The Life of Me - an autobiography Part 14

During the war the price of many things went higher and higher. Gasoline was one of them. It went from eight cents a gallon up to 29 cents a gallon. There were no drive-in service stations then, only gas pumps on the curbs out front. And of course they were all pumped by hand.

One farmer started home one Sat.u.r.day and drove up to a gas pump and asked, "Gasoline up again?" When they told him it was 29 cents a gallon, he said, "Put in one gallon. That will get me home and back." Then after thinking it over for about two seconds, he said, "No, put in a half-gallon. That will get me home and I ain't comin' back."

And food went up too. Simpson and Jones ran a mercantile store in Lamesa. One day a customer said to Mr. Simpson, "You know that quarter's worth of beans you sold me last week? Well, the sack had a hole in it and I lost two of them on the way home-and the other one had a worm in it."

We went to town about once a week, but most of our time was spent on the farm working, playing and going hunting. Joel was harrowing in the field one day, walking barefooted behind a harrow in freshly stirred soil. The harrow ran over a rattlesnake, just a small one, about 18 inches long or so.

Well the snake was running for his very life-being tumbled and tossed this way and that way. Joel saw the snake, so he ran way over to the right to avoid him. About that same time, the snake tumbled out from under the unfriendly harrow, still fighting for survival. And he didn't care which direction he went, so long as it was away from the harrow, so he too, shot out to the right.

Now, when the snake got tangled up with Joel's bare feet, there were about two or three seconds when it was hard to tell whether the boy or the snake was trying the hardest to get away from the other. They both succeeded-momentarily. But as soon as Joel could stop the horses and tie up the lines, he went back and demanded that the snake pay the supreme penalty. Not that Joel didn't appreciate the fact that the snake had not bitten him, nor did Joel have anything personal against the snake. It was just that, since the snake was a snake, he had to go.

Earl, Joel, Clarence (that's me) and Albert were generally spoken of as the four boys in our family. Ollie Mae was younger than Albert, and since she was a girl, she was sort of a different kind of link in a long chain of boys. And William Robert was much too young to be in our group. So we were the four boys.

Looking back, I am amazed that we four all reached adulthood. I don't mean from germs we got from not washing our plates-I mean because of guns and knives and rattlesnakes and wild horses and cows.

For instance, we boys were roping and riding horses one Sunday in our horse lot. We had one little mule colt about a year old that was a real pet, and at times somewhat of a pest. He was gentle and liked to be curried and petted. And naturally we enjoyed feeding and petting him. But on this particular day we were roping and riding and, in general, scaring the horses, and some of the time the horses were scaring us.

When the going got too rough for the little mule colt, he took off and jumped the fence. Now we didn't want him to run away, we wanted him back in the pen. So we thought we'd better get after him in a hurry. But our hurrying wasn't necessary. Before any of us could even get out of the pen, he was back at the gate, looking over it and wanting back in. We opened the gate and let him in and the fun started all over again.

Of course we had neighbors on the plains, some near and some not so near. One neighbor was the Nolan family. They had four or five kids, and a reputation for stealing at times. I was told one farmer missed some oats and corn from his barn one time. And about that same time the Nolans began feeding their horses oats and corn. Most of us couldn't afford such feed for our horses, and the Nolans were poorer than the most of us. They said some wolf hunters had given them the feed because they didn't want to have to carry it back home. The Nolans explained that the hunters said the corn was to keep their horses fat and the oats were to make them long-winded for chasing wolves.

One of our roads to Lamesa went by the Debnam place, the home of another neighbor. One of the Nolan boys often walked to town for the mail. It was only eight miles. Mr. Hamilton told us that one day the boy was riding with him in a wagon, and when they were near the Debnam home, the boy pointed way over toward some sand drifts and exclaimed, "Look, I see a hammer handle!" Mr. Hamilton stopped the wagon and let the boy go get it. Only the tip of the handle could be seen. It seemed quite obvious he could not have known it was a hammer handle from that distance unless he had seen it before with more of it showing. Anyway, he pulled it out of the sand and shouted, "And there's a hammer on the other end of it!" We thought maybe he had stolen the hammer from someone and had buried it there so he could pretend to find it later.

Some time later we Johnson kids were hoeing in the cotton patch with the Nolan kids and their mother. And as usual, we talked about everything, including the hammer incident. And I, as could be expected, not having mastered the art of keeping my big mouth shut, said, "Yes, and we know where you got the oats and corn."

What happened next took me by surprise. Now, it's one thing to have an older brother whip you in the cotton patch when you yell to him, "Come and make me!", as I told you earlier. But it's altogether a much more serious situation when you look up to see a mad mother coming toward you with a hoe raised high in the air and with fire in her eyes. I believe to this day, if I had been wearing shoes, they might have delayed me just enough to have allowed her to hit me. But I was barefooted and I took off like Moody's goose. The woman slammed her hoe down where I had been, but wasn't any more.

We didn't visit the Nolans much, especially for meals. In fact, I think we only ate one meal at their house, and that was before she got after me with the hoe. At the close of the meal, Mrs. Nolan went around the table pouring up the few drops and swallows of milk which were left in each and every drinking gla.s.s, explaining that there was no need to waste anything, she would use the milk to make bread next time. So, I can't remember ever going back to the Nolans for a meal after that.

Along with all our other activities, we had to get a little book learning. So we four boys went to Ballard School, three-and-a- half miles away. It was a two-room school house but we had cla.s.ses in only one room. The teacher lived in the other room with her little five-year-old girl, her two-year-old boy, and a pig. The little boy needed attention periodically, you know, like bathroom attention. Sometimes his mother took him to the bathroom and sometimes one of the older girl students took him. And if you think the bathroom was in the house, you are wrong. Now the pig needed to go to the bathroom too at times. But he didn't go anywhere-he just used the bathroom wherever he happened to be at the time. Nor did he seem to understand that one room was the schoolroom and the other room was his. He didn't seem to realize he was a pig. He thought he was a "people" like the rest of us. And when his little brother and sister were in the schoolroom, that little pig wanted to be in there too. Needless to say, when he brought his bathroom activities into the schoolroom, he disrupted the entire learning process as prescribed by the school board and the State Education Agency.

Ollie Mae was not quite seven when we boys started to school at Ballard in the fall of 1917. Mama thought it was too far for her to have to walk. So she taught Ollie Mae at home through the third grade. Our little sister was deprived of all the higher learning we others got at Ballard.

It wasn't all book learning at Ballard either. One day a couple of girls had to "be excused." In a minute or so, they came running back into the schoolroom with the news that there was a rattlesnake in their closet. (In those days they were closets, not toilets. And no one had ever heard of "rest rooms.") Anyway, we got out there as fast as possible, some through the doors and some jumped out the windows. Sure, we killed the snake all right, but it was hard for us to settle back down to school work.

Uncle Simpson was visiting us at that time and he was on his way to Lamesa in his car and he happened to be pa.s.sing by Ballard School when we got news of the snake. When he saw us leaving the building as we did, he was somewhat shocked at our seeming total disregard for discipline and order. He thought we were getting out for recess and he was used to seeing kids march out in a straight line and stand at attention until the teacher said, "Dismissed." But back at home that night we told him he had witnessed a crash operation in an emergency. He was relieved to learn that it was not always that way at our school. We didn't dare tell him how nearly this procedure approached the normal at Ballard.

On our Lamesa farm, quite a lot of our raw land had catclaw bushes on it. When clearing the land for cultivation, we would cut the bushes off just under the surface of the ground and wait for strong winds to roll them away like tumbleweeds. They would cling together because of the claws on their branches, and often long rolls of them could be seen rolling across the prairie. Then they would collect against our fences and we would pitch them over the fences and let them continue on their way.

And also, there were many whirlwinds on the plains-perhaps no more than in other places we had lived, but they were more conspicuous. I was plowing in the field one day when I saw a whirlwind coming across the field about a hundred yards away from me. At first it looked as though it had hit one end of one of those rolls of catclaws and was rolling it along on the ground. But a second look revealed that this was not the case. The roll of bushes seemed to get shorter and shorter until it was completely gone. All this took place within a short ten seconds or less.

Then I realized that there had not been any catclaw bushes at all. The whirlwind, at its bottom end, was bent at a right angle and was whirling horizontally along on the ground. The balance of it was standing upright. The horizontal part quickly became shorter and shorter until the entire whirlwind was standing upright.

Do you think I rushed to tell my family about seeing this strange thing? Goodness no! They wouldn't have believed me. Why should I make myself subject to being a bigger liar than I was thought to be already? I didn't even mention this incident until I was grown and had kids of my own half grown. I really believe to this day this little story is one of the reasons my kids think I am untruthful at times. I don't really expect anyone to believe it. I sort of wish I had never told it. But it really did happen, and I hadn't been sucking the old sow, either.

The wind blew more and stronger on the plains than it did most places. So from the time we moved there we began to hear stories about the wind. For instance there was the story about the family in the covered wagon who camped one night and tied their horses to a bush. About bedtime the wind came up and the sand started blowing. And next morning they were surprised to learn that the bush was really a tall tree which had been almost buried in the blowsand. Through the night the sand had blown away and by morning their horses were hanging 40 feet high up in the tree-both of them dead.

Before they could cut the tree down and recover their ropes and harness, the wind changed and the sand came back, burying the horses and the tree.

Then there was the story about the family who went to their storm cellar during a wind storm. The wind blew harder and harder until the cellar shook as if by an earthquake. The man opened the door to see what was happening. The cellar was rolling across the prairie and the man fell out. He ran back to get in the hole where the cellar had been, but the hole had blown away too.

The same wind blew the man's well up out of the ground and wrapped it around a telephone pole. Most of the water ran out before he could get it plugged up and put a faucet in the bottom of it. After that he didn't have to pump water, he only had to open the faucet and let it flow.

The story was told on us boys that we were not used to the strong wind and were always asking Papa if we could quit work and go in the house until the wind calmed down. They told that Papa settled the question once and for all one day. He hung a trace chain on the clothes line and told us, "As long as the bottom end of the chain is hanging down, go ahead and work. When the chain blows up in a horizontal position and waves like a flag in the wind, take off a few minutes and wait for it to settle back down a bit."

One man told us he had a rainwater barrel by his house. And since it hadn't rained for six months, the barrel was empty. One night about bedtime a southwest wind hit with all its fury and blew the barrel away. It continued to blow for three days and three nights. There were no fences, so the barrel rolled on and on. Then the wind changed and there came a blue norther from the northeast. Three days and nights later, about bedtime again, they heard something b.u.mp against their house. They took the lantern and went out to see what it was and found that their water barrel had returned home, but it had rolled so far it had worn down to about the size of a nail keg.

CHAPTER 10

SOLD FARM; MOVED TO HAMLIN

By the summer of 1919 things were looking somewhat better. Papa had ordered two new tires for the Reo. They had come in but there had been no hurry to put them on the car. They were lying there in the garage beside the old car which had been mothballed for quite a few months.

Then one Sunday afternoon we saw an airplane flying around over at Lamesa. It was a small two-seater like they flew in the war. Anyway, there we were sitting at home and watching the action from ten miles away, when Papa asked if any of us would like to drive over there and watch the airplane. OH BOY! Would we! We got busy right away putting the new tires on the car, pumping up all four tires, and getting the old car to run again after quite a spell of sitting. Then we drove over, watched the action from up close, then went back home.

While in Lamesa watching the plane, we learned that the pilot was taking up pa.s.sengers, that is, anyone who wanted to pay ten dollars to ride. And he would loop-the-loop for an extra ten dollars each loop. One man paid $40 to ride and loop three times in rapid succession. It was hard for us to imagine anyone having that kind of money to spend for so little in so short a time.

Our parents wanted to be good to us kids, but being good to us didn't include spending a lot of money on us. By their ingenuity and hard work, they had a way of stretching a few dollars beyond contentment and happiness, almost to abundance. We each had a saddle and a horse to ride, including Ollie Mae, but not William Robert. Papa braided quirts for all of us. He would take the leather uppers of worn-out shoes, cut them into long strips, and make quirts as good as the best. He cut up Ollie Mae's old high top red shoes and made the prettiest little red quirt you ever saw. And as I mentioned before, we boys had our guns.

The Higginbotham Ranch was in a rundown condition and was being sold piece by piece to farmers. Most all the ranch houses were vacant and much of the pastureland had become a dust bowl. Tumbleweeds had caught against the fences and sand had drifted into the weeds, burying both the fences and the weeds in many places. There were abandoned houses here and there on the ranch. The vacant houses had most all the windows broken out. Most of the doors were off their hinges or broken or had been taken by someone who had a need for them. We boys often took Old Scotch and our guns and our horses and went to a lot of the old houses- just exploring to see what was there.

In one of the old houses, behind a door casing, I found a 22 rifle. It worked but not well. It wouldn't shoot where I aimed it; the barrel had a curve in it. If I had found the old gun when I was younger, I might have thought I could shoot around corners with it. But I was much smarter now and I knew you couldn't shoot a curve with a gun. no matter how crooked the barrel was.

Actually the curve in the gun barrel was no problem. Papa showed me how to straighten it by placing it on a four-by-four, then placing a block of wood on it at just the right place and hitting it with a big hammer. Oh, yes, I got it fairly true, but not true enough for hunting rabbits. But then, I had my good new gun for rabbits. I learned a lot about guns by having the old gun around to play with.

One day we four boys got off out behind the barn, hiding from Papa, and made shotguns out of our rifles. We would take the bullet out of a 22 sh.e.l.l, place the sh.e.l.l in the chamber, pour some powder from a shotgun sh.e.l.l down the barrel, stuff in a little paper for wadding, then put in a few shot from the shotgun sh.e.l.l, and a little more wadding to hold the shot in place. Then we would aim and fire. But the little birdshot wouldn't even go through an old rusted out washtub. After a couple of tries, I put more powder in my gun next time. They still wouldn't go through the tub. The other boys were afraid to put a lot of powder, but I wasn't. So I put twice as much powder the next time-I really put in an overdose and a few extra shot.

Well, yes, the pellets went through the tub this time for sure, but the gun went the other way-right through the stock. The metal body of the gun split the wood stock and came almost to my shoulder. Smoke filled my eyes and a cloud of smoke rose above my head like an Indian smoke signal. It seemed that maybe it was trying to tell us something, so we listened, and we stopped muzzleloading our guns.

Once during a big, big rain the swamps caught a lot of water, and ducks became plentiful on them. A neighbor man and Frank and we four boys went duck hunting. The swamps were four or five miles apart. There was a lot of water and plenty of ducks, but there were practically no trees or bushes to sneak up behind. The ducks could see us coming and fly away. We met with failure at swamp after swamp-no ducks for us, anyhow not many.

By two o'clock in the afternoon we were circling back toward home but were still about seven miles from home, and with only three little ducks about the size of quail-well, maybe a little bigger, and we were very tired and hungry. We had been walking since early breakfast. It had been a long day and we had covered many miles.

Finally we decided to eat the ducks we had. At a vacant ranch house we found a rusty syrup bucket. There was water at the windmill. And in the barn we found some cattle salt with some black stock powder mixed in it. First we built a fire. Then we picked the ducks and boiled them in the rusty bucket, salting the stew with the black and white salt. We could hardly wait for it to cook.

We had walked at least 25 or 30 miles, and if you think walking that distance in eight hours doesn't make victuals taste good, you are plum loco, no matter what they are cooked in or seasoned with. That was, beyond a doubt the best food I had ever tasted in my life. We divided the meat as equally as possible, and it came out to about one fifth as much as each of us needed. Then we drank the soup-two swallows for you, two for him, two for me, and so on, right out of the rusty bucket. When a feather came floating along, we didn't risk wasting a single drop of soup. We would let it go into our mouth, suck the juice out of it, then spit it out.

We always had some good neighbors wherever we lived. One fall we headed maize for a good neighbor. He was to pay us $2.50 for each wagon load. But the stalks had fallen down so badly in places that heading went very slowly and we couldn't make much money at it. Papa tried to get the man, Mr. Wood, to pay us three dollars a load. Mr. Wood thought we were just trying to get more pay for less work, and he wouldn't pay it, so we quit. Then Mr. Wood finished heading the maize himself. Now, I say he was a good neighbor because, when he saw how much trouble it was to head the fallen stalks, he came and paid us fifty cents extra for each load we had gathered. My parents made a practice of praising the good in people and they taught us kids that "By their fruits ye shall know them."

Yes, our parents taught us a lot of things. But there were other things which were not taught in our family. We kids just had to learn about these things as best we could. Along about my early teens, I began to learn about new-born calves and colts and babies. Up until then, all I knew was that horses and cows found their babies out in the pasture, and doctors brought babies to women at times. And about Santa Claus, I wasn't curious about him, I was just happy about him. I well remember how disappointed I was when I learned the truth about Santa. And my newly acquired knowledge about babies brought a bit of disappointment concerning the moral character of adults.

We learned some of our lessons the hard way. I remember one Sunday afternoon we boys were riding young unbroken horses while Mama was away from home and Papa was sleeping. We knew we were not supposed to ride wild horses unless Papa was with us. He had told us never to do so. It wasn't that we deliberately disobeyed Papa. It was that we thought we had learned a lot since he last told us that, and perhaps the rule didn't apply any longer. And besides, we were riding a real gentle unbroken filly.

Anyway, Joel was on the horse and we were holding the reins when she went sideways and fell and rolled over on Joel. She mashed the wind out of him and left him unconscious. It looked bad to me. There he was, just lying there doing nothing. I knew Papa would be unhappy with our disobedience, but when there is something that needs to be done, you just do it. I was scared and I hated to have to face Papa but I didn't hesitate a second. I ran as fast as I could to get him. I was about 12 or 13. Was I scared? Brave? Loyal to Joel? Trustworthy? Devoted to duty? I don't really know. I only knew there was something that had to be done and my sense of duty was stronger than my fear of having to face Papa with my confession of disobedience, so I did what had to be done.

Lucky for all of us, Joel went down lengthways in a furrow between two ridges. The ridges held the horse up somewhat. Joel wasn't really hurt-just had the wind knocked out of him and it left him unconscious for a few minutes.

Along about this same time in my boyhood, I had something that one of my brothers wanted to buy from me. I don't remember what it was but I do remember I offered it to him for eight cents. He offered me a nickel for it. He had a nickel and four pennies. I finally offered to take the nickel if he would pitch the four pennies up and give me all that fell "heads." We didn't make the deal because Earl learned what I had offered to do and he shamed me scornfully. He said, "That's just the same as shooting dice or playing poker." I didn't know how to shoot dice nor play poker. I only knew that either one was a bad thing to do. I was deeply hurt, not because Earl had scolded or shamed me, but just to think that I would bring dishonor to my family by even thinking of gambling, after all the moral training my parents had given me. Also there was the element of ignorance. I hadn't realized that such an act would be gambling, and I was too proud to admit my ignorance.