The Life of Me - an autobiography Part 13

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.

CHAPTER 9

BACK TO OUR LAMESA FARM IN 1919; SCHOOL AT BALLARD

So we moved back to our big farm near Lamesa and farmed there in 1919. Susie and Dode moved to Hamlin. They quit farming and Dode got a job in town.

After those two dry years on the plains, there seemed to be more coyotes than ever, at least we saw more of them. The drought and hunters had taken their toll of rabbits and I guess it was harder for the coyotes to find something to eat. They would come almost to our barnyard in broad daylight in search of food. Old Scotch managed to keep them away from our chickens, but he was no match for two or three of them at one time off out in the pasture, and he was wise enough to know it.

I have seen him chase a lone coyote a few hundred yards away from our house, but then that one would join another one and the two of them would chase Old Scotch back into our yard. Then with us to back him up, he would chase them away again. When there were more than one, they made the dog stay in his place.

Now I guess you are wondering why we didn't shoot the coyotes when they came that close. The answer is simple. Coyotes are not stupid. They can tell a boy from a man, and they can also tell whether or not the boy has a gun. They simply would not come that close to a big boy with a gun. We kids had guns but they were small 22 caliber. They were too small for coyotes. And besides, the powder in the sh.e.l.ls at that time was nothing like as powerful as the powder we use today.

We four boys had our own guns and naturally Papa had his. Albert was the youngest of us four. He had a gun by the time he was ten and he killed his share of rabbits, prairie dogs and rattlesnakes.

You see, we did a lot of target practice with our guns. Sometimes we would sit on our front porch and shoot nailheads in the front yard fence. We would also stand matches up in nail holes in the fence and shoot the heads, striking the matches without breaking the stems. Sh.e.l.ls cost us only eight cents for a box of 50.

No one could deny that we were pretty good. One man told that Earl was so good with his rifle that we boys didn't climb trees to pick peaches. He said we other kids would walk around under the trees with buckets and Earl would shoot the stems and let the peaches fall into the buckets. But Earl denied it, explaining that we tried it but Papa made us quit because it bruised the peaches when they fell.

Now Joel was a year-and-a-half older than I, and no question about it, he was a smart boy. He was almost as smart as I was. But he was so good-looking the girls wouldn't leave him alone. So he sort of drifted away from his smartness and concentrated on dressing well and looking good. He wound up selling men's clothing, and later on, insurance. But when he was a boy on the farm at Lamesa, I remember he made a windmill. I mean this was a windmill to remember. He set it up on a tower and made it pump water. And he made a real cylinder out of a piece of pipe, with two leather valves attached to two wooden spools. One spool moved up and down, the other one was stationary at the lower end of the pipe. When the wind blew the mill would pump water from a can that was buried in the ground, up through a little pipe, out through another pipe and into a small watering trough. The mill must have been about two or three feet tall, tower and all. And the water it pumped would water a herd of about 20 tiny little imaginary cows.

Joel also made a submarine out of a piece of two-by-four lumber. He drilled a hole through it from one end to the other for a rubber-band motor. It would dive to the bottom of the water trough, circle around about one time and then float back up to the surface for a rewind. He could set the sheet-iron fins in different positions and make it cut di-dos in several different ways.

I remember the mail car that came up to Lamesa daily from Big Spring. And naturally it had to go back daily or else it wouldn't be there to come up again the next day. Be that as it may, besides hauling mail it also hauled pa.s.sengers when there were any who wanted to be hauled. It was a seven-pa.s.senger car. And by placing a board across the jump seats, it could carry nine pa.s.sengers with ease, all of them inside the car.

And what are jump seats? Big cars had a lot of room between the front seat and the back seat, somewhat like your living room at home. Jump seats were two in number and they folded down into the back of the front seat. They could be used if needed, or folded down to give more room, when not needed.

Now there's nothing unusual about a mail car carrying mail between two towns, nor about carrying pa.s.sengers along with the mail. The point to notice here is the segregation of pa.s.sengers according to color and race at that date in our history. Some were not allowed to ride inside the car with those who were commonly called "whites."

When there was a Negro or a Mexican pa.s.senger, he or she had to ride on a seat on the running board and hold onto the windshield post to stay on. If there was one "white," one Negro and one Mexican, there would be one riding in the car and one on each running board. The driver really had no choice in the matter. It was not his fault. It was the law of tradition-or, the law of justice working in reverse.

We used that mail car once to bring a part for our car. We had planned a trip to Hamlin and on the day before we were to go, the car broke a tooth off the ring gear in the differential. The garage man in Lamesa phoned Big Spring for a new gear. The parts man said he had the gear in stock and he would get it on the mail car that very day. It would be in Lamesa by noon, he promised.

Well, the mail car came but the gear didn't. Nor did it come the next day. They phoned Big Spring again and learned that the man who took the order for the gear had become sick suddenly and was rushed to the hospital before he could write up the order. We finally got the gear, Papa made the repair, and we went to Hamlin three days late.

Now this was no big deal-no great big story here. But a boy remembers a thing like this when he is 13 years old and he wanted to go to Hamlin three days ago.

I remember another time when we made a trip to Hamlin running on an old tire that was swelled up and about to blow out. Rather, it was trying to swell up but Papa wouldn't let it. We couldn't find a used tire in Lamesa but we figured we could get a good deal on one in Hamlin. So Papa bought a pair of leather bridle reins. Then he let the air out of the old tire, wrapped one rein through the spokes and around the bad place on the tire and buckled it down tightly. And then when he pumped air into the tire, the leather strap held the bad place in so it couldn't swell up and blow out. The strap lasted the 125 mile trip. We found the tire we needed in Hamlin.

Among other things I remember were the impressive sights on the plains, like the great number of windmills and the great distance you could see. Almost every farm house had a windmill, and more than half the houses in town had mills. It seemed there were so many mills there wouldn't have been enough wind to drive them all.

Since we had moved from a land of mesquite trees and since there were no trees on the plains-except those planted near homes for windbreakers-this country looked mighty bare. You could see as far as your eyes could stretch. A newcomer might wonder whether it might strain his eyes to look so far, until he became accustomed to it.

The town of Lamesa was a small county seat. On the courthouse lawn were two windmills pumping water into a cypress tank high on a tower. The tallest mill was 80 feet and the tank was 60 feet. That was the city water supply. Some of the stores around the square used city water and some had their own mills out back.