We were about the luckiest kids in the world. We always had as much or more than the average kids in our neighborhood. And of course, we had each other. But most of all, we had parents who had the knack of teaching us how to get pleasure from working and how to make our own fun, using a minimum of worldly goods while doing it.
For instance, we played a game called "Driving the Old Sow." The equipment for playing the game cost absolutely nothing. It consisted of one beat-up tin can and a mesquite stick for each player. We spent many happy hours playing the game, especially when we had a bunch of other kids to play it with us.
Many of our playthings were not bought with a lot of money, but were the result of our parents' ingenuity and willingness to build things for us, as well as playing with us and teaching us how to live more abundantly.
We were the only ones who had a merry-go-round all our own. It was a big one—a four-seater, big enough for grown people. And we had to hold on tightly or be slung off. There was a special seat for the smaller ones so they wouldn't get slung off. And of course it was propelled by boy power.
At Christmas we got our share of toys and things, and we got candy and fruits too. We had apples during the entire year, and we got bananas a few times. But we never saw oranges except at Christmas time.
On Christmas Eve nights, before we went to bed, we placed chairs around the living room with a name in each one. Gifts from Santa were never wrapped. He put my things in the chair with my name in it, and the others likewise. Next morning no one was allowed to go into the living room until all were ready to go in.
We were taught that our family should work together to make a more abundant life for all in the family, and now I was beginning to see families working and playing together to bring a better life to all in the community.
The Stevens family lived about a mile from us and one day one of the boys got married. The whole neighborhood knew that the newlyweds were spending the night there at his parents' home.
I was only about nine years old, and I can't remember much about that one and only chivaree I ever attended. In fact, I don't think there was much to remember about it. But when they explained to me just how a chivaree was carried on, naturally I wanted in on the action. Any country kid could beat a bucket with a stick. And it seemed that all the little kids and big kids and grow people were there with buckets and pans and sticks.
We waited until all the lights were out in the Stevens' house. Then we silently surrounded the house and when the signal was given we all marched around the house drumming up all the noise we could make.
After a few minutes, someone came out of the house with a lighted kerosene lantern. Then the newlyweds came out on the porch. I suppose they figured we wouldn't go away until they came out. The groom came out into the yard and said something like, "Ah, come on that's enough noise, leave us alone." The older ones in our bunch exchanged a few friendly words with them and then we all told them goodnight and went home.
Like all farm families, we had animals. And when a cow found a new calf out in our pasture, one or the other of us kids would claim it for our own. We would beg, "Papa, can I have it?" or, "Mama, can it be mine?" Yes, they said it could be ours. And so, it belonged to one of us kids.
Just about everyone of us had a calf or a colt all our own—until it came time to sell it. Then guess whose it became. Papa's, naturally. But then, those of us who were young enough to believe it was really ours in the first place, were young enough to forget our loss easily. After all, there was no harm done. It had been ours while it was little and cute.
We had one old mare that we called Old Ribbon. She was not only called Old Ribbon, she was old and her name was Ribbon. She was gentle and slow and patient with us young ones and didn't seem to mind if four or five of us rode her at one time.
To get up on Old Ribbon we had to lead her up beside a stump or a tub or a wagon tongue or something else we could climb up on and then jump on her back.
Along with her other admirable characteristics, Old Ribbon was also smart. When she didn't want us to climb up on her, she would move away just far enough that, when we tried to jump on her back, we would land on the ground between her and whatever it was we jumped from.
If we cheated on Old Ribbon and helped each other up without her having to get near some climbable object, she was still patient and gentle with us. She wouldn't pitch us off. She didn't have to. She knew where there was a low-hanging limb on a tree that she would walk under. And when she did, there was no way anyone could stay on her back. What's more, there was no way we little kids could keep her from that low limb. If we pulled her head to one side, she would go sideways to the limb. Then we had a choice—jump off or be forced off. The one in front could hang onto the limb; the others would all fall in a pile behind Old Ribbon. We soon learned it was best to bail out beforehand.
But one day, I remember, Old Ribbon gave us a little trouble.However, I'm sure she didn't do it intentionally.
When the Abilene and Southern Railroad was being built into Hamlin, Papa got a job helping clear the right-of-way. And it was Mama's job to take Papa's lunch to him. Pardon, in those days it wasn't lunch—it was dinner, at or near midday. Then we had supper at the close of day. Anyway, Mama and I would hook Old Ribbon to the old buggy and take Papa his dinner every day. One day we took Papa's dinner to him and found him sawing down trees where the railroad was to cross Dry Callie Creek. While we were there, he sawed into the hollow of a big elm tree and water gushed out. After the tree fell, the hollow stump was standing full of water. Of course, you've got to be a little kid for something like that to impress you. And that's what I was.
But it was another day that Old Ribbon impressed me. It was almost dinner time when Mama and I hooked her to the old buggy to take Papa his dinner. As usual, I was in the seat with Mama, and the grub box was in the floor at our feet. It was covered with a clean white cloth to keep the flies and dust away.
Now, we hadn't gone more than a hundred yards from our house whenOld Ribbon had to do what comes natural for all horses to do.But this time Old Ribbon had symptoms of dysentery and gas.Either one without the other wouldn't have been so bad. But bothtogether made it plenty bad.
The dashboard was only half large enough. It caught what it could; Mama and I caught most of the rest. And the white cloth over Papa's dinner caught its share—but it wasn't white any more. In your eyes, it burned, in your nose, it smelled terrible, and in your mouth, it tasted a lot like what it really was.
No question about it, there was just one thing to do, go back home, wash up, wash the buggy, change clothes, change the cloth over the dinner, hope it didn't go through onto the biscuits, get going again and take Papa a late dinner. Ho hum, dull life on the farm, no excitement.
Papa may have been hungry by the time we got his dinner to him and he may have been worried and weary. He may have been upset and Mama may have been upset but they couldn't afford to say anything bad. They didn't allow any sort of rough language in our family.
Old Ribbon was a good gentle horse for Mama and us kids, but Papa had some big horses he used to move heavy loads and haul his cotton to the gin. And in the rush cotton picking season, we kids and Mama picked almost all of the cotton, while Papa took it to town, got it ginned and then sold it.
There were many days when Papa would leave home before five o'clock in the morning with a load of cotton, wait his turn at the gin and not get home until after ten that night.
Ginning was slow in those days. Sometimes it would mean that Papa could get home an hour or two earlier if he could get to the gin ahead of just one other farmer. So, a good team was valuable to a farmer during the cotton harvest season.
I never heard Papa tell of trying to go around another farmer on his way to the gin. But I have heard him tell of speeding up to beat another man to a crossroads in order to be ahead of him when they both turned the last corner toward town. And I have heard him tell of others trying to pass him on the road. But I never heard of one who succeeded. Papa drove big horses with a lot of endurance, and on a three-mile stretch of level road, they usually held their own.
Despite all the work we had to do, we kids played a lot and had a lot of fun. When it rained at the Exum place, water ran out of our pasture, across the parking area by our front yard, and continued on down a road toward the blacksmith shop.
It had just come a hard rain and was still sprinkling a little. So we took shovels and damned up the road where it was deepest and not spread out so much. Water was flowing into our small lake almost as fast as we could build the dam. The water backed up and covered the parking area by our front yard. By the time the water stopped flowing and we stopped building the dam, water was as much as three feet deep over an area as large as two or three city lots.
I don't remember where Frank got his boat. Nor do I know how long he kept it nor whether he built it especially for that occasion. But I do know we went riding in his boat just outside our front yard. They even took Kodak pictures of us in the boat on our little lake.
In two or three days the dam had to be destroyed and the lake drained so we could use the road again and so we could get in and out of our front yard.
The years passed quickly and during the period from 1912 to 1916 things were happening fast in our part of the country. Hamlin was growing up. In the fall of the years, they had their fairs, with their carnivals, large hot-air balloons, motorcycle races and livestock shows. Prosperity was spreading over our country and everyone who wanted to work could get a job.
Frank took his horse and buggy and carried the mail at times, as a substitute carrier. But for some reason unknown to me, he became disenchanted with the job and gave it up.
Papa bought our first auto in 1916. It was a 1914 model Reo, five-passenger touring car—the cost, $800. We drove it until 1922, then junked it.
That Reo car had a feature I have never seen on any other car. The left pedal was a clutch pedal the first half-way down. The remainder of the way down, it became a foot brake. The right pedal was an emergency brake. Both had ratchet-type bars underneath which held them down to the desired place.
Handy? You bet! Many car owners wished their cars had the clutch and brake under one foot. It was especially handy when starting a car headed uphill, because it left the right foot free to work the gas feed.
The old Reo didn't have a lot of power to brag about—maybe about as much as a couple of wooden-legged donkeys. I remember we went to Lamesa in it one time. Going up the Cap Rock, it just couldn't make it alone. The road was steep and rocky. The Buick, which we bought later, would go up the hill with all of us still in the car. But the Reo was different.
We not only had to get out and walk up, we had to push the Reo up too. There were about four or five of us pushing, and two of us were carrying rocks to put behind the wheels when it stopped. Then the driver would "rev" up the motor, let up on the clutch, and with all of us working together, we would move the car forward and upward two or three steps. Then again, rocks behind the wheels—quickly.
That kind of life gave people something to do besides griping and asking Washington for handouts. It also gave a man pride in ownership, especially if the car he owned would outdo the car his neighbor owned.
Bragging on your car was a way of life in early carhood days. If a man had a car that could do anything his neighbors couldn't do, that was something to brag about. No two cars were alike.
But now, 60 years later, we find that auto-makers have wiped out all differences and are making all cars alike. No matter which company made the car you are driving today, you have nothing to brag about. Today's cars all have at least four things in common- -they are too big, too powerful, too costly and burn too much gasoline.
But it hasn't always been that way. About the same year we bought our Reo, a neighbor family of ours had a flat tire. They set the emergency brake while they jacked up the car to put the spare on. Then when they got going again, they forgot to release the brake and drove about a half-mile with the brake on. Later, one of the boys in that family bragged that their car was so powerful it went a half-mile with both hind wheels sliding.
My brother, Frank, got rid of his motorcycle and his Buick car and bought a Grant auto. It had a reputation of having great power. They said you could run the front bumper up against a tree and it had enough power to sit there and spin the wheels on dry land. That was a lot of power for that time.
One fellow who didn't think too highly of the Grant said he knew a man who bought one and, not having a garage to lock it in, drove it out by his hog pen and chained it to the pen. That night some thieves came, cut the chain and stole the pen.
But before cars made it so handy for farmers to drive into town to buy supplies, peddlers were already plentiful, bringing supplies to the farmers.
Horse-drawn rigs were apt to pull up at our farm almost anytime. They had for sale most anything you might want, from kitchen utensils to medicine; hardware to veterinarian supplies; needles and thread and blue denim. You name it—they had it—even horseshoes and nails.
With the new prosperity came growth, and as a country grows so do her cities and towns. And as towns prosper, they breed violence.
I was only a kid but I heard some grownups telling about a man who got shot in Hamlin. One man was after another man with a shotgun. He got off one good shot, which proved to be effective enough. The man who got shot ran into a hardware store, ran through the store and out into the alley, up the alley a few doors, then ran back into a drygoods store. There he crawled under a counter to hide and died. That's how I remember it. That's all I ever heard about it. I don't know who got shot nor why.
During all this time, naturally, we kids were growing up too. Frank was almost a grown man and Susie had fallen in love. When she was born, they named her Susie. But it wasn't long till her Aunt Annie nicknamed her "Sookie." She hated that nickname ever- so-much. Nevertheless, she was stuck with it until she began to get serious about having Dode Sanford over to our house for supper quite a few times through the week and almost every Sunday night. Then she began asking us kids to call her Susie. She even gave us a penny now and then to do so.
Fifty years later she moved to California and changed her name again—to Susan. Some girls are just never satisfied with what other people give them. She still argues that she was named Susan to begin with. And she's probably right, Jones County didn't start keeping records until four years later.
Anyway, Uncle Jim's farm joined our farm on the east. Dode was working for Uncle Jim on his farm. That made Dode and Susie next- door neighbors. I think that was about the time I began to learn a little bit about what being sweethearts was all about.
Well, the long-awaited day finally arrived and Susie and Dode got married. I don't remember much about it all. In fact, I never did know much about it. They didn't tell me and I didn't know enough about it to know what kind of questions to ask to find out more. If I remember right, it seems they just drove away in the car one day with Papa, and when they returned, someone told me they were married. I couldn't tell by looking; they looked the same as ever to me. I was told they went to see a preacher but I didn't know what for.
Even at that early date, the county began to need better roads. Farmers were allowed to work on the county roads so-many days a year as a way of paying their taxes. The road work could be done at a time most convenient to the individual farmers. This was not a matter of welfare handouts to farmers. Rather, it was a case where farmers worked together to improve conditions in their community and still keep their money at home.
If a man was unable to do his share of the road work, the county would collect tax money from that man and use it to hire another man to work in his place.
Papa did his share of the county road work. But with that work added to all his regular farm work, he had to search for faster and better ways to do some of his work.
You see, one of Papa's big problems was that he had a house full of growing kids who could use a spoon right well at the dining table, but were too little to use a feed-heading knife in the field.
There just wasn't enough time to head our feed in the fall. Papa had a row binder with which to bundle the feed. But he wanted feed heads in the barn to feed his work horses.
So he bundled the feed with his binder and shocked it up to dry. While it was drying, he built a large knife, somewhat like those paper cutters you have seen in print shops. He bolted the cutter to one sideboard of his wagon Then he would drive the wagon up beside a shock of feed in the field, and while he placed the heads of a bundle across the lower knife blade, one of us boys would bring the upper blade down and cut the heads off the bundle. When the heads were cut off, they fell into the wagon.
The cutter worked quite well when Papa had the proper boy operating the knife, but sometimes he had to use me to help him.
As I said, Papa and I did a lot of things together. Cutting heads off bundles was one of those things. Almost cutting his hand off was another.
One day Papa was placing the bundles into the cutter and I was working the upper knife. I thought he was ready for me to cut, but he hadn't gotten his hand back out of the cutter. It looked to me like a bad cut. It bled a lot at first. I sure regretted what I had done, but I guess it wasn't cut very badly because he wrapped his bandanna around his hand and we went right on with our work.
Papa was always and forever doing things that fascinated me and, at the same time, taught us to use our heads and develop our skills.
When we had used all the hot water washing our feet at bedtime, and there was not enough water for Papa to wash his, he didn't seem to mind. He would get a wash pan of cold water, set it on the hearth and put in live coals of fire until his water was hot enough. We kids liked to hear the hot coals sizzle in the water.
There were times when the kitchen was too cold for comfort at early breakfast time. Of course, the dining table was in the cold kitchen. Well, Papa would take an open-top, five-gallon can with about four inches of ashes in the bottom and a few shovelfulls of hot coals on top of the ashes and set the can under the dining table. That would warm our feet while we ate breakfast. And it would also help warm up the kitchen.
So, it was there at the Exum place that I spent six of the best years of my life. They were years of family contentment and prosperity—we youngsters working, playing, exploring, wading in the creek, hunting rabbits with air rifles, going to school; gathering eggs, feeding chickens, feeding cows and horses; playing in the barn, playing in the cottonseed, eating peanuts in the barn loft, wading in puddles after summer showers; enjoying the warm fire in the fireplace, washing our feet by the warm hearth at bedtime, snuggling between warm blankets in cold bedrooms; in short, growing up and enjoying every minute of it.
Papa had two rancher brothers, Joe and Simpson, who had remained in the cattle business when all the rest of the Johnsons went to farming. And Papa preferred cattle ranching over cotton farming. So he got the urge to get back to growing more cattle and not so much cotton.
This was not just a far-out dream as if he didn't know what he was doing. After all, he had been in the cattle business with his father until the time they all moved back to Texas from Oklahoma. At that time he went to farming because it required far less capital to be a farmer than to be a rancher. And he was a young man just starting out on his own.
But now he had accumulated a little of this world's goods and he thought it was time to step up to a larger place that would grow enough cows and calves to afford a better future for him and his family. This was not just a wild adventure. He knew it was easier to grow a dollar's worth of calves than it was to grow a dollar's worth of cotton.
We had prospered greatly during our six years on the Exum farm. But our chances for expanding in Jones County were limited. Most of the good pasture land had been cleared and put into cultivation. But on the West Texas plains there was ample room to expand. The soil was rich for farming and yet not too expensive for pasture land.
So in 1916 Papa went to that land of promise and bought a section of unimproved land ten miles southwest of Lamesa. It was a half- mile wide and two miles long. It was part of the old Higginbotham Ranch. The ranch was being sold piece-by-piece for farms. And it seemed to be a very good place to grow feed and cattle.
Now Papa knew he would have to have a place to live. He knew he couldn't move onto unimproved land and start making a living on it. So he also bought another smaller farm about five miles from the large one. It was fairly well improved. His plan was to live on the small farm while he sent us kids to school, built five miles of wolf proof fence around the new land, had a well drilled, put up a windmill and a water tank and built an eight- room, two-story house to live in. He did all this on the new land.
With that much completed, we moved onto the new farm and started building a small barn, chicken house, car shed, tool house, storm cellar, wash house, an out house, a yard fence, field fences and cross fences. This all took quite a spell but by this time the place was fairly well improved.
But wait—before we did anything to either farm we moved into the house on the small farm in the dead of winter. Dode and Susie moved in with us—or rather, we moved in with them. The plan was for them to farm the small place and we would farm and ranch the large place. We would live with Dode and Susie until we made the other place livable.
There we were, all of us, in the cold winter, waiting for the weather to cooperate so we could begin improving the raw land.
Meanwhile the family who sold us the small farm with the house on it, and who had planned to be moved out by this date, had not moved out. And since it was coming a blue norther and snowing outside. They were not in a big hurry to move out. But they were kind to us and shared with us what they had—which was ours of course.
There were four in their family. They retained the kitchen with a cookstove in it, the livingroom with a heating stove in it, and a bedroom. They let us have two small rooms in which to store our furniture and cook and eat and sleep.
There was no flue for a stove in our part of the house. We ran a stovepipe out through one window and attached the lower end of it to a small heating stove so we could fry flapjacks and heat the room. But when the wind blew from the wrong direction, the fire smoked up our rooms and we had to aim the stovepipe out another window more in keeping with the direction the wind was going.
It seems that the family in the other part of the house was named Stewart—Mr. and Mrs. Stewart and their two kiddos. Boy! Did they deal us misery by not sharing a greater portion of our house with us. I think I would hate everybody named Stewart except I'm not quite sure Stewart is the right name.
Man, it was cold! As I said, there were four of them in three of our rooms with good stoves in two of the rooms. And in the two rooms that we had there was Papa, Mama, Susie, Dode, Earl, Joel, Albert, Ollie Mae, William Robert, and me—ten of us. And out in the pasture were all our cows and horses, practically freezing to death. Mr. Stewart was using our sheds for his cows and horses.
Papa had bought two or three carloads of cows in Jones County and had shipped them to Lamesa by rail, along with our horses, household goods and farming tools.
You know the old saying, "Things could have been worse." Well this time we didn't think things could ever be worse. But we were wrong. They did get worse; 1917 was a dry year.
We kids went to school while Dode and Papa went about farming the small farm and improving the large one. The dry weather prevailed throughout the year. Grazing dried up and cattle got poor. Papa did what he could to feed his family and his livestock.
The United States was at war with Germany and, luckily for us, Uncle Sam was buying rabbits. Jackrabbits brought ten cents each and cottontails brought six or eight cents. When we killed a rabbit, all we had to do was cut open his abdomen and sling his intestines out. Then we pitched the rabbits into the wagon and took them to town in the next two or three days.
We were looking for most any honorable way to pick up an extra dollar. I have seen Papa and Mama take a 22 rifle and a lunch and some horse feed for their team and go out in a wagon and stay all day, while we kids were in school. Before night they would come home with rabbits piled eight or ten inches deep all over the wagon bed.
One man bought a single-shot 22-rifle and some shells on credit— about eight dollars worth. In one week he brought in enough rabbits to pay off the debt. That was one time you might say rabbits saved our lives.
During the dry weather, while we were slowly losing about everything we ever had, Papa hired out to haul cottonseed cake in his wagon to ranchers somewhere west of Lamesa. I didn't know where he was taking it but there were times I didn't see him more than once or twice a week.
Monroe Hamilton was one of our neighbors. He and his family lived about a mile from us. During the drought of 1917 his work horses got so weak and poor that they became exhausted while plowing in the field. They stopped in the middle of the field and had to be unhitched and walked home. He began feeding them more and working them less while they regained their strength. Mid-afternoon was about as long as they could keep working.
By the time the horses were strong enough to work all day again, they had become accustomed to stopping their work about mid- afternoon and they refused to pull the plow after that time of day.
One day Monroe became so unhappy with them that he unhitched them in the field where they had staged their sit-down strike, drove them to the barn, hitched them to his wagon and trotted them eight miles to Lamesa to get the mail. Then he trotted them eight miles back home. They had never experienced becoming exhausted while pulling a wagon out on the road. They were not smart enough to pull a sit-down strike anywhere except plowing in the field.
During World War I, Frank wanted to join the Army. But Mama and Papa did their part in talking him out of it. He was too young to be drafted. But he wasn't at home much after that. He worked here and there in defense work. He told us he worked awhile in a powder factory in West Virginia. After the war was over, he came home in 1919 and worked some for Dawson County, doing some mechanical work on a road grader tractor. Finally, Papa bought a big truck and let Frank take it and go wherever he could find a job, hauling whatever anyone would pay him to haul.
Another source of income for us during the dry weather was in gathering and selling dry bones. There was a ready market for bones in Lamesa. A lot of cows had died here and there due to dry weather and cold weather. We hauled and sold quite a few bones.
We also salvaged a lot of rawhides—dry rawhides. We couldn't sell them but we could use them ourselves. They were hard and stiff, but by soaking them in water we were able to straighten them out, cut them into strips and use the strips for braiding whips and making other useful articles to be used on the farm.
Despite all the work, we boys had some time off for fun and adventure. There were times after rains when it was too wet to plow. But then there might be bushes to be grubbed or we might have to build fence or maybe chop wood or do any one of a dozen things that kept bobbing up to be done. If and when we got all those things done, and then if it was still too wet to plow or hoe weeds, then we had some time off for ourselves. Also on Saturday afternoons we took time off, unless there was something which just had to be done.
We always had Sundays off for rest and play, but never for work of any kind, that is, work which was of any monetary value, except routine work like milking cows and feeding the livestock. The question of work came up one Sunday afternoon when we put some new tires on our car to go watch an airplane at Lamesa. But then, that was regarded as play since it involved only recreation and had nothing to do with work which could in any way produce anything of value. Sunday was a day for going to church, resting, visiting friends, playing games, reading, or just sitting.
Now, if we boys wanted to go out into the pasture and kill a snake or two with sticks, that was okay. And if we could get a rabbit without a gun, that was all right too. But, no guns on Sundays. When a rabbit ran into a prairie dog hole, we could twist him out with a barbed wire. That was okay on Sunday.
We would run a barbed wire down into the hole and twist it by means of a crank at the upper end, which was nothing more than the wire itself bent in the shape of a small crank. As the wire revolved over and over down in the hole, it would get the barbs entangled in the rabbit's fur and we could pull him out of the hole. That was called "rabbit-twisting."
The idea of sin being connected with shooting a gun on Sunday had probably been handed down from pioneer days when men lived by hunting game. In those days hunting was a means of making a living, therefore it was work, and work was not to be done on Sunday.
Despite the dry weather that seemed to threaten our very existence, we used water from our well and grew quite a bit of garden produce. Our garden was like an oasis in a dust bowl. And then, one day we received a bit of news that was like an oasis of good news in our desert of bad news.
Uncle Robert got word to us that Old Scotch had returned home to the Exum place. Papa began getting the car ready immediately and went after him. I think maybe Joel went with Papa.
A family named Bristow was living on the Exum farm when Old Scotch returned. Mr. Bristow thought this might be our dog, but he was not sure. He said it looked as though the dog had traveled a long, long way. The first thing Old Scotch did was lie down in the yard and rest. Then he chased all the chickens out of the yard as he had done many times before. Next he went into the house and slowly looked through all the rooms, as if looking for something familiar to him. Finding no one he knew, he went back out into the yard to rest again.
Then Mr. Bristow phoned Robert Johnson to see if he might know our dog. Robert drove over in his Buick. Old Scotch met him way down the road and leaped for joy beside the car all the way back to the house. He had finally found new hope. The Buick motor was music to his ears and, although Robert was not home folks, at least the dog knew him as a friendly neighbor.
When Robert got out of his car, Old Scotch leaped up into thefront seat, sat down and put his paws on the steering wheel.When Robert saw him do that, he turned to Mr. Bristow and said,"That's their dog all right."
We had no telephone on our farm on the plains. And we were ten miles from Lamesa. I don't know how Robert got word to us about Old Scotch, but Papa lost no time in bringing him home. The round trip was 280 miles.
When Papa brought the dog home he was covered with lice, there were sores on his body, some of his beautiful coat had fallen away and his feet were sore from traveling so far. He had lost a lot of weight, was poor and half starved.
We believe that some Gypsies stole him and tied him to their wagon. Gypsies came by our farm now and then, and both we and our neighbors had a low opinion of them. Theirs were the only poor, skinny dogs we ever saw.
Anyway, we were mighty glad to have Old Scotch back with us and we soon had him as fat and sassy and as good looking as ever. And he was right there with us all the rest of his life.
Now that we had our dog back home, it was time again to settle down to facing the realities of dry weather and sandstorms. One day there came a sandstorm from the southwest, as usual. We had many sandstorms but this one was not just one of the ordinary ones. This was an extra special—the granddaddy of all sandstorms. We kids were in school at Ballard and it got so dark in the schoolhouse we couldn't see to read. We could only sit and talk or play games. You could clean the dust from the top of your desk, and two minutes later write your name with your finger in the new dust.
When school was out at four o'clock in the afternoon, it was so dark the teacher was afraid some of us couldn't make it home. She held us there until our parents came for us. The wind was still very strong. Everyone drove with their lights on, not to see the road but to see each other.
We couldn't see the sunset—couldn't even see where the sun was supposed to set. We didn't believe there were any clouds, only sand and dust. But we really couldn't tell. Anyway, dark came way before its time.
At suppertime that night there was so much sand and dust in the air in our kitchen that we ate supper with the tablecloth still spread over the table, over the food, and over the plates we were eating out of. We held the cloth up with one hand to shelter our plates while we reached under the cloth with the other hand to bring food from our plates to our mouths.
During the afternoon, sand blinded the rabbits and they couldn't find their way to their burrows. Jackrabbits don't usually burrow, but cottontails always do when they need shelter. This time it was different. They needed shelter but couldn't find it. This time they all sat behind bushes with their tails turned to the wind and sand.
For hours the sand didn't let up. About ten o'clock that night the wind shifted around to the west, a little while later, to the north, and then to the northeast. It still didn't slow up. Each time it changed directions, it stirred up more sand.
As the wind shifted, so did the rabbits. They moved around their respective bushes, keeping behind the bushes from the sand, and with their tails still windward.
When the wind came out of the north, it became very cold and began to snow. The temperature got down below zero that night and many rabbits froze to death and were buried under the snow.
For a week or two after that storm, we went hunting and shot dead rabbits, not knowing they were already dead. They were still sitting under bushes and looking very much like live rabbits. We continued to shoot dead rabbits until they were all eaten by coyotes and buzzards.
It was reported that one rancher near Lamesa lost 500 cows that night from the cold and the snow.
On one side of our house snow drifted into a huge pile halfway up our windows. After it melted, the sand which blew in with the snow was at least two feet deep. That was the first time I can remember when snow was so dirty we couldn't make snow ice cream. However, there were many other times later on.
Here is another little rabbit story. On one occasion when Frank was home, he went rabbit hunting with the other four of us boys. We hadn't had much luck until almost sundown. By that time we were still about four or five miles from home and we came to another windmill and waterhole. There was a lot of sagebrush around the waterhole and jackrabbits began to hop up here and there. This place was so far from civilization the rabbits were not much afraid of us. They would hop off a way and stop and sit up and look back at us.
We all spread out and took a swath about the width of a city block and circled the waterhole one time—and killed more jackrabbits than we could carry home. We swung some of them over our shoulders, tied some to our overall suspenders and carried some in our hands. It was a long way home and we were plenty tired before we got there.
During our stay on the plains, tractors had not yet established themselves on American farms, at least not in our part of the country. Men were still raising fine work horses and looking forward to raising even bigger and better ones. A neighbor named Debnam bought the biggest horse I ever hope to see. A big man had to reach high to touch his nose, and few men could reach the top of his shoulders. He was one of the six largest stallions in the United States and he cost the man $3,600. By the time he was three years old he weighed 2600 pounds, and his feet were about as large as a cedar water bucket.
Now Papa needed at least four of those fine work horses but he didn't have the money to buy them, and he couldn't get the money. And farm tractors were almost unheard of before the late 1920s. However, there was a company that made an attachment to go on a Model T Ford car which was supposed to make a tractor out of the car. The manufacturers name for the "thing" was "Pull-Ford." Papa heard of a man who had such a contraption, so he went to look at it.
Now, the fact that the man was not using the gadget should have told Papa something. Moreover, the fact that he was willing to sell it at a bargain should have told Papa something more. And finally, when he went and looked at it and saw that it was practically unused, that should have been the final message to Papa.
But Papa wasn't listening good. He was a man in trouble. Dry weather and sand colic had claimed some of his best work horses. And he could buy this thing for a lot less than four horses would cost. Anyway he bought the attachment and made it fit on the Reo. I suppose he reasoned that a Reo owner had more sense than a Ford owner, and even if it was not a success on the man's Ford, he could make it do the job on a Reo.
Well, anyway he bought it and brought it home and a few days later he had it all rigged on the old car and ready to go. It didn't prove to be the best tractor in the world, in fact, it might compare with a modern tractor of today about like the Wright Brothers' first flying machine would compare with a superjet.
Anyhow it worked some. It took one to drive the car and one to ride the plow. It didn't replace the horse in the field half as well as the Reo car replaced the horse on the road. Yet it filled in somewhat when feed was scarce and horses were tired. This monster didn't have to stop and rest, just stop to get water and cool off. As a tractor it wasn't so hot—it only got hot.
We didn't spend all of our time at hard work on the farm. Come Saturday afternoon, if we were pretty well caught up with our farm work, we would spend an hour or two in Lamesa.
I remember one time we were in Lamesa, when I was eleven years old. I had spent all my money except a dime. I wanted to buy a pocketbook to put my money in. There were four stores in town that sold pocketbooks and I went to all of them but it was of no use. The cheapest one any of them had was ten cents. Now, if I spent my dime for one, I wouldn't have any money left to put in it. And if I didn't buy one, I was apt to lose my dime. What should I do? That was a big decision for me to make.
I went back to each store time and again, hoping to find a five cent pocketbook I had overlooked before. But it just wasn't there. And I don't recall whether I bought a ten cent one or kept my dime.
Now you may ask, "If you can't remember whether or not you bought the purse, how can you remember it was on a Saturday?" That's easy. Saturday was about the only day we went to town. I was a big boy before I learned that there were people in town on other days of the week. I hardly knew that stores opened except on Saturday.
I remember another time in Lamesa when a kid about my size was aggravating me. Now, we kids were taught not to fight. I grew up not knowing how to fight, not wanting to fight and thinking that boys who did fight were bad boys. And here I was, faced with the stark realization that I needed something I didn't have—the ability to make a bully leave me alone. I was about as big as he was, but I was afraid he had the know-how to fight in a way that could hurt a country boy like me.
I didn't want to fight the boy. I only wanted him to go away and leave me alone. But he had other plans. We went in and out among the cars parked by the curb. I was always in the lead, he was after me. Somehow I had hoped that I could lose him. But he kept coming back, pinching and hitting me a little harder each time. I really think my not fighting him encouraged him to get tougher and rougher.
Then he got me out behind the cars, out near their back wheels, and he was just about to really let me have it. People on the sidewalk couldn't see us. It was just him and me. I had to do something—so I hit him and ran. That proved to be the best thing I could have done. He came right after me. I knew he might hit me but he couldn't hit me in the face and bloody my nose—I had my back to him.
I jumped up on the curb with the bully right on my heels. The first man I passed asked, "Is that boy bothering you?" Before I could answer him, the boy had turned and was going away. He didn't bother me any more. He probably thought the stranger was a friend of mine and that he had better leave me alone or else the man would get him.
On another trip to Lamesa I went with Papa one day into the back of a hardware store—back among the shelves of bolts and nuts and things. Way back there were stacks of silver dollars and half dollars and other coins, lying there on a shelf where the store was only half lighted. Papa and the clerk were around behind some other shelves. They couldn't even see me. It would have been easy to slip some money into my pocket and walk away. But I didn't, and I have wondered a lot of times just why I didn't.
There was no question but that I knew it would be the wrong thing to do. Yet I don't believe the moral aspect kept me from taking at least some of the money. That is to say, I could have lived with my conscience but I could not have lived with the condemnation I would have gotten from my family, once they learned about it. And I knew that somehow they would learn about it. Then there would have been the "dishonoring" of thy father and thy mother.
This would not have been a small thing, like talking back to Frank in the cotton patch years ago. That was an isolated case of one boy doing wrong and receiving his punishment. It was my punishment alone, it hurt no one else in the family and it was soon forgotten. But taking any part of the money from the store would have been altogether different. There would have been no way for me to take some of it, then take my punishment and not hurt my folks.
Until the depression years of the 1930s, merchants never fooled around with pennies. If the wholesale cost of an item was four cents, he would usually sell it for ten cents. Then he could sell the items at two for 15 cents and still make a good profit.
Well, Papa wanted to buy us kids some firecrackers but the war was on and they had gone from five cents a package up to ten cents a package. With six kids at home, that would put quite a strain on Papa's pocketbook. So while he was figuring how many to buy, my brother Joel began dickering with the clerk.
"Two for 15 cents?" he asked.
"Yes," came the reply.
"Four for a quarter?"
"Yes, I guess so."
"Nine for a half dollar?"
"Well, yes, okay."
Papa bought the nine packages and we all laughed at how far that was from ten cents each.
Susie had gotten married about the time we moved to Lamesa. And with her away from home, Mama was always short handed in the kitchen, there being so many men and boys in the family and only one little girl still at home, and she was too little to be of much help. And since Mama's kitchen work extended to the milk shed, the henhouse, the vegetable garden, the wash house, the clothes line, the ironing board, the yard and a few other odd jobs about the place, she had to cut all the corners she could.
She never put our eating dishes up in the cabinet. After she washed them, she stacked them back on the dining table and covered them with a cloth. So, she didn't have to place the dishes at mealtime. We simply sat down and got our own plates and tools. And we took only the tools we needed. There was no need to have to wash a knife, a fork and a spoon when a spoon was all we needed to use.
We grew up not knowing there were different forks to use for different things. We used the rule of instinct in choosing the tool to use. That is, "If it's hard, use a knife, if it's soft, use a fork, and if it's wet, use a spoon—except in the case of molasses. You sop molasses up with a piece of biscuit."
To save time and effort, Mama also left certain foods on the dining table—the salt, sugar, pepper, syrup, honey, vinegar, pepper sauce and other such things. These were all covered with the same cloth that covered our dishes. We had no refrigerator. Nothing would spoil at our house, we ate it before it had time to spoil.
Mama needed help to wash the dishes after supper. But boys don't like to wash dishes. So Mama was in trouble—but not for long. She came up with an ultimatum: "You wash your own supper dishes or eat out of your same plates for breakfast."
This was a boy's dream come true—no dish washing. This was the beginning of my sopping my plate clean. We all did. We could lick our spoons as clean as any woman could wash them in a dishpan. And I seldom used any tool except a spoon. Plates were no problem either. When it comes to shining plates, a good, tough biscuit rind in the hands of a growing boy could just about put a soap factory out of business. And no matter what he sopped out of his plate, it added flavor to his biscuit.
When we were through licking and sopping, each of us would place our spoons on the table at our respective places, turn our plates upside down over them and take off for things more interesting. The last one to finish would help Mama spread a cloth over the entire table and the job was completed. Mama was out of the kitchen in no time at all. We had learned a long time ago not to take anything on our plates that we couldn't eat. Now that habit was paying off.
The dry weather still prevailed, and in spite of all our efforts to earn extra money, we were getting deeper into trouble month by month. By the summer of 1918 we were about finished in our new venture. There was no grazing and no money for livestock feed. Cows and horses grazed the short grass, taking in sand with each bite. Sand clogged their stomachs and they died with sand colic. Many died but a few didn't.
Something simply had to give. We just had to try something else. After a long heart-breaking battle against the elements, we rounded up the remaining cattle and drove them to the railroad stockyards at Lamesa. That was a slow exodus. They were so poor and weak some fell by the wayside and didn't finish the ten-mile drive. Most of them did make it. I don't know where Papa sold them nor what he got for them. I know he couldn't have gotten much.
After that, we sold the smaller farm and got rid of the Buick car. Susie and Dode moved onto the large farm, and the rest of us moved to a farm near the community of Abbie, about nine miles east of Hamlin. We bought out a crop from someone in mid-summer. It, too, proved to be a failure—we made three bales of cotton.
In that year and a half we had lost most of our money, our cattle, quite a few of our horses and our best car.
After the crop failure at Abbie we had to try something else again. So we loaded the Reo car and went to Wichita Falls, Texas, where the government was building an aviation camp to train flyers for the war that was still going on. Papa hired on as a carpenter at six dollars a day.
Let me tell you about one night when some of us green-horn country boys went to downtown Wichita Falls with Papa. While he was attending to some business, we boys got out of the car and were looking at newspapers out in front of a drug store. It must have been a Saturday night because the newsracks were full of Sunday funny papers.
We were keeping hands off and just seeing what we could see without touching the papers when a stranger came by and told us, "You boys can have all the funny papers you want. They only want the newspapers. Help yourselves to all you want."
Boy! We were sure pleased to hear that. I was beginning to believe that city life was much more interesting than the country life we were used to. The funnies were just what we wanted. And we were getting more than our share when a friend, Harry Stacy, came along and informed us that, "If you boys don't want to get put in jail, you better put those papers back in the racks and get in that car in a hurry." We did what he told us to do.
Harry was one of Frank's buddies. He and Frank were carpentering out at the aviation camp. As far as I was concerned, I respected Harry and I knew he had almost as much authority to spank us boys as Frank had. At least he was concerned about our well-being. We didn't know that a stranger would lie like that to country kids just to see them get into trouble.
Anyway, while Papa carpentered we lived in a tent—and it rained and rained and rained, week after week. Our tent didn't leak from the top, but it might as well have. Water soaked the ground and came up in our tent as out of an artesian well. Everything was wet. You could almost wring water out of the air in our tent.
Mama had taken about all she thought she could. She wanted to go home to our farm at Abbie. So Papa loaded us all up and drove all one Saturday night. We arrived at the farm about daybreak. We hurried to get unloaded so Papa could drive back to Wichita Falls Sunday and be there ready to work Monday morning.
But Mama didn't want to be on the Abbie farm without Papa there. Of course he couldn't stay because he just had to make a living for us. He had to go back. So we all loaded back into the car and drove all day, back to the wet tent in a pasture about a half- mile from where Papa was carpentering.
When it didn't rain so much, we boys walked from our tent to nearby farms and picked cotton. We got to making so much money in the cotton patch that our parents reasoned that we all, working together in the cotton patch, could do much better than we could with the family split up, some picking cotton and Papa carpentering.
Knowing that the cotton crops were good in parts of Oklahoma, we got ready and headed for Duncan. Before we got there we saw that the cotton was really good—fields were white beyond our expectations. Many people were in war work and there was a shortage of laborers for the harvest.
But before we got to where we were going, we lost a suitcase off one front fender and hadn't noticed it was gone. The loss was discovered by one of the older boys when we stopped for one of the little ones to hide behind a bush. Naturally, we couldn't just drive on and leave the suitcase. We had to go back and find it. And about five miles back down the road we found it hanging on a fence post.
It seemed we were always stopping for bushes and culverts. I was twelve years old and there were three others in the car who were younger. And no two little kids ever have to "go" at the same time. So it was stop here for one and stop there for another one. Lucky for us, we had to stop for another one before the suitcase got many miles behind.
There were no service stations with fancy restrooms in those days- -only greasy garages with gasoline pumps out in front on the curbs and two-holers out back by the alley, all of which were dirty and smelly. Bushes along the road were much more sanitary.
However, I remember one garage that had indoor plumbing. Years ago, when I was just a little kid nine years old, Papa had gone to a garage to get the carburetor adjusted on his car. Joel and I went with him. And since it took the mechanic more than 15 minutes to do the work it was a good thing there was a place for little boys to hide.
The nice man working on our car must have been a little boy himself at one time or another, or maybe he had little boys of his own. At any rate, when he saw us whispering something in Papa's ear, the man pointed to the stairway leading up to a storeroom, in one corner of which was a little boy's room.
Yes, we found the room all right—and we used "the thing" in the room. But then we had a little trouble figuring out how to operate the thing. There was a wall-tank six-feet high on the wall, with a lever extending outward from the top of it and a long cord hanging down from the lever. We couldn't figure anything else to do, so we tried pulling on the cord. That was the secret—it worked. Water came down from the wall-tank into the bowl with a world of fury and gusto and noise.
Now we had another problem—should we have pulled the cord? We began to wish we had not. The bowl was filling up fast. We couldn't stop the flow of water. True, we had pulled on the cord to start it, but we couldn't push up on the cord to stop it. The bowl was almost full now and the water showed no signs of stopping.
Just before the bowl ran over we ran downstairs. We looked back, expecting to see the water come flowing down through the upstairs floor, or maybe down the stairway. But it didn't run over. We had gotten scared all for nothing. It was years later that we learned about indoor plumbing having automatic cutoffs on the water supply to the bowls.
Now getting back to our trip—before we found a farmer who needed us, one tooth broke off the ring gear in the differential of our car. We were familiar with the sound—it had happened before. But we drove on, listening to the click, click, in the car's rear end every time the wheels went around. Soon it ceased to be a click, click, and became a wham, wham. That meant there were two teeth off. It sounded bad; we couldn't go on.
With the differential sounding like it might go to pieces at any minute, we decided that perhaps this was the cotton country we had been searching for. So we spotted a large patch of white cotton and inquired about picking it. The man said he didn't need hands, but he thought Mr. Hammond wanted some pickers. He lived about three miles on down the road.
We phoned Mr. Hammond and found that we were in luck. He wanted us, and we certainly needed him. He brought a team of mules and towed our car to his place. We unloaded and began picking immediately, and before nightfall we had gathered hundreds of pounds of cotton.
Papa caught a ride to Durant the next day and ordered a ring gear for the car. Before we had finished picking Mr. Hammond's cotton the gear came by mail. Papa jacked up the car, crawled under and made the repair right there in the cotton field by our camp.
When we finished that patch, there were other fields waiting for us. We were making from $30 to $40 a day. The work was hard but we didn't mind. We were finally getting a little money ahead.
I was twelve, and even at that age, I enjoyed helping the family do what I knew had to be done. I was growing up. I was picking more cotton in a day than I had ever picked before. I enjoyed figuring how much I picked and how much money I was making. I knew it wouldn't be my money, but I found pleasure in knowing how much I was adding to the family income.
We quit picking cotton in time to get to Lamesa before Christmas. We didn't go by our farm at Abbie, but went west into the Texas panhandle. Then we turned south to our Lamesa farm.
All in all it was an easy trip. One stretch of road in Oklahoma was through sandy post oak country. Some of the trees were fairly large, otherwise the land was like Texas shinnery. The county road didn't go through the worst of the sand but detoured many miles out of the way to go around it. In some places the sand was higher than our car top. One man who owned some of the sandiest land had a road through his pasture so people could cut through and save many miles. He had built wooden runways over the sand hills so cars could travel easily. He charged a toll of one dollar for each car. We paid the toll and saved a good many miles.
And then, of course we came to the Red River that forms the boundary between Oklahoma and Texas. Now, in that part of the country there is just one way to get from Oklahoma to Texas and that is to cross the river. And I don't know of anyone who would choose to stay in Oklahoma if he had a chance to go to Texas. And that included us. So we crossed the river.
I remember, there was a long, long bridge made of wood. It never occurred to me at the time just why it was made of wood instead of concrete, this perhaps because I had never seen a concrete bridge, and didn't know at that time they would have such things in my lifetime. Anyway, there was this nice bridge across the big muddy river. And about 200 yards down stream from the bridge, there was a road where people could cross the river in the mud and shallow water if they wanted to.
Now the next thing I knew, we were down there in that muddy road while all the other cars were zipping across on the bridge. I wondered why we didn't ride across on the bridge. We didn't even ride across the river—well, yes, the driver rode—that was Papa, but the rest of us didn't ride. Papa was smart. He was not only smart, he was the only one who could drive the car. The rest of us didn't walk, either, we ran and pushed. Part of the time we were running and trying to keep up. The rest of the time we were pushing, trying to keep the car from stopping and sinking into the quicksand.
I think the bridge we didn't cross on was a toll bridge. My memory doesn't tell me it was a toll bridge, but by way of reasoning I can only conclude that it was. Otherwise, why would we Johnsons have been down there pushing in the mud when other cars were crossing on the bridge? And why did that man at the bridge show Papa how to get down to that muddy road? Why wouldn't he let us cross on the bridge like the other cars were doing? Yes, it all adds up, that must have been a toll bridge.
But we didn't pay the toll. And we had very little trouble crossing on the low road. Matter of fact, we didn't even stop, that is, Papa didn't, except for us to catch up and load back into the car. We saved our money and lost very little time.
When we got into the Texas panhandle, we headed south toward Lamesa. We stayed awhile with Susie and Dode and then went on to the rented farm at Abbie.
It was the end of the year now, and time to re-rent the Abbie place for another year or give it up. We gave it up and moved back to the farm at Lamesa. We moved west the first time by railroad. We went this time in two wagons. It was January, 1919 and the weather was cold.
If I had known then what I know now, I think I might have asked my parents how this wagon trip compared with another cold January 21 years ago when the Johnsons moved back to Texas from Oklahoma in wagons. At least this time we were not driving a herd of cattle, only one old milk cow. And the weather wasn't all that cold.
I guess the coldest night was the one we spent in an old rundown schoolhouse, after chasing the skunks and roadrunners out. It was somewhere in the bad lands near Gail. The next morning it was almost too cold to travel. After going a few miles we stopped and got around behind Gail Mountain out of the cold wind, and built a fire to warm by.