The Life of Me - an autobiography Part 15

Anyway, I resolved to myself then and there never to do a thing like that again as long as I lived, never to gamble in any way. But, like Adam in the garden of Eden when he blamed a woman for his disobedience, I too can say, "A woman tempted me and I did gamble." I'll tell you about it later.

This last year we were on the plains, it looked like we were sure to make good. But it seemed that fate was trying our patience. I think the devil also had a hand in the turn of events. I never did like that guy. Sometimes I think he is still after me.

Anyway in late summer Papa and the neighbors looked at our cotton crop and came to the conclusion that we couldn't keep from making 100 bales. And cotton sold that year at $200 a bale. It looked as though the Lord had finally smiled on us as he did on Job. But I guess we hadn't suffered as much nor repented as well as Job had. When the Lord favored us with a good rain one Sunday afternoon, our neighbors saw the rain and said, "Man, that Johnson family sure must be living right. Look at the rain the Lord sent them."

But what the neighbors didn't know was that the devil had put a boll worm in each and every drop of that rain. None of us knew about the devil and his pesky worms until later.

What happened? We made 20 bales instead of 100, about enough to pay the taxes, interest, and the annual note. If the devil had left us alone, we would have had about $16,000 left over.

So now what? Sell out, of course-sell out and get out. We sold the farm for $25 an acre; we had paid $18. That would have been a good profit on the place except for the fact that the improvements we had made on the place cost about as much as we made on it. So we just about broke even. But the value of land had begun to rise and we didn't know it. Before we moved off the place, even before Mama signed the deed, the farm sold again for $10 an acre more than we got for it. When Mama learned about the last price it brought, she said, "I don't think I'll sign the deed."

Papa told her, "Oh yes you will."

Of course, Mama had not really meant what she said.

So, due to three years of drought and crop failures, we had gone broke. Then we moved to Hamlin-all of us without money, and Mama and Papa very weary. In a short three years we had gone from a good life on the Exum farm to poverty in a rundown house in a one-horse town.

This gives you some idea of the financial state of the family at that time. This might also give you an idea of the patience of a couple who had come through this valley of gloom and destruction-came through in fairly good moral condition, and continued on to guide their children along the right path.

OKAY! Okay, so we didn't stay on the right path all the way. At least we were told which way to go. We were not all angels, but at least we tried hard at first to hide our devilish ways.

That last fall on the plains, Papa didn't have enough money to pay us kids for gathering cotton. But he promised to pay us so- much a 100 pounds and told us to keep an account of how much he owed us, and he would pay us gradually and eventually.

We each kept an account in our little books. When we boys wanted to buy or sell among ourselves, we would show the transaction in our little ledgers. Evidently some of my brothers didn't put much stock in Papa's ability to pay later, or they got a little pay from him now and then much faster than I did, or something. Anyway, after we moved to Hamlin, I still had my book which showed a balance of quite a few dollars that Papa owed me. I hadn't gotten all my money, but I hadn't needed as much as some of the others. And I thought it my duty to spend less and thereby help Papa out over a longer period of time.

Furthermore, at that early age I was getting a thrill out of watching my balance grow. I had sold quite a few items to my brothers without cash. We had simply subtracted the amount from their books and added the figures to my balance. I actually had over $23 in my balance when one brother accused me of cheating and stealing. They could have checked up on me. I had every transaction written down. But I threw the book away rather than have my family doubt my honesty.

CHAPTER 11

ROAD WORK AT GORMAN, TEXAS

While we had been working on the farm six days a week and resting on Sunday, there were millions in this country living in cities and working on Sunday. Then we moved to town and Sunday became a way of life for us also-but not all at once. At first our working on Sunday came gradually and very reluctantly. But many town-people had no stumps to dig up, no cotton to pick, no fields to plow, no weeds to hoe, nothing to make them tired enough during the week that they needed to rest on Sunday. So, instead of sitting and resting, they played golf on Sunday. Now, Earl became a good golf caddie. But he couldn't just caddie on week days and rest on Sundays. Golfers liked him and wanted him to caddie for them on Sundays also.

Well, the love of money may be the root of all evil, but in Earl's case it was not so much the love of it as it was the necessity of it. Earl liked to eat, so he caddied on Sundays.

At the same time, Papa got involved in trucking and there were times when his services were needed on Sundays as well as during the week. He just simply couldn't get it all done during the week. It became a real emergency when one of his customers had to have his goods hauled on Sunday so that he could begin his work on Monday morning.

We all know that it is perfectly all right to help the scriptural ox out of the ditch on Sunday. And when a trucker helps the ox out on Sunday, and receives good pay for doing it, he soon gets in the habit of wanting to help the ox out every Sunday. It even comes to the point where a man might push the ox into the ditch on Sat.u.r.day in order to get to help him out on Sunday, for pay of course.

If I wanted to try to justify our working on Sundays, I might mention that it was hard to make ends meet even at that. We lived three years in Hamlin before we gave up the old kerosene lamps and moved up to electric lights. Even then it took some planning. The meter deposit was three dollars and we spent five dollars for a bunch of used insulated wire and light fixtures. It wasn't easy to get eight dollars ahead in just three short years, but we did it. We still didn't have screens on our windows, nor did we have an icebox. I took some sc.r.a.p lumber and built an icebox just large enough to hold a dime's worth of ice, a pound of b.u.t.ter, and a quart of milk. The ice would last two days. Most of the milk stayed in the milk cooler on the back porch, with damp clothes spread over the containers. It would have cost too much to refrigerate all the milk.

When I was 13 I made the interesting discovery that a flashlight consisted of nothing more than two cells, a bulb, a container for the cells, and some kind of switch. I couldn't afford to buy a flashlight so I made me one. I used a radiator hose to put the cells in, a copper wire for a bulb holder, and I pushed the bulb down against the center post of the cell to switch the light on. I was beginning to learn a little about electricity. This was the beginning of my knowledge of how to wire our house for electric lights. Yes, I did the wiring; we couldn't afford to hire it done.

Shortly after we moved to Hamlin there was another new adventure in our lives. It involved a little detour to Gorman, Texas, to do some road work. You remember the truck that Papa let Frank use to go everywhere and haul whatever people would pay him to haul. Well, by the time we landed in Hamlin, Frank was getting tired of hauling everything for everybody. So Papa inherited one good used truck from one tired-of-trucking boy named Frank. Papa also had a friend named Marvin Hood who was building a paved road near Gorman. I think it was generally understood that Marvin could use some of us if we would come on down to his camp. We needed to work-for pay, that is-so we took the truck and an old Dodge car and went to see Marvin.

Sure enough, Marvin could use us four boys, and Papa could haul supplies in his truck. We lived in a canvas tent in a pasture about a half-mile from the rock quarry from which they were getting rock for the road. Albert became waterboy; Earl was powder monkey, in charge of all blasting. Joel operated a road grader which was pulled by horses. I fired a steam boiler and made steam for a steam drill to drill holes into the earth. And into these holes Earl would put his dynamite and blasting powder, which, when set off by a fuse and blasting cap, excavated the rocks which were crushed and then hauled and placed on the road which Joel had smoothed so perfectly with his little grader. We were doing so many things for Marvin, I wondered how he managed before we got there.

Marvin paid his hands three dollars a day and they paid him one dollar a day to eat at his cook shack. We didn't eat there; we could eat much cheaper at our tent. There were two men cooking for the crew, but they got to drinking so much and cooking so badly that Marvin was losing some of his workers. He had a problem. So Marvin came to Mama and asked her to cook for him. He hired a farm woman to help Mama and together they cooked for the men. And Marvin let our family eat at the cook shack at half price.

As usual Mama wouldn't throw out any food if it could be used in any way. She took the left-over biscuits and made coldbread pudding out of them. At first the men were reluctant to sample the dish. But after getting a taste of it, most of them asked for more-and they called it "make-'em-eat-it."

Sometimes Earl would find a can of powder that had been wet or had sweated in the can and was lumpy. He was told to pile those cans out behind the mule barn and not try to use the lumpy powder. Well now, that pile of 12 or 15 cans of blasting powder, which no one wanted, seemed to me to be an excellent source of fun, as well as research material. So, unbeknowing to all others, I toted a can of the stuff home to our tent one day. Then I decided that Papa might frown on the idea of my having 50 pounds (or maybe it was 25 pounds) of powder about our tent, especially if he found it hidden under his bed, so I thought I had better do a lot of experimenting in as short a time as possible, before anyone else came home. I felt that any one of my brothers would scold me for taking a can of powder home to play with. And I was sure he would not be able nor willing to keep such news to himself. I'd better work fast and let it remain my own little secret. After all, muzzleloading a rifle was child's play as compared to playing with 50 pounds of blasting powder. So I'd better try to get by with this powder as I had gotten away with other secret adventures-all alone. How I longed to share some of my good times with my brothers, but I didn't dare try. Such secrets can only be kept by one person. A partner would be sure to spoil things.

Sometimes a kid's reasoning without certain knowledge can lead to trouble. I reasoned that, since a big stick of wood burns slower and longer than a small stick, a large rick of powder would burn more slowly and thereby afford more pleasure and excitement. I even envisioned me walking along beside the burning powder as it wiggled and twisted here and there, as a snake would crawl across the pasture. I remembered the matches I had stood up in the sand at Grandma's, and how the flame had leaped from match to match until it reached the last one. And that's what I wanted to do with a string of powder-light it at one end and watch the flame slowly travel to the other end. I had plenty of powder so I piled it up into a rick about two inches high and as long as from here to yonder.

And that was when I learned, by experience, that big powder burns faster than little powder. When I lighted one end of the powder- snake, it blasted fire and smoke right up into my face. I fell back quickly for protection. Then I reopened my eyes just in time to see my fireball fizzle out at the far end of the rick of powder. I hardly saw any of what happened-it was all gone in two or three seconds. I was glad no one else had seen it. Needless to say, that ended my monkeying around with powder, trying to play powder monkey.

There was no one at the quarry who really knew how to blast efficiently. But then one day a man came out and showed Earl how to use electric blasting caps instead of the fuses he had been using. By drilling shallow holes, placing less explosives in each hole, and setting them off all at once, electrically, the blasting was much more efficient and a lot safer. Before that time, the custom was to set off a small blast in the bottom of a deep hole for the purpose of opening up a "pocket" large enough to hold as many as eight cans of powder and 80 sticks of dynamite. That didn't result in a lot of usable rock for the road we were building. Instead, it mostly made a big hole in the ground and sent rocks high into the air.

Earl did most of his blasting late in the afternoons after work hours when the workers were out of the quarry. When he was ready to set off a blast, he yelled, "FIRE IN THE HOLE," and everybody took cover, and the most reliable cover was a lot of distance. I saw a few rocks as large as your fist fall a half-mile away. One time a rock about the size of a basketball went so high and came down so fast that it came down through the roof of the cook shack, came on down through the ceiling, landed in a stack of metal dinner plates and took them down through the table and on down through the floor. Another time, one man got under a wagon for protection. The heavy wagon bed protected him from the falling rocks, but one huge rock rolled against a wheel and scooted the wagon sideways a couple of feet.

They told us that before we went to work there, one blast failed to go off for some reason. They waited ever so long and it still didn't go off. Then finally they cautiously ventured out from hiding and it blew up with Marvin standing almost on top of it. It must have been a small charge or it might have killed him. He said, however, it was big enough. He said he looked down on trees during his flight. I don't know, really. Of course it could be true, it happened in Texas you know.

One day a man signed on to work for Marvin, worked a couple of days, and disappeared without asking for his pay. We had not known it at the time-even the bookkeeper thought nothing of it, but when a couple of men came out a week later and arrested one of the mule-skinners, (lingo meaning mule driver) we put two and two together and came up with the answer. The man who had worked two days was an undercover agent for the F. B. I.

When arrested for manslaughter, the mule driver told the agents he had been expecting them. He had planned to work until payday and move on. They got him just before payday. He had been going to church regularly and had preached a few times in a little country church near by.

Well, we Johnsons were making money and things were looking good. But we might have suspected something would go wrong. I guess we should have moved on as the arrested man had been doing for months. But we, like he, stayed too long. Anytime our present and future looked that rosy, we might have known that financial disaster was lurking near by. The old devil was after me again. To calm our financial tempest, my family might have to throw me overboard, as the sailors did Jonah.

This time the bank went broke-the bank in which the road- building company had its money, the money which was paid to Marvin Hood month by month. He couldn't pay us. He couldn't even pay himself. Papa often paid cash out of his own pocket for supplies for Marvin. Then Marvin would repay him on payday. The bank closure caught Papa without any cash. And Marvin couldn't get any money to repay Papa. He couldn't even get a little money to help us get back to Hamlin.

We had the truck and the Dodge car. I don't know how we made it. I think we drove part way on kerosene; we could buy it for only four or five cents a gallon. And of course we arrived home hungry. Duck soup from a rusty bucket would have tasted good. After years of negotiating, Papa finally got about half the money Marvin owed him, and that included two of the wagons used for hauling the crushed rock at Gorman.

While there at Gorman, Old Scotch took sick with what was commonly known as sore mouth, and after many days of severe suffering, he finally died.

If Old Scotch had died suddenly before his period of suffering, it would have been almost like losing one of the family. He was one of the family and had been in the family longer than some of us could remember. We wouldn't have sold him for any amount of money. But, though we regarded him highly, since we had found no means of alleviating his suffering, and since he had suffered for so long, his death didn't bother us quite so much. We hated to see him go but were glad his pain had ended.

I don't really know what was done for Old Scotch during his sickness. That fell in Papa's line of duty. I would guess that he asked the advice of a druggist or an M.D., or maybe other owners of dogs. Veterinarians were practically nonexistent. If there had been one around he would have been called an animal doctor. I seriously doubt that we did much of anything for the dog which could in any way be cla.s.sed as veterinary medicine, as we know it today.

All my memories of Old Scotch are pleasant ones except for those last miserable days of his life. He seemed to always be in the right place at the right time. And I don't recall that he ever once did anything wrong. There is no way of knowing how many times, if ever, he saved one of us from the poisonous bite of a rattlesnake.

On our Lamesa farm rattlesnakes were everywhere, not every day, but at one time or another. They were in pastures, in cow trails, beside cow trails, in the garden in shades of potato vines, in chicken houses, in feed barns, in the corn patch and in the watermelon patch. Wherever they were, there was a 50-50 chance Old Scotch had been there ahead of us. And when there was a snake, he often found it first.

When there was something he wanted us to know about, he barked. And the tone of his bark told us whether the something was dangerous or only a horned toad to be played with for a moment and then ignored. A cow in the yard brought a bark in a tone which seemed to say, "Come and help me, or at least come and close the gate after I drive her out." Chickens in the yard brought no bark at all. He could handle chickens alone. A skunk or a badger brought a bark from Old Scotch which told us he would like to have some of us around if only to keep him company and help him make decisions, and maybe take note of the swell job he was doing. After driving it away, he would always accept a congratulatory pat on his head, if we had one to offer. And he was most certain we would have.

Old Scotch knew things instinctively. Of course, we all know that dogs know a lot of dog things by instinct. But Old Scotch knew human things which he had never been taught. One day Papa was building fence on our Lamesa farm. We boys were in school, so Old Scotch was with Papa, also building fence and looking after Papa. As the morning warmed up, Papa pulled off his blue denim jumper and laid it down. He probably laid it on the ground, there not being many bushes in Dawson County large enough to hang a jumper up on. Anyway, when he finished doing what he was doing at that place, he started walking along the fence to his next place of work.

Then he noticed an enthusiastic whine from the dog, which was really a half-whine-half-yelp expression, but anyhow, it got Papa's attention. He looked back. The dog was sitting there pleading with Papa. He first looked at the jumper and whined, then at Papa and yelped, and wagged his tail in a manner that could mean only one thing, "You are forgetting your jumper and I don't want to stay here and watch after it. I want to go with you."

Papa went back and let him know he got the message, but that he hadn't meant to take the jumper. Then he spoke to the dog in words which he could understand real well because he had heard them often through the years, "It's all right. Leave it alone. You can go."

And with a happy little yelp which meant, "Thank you," and with an enthusiastic wag of his tail, he quickly bounced up beside his master seeking a pat of approval before going on his way out front to clear Papa's path of any and all vermin, and to warn him of any danger that might lurk in his path.

Old Scotch may not have been the fightingest dog in the world, but there is no doubt he was the whippingest. So far as I know, he whipped every dog that ever challenged him, and quite a few who came in peace with no thought of conquest. Once I saw two dogs jump him at the same time. Either one of the dogs was as large as Old Scotch, but he whipped them both and sent them scampering away. He didn't suffer a scratch. I'll admit he had a slight edge that time; he was fighting on his home ground and the cheering section was on his side.

Once a man came to see Papa about something and he allowed his dog to come along. His dog was about as large as our dog. And while the men were talking business, the two dogs went about their business of getting acquainted with each other. It seemed they were getting to be friends until the fight started. The speed with which Old Scotch struck the other dog took him by complete surprise, and he went backward and sideways, almost losing his balance.

Then almost as quickly as the fight had started, Papa brought it to a halt with the command, "Scotch, stop that!" Whether the command was "sic 'em" or "stop that," Old Scotch usually responded immediately. In this particular case, a "sic 'em" started the fight and the "stop that" ended it.