The Life of Me - an autobiography Part 27

I told him it was fairly easy. First I tried leading him into the trailer just as I would any horse. He was almost through the loading chute when he decided to retreat. In fact, he retreated all the way back down the chute and out into the corral. Then I said to him, "Okay old boy, since you like to back so well, just go ahead and back."

I backed him across the lot until his tail hit the fence on the other side of the lot. By this time he seemed to be getting the "hang" of it and didn't seem to mind backing up. So I backed him along the fence all the way around to the loading chute, then up through the chute and into the trailer, and closed the tailgate. The entire operation didn't take more than a couple of minutes, and it saved Old Pony Boy a long, hard journey on foot. I really believe he enjoyed the ride, though he never mentioned it to me.

It seems like I mentioned before, that I had never lost a penny on a bad debt. However, there might have been a time or two when I almost did, but it was when I was farming, and not while I was in business.

Yes, this happened at Royston. Hobb Reed and Hester Hammitt each owed me two dollars. Hobb had promised to pay me his two dollars as soon as he got out his first bale of cotton. Well, he got out his first bale, then his second bale, and still hadn't made a move toward paying me. So one day, in the store, back by the post office, I asked him about it. He said, "Johnson, I'm not going to pay you until Hester pays you."

I asked him, "What if I told Bill Carriker I wasn't going to pay my grocery bill until everyone else paid him?" Then I added, "And besides, you promised to pay me when you got out your first bale of cotton, and you didn't."

Hobb asked, "Johnson, are you calling me a liar?"

I said, "Call it whatever you like, you promised to pay me and you didn't."

Then he told me, "Johnson, come outside here, I'll just whip you."

And I said, "Okay, but remember, after you whip me, you still owe me two dollars."

Then suddenly, he became calm again as he said, "Come over here to the cash register, I'll just pay you."

Thank goodness we didn't go outside while he was in a bad mood.

He was a lot bigger than I was and he might have half killed me.

While we lived at Royston, Papa had an old Chevrolet car that he was through with and he wanted to give it to Dennis. It was an old, old car, just had a seat and a pick-up bed, no cab at all, tires not worth 50 cents each, all leaking, radiator leaking, using oil, dripping oil, and no license plates. And besides all that, Dennis didn't have a driver's license. I didn't want Dennis to own the old car. But I saw later that I had made a mistake, and told the family so.

Looking back, I can see why I should have allowed Dennis to own the old car. But at the time, I reasoned: Dennis couldn't repair a flat, I would have to do it. With no license, he could only drive it out in the pasture. Thorns would puncture his tires. We had no money to waste on the old car. We had a car and two pick-ups, and Dennis had not shown any inclination toward repairing nor maintaining the ones we had. Besides, one neighbor boy had an old car like that, and one day he was driving down the road and the motor fell out. No kidding, the front end of the motor dropped down and stuck in the ground.

But who knows, this old car might have been just the thing to spark Dennis' enthusiasm and spur him on, all the way up to greasy hands and skinned knuckles. And it might have built up his confidence in himself. Anyway, I regret very much that I didn't allow him to own the old car and play with it. Some of my kinfolks thought I was sort of, if not altogether, cruel to the boy. They convinced me but it was too late. The damage had been done, never to be undone.

Years later, after I had made a lot of changes in my way of thinking, and had repented for many of my shortcomings, there came a time when a daughter of one of those same kinfolks wanted to own a saddle horse in the city where they lived. And there was a time when it looked as though the girl was fighting a losing battle with her mother, who was not altogether in favor of her owning the horse in town. The mother was finally getting a look at a situation similar to the one I had years ago, but from a different viewpoint-viewing her own pocketbook instead of mine. I sent word to the mother not to be cruel to her daughter as I had been to Dennis. I told her, "By all means, let the girl have the horse, regardless of the cost." The girl got the horse all right, but he cost a fortune in trouble, money and inconvenience.

During those last years we lived at Royston, Calvin Carriker built a new house at his River Farm and wanted to put a butane log in the fireplace. But he was unable to find an artificial log that would burn butane, they all burned natural gas. He searched everywhere, and finally brought home a gas log and asked me to change it over to burn butane. I worked on it in my spare time for several days, as well as some time that was not spare. I even went to junk yards and got parts that I had to drill and shape and alter until they would do what I wanted them to do.

After a good many days, I had it burning pretty good. Calvin stopped by the shop one day and left his wife, Nell, sitting in the car. Then, when he saw how well the log was burning, he called her to come and see it. She came in, looked at it and asked, "Calvin, is that the log you bought at Rotan?"

He told her it was, and she said, "Calvin, didn't you tell Clarence that the factory man said they hadn't been able to make a log that would burn butane successfully?"

Calvin said, "No, if I had told him that, he might not have fixed it. He didn't know it couldn't be done."

I remember one day one of Calvin's bulls got through the fence and into the pasture west of his barn. He saddled a horse and went into the neighbor's pasture after him. Well, he came back telling Max and me about a rattlesnake he had seen, but couldn't find anything to kill it with. He wanted the three of us to go hunt the snake and kill it. Max took a 22 rifle and Calvin and I each took a hoe.

It was early spring and the snakes had begun to come out of their dens in the heat of the day. The gra.s.s was short but we took no chances. We walked side by side, very slowly, and watched closely. We soon found our first snake, lying at the mouth of a hole, which was about like a hole a badger might have dug. We stopped and stood motionless, whispering plans of what we should do-or at least try to do. We decided that Max was to shoot the snake, and in case he missed, Calvin and I would cut him to pieces with our hoes. Our idea was to hurry and try to keep him from escaping into the hole. Well, we got all set, Max slowly raised his gun, aimed, and fired.

We still don't know whether or not Max hit the snake. We do know, however, that the snake went into the hole, along with four or five or six others. Who knows how many? It all happened so fast. We just stood there-frozen in our tracks, trembling, scared and surprised. We had not seen any except the one snake lying near the opening of the den. We quickly looked down around our feet to see whether there might be others that we had not seen. If there happened to be one behind me that wanted to get into that hole, I sure wanted to jump aside and let him go by.

It was some time before we regained our composure. We were well aware that we must be more cautious and watch more closely than we had been. Then we walked forward, more slowly, closer together, almost stumbling over each other. We walked about 100 yards, moved over a way and took another swath coming back the same 100 yards-and killed 27 rattlesnakes. There were others, to be sure, but we had had enough for one day. And somehow, hunting rattlers was not as alluring as it had been an hour before. We planned to go back some day, but we just never did get around to it.

All my life I have seen cattle round-ups, but people always seem to do things the hard way. And that wasn't for me. A cattle round-up at our Royston farm was unlike any other round-up in the world, so far as I know. We had saddle horses but we hardly needed them. Our cows were in the habit of coming into the feed- lot to eat bundled feed. By simply closing the gate behind them, the round-up was ended. The work we had to do next would take a little more time than the rounding up did. But it was easier and faster than any system I have ever seen.

At least once each year, we had to brand all the new calves, those we had bought as well as those we had raised. We had to reduce the little bull calves to steers, vaccinate all young cattle against blackleg, both young and old had to be vaccinated against some other disease-I have forgotten what it was called, and I'll bet a quarter we farmers didn't call it by the same name that veterinarians called it. And finally, all calves that had not been dehorned had to have their horns cut off. I remember one time we had 25 cows, a large bull, and 55 calves to work. That meant 135 vaccine shots, 30 to be branded, about 20 to be dehorned, and maybe 15 little bull calves to be worked on.

Anita was big enough to keep a fire going and to keep branding irons hot and to hand them through the fence to me. Dennis was big enough to help drive the cattle into the stanchion, hand the vaccinating needles to me, bring in more cattle from the feed lot, and turn out the ones we were through with. I was big enough to catch the cattle in the stanchion, vaccinate in the shoulder with one needle, in the hip with another, brand a Lazy-J on the left hip, cut off their horns, and work the little bull calves.

We never fooled around with a chute because we found that cattle were reluctant to enter a chute. That would be too slow and too much work. Instead, we used a stanchion that was installed permanently between two small pens. It opened large enough for the largest bull to go through and it closed small enough to hold the smallest calf. And it wasn't all that expensive. It probably cost me $1 for second-hand lumber and 50 cents for a rope to pull the top ends of the bars together.

It was easy to get the cows to go through the stanchion since it formed a gate between the two pens. Our milk cows pa.s.sed through it every day. Most any cow or calf would be glad to go from one pen to another, especially if there were some cows in the other pen.

The system was fast, and by far the easiest I have ever worked with. We three did the 80 cattle one morning but finished a little late for dinner. We sat down to a one-o'clock meal instead of a twelve-o'clock meal.

I mentioned before that we sometimes cut feed for the public. At first, Ima went along to drive the car. But later on, I build an iron "basket" at the back b.u.mper of the car to carry the front wheels of the tractor. Then I could drive the car and trail the tractor and the binder, and Ima could stay home. One patch of feed was 50 miles away in Kent County. Where the road was so sandy that the car couldn't pull the tractor and binder, I would crank the tractor motor and let the tractor push, with no driver on it. And we learned that low air pressure in the auto tires would allow it to go most anywhere in sand. We parked that Buick on top of nearly every sand hill in Carriker's big sand field.

When the binder needed a repair job underneath, we threw a chain over the top of the binder and hooked one end to the frame and the other end to the tractor. Just a little pull with the tractor would roll the binder over for easy access to the underside.

By the end of World War II, our old coal oil cookstove was pretty well rusted out and was looking like a reject from a junk heap. Ima was looking forward to something better. In fact, she knew exactly what that something was, a new butane range. She and I went to Stamford one day to inquire as to whether we would be able to get a butane tank and how much it might cost. We got this information from the appliance dealer. He could sell us the butane and tank, but we might have to wait a year for a permit to buy a stove. He told us we might go to the ration board and find out. Now, I knew we couldn't get a permit from the Stamford board, because that was in Jones County and we lived in Fisher County.

The ration board was only a short distance away, so I went over to ask a question or two. But the woman in charge ignored my questions and, very undiplomatically, ordered me to, "Sit over at that table and fill out this form."

I filled out the form and presented it to the not-so-friendly woman. She looked it over, mumbled a few words, which I couldn't understand, placed another paper before me and said, "Sign here."

I still wondered how long I might have to wait for the lady to answer a simple question or two but by this time I was afraid to ask. I sure didn't want to make her mad, she might never answer my questions. So, when she told me to sign, I lost no time in signing the paper. I didn't know what I was signing and I didn't much care. I only hoped that she would answer my questions when I got through signing all the forms she kept handing me.

When I finally got through signing all the papers and gave them back to her, she still wouldn't talk to me, but she gave me a certificate which would allow an appliance dealer to sell me a butane cook stove without either of us being subject to confinement in a Federal Penal Inst.i.tution.

I went back and showed the certificate to the appliance dealer, and he was really surprised as he asked, "How did you get that? I have customers who have been waiting a year for one and are still waiting. Some of them would be glad to pay you $100 for it."

I told him I just filled out some papers, and the nice lady gave it to me.

There was no need to lie in filling out the forms. I told the truth all the way. One question I had to answer was, "Where do you live?"

My answer was, "On a farm near Hamlin."

If it had asked, "In which county do you live?" I would still be waiting for the certificate. The lady and Hamlin were both in Jones County. I lived in Fisher County.

CHAPTER 19

TOUR PIKE'S PEAK, MOVED TO ARKANSAS, WENT TO COLLEGE

As you know, Frank was the oldest in our family, and when I was growing up, he was away from home a lot. I had long since become accustomed to his being away from home. He even went to college awhile, I believe it was Denton State. But he didn't go very long. I didn't know whether he quit because of a lack of finances or because of a lack of interest and drive. I was the only other one of us who ever left home to work or run around- except Joel. He went as far as Stamford and worked there for years in a drygoods store. And later, of course, he had his portable skating rink and he took it from here to there. Then he settled down with it in Brownwood.

My working away from home never amounted to much. However, I wouldn't take a pretty penny for the educational benefits I gained from my traveling around. It increased my desire for more learning, and it gave me confidence in my ability to do more things. It made me more mobile and took away my fear of strange places.

In fact, I thought so much of my education gained through travel that I wanted us to travel a lot with our children. But we were poor and couldn't travel first cla.s.s, which would have pleased some members of my family. As for me, I would have been glad to travel second cla.s.s or third cla.s.s rather than not travel at all. As is evident, I have roughed it much of my life. Later, when I wanted to travel with our kids, I would have gotten a lot of pleasure from roughing it again, going places and seeing things, camping out, and visiting the wild. Some of our traveling proved to be a big failure because some of the family didn't especially care to put up with some of the roughing they had to go through with at times.

For instance, we drove up Pike's Peak once in our Dodge Command car. There was nothing wrong with the car. It was built capable of traveling across the Sahara Desert trouble-free. It was Army surplus, four-wheel drive and as solid as they come. Many cars get too hot climbing the Peak, but this one didn't, although it was in the heat of summer. It had an army canvas top and curtains to match. But since it was beautiful weather, we had the curtains packed away under the back seat. And although it was summertime at the foot of the mountain, it was not summer on top.

The weather on Pike's Peak can change from sunshine to snow and from snow to sleet quicker than perhaps anywhere else in these United States. And the sky can pour out the abundance of her elements faster than is sometimes enjoyable to those upon whom she so recently spread her sunshine. And that is just what she did to us that day. Her elements were in the form of rain, snow, and large sleet. The sleet was sort of a cross between pure white sleet and large, soft hail.

Now, the road up Pike's Peak is, for the most part, void of suitable parking places, even for emergencies. And all this sleet and ice falling suddenly out of the sky did create an emergency. However, before we arrived at an emergency parking place, Ima was very unhappily sitting in a puddle of snow and sleet and ice that had fallen into the front seat and had worked its way down to the back side of her lap.

When we found a little place to pull over and stop, we put up the curtains. But Ima's unhappiness remained with her much longer than I had hoped it would. The truth is, she carried a large portion of it, as well as a little bit of dampness, all the way back down the mountain to Colorado Springs. And there, we found the same type of slush curb to curb four inches deep.