The Life of Me - an autobiography Part 10

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 when Old 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 both together 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 pa.s.s 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 d.a.m.ned 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 pa.s.sed 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 subst.i.tute 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-pa.s.senger 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 b.u.mper 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.

CHAPTER 7

DRY YEARS ON THE TEXAS PLAINS