where Ima and I lived during the year of 1932, and that is where we lived when Dennis, our first born, came to live with us.
But the national economy was such that many farmers lost their farms to mortgage holders. By the end of 1932 the Federal Land Bank had repossessed more farms than they knew what to do with. I was told that they were begging farmers to hold onto their farms without making their annual payments—pay only the interest and let the principal wait until they were able to pay. By this time Papa could buy better farms for less money than he still owed on this one. So he let it go back to the mortgage holder.
At the beginning of 1933 we moved onto Uncle Jim Johnson's farm at Royston, 14 miles west of Hamlin. He offered to sell me the place for five thousand dollars, with nothing down and nothing per year except the interest until I was able to pay some on the principal. I turned it down. During the depression of the 1930s there were a good many years that the farm didn't make enough to feed our family and pay the interest.
Then soon after we moved to Royston, Papa came to me and told me that he would have to sell the plow-tools and horses to me "Because," he said, "They keep hounding me and won't leave me alone as long as I try to help you as I am helping the others." He didn't tell me who "they" were and I didn't ask him; I didn't even care who they were.
The 1930s hit most all of us pretty hard, including those who were still in the trucking business. I knew men with families drawing wages of less than two dollars a day. When I was building a tractor, I hired a man, who was a good welder and mechanic, for 50 cents a day plus a hamburger for lunch. The burger cost me a dime. Those were the good old days. It was a wonderful depression but I'm glad it's over.
Dennis was eight months old when we moved to the Royston farm. The farm had been neglected for years and things were quite run- down—fences, barn, the house, everything.
My youngest brother lived with us three months after we moved to Royston. He and I would take our 22 rifles and go out after the milk cows in the afternoon, and it was a common thing for each of us to kill from three to ten rabbits each day. Our pasture had the smell of dead rabbits for three months.
Rattlesnakes were also plentiful on our farm during warm weather. We even killed one in our back room—that is, Ima did, with a 22 rifle. And when Anita was two years old, Ima and I were out early one morning milking cows and when Anita woke up she came out to join us. Ima picked her up and carried her back to the house, and there under the icebox, right by the door through which Anita had passed, was a rattlesnake.
Big rats and mice had their heyday the first few months we lived there. Rats would often wake us up at night gnawing holes up through the floor in our house. We managed to catch those in the house in traps, but those under the house sometimes kept us awake gnawing. I got out of bed one night and poured carbolic acid around a hole where one had been gnawing up through the floor. Later that same night one woke me up again and I found the hole large enough for a rat to come through, and I found the rat in the house feeling very sick—from acid poisoning.
We often saw mice run from furniture to furniture or peep out from their hiding places. Many times I carried my rifle to the dining table with me and also placed it by my side when I sat down to read. If a mouse hesitated just a moment he was apt to find himself to be a dead duck. One more little bullet hole added to the big holes in the floor didn't mean a thing in that house. Of course, as we continued living there we made some improvements and it became quite comfortable.
When Dennis was two years old, just about a month before Anita was born, Ima, Dennis, my brother, my brother's wife, and I all went to the Rocky Mountains sightseeing. We were driving my old Dodge sedan that wouldn't stay in high gear, leastwise it wouldn't voluntarily. We had to prop the gearshift lever in high with a forked mesquite limb about a foot long.
There in the Rockies one afternoon we had left Cripple Creek and were driving down Phantom Canyon when night overtook us. But before night had come on so strongly, we had gotten a good view of the canyon. On one side of our car we could see straight down hundreds of feet, and on the other side the mountain was straight up just about as far. And every few miles the road crossed to the other side of the deep gorge over dilapidated bridges with big holes in their floors. Most of the bridges had been patched with boards running lenghthways. And some of the patch-boards had holes in them also, and some of them were broken and split up. Others had come un-nailed and were loose and out of place.
Once we came to an abrupt stop on a bridge when a front wheel pushed one end of a board down through a big hole and kicked the other end up against our differential. We had to back up and detour around loose boards and big holes in the floor of the bridge,—all this at night, high above the floor of the gorge below. They condemned the bridges and closed the road soon after we made that trip. As a matter of fact, ours may have been the last car over it before they closed it.
We didn't have much time nor money for such trips. We were too busy farming and raising cattle. The pasture on our Royston farm was a mile and a half long, and when Dennis was three years old he often went with me to drive the milk cows home in the afternoons. He usually walked all the way there and half way back. Then he would ride my back the rest of the way home. Just as my father and I did a lot of things together when I was a small boy, so did my children and I do a lot of things together
While we lived on the Royston farm, Ima was telling me about the death of a kinsman at Gordon. Ima didn't attend the funeral but many of her people did. Families had gathered from far and near to pay their respects and to attend the funeral the next day. The house where visiting was taking place that night had no electric lights but was lighted instead by kerosene lamps. Ima's sister, Mary Beth, was five years old at the time, and when one of the men struck a match to light his pipe, she said, "Oooooh! Don't it get light when you strike a match."
The story is told that just before it got dark that night, one woman, perhaps an Aunt Minnie or an Aunt Hattie,—she was blessed with an oversupply of aunts by both names—anyhow, one of the women went out on the back porch and, looking toward the outhouse, said, "I want to get a good view of that outhouse before dark. I have an idea I'll have to make a beeline for it before morning and it's going to be dark."
Well by midnight all were bedded down, on beds, on cots, on pallets, in hallways and in corners. Then for the next three or four hours all was relatively quiet except for snoring and other occasional noises made unintentionally.
Then there was the movement of a person—perhaps a woman—maybe the same woman who took a good look across the back yard just before dark. It was dark in the house now, and she couldn't be seen, but her movement could be followed by your ears as the floor squeaked and groaned under her weight, as she tiptoed between the pallets and through the hall door, getting faster now as she neared the back porch, and still faster as she left the porch and crossed the back yard. Then suddenly and without warning there was the noise of a heavy soft object against a clothes line, followed by the noise of the same soft object as it fell flat on the ground. And then, after a moment of silence, there came the voice of a woman sitting on the ground and saying, "Oh well, I wouldn't have made it anyway."
I have a lot of memories of things that happened at Royston when our kids were growing up. I was working on the windmill down in the field one day, about a half-mile from our house. I needed a wrench from home and I needed Ima to help me a little. It was getting late and I wanted to keep working, so I sent Dennis and Anita in the car to get Ima and the wrench. I told Dennis not to try to turn the corner up by the barn, but to switch off the motor there and walk to the house and tell Ima what I needed. I put the two kids in the front seat of the car, then I put the car in low gear, got it started toward home, and then I got out.
Dennis was upwards of five years old, at least past four. He could drive the car by getting up in the seat on his knees. All he had to do was guide it and switch off the motor when he got to where he was going. But Dennis thought he was smarter than I was. He still thinks that at times even now. I can't seem to convince him otherwise.
Anyway, he thought he could turn the corner by the barn, and he almost did. But he sideswiped a fence, taking a post or two with him until the car got so involved in the barbed wire it couldn't go any further and the motor died.
The little wreck scared both of the kids. They got out of the car and went to the house, Dennis crying and Anita trying to tell Ima what had happened. Ima was about as upset as a wet hen in a rainstorm as Anita told her, "Car run in pense." Ima was still upset when she drove the car back to the windmill. She seemed to think I had done something wrong. How was I to know that Dennis wasn't as smart as I had been at his age? My goodness, I was planting with a two-row planter before that age. Was Ima going to admit that her son wasn't as smart as his pa?
I had always wanted to become a school teacher. I thought I had the ability to teach kids a lot of things. At times it seemed hopeless but I kept trying and some of my ideas worked. When Dennis was about four, Ima saw him reach up under a car fender, break off a chunk of dried mud and start eating it. She scolded him and told him to stop it. But after Ima went in the house I took Dennis around the other side of the car, where Ima couldn't see us from her kitchen window, and showed him a lot of good lumps of dried mud and I told him he could eat all he wanted. He ate a little and quit, and we never caught him eating any dirt after that.
During the 1930s most of my brothers and sisters were married and had kids of their own and we often took our little children and all went to visit Papa and Mama on Sundays. During those visits, many times my brothers would go away to do their thing and I would be left in the house with Mama and Papa and a bunch of sisters and sisters-in-law. Then when Papa would leave to go play golf, which I didn't have enough money to do, I would find myself with a house full of women.
So one day Mama asked me why I didn't go on out with the other boys. She said, "There must be something wrong with you. You just can't get along with your brothers." Well, I got out all right as she suggested, and I found them out in the freight warehouse, drinking beer and shooting dice. If I'd had a dollar, I guess I might have been out shooting golf with Papa. But all I had was 18 cents, so I asked if I could get in their game.
They let me in and I soon had $1.50. I decided this game was more interesting than I had thought. At this rate thought I might really learn to like it. Then after playing quite awhile they planned to stop the game at a certain time, and since I was not "hooked" on the game as yet, I began trying to lose back down to my original 18 cents.
But I wasn't that lucky. I kept winning now and then and when the game ended, I still had 98 cents. I took my 18 cents and left the 80 cents lying there. I told them I was only playing for fun, it was their money. But they said they were playing for keeps and didn't take it.
Later that day some of the smaller grandkids were playing in the warehouse and took the 80 pennies into the house and showed them to their Grandma.
Meanwhile, my brothers had gone some place in their cars and I went back in the house. Mama was afraid the little ones had gotten into Earl's desk out in the warehouse and had taken his money. She asked me if I knew about the money. I told her, "Yes, I won it in a crap game with my brothers, and I tried to give it back but they left it on the loading dock."
Mama asked, "Is that what they do on Sunday afternoons?"
I told her, "Yes, that and drink beer."
She was horrified as she asked, "Why haven't you told me this before?"
I told her, "Because you never asked me before.'
She said, "Well, don't you ever do that again."
I said, "Okay, I won't unless you tell me to again."
I often wondered if some of my brothers sort of hated me because I wouldn't drink and gamble with them. It wasn't that I thought I was too good to do those things. I just didn't enjoy doing them and didn't want to. I didn't hate them for doing what they did, so why should they cast me out for not joining them?
A little note here, Joel was working in Stamford in a drygoods store in those days. He wasn't included with us in these gambling and drinking affairs. Now, I only gambled one time and I didn't drink their beer. I tried it one time and couldn't stand the stuff. I was sick with influenza and they told me it would be good for me. I took two swallows and decided to leave off drinking and keep the flu.
But now back to the farm at Royston. Most people think of cattle drives as something that happened long ago; and that's mostly true. But soon after we moved to Royston, I got Lester Whitley to help me drive a little herd of cows to Carriker's farm in Kent County. Lester would ride Old Nancy and I would ride Old Buck. We would carry a bite to eat for lunch, but there was no need to go to a lot of trouble and try to take everything as though we were heading up the trail to Abilene, Kansas, like back in 1885. After all, we wouldn't be far away by nightfall, and my brother would have all day to put a few things in my car and drive out to find us about sundown. He would need to bring us something to drink, something to eat, something to sleep on and some horse feed and a rope or two.
Lester and I got an early start and had the cows headed in the right direction when we learned that we had one old Jersey cow that thought she was a racehorse. Right away she started running straight up the road ahead of all the others. And she kept right on trotting until one of us got ahead of her and brought her back. We could see we really needed three horses, one for that old trotter and two for the rest of the herd. But we had to get by with one for her and one for the others. We thought surely she would settle down after awhile but she didn't. It was the same thing all day long, one of us behind to drive and one in front to hold her back.
Sundown found us about where we had planned to be. There was a place where the fence was set quite a way back from the road, embracing an extra two or three acres of Johnson grass and weeds and a puddle of water, all within the right-of-way. So we turned the cattle into that little pocket and held them there while they grazed and settled down.
If it had not been for that one old cantankerous Jersey cow, our entire day would have been dull and uneventful. There wouldn't have been anything of value to mention in our story during that day. Without that cow, our story could just as well have started after we got them bedded down for the night.
We could have begun our story with,—We waited and we waited. It got dark, and we still waited for my little brother to drive up in the car, but he didn't. We had no horse feed, so we didn't feed our horses. We had only one rope, so we staked Old Buck out and hoped that Old Nancy would stay with him through the night. She was tired from the day's work and fortunately she didn't try to leave. Nor did the Jersey cow give any further trouble. I know she was tired. There is no way a cow can run as far as she had run that day and not be tired.
We had gathered firewood before dark and our fire was warm and friendly in the cool of the darkness. It seemed that we should be eating something in the light of the campfire, but there was nothing to eat. I kept thinking that perhaps my brother would show up yet. Maybe he had car trouble. Any one of a dozen things could have happened to delay him.
Now, when a man is hungry, he can take a drink of water and go to sleep in a warm bed and forget his hunger until morning. But we had no water and no warm bed, and the night was too cold to sleep without cover. We built a large fire but it cooked us on one side while the other side froze. And I've got to tell you, saddles make very poor pillows. In the movies I have seen cowboys use saddles for pillows, but this was no movie, this was for real. And furthermore, I was no cowboy, just a poor farmer trying to pick up an extra dollar to keep body and soul together while fighting my way through a wicked depression.
Again it looked as if the devil was after me for sure. But I didn't really think he would stoop so low as to get my own blood brother to help him. I didn't see how the devil could do this to me, after all the things I had done for him. Just the thought of some of the things I had done for him caused my spine to tingle, and I moved a little closer to the fire. I wondered whether it was the chill of the night, my fear of the darkness, or the thoughts of my past that made me shiver and move closer. Anyway the night was totally dark and cold and damp, and I was completely miserable. In such misery the one best thing I could wish for was daybreak, and when it finally began to push the black out of the eastern sky, it was a welcome sight, and I was glad.
We saddled up early and pushed on. Before noon we left the highway and funneled the herd through a gate and out into open ranch pasture. Still the Jersey cow simply refused to stay with the others. On the highway she could only go forward between the fences, but here in the pasture she could go all directions. When we came to the next ranch house, we borrowed a corral long enough to catch the cow and put one end of a rope around her horns and the other end around the neck of a large Hereford cow. That ended our trouble with the Jersey cow. Things went so smoothly after that, we could hardly believe it.
When we got to the nearest corner of the Carriker pasture, it was still a long way to the gate that opened into the pasture. We were tired, sleepy, hungry, thirsty, weary, and almost entirely angry at one little brother who had contributed so much to our misery. So instead of making the long drive to the gate, we took wires loose from the fence posts, tied the bottom wires down, propped the top ones up, and drove the herd through the fence and into the pasture. This ended our drive, but there was still one little chore to do.
I wanted to cut the rope between the Jersey cow and the Hereford cow and let them run free. The terrain was rough and almost completely covered with trees and cedar bushes. I prepared my catch rope and made one desperate attempt to rope one of the cows. I threw the loop and it went over one horn of the Hereford. I knew the herd would vanish into the brush before I could get ready and try again. So I jumped to the ground and tried to flip the rope around the other horn also. I had hoped to delay them long enough to rush in and cut the rope between them. But I had no such luck. My throw rope came off the one horn and they quickly disappeared into the thick brush. They were all gone, vanished into the bushes.
I looked for Old Buck and he was gone too. Then I looked for Lester and he was nowhere in sight. I called to him and he came riding up out of the brush. I asked if he had seen Old Buck. He hadn't, but he rode off to find him. We found Old Buck working alone and holding back a bunch of cows that were trying to run away. There were two ways for the herd to escape. Lester had gone one way and had tried to hold the cows back, but had failed. Old Buck had gone the other way alone and had cut off the escape route of the other half of the herd. Not a single cow had gotten by him, but the two cows we wanted had escaped down the way Lester had gone. I could write a book telling about the splendid work Old Buck did for me while we were together.
Anyway, we fastened the fence wires back in place and were riding toward home when night overtook us out on the highway. After dark some men from our community drove by in their car, recognized us, offered to take us home and we accepted. We still had only one rope, so we staked out Old Buck as we had done the night before and hoped that Nancy would stay with him one more night.
Needless to say, when I got home I ate everything I could get my hands on. I was hungry enough to eat anything that wouldn't fight back and couldn't outrun me. And my bed was so much better than the one that had tortured me the night before.
Early the next day when we returned to get our horses, Old Nancy was not there. We searched for her but in vain. We returned to the area every day for a week looking for horse tracks either in the lane or in the pastures on both sides of the highway. But we found no clue whatsoever as to where she had gone. Then finally a thought came to me. Down in the valley of Texas there was a woman I had heard on radio—I believe her name was Ethel Duncan— who claimed to have aided many people in locating lost articles. If you would send her a dollar she would answer three questions for you. I knew it would be worth a dollar to me to have her answer just one question. So we went to the telegraph office in Rotan and I wrote my question on a telegram form, "Where can I find my lost saddle mare?" The telegraph operator read the question, looked at me, and shook his head just a little, as if to say, "There's one born every minute." But money talks, and since I had the dollar to send to Ethel and enough left over to pay the man for sending it to her at McAllen, he took my money and sent the question and the dollar.
About an hour later the following message came over the wire, "In my opinion your mare is grazing along the right-of-way of the railroad which runs into Rotan from Nugent, about three miles from home."
The railroad ran beside the County road all the way to my home in Royston. It would be easy to look for the mare, and we did look all the way home. But there was nothing, no horse, no cow, no sign of any animal of any kind, except maybe a few jackrabbits. There were not even any horse tracks.
Well that was the last straw. As far as I was concerned, the mare was gone for good. I gave up. I had spent too much time away from my farming already. There was work to be done and I had better get with it. I knew we would miss Old Nancy, but we could live without her.
Then at home, while I was getting ready to get back to plowing, some thoughts were running through my mind. I read the telegram again.". . .along the railroad which runs into Rotan from Nugent." I knew it didn't run from Nugent, but then it did run to Rotan. I couldn't see anything wrong with that. But wait— something still wasn't clear. I was trying to figure whether there was something I was overlooking. I read a little further, ". . .about three miles from home, "THAT'S IT, HOME. Where was my home? Was it Royston? Was it my house? Come to think of it, neither of those places was mentioned in my telegram to Ethel, Rotan was the only place mentioned. That had to be it, three miles from Rotan. That would be about nine miles from my home.
I got back in my car and drove almost to Rotan. When I thought Rotan was still about three miles away, I pulled up to a farm house and asked a farmer whether he had seen a stray mare.
"How long she been gone?" the farmer asked.
"One week today," I answered.
"Nope, haven't seen her. Got one been here two weeks; couldn't be yorn."
"Mind if I see her?"
"Nope, she's out in the lot with the other horses."
We walked to the horse lot and I looked.
"That's her all right," I told him.
"How long you say she's been gone?"
"One week today."
"Seems like she's been here a lot longer'n that. No, guess not,—today's Wednesday ain't it? Yep, yep, that's right, she come last Wednesday. That's the day I drove into town. She was here when I got back."
I changed the subject, anxious to check on Miss Duncan's accuracy. I asked the man,
"How far is it to Rotan?"
"Three-and-a-half miles."
"Do you happen to know where that little mare was about an hour- and-a-half ago?"
"Yep, she was down in the back of the pasture."
"Which way does your pasture run from here?"
"Down that way toward town."
"How big is your pasture; how far is it to the back side?"
"A half-mile."
"Do you remember if the mare was near the railroad fence, or out in the other side of the pasture?"
"Yep, she was agin the railroad. But why all these questions?"
Then I told him the whole story—the cattle drive, the lack of a rope to tie the mare, our week of searching, the telegram, and I let him read the reply. After he finished reading it he said,
"That's right, she was three miles from Rotan by the railroad."
So we finally got the mare back and we were happy about that. Now there is still the question as to why my brother didn't bring the things we needed. He had a simple answer: He didn't want to. No further explanation, no apology, no feeling of guilt, no regrets—just simply didn't want to.
During the 17 years we lived on the farm at Royston there were a number of other stories, some good, and some not so good.
Wes Kennedy and his family lived about a mile northeast of Royston and they had three big dogs that had the bad habit of chasing automobiles and barking and snapping at the front wheels. The dogs chased the family car the same as they did strange cars which passed by along the road. Wes tried every way he knew to break the dogs from the bad habit, but every effort had failed.
Now the story goes that one member of the Royston Spit-and- Whittle Club suggested that he tie a burlap bag to the spokes of his front wheels. As the dogs snapped at the wheels, they were supposed to get their teeth caught in the burlap, this would hurt their teeth and break them from chasing cars.
They say Wes was anxious to try it, so he tied a potato sack to one front wheel and drove right on home. As usual the three dogs came out to meet him, growling and snapping at the turning wheels, and the scheme really worked. The dog that snapped the spinning sack never chased another car as long as he lived—which was about five seconds. You see, dogs with broken necks seldom chase cars. Oh well, they still had two big dogs and that was enough for the whole family.
Wes and his wife also had quite a few boys and girls, a lot of little ones and at least one big one—a girl. I was told that there was a difference of opinion as to just how big the girl really was. Wes thought of her as just a little girl, but she thought she was big enough to go with the boys. And her mother, having been a girl once herself, sort of agreed with the girl. Since her dad objected so vigorously, the girl, with the aid of her mother, devised a little scheme which was designed to satisfy the girl and yet not be too painful to her father, especially since he was not to know what was taking place. Anyway, the way I heard it, the kids were hoeing cotton one particular afternoon—who knows how many kids, maybe eight, maybe ten, anyway enough that one girl more or less would hardly be noticed by a father who was often busy at some other job which in most cases was easier than hoeing cotton.
The cotton rows butted up against a county road about a half-mile from the house. And in the weeds along the road ditch was a perfect place for the girl to hide a paper bag full of her clean clothes. And after sundown was a perfect time for her to exchange her hoe for that bag of clothes. So, when the other kids put down their hoes for the night, Wes didn't count kids and didn't notice that the big girl was missing. She had hoed to the far end of the rows and had not returned with the others on that last round after sundown.
Meanwhile, the girl's prince charming didn't carry her away on his white steed, but rather in his black Model A Ford. She kept her date with her boy and then spent the night with her girl friend. Next morning the girl, dressed again in her work clothes, picked up her hoe at the far end of the cotton rows and joined her brothers and sisters in the field on their first round of hoeing. No one ever told her dad about the incident, so he lived happily ever after.
In those days, when I wasn't too busy farming, I earned a little money at other things. I did road work for Fisher County quite a few months one year. One day I was hauling caliche in the county truck to fill in holes in the road by a bridge. When I was hauling my last load for the day, I was not in any particular hurry, so I stopped by my home to let Dennis and Anita go with me. I wanted them to get a lot of experience at a lot of different things, as I had done when I was a boy. I didn't want them to grow up in ignorance. There were times, I'm sure, Ima wondered whether I wanted them to grow up at all. Well this was one of those occasions. I was glad Ima wasn't along.
The kids played around while I unloaded the truck. And after I had finished my work, I took one of the sideboards from the truck, which was a two-by-eight twelve feet long, and I placed it across the buttment of the bridge. With me on one end and the kids on the other, I could see-saw them up and down and they could splash their feet in the water. What could be more fun to a three-year-old and a five-year-old? We had fun and all went well until time to load up and go home.
Dennis was out on the end of the board and I told him to sit still and let Anita get up first and come to me out on the road, then it would be his turn. Well, Anita got up and was walking toward me when Dennis decided he wanted to be first. Nothing I could do or say would make him change his mind. I just couldn't get him to sit that extra few seconds. He got to his feet and tried to pass Anita on the eight-inch board. And of course, since Dennis was biggest, Anita went off into the water—head first. I couldn't turn loose of the board quickly and jump in after her; I had to hold on while Dennis came on out and got off the board. By this time Anita had come up again and I lowered the board to her. She crawled upon it and came out with mud in both hands and was laughing. Excitedly she said, "Daddy, me pick up mud mit me hands."
It was not the time of year to go swimming because the weather and water were both too cold. But inside the truck cab, with the glasses up, it was hot. So I put Anita up in the seat with all her clothes off and she was comfortable right away. Her clothes dried out before we got home and we put them back on her. I sort of hoped that Ima wouldn't have to know about the accident, but do you think Anita could keep it secret? Goodness no! She had to go and tell Ima the whole story, in her own small way.
I worked off-and-on for Calvin Carriker all the years we lived at Royston. Along with his farming he also operated a grocery store, a filling station, and the post office. Ed Lewis worked full time for Calvin for years, and at one time was driving a stripped down Model T Ford, and there was something wrong with the T which Ed had not been able to remedy. At slow speed it skipped on one cylinder; at high speed it ran okay. When I speak of high and low speeds, I'm speaking in the neighborhood of, "Under ten miles an hour it skipped and over fifteen it didn't."
One day after a rain, Calvin asked me why didn't I help Ed, and the two of us get the old car to running better, since it was too wet to work in the field. I asked Ed what all he had done to the motor, and after he told me, I told him it had a broken piston. But Ed said he had looked at the pistons when he had the head off grinding the valves, and the pistons were okay.
I told him, "Okay, let's run through it once more. You have put in new plugs, timer, manifold, gaskets, and ground the valves. You have replaced everything that could cause it to skip on one cylinder except a bad piston."
Then Calvin said to me, "Why don't you take the piston out whileEd gets a piston from somewhere?"
Looking at the pistons from the top, Ed couldn't see the broken piston, but when we took it out, we found it broken on one side all the way from the bottom up to the top ring groove. We replaced that one bad piston and the old car ran okay.
There were other troubles with automobiles in those days. Today some of us older people are inclined to talk about the good old days and tell of how we were born during the horse-and-buggy days and how we lived through the Model T era, the Great Depression of the 1930s and into the Jet Age. However, most of us have failed to inform the younger generations about the "broken-fender" age and the "drain-your-car-every-night" era. These two periods overlapped to a considerable degree and ran concurrently much of the time.
That was when car fenders were bolted to the running board at one end and the other end of the fender was allowed to vibrate and flop up and down—especially on rough roads, and there were no smooth ones. The constant flopping caused the fenders to begin to break directly above each wheel. This called for a welding job to repair the break. Then a few weeks later the fender was beginning to break again in the same place. And this called for yet another repair job, and this went on and on throughout the entire life of the car. It happened to all cars alike—the Essex, the Nash, the Whippet, and even the Hupmobile.
This broken-fender age lasted from about 1928 until the late 1950s, and for me it extended into the 1960s because the only cars I could afford were old and well used and the fenders had been repaired by any number of other previous owners.
Why didn't fenders break before 1928? A number of reasons. They were much smaller and lighter, and therefore they didn't flop and bend and break. Furthermore, cars were slower, and many of them didn't last long enough to run far enough to break their fenders. The fenders outlasted many of the motors
Now, concerning the drain-your-car-every-cold-night age. Wood alcohol was about the only antifreeze we had, and it would boil away easily. Also it would evaporate and it was expensive, Furthermore, after making a long drive or pulling a heavy load, you never knew whether you still had enough alcohol to protect your motor from a freeze-up. Nor did we have efficient weather forecasts telling us just how cold it was going to get before morning. Therefore, most of us didn't use alcohol. We just used water and drained it out in cold weather.
So, all cars had a handy little faucet under the radiator. And most cars had another faucet on one side of the motor. Together they made it real easy to drain the water out. By raising one side of the engine hood, I could lean across the fender and reach both faucets easily, even in the dark, as I often did.
On one particular winter night, it was about midnight when a norther hit and woke me up. I knew I should have drained the car before I went to bed But being a gambler at heart, as well as being lazy all over, I took a chance—and lost. And with a fresh norther roaring outside, there was just one thing to do, go drain the car. So, clothed in my shorts and my house shoes, and hidden behind a cloak of darkness, I hurried out to drain the car. I quickly raised one side of the hood, leaned across the cold fender, and in a jiffy I had both faucets open.
Then as I raised my weight off the fender, a sharp pain in the skin of my stomach reminded me that I was living in the age of broken fenders. When I leaned across the fender, my weight had caused the crack in the fender to open, and as I lifted my weight the fender bit me right in the stomach. I had to push my weight back down on the fender and hold its mouth open with my hands while I carefully removed my stomach.
Despite the mechanical problems we had suffered during the 1920s, by the early 1930s the automobile was a proven necessity and the farm tractor was beginning to crowd in and push the horse off the farm. So I decided to cash in on my horses before the price fell.
In the spring of 1934, when a lot of farmers were buying horses for the coming farming season, I sold all my work horses. Now, I didn't have a tractor and I couldn't afford to buy one, but I figured I could build one. I had never seen a home-made tractor—never even heard of one. But now that I had sold all my horses, I was left with no choice except to build one.
Again it was a matter of trusting my own judgment and going out on my own. Again there was no turning back; I had to go forward. I used a truck differential and a car motor. And by the time I got it all together and put plows on it, my cost was $250. I have seen tractors that others have built since then, and I helped neighbors build a few, but that first one I built beat them all. I farmed with it two years, then sold it for as much as it had cost me, and then I bought a used Farmall.
While I was dealing with horses and tractors, our kids were making history on their own. They had this little white mama dog that had never had pups and they had an old mama cat that had come from no-telling-where, and she had stopped over at our place long enough to give birth to three kittens. But while her kittens were still suckling, the old cat up and died. And the next thing we knew that little dog had adopted those three kittens and was letting them nurse. We never did know whether they got any milk for their effort, but they really put forth the effort. I had never heard of a dog being that friendly with any member of the cat family.
During the lean years, when I had time to work for the other fellow a little, I wasn't content to hoe or drive his tractor for a dollar a day. Instead, I was always looking for a way to make money easier and faster. Now, running a row binder didn't necessarily make money easier, but it made it quite a bit faster.
One fall I took my row binder and car and tractor and Ima, and we all went out and made $300 in a single month, cutting feed for neighbors. That was clear money above all operating expenses, car expenses, binder repairs, and a babysitter at home for Dennis and Anita.
Now you may think I'm a male chauvinist, listing Ima along with my other property that I took. But I didn't mean it that way. I simply meant to list her with the items I took. You see, I had to take her, she wouldn't go voluntarily.
During that month, we slept in a bed on top of our car. We had all the tools we needed for repairing the binder right in the middle of any field. And we always had plenty of hot bath water right from the tractor radiator. It was clean water—we put in fresh clear water daily.
We also found other ways to pick up a few extra dollars. When World War II was in full swing and scrap metal was bringing a good price, we took a few loads of scrap to Sweetwater and sold it. While unloading there one day, I noticed an old Buick car in the scrap pile. I looked it over, and the more I looked at it the better it looked to me. Finally I paid the man $30 for it, pumped up the tires, put in a one-dollar battery and drove it home. It proved to be one of the best running cars I had ever owned. We drove it two years and then swapped it off for a $45 milk cow.
It seems that about half the years we lived at Royston were dry years and that about half of every wet year was dry. So there were a lot of dry times when I was not farming because there was no farming to be done. On one of those occasions I rented an old blacksmith shop at Royston—nothing in it, just four walls and a roof. I think I paid two dollars a month for the use of it, which was all it was worth, considering the sandy dirt floor that came with it, and with no windows for light. It had big doors at one end for cars to come through, some of which I repaired and some I wrecked out and sold for parts. In addition, I stocked and sold a few new parts too.
Wes Kennedy came into my shop one day and showed me some auto light bulbs he had bought at Sweetwater at 20 cents each. And he added, "Some places get 35 cents for them."
I showed him the same kind of bulbs in my shelves which I was selling at 15 cents. He looked at them and said, "I didn't know you sold light bulbs. You mean you sell them for 15 cents?"
I told him, "Yes, they cost me 8 cents, and I've got to make a little profit on them to stay in business."
Of course, we laughed at Wes, and he laughed with us, for thinking he had found such a big bargain at Sweetwater, and had overlooked a bigger bargain right at home.
This shop work went on for about three months. Then one day it rained and I closed up shop and went back to farming. Instead of working at a dollar a day, I cleared about $3 a day in the shop.