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 shells 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. Shells 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 passengers when there were any who wanted to be hauled. It was a seven-passenger car. And by placing a board across the jump seats, it could carry nine passengers 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 passengers along with the mail. The point to notice here is the segregation of passengers 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 passenger, 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.
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 Saturday 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 glass, 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 classes 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 passing 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 bump 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.
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 passengers, 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 shell, place the shell in the chamber, pour some powder from a shotgun shell down the barrel, stuff in a little paper for wadding, then put in a few shot from the shotgun shell, 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.
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.
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 Saturday 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 scrap lumber and built an icebox just large enough to hold a dime's worth of ice, a pound of butter, 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 classed 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.
As we all know, dogs have a keen sense of hearing. They can hear sounds that we humans can't hear. And as we also know, 12-year- old boys like to see dogs fight. Show me one who doesn't and I'll help you try to find out what is wrong with the boy. I was 12 at that time.
Old Scotch was by far the easiest dog I ever saw to sic onto anything he wanted to get onto. And he usually wanted to get onto any dog that happened to be close when one of us boys said, "Sic 'em." I think maybe this was because the dog lived such a lonely life. Of course, he had us humans to keep him company, but there were no other dogs about the place to accept any of the commands to sic 'em. So he had to be alert at all times and do all the dirty work himself. He was so accustomed to the word sic 'em, and he had become so easy on trigger, he was off and away before the full word was spoken. He didn't wait to hear the "'em" part of the word, he didn't even need the "c" part, but only the "si" sound, and he only needed to hear that part in a whisper.
Now, that was all I said that day—just an almost noiseless "si"—a mere hiss of wind through my upper front teeth. And I remember, Old Scotch looked up at me as if to ask, "Did I hear what I hope I heard?"
I looked at him and winked one eye and barely nodded my head toward the other dog and smiled and very quietly—almost silently- -repeated, "Si-," and in a split second he was all over the other dog like a crow on a Junebug.
After Papa had stopped the fight, Old Scotch looked at me with a question-mark expression on his face. I smiled back at him just to let him know he had not misunderstood me, and he came over to me for a pat of approval, which I gave freely.
No one had heard the "si-" except the dog and me. It would be our little secret. I certainly wouldn't tell, and he couldn't tell. I gave him a few friendly pats; he licked my hand and wagged his tail—the only way he knew how to say, "Thank you, it was fun while it lasted." Then he went back to investigating and making friends with the other dog.
In the meantime, after we got back home to Hamlin, Papa gradually got into the trucking business. The truck replaced the horse in our lives and after a few years we sold our horses. Then Papa began to wonder if a truck would pull a trailer. He had a good wagon he didn't need, so he thought to himself, "Why not make a trailer out of a wagon?" He tried it and it worked. He cut the tongue off short, hooked it behind his truck and hauled cottonseed to the oil mill at Hamlin from gins in Hamlin and from gins in small towns near Hamlin.
While Papa was experimenting with new innovations, I was doing some experimenting on my own in my spare time. Before we got electricity in our home, I had learned that the telephone company was in the habit of throwing away dozens of old batteries from time to time. Most of them were dead, others were sick and dying, but a few of them still had a little life in them. By connecting enough live ones together, I had enough current to light flashlight bulbs.
I had brought back hundreds of feet of small insulated wire from electric blasting caps at Gorman. I strung the wire all through our house and had little night lights in all our rooms even before we got city current. Although the lights were small, they gave enough light to prevent most of the skinned shins which were usually caused by vicious chairs that jumped out and tackled a fellow as he made his way from his bed to the back door on his nightly journeys to the outhouse.
I also had an Erector Set which had a little motor that ran off the old batteries. It came in handy in a lot of my experiments. We heated a part of our house with a wood-burning heater. I didn't like to get up and build a fire on a cold morning. So I got to thinking, "Why not make my old alarm clock light my fire?" One night I rigged the thing up before I went to bed. The next morning when the alarm went off, it started the motor that struck the match that lighted the kerosene that lighted the kindling that lighted the wood that heated the room.
Well, did it work? Sure it worked, cross my heart. But it wasn't practical. I didn't expect it to be. It was more trouble to rig all that stuff up the night before, than it was to build a fire next morning and jump back into bed while the room warmed up. I just wanted to see if I could do it, and I could.
Once I hooked a bunch of those old dry cells to an auto horn and it really sounded loud in the house. Then one night while Joel was away from home, I made a pressure switch and put it under his mattress so that when he got into bed it would honk the horn under his bed. He was out with his girl and I knew he'd come in after we were all in bed, and more than likely all asleep. So I began to have second thoughts about my little scheme. Papa and Mama would be sure to frown on the idea of being waked up in the middle of the night by what would seem to be an automobile coming through our bedroom honking its horn. And I knew they would frown on me for doing it. So I got cold feet and disconnected the thing before Joel got home.
During the 1930's many farm families had battery lights in their homes. They had "windchargers" to keep their batteries charged. The windcharger was a wind-driven generator. The more the wind blew the more it would keep their batteries charged. In 1921, when I was fifteen years old, I made the first wind-driven electric plant I ever saw or had ever heard of. I took a magneto off an old car and changed the wiring in the inside so it would put out an alternating current instead of a jump spark. It wouldn't charge a battery but it would light a flashlight bulb when the wind blew. I mounted the plant on top of our house above my room. I left the light switched on all the time. It burned day and night, if the wind blew. And the brightness of the light was a good indication of how fast the wind was blowing.
After we got city current I did further experimenting and learned more about electricity. For instance, I liked to get a little shock now and then from the city current. And I learned that I could touch the two wires just a wee bit with the tips of my thumbs and fingers and enjoy a little electrical tingle. One day I tied two metal handles onto the ends of two wires so I could get a better hold and enjoy even more shock. I already knew that a tighter grip on the handles would give me a stronger shock. But what I didn't know was that when the shock reached a certain degree of intensity, it would cause my hands to grip even harder, and I found myself unable to open my hands to free myself. Lucky for me, I had tied the wires onto the light fixture hanging in the center of the room. I couldn't open my hands, but I dropped to the floor and pulled the wires loose from the fixtures.
One day Albert found an old sewing machine motor in a trash pile in an alley. I was glad when he decided to sell it to me. That was another one of my dreams come true. I was ready to do more research and playing. The motor did a lot of things for me, but the thing that was worth the most to the family was the fly- chaser I made out of it.
In those days we Johnsons still didn't have screens on our windows and doors. We just barely had windows and doors. Anyway, I took the electric motor and mounted it on a wooden box with its shaft sticking up. Then I fastened a stick to the motor shaft and a fringed cloth to the stick so that the fringe would float three inches above the food on the dining table. When I placed this monster in the middle of Mama's table, she was not at all pleased.
You see, Mama remembered some of my earlier gadgets, one of which had blown up all over her kitchen stove, cabinet, walls and floor. Some of it even hit the ceiling. Nevertheless, by the time Mama became brave enough to come near her dining table on this particular day—the day of the fly-chaser—I had the motor in the middle of the dining table, sending the fringed cloth round and round, shooing all the flies away. It proved to be a lifesaver. No fly ever lighted within its magic circle. Mama could place all the food on the table and feel sure that no fly would ever light on any of it.
After Mama realized the value of this latest invention, she got back on speaking terms with me. And I sort of guessed she might be happy in the thought that her little ugly duckling might just make his mark in the world after all .
Oh yes, I mentioned the blow-up in Mama's kitchen. That was quite a different story. I had gotten this toy steam engine for Christmas. To make it run I had to fill the boiler with water, light the alcohol burner under it, and then wait ten minutes for the steam to make the wheels start turning. Then about two minutes later the boiler was dry of water and the whole operation had to be done over. That amounted to too much waiting and not enough wheel turning to suit me.
I reasoned that a larger boiler wouldn't have to be filled so often, and there would be more action each time I heated it. So I put a valve stem from an inner tube in the lid of a gallon syrup bucket. And I ran a small rubber hose from the valve stem to a little pipe on the boiler of the toy steam engine. Next I filled the bucket with water and placed it on Mama's wood cookstove and waited—and waited and waited.
And that's when it happened. It blew up. The lid hit the ceiling, and water hit the four walls and everything in the kitchen. I was glad Mama wasn't in the kitchen. The noise alone was enough to scare her half out of her mind, and it brought her running in a hurry. And now let us have a moment of silence while you imagine what Mama said to me. Of course I was sorry it happened. The kitchen might never be the same again. And I was sorry to have scared her. But mostly I was afraid she wouldn't let me do experiments in her kitchen again.
After the steam cleared out of the kitchen, Mama allowed me to return to the scene just long enough to remove the "thing" to my own room. Then I found that the little rubber tube was stopped up. Steam couldn't get through it.
Oh well, air seemed to be much safer and faster anyhow. So I borrowed Papa's tire pump and pumped air into the little toy boiler. That worked just fine. One stroke of the pump and the wheels started turning. Only trouble was, I had borrowed the tire pump without asking, and the next time Papa needed it, it was out of place and he couldn't find it. Again I was in the doghouse.
Electricity seemed to be in my life to stay. At age sixteen I owned my first electric train. It was not the steam-locomotive type, but the true original electric-type engine. I bought the train myself and it proved to be a lot of fun. By that time I had known the truth about Santa for a couple of years and I figured he wouldn't be bringing me one. So I started saving up my nickels and dimes and bought my own train. A year or so later I bought my first and only bicycle. It lasted me until I bought my first car.
By that time I had begun to believe a fellow could do about anything he set his mind to. So I gave a kid a dollar for an old one-cylinder gasoline engine with its carburetor missing. I knew I couldn't buy a carburetor for it, but I was confident enough, or foolish enough to believe I could make the thing run without one. I was right; I could and I did. That is, I made it run without a real factory-built carburetor. The one I gave it was a small tin can stuffed with rags that were saturated in gasoline. The vapor from the can was the gas that it ran on.
I made the little engine pull Mama's washing machine—which she was in the habit of making me pull. Of course it was more work keeping the engine running than it would have been just simply running the washer by hand. But it was more fun my way. And besides, I liked to do things that others couldn't do,—things some mechanics said couldn't be done.
When I got hold of an extra dime now and then, which was not needed for something else, I would go see a movie. But my slow reading caused me to miss part of the story during the old silent movie days. So I began dreaming of the time when we would be able to go to a movie and listen to the stars talk and sing. I worked the whole thing out and told my parents and some of my friends just how it would be done and how the mechanism would be set up. Some of them listened, but some of them walked away, slowly wagging their heads as if to say, "Poor Clarence, he finally flipped his flopper. He has gone plum crazy."
Three years later they came out with a stupid phonograph and tried to keep the talking on the record correlated with the picture on the screen. It was four years after I invented the talking picture that they finally put the sound on the movie film where I had put it in the first place.
I was out front on automobile generators too. In the early 1920's generators were dealing us plenty of trouble. Their commutators were the biggest headaches. By 1924 I had invented a direct-current generator without a commutator but with two collector rings instead. I even applied for a patent on my invention. But I ran out of money and had to give it up. Then 39 years later, in 1963, most all American-built cars came out with my generator on them. They are now called alternators. Of course my generator was not exactly like the alternator. We didn't have diodes in 1924. My generator didn't need diodes.
Along with my experimenting, I was reading mechanics magazines and in one of them I saw the International Correspondence School advertisement and enrolled in an electrical engineering course. I learned a lot from it but I was not financially able to buy all the things I needed to do the experiments which would have helped me learn and understand much more. Furthermore, there was not another kid in town with whom I could work and study, nor who was interested in learning about electricity with me. So, electrical engineering lost much of its charm and glamour. However, during my high school days, my classmates and teachers nicknamed me "Edison." I kept the stage lights in repair for all events. And when an office light needed attention, they sent for me. They never required me to buy a ticket to any school activity. I kept the lights working all over the building. I carried a key to the building and came and went as I pleased, day and night.
Along with my other activities, I have studied and practiced a little bit of character reading. Since my teens I have had this thing about being somewhat able to read a person's character on sight—at least I liked to try. When I was 18 I was visiting a kid in another town and he showed me a picture of his high school class, 32 kids. I looked at the picture, then I pointed to one girl and told my friend that she was the top student in his class in English. My friend was surprised but he admitted that I was correct. He became even more surprised when I picked the best math student, the most mischievous boy, the one who liked to play good clean practical jokes, the one who was the most active in the art of deceit designed to really hurt others, the best football player, best all-round athlete, and several others. After I had finished, the boy told me I got about 20 of them just right, ten partially right, and two absolutely wrong. Oh well, you can't win them all.
I have been in business off and on many years in my life and I can't remember having lost a penny on a cold check or a bad debt. I have a way of trusting people that I judge to be okay and it seems that they want to prove that I have not misjudged them.
This ability to judge rightly has helped me and others many times. One day a stranger was driving through Hamlin on his way to Bronte where he was to go to work on a ranch. He was out of money. I bought him five gallons of gas and a quart of oil. Three days later I received the money from him by mail.
Why did I trust the stranger? I don't know. He looked okay. He acted okay. He didn't ask for credit nor any other favor. Instead, he asked if he might camp out behind our service station for three or four days. My boss told him it was all right. Then when he asked to borrow a pencil and a piece of paper, I learned he was planning to write his employer a letter and ask him to send a couple of dollars for gas and oil so he could finish his trip. I bought him the gas and oil and told him to get going and get on the job. Then he offered to leave his saddle as security. I told him I didn't need security, "Just send me the money when you get it." And he did.
I've always been that way about my money. I would rather see my money used for home missions than for foreign missions. I like to see results. In the case of foreign missions, I never know how my money is being handled nor what it does for people. To be sure, this man repaid me, but if he had not, I would still prefer home missionary work. That may not be the right attitude, but it's the way I feel.
This new-fangled city living didn't take all the country out of us boys right away. We often went hiking along the creek that runs through the south end of Hamlin. One day we slipped out of our clothes and were swimming in the Orient Lake when a group of women and little kids came to fish in the lake. Boy, I thought we were in trouble for sure this time. But Joel came to the rescue. He always was a smooth talker, and this time it paid off for all of us. He yelled out to them that we were swimming without our swim suits, and if they would go back around the bend, we would be out in about three minutes and then they could come on and fish. They did and all was well.
Soon after we moved to Hamlin we owned an old Dodge car, about a 1918 model. It was probably the one we drove to Gorman, although we did own two other Dodges through the years. Anyway, this old car had so much play in the gears and the differential and the axles that you could let up slowly on the clutch, and when all the slack finally wound out of all the gears, the car would leap forward. And if the motor didn't die, you were off and going.
Our car shed opened to the alley. To get into the shed we had to drive up the alley, circle into the shed and stop the car just before it hit a solid board wall. At least it was a board wall, and we had thought it was solid until Albert proved differently. Anyhow, the wall separated the car from the back yard, which, in turn, connected with the back door of Mama's kitchen. Now, this back yard had within its boundaries a number of clotheslines, a storm cellar and a couple of huge mulberry trees, under which a dozen or so old laying hens reclined in shaded pools of dust and ashes while off duty from producing the better half of many nourishing breakfasts for a bunch of growing kids.