THE LIFE OF ME

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Clarence Edgar Johnson

Clarence Edgar Johnson 2538 Chestnut San Angelo, Texas 76901

DEDICATION

Ima, my wife

Virgil Dennis, our first son

David Larry, our youngest son

and especially to our late daughter, Anita Joyce.

Preface

Chapter 1. Grandparents, Parents, And Our First Farm 2. Early Childhood At The Flint Farm 3. At The Exum Farm After I Was Five 4. Social Living, Loving, Listening, And Learning 5. Books, Folklore, Medicine, And Dreams 6. Prosperity, Animals, Growing Up 7. Dry Year On The Texas Plains, 1917 8. Moved To Jones County. Picked Cotton In Oklahoma 9. Back To Our Lamesa Farm In 1919. School At Ballard 10. Sold Farm, Moved To Hamlin 11. Road Work At Gorman, Texas 12. My Inventions And High School Days 13. My Travels To The Gulf, McCamey, And Denver 14. Haul Maize, Repair Trucks, Turn Trucks Over 15. Got Married, Drove Truck, Farmed, Cattle Drive 16. At Royston Until World War II 17. World War II Was On. We Went to California 18. Back At Royston. Worked At Gin And For Neighbors 19. Tour Pike's Peak, Moved To Arkansas, Went To College

PREFACE

This writing grew out of a request from my daughter, Anita, that I write to her concerning me, my family, my parents and their families; how we lived, how we grew up; our ideals, our customs, and our social life.

The original writings were in the form of letters written to Anita during the last few years. When my sons, Dennis and Larry, learned of the letters, they also asked for copies.

As I began writing, I soon realized that I knew very little about the details of the lives of my parents and grandparents.

So I set out to tell my children a few things about myself and to leave unmentioned some things which I do not want them to know about me. I also included some things about a few kinfolks and neighbors who had a part in molding the character whom my children now refer to as "Dad."

It was hoped that the letters would aid in their better understanding of how certain teachings and ideals had been handed down through generations, and that they might better understand why they grew up under those rules and customs.

Others also may be interested in the way one family lived in the
Southwest around the turn of the century and later.

Clarence Edgar Johnson

(Drawing) The house where I was born

(Photo) Smokehouse at the Flint farm. Clarence, Earl, Joel,
Albert, and Susie.

(Photo) Our Exum home

(Photo) The lake by our front yard

(Photo) Sunday morning, going to church

(Photo) At the Exum farm. Joel, Clarence, Earl, Albert

(Photo) Our merry-go-round

(Photo) At our home on the plains. Mama, William Robert, Ollie
Mae, Clarence, Albert, Joel, Earl

CHAPTER 1

PARENTS, GRANDPARENTS, OUR FIRST FARM

My Johnson grandparents reared nine children. Andrew was the
oldest and was a half brother to the other eight. Joe was
Grandma's first born, second was my father, William Franklin.
All but one of them lived and thrived and raised children.
That's why I have dozens of cousins.

When my father was born, the family lived in Bosque County, Texas, somewhere about Meridian. They were ranchers and owned a bunch of cattle. Some 20 years later we find the family in Concho County somewhere near Paint Rock or in between Paint Rock and where the little town of Melvin now stands.

At least two of the boys, Joe and Will, worked for the Melvin brothers on their ranch. I have heard Papa tell of breaking saddle horses for the brothers as well as trail driving near San Angelo.

In the meantime the weather turned dry, grass became scarce, and the Johnsons drove their cattle to Indian Territory, (Oklahoma) looking for grass in about the year of 1894—that is, all but Joe. He stayed with his job in Texas.

About a year after the family moved to Oklahoma, Will Johnson got a neighbor boy to go with him back to their place in Texas to bring another wagon load of household goods. They were gone about two weeks.

While the family was in Oklahoma, Will—who was about 20—taught school two terms at Nubbin Ridge, somewhere near Duncan. Simpson, being about 17 at the time, was not about to go to school to a teacher who was his older brother, so he saddled his horse and slipped away back to Melvin's ranch, to be with his brother Joe. He said he got tired of riding but not nearly as tired as his horse. The journey was about 300 miles. He was on the trail three days and nights and had to stop at times to let his horse rest. When he got to the ranch, Joe wrote to the family saying that Simpson was with him and for them not to worry. They had suspected where he had gone but were not sure.

My Gaddie grandparents reared five children, three boys and two girls. Emma, my mother, was next to the youngest. Hugh was her younger brother. When my mother was born the family lived in Larue County, Kentucky, near Hodgensville. Their farm joined the Lincoln farm. She and Abraham Lincoln drew water from the same well but not at the same time. The Lincoln family had moved away some years before the Gaddies moved there. The well was on the fence row between the two farms.

When Emma was four years old her family moved to Dallas County, Texas. Then they moved to Grayson County, where Emma started to school at age seven. When she was nine they moved back to their old home place in Kentucky. Again, when she was 13, they moved to Dallas County, and at age 16 the family moved to a farm some eight miles southeast of Duncan, Oklahoma.

About the same time the Gaddie family moved to their farm near Duncan, we find the Johnson family leaving Texas where the weather turned dry and the grass became scarce and the Johnsons drove their cattle to Indian Territory looking for grass, and they found that grass near Duncan, Oklahoma.

They stayed in Oklahoma about four years and during that time at least two of the boys were busy at things other than sitting around watching cattle grow. Andrew had married a girl named Mary, and Will had met this pretty little freckle faced girl from Kentucky.

So then, as you can see, here in farming and cattle country near Duncan is where the Johnsons met up with the Gaddies. This is where a schoolteaching cowboy named Will met a country farmer's daughter named Emma Lee. This is where the falling in love took place. And this is where Will married Emma in the fall of 1896. She was 18, he was 22. They were my parents.

After living in Oklahoma that four years, Grandpa Johnson went back to Texas looking for land to buy. He found what he wanted and bought 1,000 acres of unimproved land in Jones County about three miles southeast of Hamlin. Then he went back to Oklahoma to get the family.

So by the time Grandpa Johnson was ready to start his journey back to Texas with his family, the family had increased by two daughters-in-law and two grandchildren. Will and Emma had a son, Frank, six weeks old. Andrew and Mary had a daughter, Ruth, only three weeks old. Some thought that Ruth was too young to make the trip in the cold of winter. But they all came through in wagons and drove their cattle. That was in January of 1898.

In later years Mama told me that she thought she would have frozen to death if it had not been for Frank in her lap to help keep her warm. The trip took two weeks in the dead of winter and it rained every day of the trip.

Since there were no improvements on the Johnson land, they all rented other farms for a year or two while they made improvements. Papa and Mama rented and farmed one year in Fisher County. Much of the well water in that county tastes so strongly of gypsum that people have to haul their drinking water from the better wells. So, the story is told that when they were driving their covered wagon to Fisher County, they stopped and asked a man, "How far is it to Fisher County?"

The man said, "You are still about ten miles away."

"How can we tell when we get there?"

"You will see farmers hauling water in barrels in wagons."

"Have they always had to haul water in Fisher County?"

"Yes, but during the World Flood they didn't have to haul it so far. The flood water came within a half-mile of Roby."

I guess Grandpa farmed at least one year in Fisher County. They tell me that Ed, one of the younger boys, went to school in that county at White Pond one year.

Grandpa had bought the l,000 acres for all the family. Andrew and Will were the first ones to buy their portions of 100 acres each. The raw land had cost $3 an acre. Papa's farm cost him $300.

Papa was fast becoming a good carpenter and he did his part in helping build a two-story house on Grandpa's portion of the land. The house is still in good shape and has a family living in it 77 years later.

Andrew first lived in a dugout on his 100 acres. They used the dugout for a kitchen and storm cellar many years after they built a house beside it.

Papa's land was in the southeast corner of the 1,000 acre tract. He built his house about a quarter-mile south of Grandpa's house. It is still standing also. Since that time some of the Johnson boys and girls have bought and sold and swapped portions of the land. But most of it is still in the hands of the Johnson boys and girls or their sons and daughters.

After farming in Fisher County in the year of 1898, Papa moved to a farm in Jones County, a mile northeast of Neinda, and farmed there in 1899. And there, in a half-dugout, my sister, Susie, was born.

Many years later as we would drive by the farm in our hack, on our way to church at Neinda, our parents would point out the old dugout and explain, "There is where we used to live." Year after year as the old dugout deteriorated and began caving in, we still went by it on our way to church and there was always something fascinating about it to us kids as one or more of us would point to the old dwelling and say, "There's where Mama and Papa used to live."

During the two years my parents farmed away from their own farm, they spent many days of hard work driving back and forth, building a house, clearing some of the land, and building fences on their land. And of course they had to have a well drilled and put up a windmill and water tank.

At the end of that two years, they took their two children and moved into their new house on the first farm they had ever owned. And Papa, with the aid of an efficient helpmate, continued to improve the farm. They built a big barn and shelters for cows, hogs, horses, poultry, a hack, buggy, harness, and other things. And the family continued to grow. George was born in 1900 and a daughter in 1901. George lived 26 months and died with the croup. The daughter lived only two weeks. Earl was born in 1902 and Joel in 1904. This was the state of the family in 1906, the year Grandpa died in his home, and the year I was born. Aunts, Uncles, and cousins lived on three sides of us, and Grandma lived in the big house a quarter-mile north of us.

My parents were getting quite a collection of children by this time. And it is not always easy to find family hand-me-down names for that many kids. So by the time the seventh one arrived they had to go outside the family for a name. I don't know how far out they went but they came back with what I have always thought was a "far out" name, Clarence Edgar, and they pinned it on me. I was born January 11, 1906, in Jones County, West Texas, in the middle of a large family. Frank was eight years old when I was born, Susie was seven, Earl three, and Joel 16 months. There were three others born later, Albert, Ollie Mae, and William Robert. So, as you can see, my parents thrived and grew rich—if you count children as wealth. There were ten of us, eight of whom attained full size and strength.

Five years after I was born, we moved to another farm about a half-mile east. Albert was born at the first place we lived and William Robert was born at the second farm. I know Ollie Mae was born sometime in between those two boys, but I don't know where she was born. I'm sure it wasn't between the two farms. Wherever it was, she became one of us and is still with us.

Mama told me that the $300 they paid Grandpa for the farm was the hardest debt they ever had to pay off.

Money was hard to come by for a young couple just starting out.

Mama also told me all about how her family had moved from Kentucky to Dallas County, Texas, then again to Grayson County, then back to Kentucky, then again to Dallas County, and finally to Oklahoma.

During all this time Mama's younger brother Hugh was trailing along two years behind her. They were seven and nine years old when they moved back to their old home in Kentucky. There were 200 acres in the farm, and these two kids had four years in which to explore the meadows, the hills, the streams, and the woodlands. There were three springs of water, acres and acres of wild berries, wild nuts, cherries, peaches, apples, and papaws. There were many kinds of birds as well as coons and skunks. And for delicious food, there were swamp rabbits and opossums.

I was a young boy when Mama first told me that Hugh was her favorite brother. It didn't mean much to me at that time. But after I was a grown man, she told in detail how she and Hugh had roamed together over the old farm during those four years, how they had picked wild berries, and how they had carried them to the store in Hodgensville and had sold them for ten cents a gallon.

Emma's older sister and an older brother had long since married and lived far away. Henry was still at home but he was older than Emma and too busy at other things to be interested in that kid stuff. No wonder Hugh was her favorite brother. They had played together, explored together, and had grown up together.

When I was young I heard Mama tell that her brother Hugh was shot to death one day while out on his horse. I didn't know whether the Gaddies were living in Kentucky, Texas, or Oklahoma when he got shot. When I heard how Hugh had died, I was old enough to know about Kentucky moonshiners, Texas cattle rustlers, and Oklahoma desperadoes. I wondered if any of them had played a part in his death, but I didn't ask any questions .

Mama told me later that Hugh was a cowboy, had gotten his pay and was riding home when a man shot him in the back and took his money.

I was sorry I had ever wondered.

Mama told me that her brother Henry and the blacks around Duncan were not very friendly toward each other. At least one time, the blacks held hands and formed a human chain across the road to keep Henry from coming by. But Henry whipped up his horses and drove right through the crowd. After that he carried a long blacksnake whip to use on them if they ever got close to his wagon again.

Part of the tradition that was handed down to us from the Gaddies and the Johnsons was that there were only three things to drink— water, sweet milk, and buttermilk. You might include clabber if you like. But then, clabber was more of an "eat" than a drink. Soda pop was for the wealthy and foolhardy, and coffee was not permitted for three reasons: it cost money, it was unnecessary and it was not good for you. Money was for necessities. Any drinks stronger than these mentioned were strictly forbidden.

Even the sound of the word "whiskey" carried with it an inkling of sin and dishonor. Whiskey without drunkenness was improbable, and drunkenness was about as low as a person could go.

Mama grew up to hate whiskey because of its effect on men and because it tasted bad. However, there was always a jug of it under her father's bed—for medical use only. Any symptom of disease was treated immediately with whiskey. Mama hated the taste of it.

Mama told us about a man—perhaps an uncle—who was sick in bed and who was fond of whiskey. As he lay in bed, a few friends and kinfolks stopped by to see him. And one by one he asked them to mix him a little toddy. They did.

And wouldn't you know it, five or six toddies all in one man at one time made the man forget he was sick on disease and it made him fairly sick on whiskey which was what he had planned to be.

After I came into the Johnson family, Mama's people lived so far away I didn't get to know much about them.

We didn't get around to visiting them much. But I remember we did go to Duncan one time to visit some of them. It seems that the trip was made in about the year of 1916. We went in our 1914 model Reo car.

I guess I was about ten years old. I don't remember much about the people we went to see, but I remember the white rabbits and prairie dogs they had for pets. They were running all over the place. I suppose it was Uncle Henry's place and I believe the pets were Leo's, Uncle Henry's son. Leo was perhaps four years older than I was—maybe even more.

I think I met Mama's sister and her older brother, Will, a time or two; I'm not sure. But Henry was the only one of them I ever really knew.

Henry and his wife, I think her name was Emma also, came to Hamlin to visit Mama and Papa a couple of times after I was married. Then, when I was attending college in Arkansas, my wife, Ima, and our youngest son, Larry, and I stopped by to visit Uncle Henry two or three times.

During one of those visits, Uncle Henry went out into his garage and took a book from the bottom of an old trunk. The book was similar to a ledger, about seven inches wide and ten inches long, with a flexible cover. In the book were 54 songs, handwritten with pen and ink, most of them in my father's hand, a few written by my mother.

It was my father's book which he had carried to parties and singings while he lived in Oklahoma. When he heard a song he liked, he would write the words in his book of songs. Other boys and girls had their books of songs also, including Uncle Henry.

Uncle Henry also had a mother-in-law—or rather, I think it was his mother-in-law-to-be—who gave him trouble at times. One time she got mad at him for some reason and burned his book of songs. So Papa loaned Henry his song book.

Then the Johnsons moved away to Texas before Henry returned the book. When he was through with the book, Henry hesitated to make a 400 mile round trip in a covered wagon just to return a borrowed book. So he didn't return it right away. He put it away for safekeeping. It was forgotten until Henry mentioned it during a visit to Texas to see Mama and Papa 50 years later

Mama was about 80 years old when Uncle Henry took the book from the old trunk and asked me to take it to her. Papa had died many years before.

I have one copy of those songs and there is a copy of them filed away at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Neither the Johnsons nor the Gaddies had any part in the Oklahoma land rush. That took place in 1889, a few years before either family arrived in Oklahoma.

I never once saw my Grandma Gaddie. She passed away in Oklahoma in 1912. She suffered a sunstroke and died two weeks later.

Some years after that, Grandpa Gaddie came to live with us in Texas. I don't remember exactly when he came, but he passed away while we were living on the Exum place, and we moved from there in 1917. He seemed quite old, maybe old ahead of his time because of hard work and the severity of life at that time in our history.

Anyhow, he could do light odd jobs about the farm. There were always outside chores to be done. We kids were glad to have him help us do them. And he kept us kids company at times when there was no work to be done.

But Grandpa was much more of a stranger to us than Grandma Johnson was. She lived only a half-mile away; we grew up with her. But I guess we hadn't seen Grandpa Gaddie more than once or twice before he came to live with us.

Grandpa was never much of a bother in any way. He was never bedfast and never had to be waited on. It didn't take much to feed him. We raised almost everything we ate and he brought plenty of clothing with him when he came. The entire family didn't require much money, and we had plenty of other things in life.

Grandpa was agreeable and compatible. He was never grouchy. He had a room and a bed of his own in our home and he soon became just one of the family and was accepted by all of us.

Then one morning Grandpa didn't come to breakfast. A knock on his door brought no answer. Had he slipped out and gone for a walk? No one had noticed him out anywhere. This was unusual for Grandpa. He was usually there on time for meals so the rest of us wouldn't have to wait for him. In our home no one ever started helping his plate at meal time until all were seated and the blessing was asked.

Papa knocked on Grandpa's door again, then he called to him, but there was still no answer. As Mama and Papa opened the door to his room, there he was, still in bed, still asleep—but he was not breathing. It seemed that Grandpa just went to sleep and didn't wake up.

Papa went to Hamlin that morning in a wagon and brought back a casket. The women dressed Grandpa in his best suit. Some men went to the graveyard and dug a grave. Others went to tell the preacher, and found him plowing in his field. He stopped plowing and went home to clean up and eat dinner.

Grandpa was placed in his casket and loaded into a wagon. Then about three o'clock we drove him to the Neinda graveyard where the preacher and other friends were gathered. And there, that afternoon, we laid him away in his final resting place.

It's amazing sometimes, how a very little thing can stick in the memory of a little boy, and that's the way it was this time, just a simple little statement made by an older brother one morning—a couple of mornings after we had buried Grandpa. Four of us boys slept in the west room of our home, the room usually referred to as "the boys room." We boys were getting out of bed and getting dressed when Frank said, "Well, Grandpa's in heaven by now." That was all he said. That was enough. After that, an air of reverence filled the room. And as we finished dressing, we left the room one by one, in complete silence. Frank had no way of knowing how much I honored and respected him for that little statement and the thought that went with it. I was too young and timid to know how to tell him.

That's about all of my childhood memories concerning the Gaddies. In later years I had a desire to learn more about my mother's people. But as I began digging into census records, I soon found that Grandma Gaddie had a first cousin by the name of Jesse James- -yes, that's right—"The" Jesse James. So my desire suddenly changed to fear and I gave up digging into records.

CHAPTER 2

EARLY CHILDHOOD AT THE FLINT FARM

The first farm we owned, the one where I was born, is still spoken of as the Flint place, because we sold it to a family named Flint. So at times I may refer back to it as the Flint place.

Since I was only five when we moved away from the Flint place, I remember only a few things which took place while we lived there.

I remember we had old hens that laid eggs for us to go gather up and take to the house in a bucket. Sometimes the bucket would get so heavy I couldn't carry it. And sometimes we had to get eggs out from under old setting hens that wouldn't get off their nests. They would peck me to keep me away. I was too little to get those eggs. Mama or some of the bigger kids would have to get them.

But if the old setting hen was off the nest, I knew which eggs to get and which ones to leave in the nest. The ones she was setting on to hatch out little chickens were marked all over with a lead pencil. The ones that didn't have marks on them were fresh eggs that had been laid that day.

Some city folks are confused at times about some of the words we farmers use. For instance, take the words sitting and setting. The truth is, if an old hen is on an egg that she has just laid, and if she is planning to go away in a minute or two, she is just sitting on the egg. But if she is on the egg or eggs with the intention of hatching out little chickens, then she is not sitting, she is setting.

Even some people who are supposed to be smart don't know farm words. In college English, the teacher had us making sentences using certain double words like, "Look up a word in the dictionary." And "Hand over your gun."

I made a sentence like, "The cow wouldn't give down her milk."

The teacher gave me a zero on the sentence. And when I asked her why, she said, "A cow can not hold up her milk nor give down her milk."

I told her, "Lady, you may know your English, but you sure don't know milk cows."

Now back to the Flint farm.

I was so little that, when I would throw out corn and maize seed to feed the chickens, I couldn't throw it far enough away from me. Some of it would fall at my feet. So the big chickens would crowd around my feet to pick up the grains and I was afraid of so many big hens so close to me. And I really got scared when they started pecking the feed out of my feed bucket. Sometimes I would drop the bucket and run away.

I remember seeing Papa digging up big trees where he was going to make a field. It wasn't far from our house. Sometimes I would go take him a drink of water. And sometimes Mama would send me to tell Papa dinner was ready.

While Papa was drinking his water and resting a bit, I liked to get down in the big hole he dug around the bottom of a big tree. The dirt was damp and cool in the hole. Some of the holes were so big and deep it was hard for me to crawl back out.

Sometimes our old surley (bull) was close by and I was afraid of him, so Mama would leave me at the house to watch after Albert while she took Papa a drink. But if the cows were way over in the other side of the pasture, I wasn't afraid to go.

I remember our garden just outside our yard. I was big enough to pick fresh beans and peas. The older ones in the family taught me how to break the peas off the vines without breaking the vines. Mama could pick them so easily, with just the right twist of her hands. But I had to hold the vine with one hand while I twisted the peas off with the other hand.

I had the smartest Mama. She could do so many things, and she could do them so easily.

I especially remember one little incident that took place in our home when I was three. Most of the things I remember from my early childhood have been almost forgotten and I now remember them through special effort and recall. But this one brief moment has lived with me and was never put aside to be recalled later.

Mama was sitting in a chair in our living room. Albert was in her lap getting his natural milk breakfast. I was in a hurry for the baby to get through nursing so I could play with him down on the floor. In the meantime, I was standing leaning against Mama and playing with the baby—playing with his hands and feet, rubbing and patting his "tummy," and sometimes tickling him to make him laugh.

Now all this activity caused a lot of wiggling and squirming in Mama's lap. And it also caused a lot of letting go of, and getting back to, the baby's morning meal. This kind of playing with the baby might have aggravated some mothers and might have brought a word of scorn, or at least an expression of impatient dissatisfaction from them, but not from this mother. She was one of a kind. She seemed to enjoy it all. She was my Mama.

I was standing on Mama's left. When Albert finished and was full, Mama stood him down on the floor on her right. And while he was standing there holding to her dress for support, before Mama put his breakfast away, back into her blouse, she looked over at me and very motherly asked, "Now, do you want some of the baby's milk?"

I didn't say a word. I just bashfully backed away a step or so and looked up at her and thought something like, "That's for the baby, not for me."

For the first time in my life I was consciously aware of my mother's love for me, in that brief moment, because of that simple little gesture. The poet expressed it better than I can, when he wrote, ". . .the love of a mother for her son that transcends all other affections of the soul." I was deeply moved by the thought that, although she had another little one to hold closely and love and nourish, she had not pushed me aside. Her love included me too.

As the years went by, sometimes all seemed hopeless and I would ask myself, "What the heck? Who cares anyway?" And always that little three-year-old kid would give me the answer, "Mama does."

I remember the windmill by our garden and the water tank way up high on the tower. When the wind blew and the mill was pumping water, we could open a faucet at the top of the well and get a drink of fresh cold water. We had a tin cup hanging on a nail on the windmill tower to drink out of. And we kept some water hanging up on our back porch in a wooden water bucket made out of cedar. There was a dipper in the bucket that we all drank out of.

Once when Papa was building his big barn at the Flint place, before he got it finished, a strong wind hit it and leaned it way over, but it didn't blow it all the way down. Papa took a block and tackle and got some men to help him and they pulled it back up straight.

Our house had three rooms. One of them was a kitchen and dining room together. There was a long porch at the front of the house and an L-shaped porch on the back. There were flower beds and flowers in our front yard, and morning glory vines on the front yard fence and china trees in the back yard. They made good shades to play in.

There was a hog pen on the north side of the barn, with sheds to protect the hogs from the summer heat and the winter cold. The horse lots and cow lots were on the south side of the barn, with sheds to shelter the stock. Feed troughs were under the sheds and feed was stored in the big barn.

I remember the hill west of the barn about a hundred yards. It wasn't a steep hill—just a gentle rise in the land. But it was high enough to get up on and see Uncle Andrew's house and Grandma's house. I couldn't see Grandma's house as good as I could Uncle Andrew's because hers had so many big trees all around it.

I remember we had a syrup mill too, up on the slope northwest of the barn. We had a horse that would go round and round and make the big iron rollers squeeze the juice out of the cane stalks. The juice would run down a spout and we would catch it in buckets. Then Mama would cook the juice in a big pan over a fire out there in the pasture.

Of course Frank and Susie and Earl would all help keep the fire going and help Papa keep putting cane stalks through the big rollers. Joel would help a little bit, but I was just in the way. And Albert had to be looked after too.

Sometimes the cows and horses would come and try to eat the cane and we had to put them in pens by the barn. When we finished squeezing the juice out, we would let them all come out of the pen and eat the stalks we didn't want any more.

When we got the juice cooked enough it was good ribbon cane syrup and we would put it in big jugs and take it down in the cellar. But not all of it. We would take some of it in the kitchen to eat.

I remember a big pile of wood and lots of mesquite posts. They were southwest of the barn on the slope of the hill. The wind had been blowing and lots of sand had drifted up in piles by the woodpile. Some of our plows and wagons were out there too by the woodpile. The posts were leaning up against big trees.

Just north of the hog pen was our stack lot with big stacks of bundled feed in it. And when I think of the stack lot, I think of a little black horse we had named Keno, because all too often Old Keno was in the stack lot without an invitation. He was not a big work horse, yet he could hold his own when hitched to a cultivator. And he could outdo all the others at acrobatics.

Yes, Old Keno was a fence jumper. We often found him in the corn patch or maize patch, what time he wasn't in the stack lot. That's probably the reason I always remember him as being fat and having a shiny coat; he got more than his share of goodies to eat.

Anyway, one time I remember seeing Old Keno in the stack lot when we were coming home from church or from Uncle Andrew's. We drove up from the west and as we came over the rise west of the barn, there he was, in the stack lot again.

I really believe we were coming home from church because we were all dressed up and were in our new hack.

We had an old buggy and I think we had an old hack. I think I sort of remember when we got the new hack. The old one was good enough for everyday use, and so was the old buggy. But for really stepping out in style, that shining black new hack was something else. For Sunday and for going to town, we used the new one. It had two seats, rubber tires, and a beautiful glossy black finish—with tiny little yellow pinstripes at just the right places. When Papa hitched his two trotting horses to it, it was truly a carriage to be proud of.

We also went socializing in the new hack. And Papa never fooled around with a walking team, they always trotted. Even when we drove 18 miles to Anson to visit the Hood family on Sundays, our team trotted practically all the way. And then they trotted back the same day.

As I said, Old Keno was eating more than his share of the grain from the bundles of feed, and he was wasting a lot also.

I was in the front seat with Papa and some of the other kids. I was probably in Papa's lap, I don't remember. Mama was in the back seat with some of the others. In fact, Mama always rode in the back seat. There is no picture in my memory of Mama ever riding in the front seat of our hack. I don't really know why she chose the back seat. Fact is, it never occurred to me until now that she may not have chosen the back seat; she may not have had a choice. While she was with us, it never entered my mind to ask her why. But now as I ponder these things, I wish I had. If she were sitting here in the room with me now, I would stop writing long enough to look up and ask, "Mama, why did you always sit in the back seat of our hack?"

And I haven't the slightest doubt that she would answer, "Why, Willie and you children always rode in the front seat. There wasn't room for me."

Anyway, I was less than five years old, probably less than four. And I don't remember what else Mama was doing, but I'll bet a dollar she was holding Albert in her lap. And I'll bet another dollar I can guess what Albert was doing. Since baby bottles were almost unheard of in those days, and were not needed in our family, he was probably getting his milk from some other source, as mother nature meant for him to.

Be that as it may, Old Keno was eating at the feed stack and he seemed to be much happier than Papa was to see him there. I don't remember what Papa said, if anything, but I do remember that Mama expressed her disapproval of Old Keno's bad manners by calling him a scoundrel. That was the name Mama gave to troublesome animals and mean people.

There was plenty of work to be done on the farm, and we kids learned to work early in life. Joel was just 16 months older than I was, and one spring, when he was too young to go to school, Papa had him planting in the field with a two-row planter. In the afternoons, when Earl got home from school, he would relieve Joel, so Joel could go home and play the rest of the day.

Then one day Joel got a foot hurt and couldn't run the planter. So I had to take his place on the planter for a few days. Planting had to go on. I don't remember how old I was at that time. I do know for sure I was planting at the Flint place. And we moved from that place in January—the same January in which I became five years old. So, I must have been planting when I was a little over four years old or when I was just past three, I'm not sure which. I am sure, however, I was older than two, because, when I was only two, Earl was too young to go to school.

If it were not for skeptics, I could go ahead with my memoirs. But I feel I should detour here and explain a thing or two, or some folks will think I am lying. One man has already questioned my story about the two-row planter. He thought they hadn't made a two-row planter as early as 1910. This one happened to be a special type planter. I have never seen but two of them in my lifetime.

But you could be sure, if William Franklin Johnson heard of a farm implement that he thought could be used to do a better job on the farm, he would get it, if at all possible. And if it wouldn't do to suit him, he would make it do whatever he wanted it to do.

I remember having seen Papa, as early as the Flint place, mind you, using a combination cultivator-planter. He could cultivate his young feed or cotton and, at the same time, plant new seeds in the skips where the first planting had not come up to a good stand.

He built the implement himself. That was ingenuity. He was my father.

This special two-row planter that I used was pulled by two big, gentle horses. They knew how to follow the furrows and stay on the rows. And they knew that "whoa" meant stop, even when a three-year-old said it. What's more, Papa was plowing along beside me, just a few rows away, and he worked the lever and turned my team around at both ends of the rows.

Now, that doesn't sound so far out, does it?

I'll bet the people around the little town of McCaulley would believe me without an explanation. They had a man in their community who used a dog to do his plowing for him. It's true. And the man didn't have to be there to work the levers for him and turn the team around at the end of the rows.

There were no rows. He was flatbreaking his ground, going round and round. His mules followed the furrow all day long and the man only had to sit there hour after hour doing nothing. Then he got the idea of tying his lines up and slipping off to the house without his mules knowing he was gone.

This worked well except when the mules would stop once in awhile, and he would have to go start them again. So, next he put his little dog on the plow seat. The dog liked to ride so well that, when the team would begin stopping, he would bark to keep them going.

People could hardly believe their eyes—the very idea—a dog plowing while his master sat on his porch in the shade.

Now, Papa didn't have a dog, so he used me.

We Texans have to be careful what we say and to whom we say it. When I start talking with a man, the first thing I want to know is, where is he from?

I know, Texans have a reputation of being big liars. It is true, all Texans are capable of lying, but they are not all liars. They don't have to lie. In Texas the truth is wild enough.

If I am talking with a man from north of the Mason-Dixon line, I only have to tell the truth and he thinks I am telling a big Texas lie. But if the man is from Oklahoma, I sometimes have to lie just a little to make the story interesting to him. Those Okies are almost as bad as Texans about story telling.

Some people think Texas is a state, but it's not. Texas is a state of mind, an attitude, a broad open expanse of freedom and liberty known only to Texans. It's a feeling you can never get just by living in Texas, you've got to be born in Texas.

There are other happenings dating back to the Flint place. Here are a couple which took place before my time. I can only relate them to you as they were told to me.

We don't know where Frank got his first taste of chewing tobacco, but he liked it and he wanted another taste. It was only a half- mile from our house over to Uncle Andrew's. Now, Uncle Andrew chewed tobacco and Frank knew it. So, Frank found it easy to get Mama to let him walk over there to play with Ruth. He also found it easy to ask Ruth if she knew where her dad kept his tobacco.

She knew all right, and she found it easy to "snitch" a chew for Frank. She also had the forethought to make sure she took enough for both of them. But, now that they had the tobacco in their possession, it wouldn't be smart to risk being caught playing around the house with tobacco in their mouths.

So, now Frank tells Aunt Mary he came over to see if Ruth could come over to his house and play. Yes, Aunt Mary would allow her to go, which was a perfect set-up for five-year-old kids. They could chew the tobacco all the way from Ruth's house over to Frank's house, just so they got rid of it before they got there. Who cares how long it might take two little kids to walk a half mile? They could chew a long time.

However, one little problem developed. The tobacco didn't affect Frank at all, but before they got to Frank's house, Ruth was as sick as a horse.

Naturally, they didn't dare tell why she was sick. And she was sure she would feel better in a little while.

Another little story came to me from Susie, my older sister. She was always having to see after the baby of the family. At this time Albert was the baby and I was about three years old. She probably had to take care of me also, when I was a baby. But on this particular day—the day of the snuff—Mama, Grandma, and I went out to the garden. Susie wanted to go but had to stay in the house with Albert.

This was one of the few times during my childhood that I was just the right size, and here I am, unable to remember a thing about it. Susie had to tell me about it. If I had been any smaller, I might have had to stay in the house with Susie and Albert. And if I had been any larger, I might have had to watch after Albert while Susie went to the garden.

Anyway, Susie's brain was partly angry but mostly just idle, so the devil used it for his workshop.

Grandma had put her snuffbox on the door casing above the kitchen door. Susie had never been allowed to taste snuff, but she reasoned that it must be something special, because Grandma "dipped" it all the time.

Many's the time Grandma would send me to the "branch" (creek) to bring her a small hackberry limb for a tooth brush. (It was really a snuff brush.) She would take a hackberry twig about twice as big and twice as long as a wooden match and chew on one end until it "frazzled" out into a bristle. Then she would dip the damp bristle into her snuff, put it in her mouth, and work happily for hours, with the "brush" extending out one corner of her mouth.

Now, this picture of contentment on Grandma's face as she dipped and worked, is what the devil showed to Susie when he told her she ought to climb up on the kitchen cabinet and get her some of that delicious brown snuff in the little tin box.

She climbed up in a chair and got up on the cabinet, only to find that she couldn't reach the snuff. But she didn't give up. She climbed back down and put a chair up on the cabinet. Then she climbed up in the bottom chair to get onto the cabinet so she could get up in the top chair. And by leaning way over, she could reach the snuffbox.

Now, Susie didn't want to climb down to dip her snuff. It would be too hard to have to climb all the way back up to put the snuff back on the shelf over the door. So she just sat down in the upper chair and began dipping the snuff.

That's about all the story. At least that's all she remembered. She never did know how she got down from the chairs and the cabinet. She only remembers that, when she began to regain consciousness, she was a mighty sick little girl, and snuff had lost its charm and glitter.

CHAPTER 3

AT THE EXUM FARM AFTER I WAS FIVE

We, the Will Johnsons, owned this first farm 12 years. Then in the fall of 1910, Papa bought the Exum farm, just east of us. It was much larger and it fitted our needs better. There were 332 acres in the place, and we paid $9,000 for it.

When January rolled around, it was time for us to move onto the Exum place. And on the day we moved that half-mile, I had to stay at our old home. I was allowed to help load the wagons at our old farm, but they wouldn't let me go with them to our new home to unload the wagons. Of course, that hurt my feelings terribly.

But I was hurt even worse when one of the older boys came running back to the house to get a gun to kill a skunk down on the creek—and Mama wouldn't let me go with him.

She said, "No, you can't go. You're too little."

I didn't understand how Mama could be so mistaken in my size. I was as big as most of the other boys, I thought, and smarter than some of them.

After we got moved to the new home, again Papa set out to build whatever buildings we needed to suit our wants. There was already a house and a good size barn. And when Papa finished building, there were shelters for tools, livestock, poultry, and a blacksmith shop.

He made a large, roomy cellar at our new home. I can't remember ever having to go to the cellar because of a storm, but it was there just in case. And it was good for storing fruits, vegetables, and canned goods.

One time Papa brought home a stalk of bananas and hung it down in the cellar. Down there it would be protected from the heat of the days and the freezing nights. Papa explained to us that we should eat the ripest bananas first before they got too ripe and had to be thrown away. Then some of the older kids jokingly told that Papa said, "Eat the rotten ones first and wait till the others rot to eat them."

We were poor in terms of money, yet we had as much as or more than the average family in our community. Papa was a carpenter, a blacksmith, a good farmer. And when automobiles came along, he became a mechanic.

We never left our hack out in the weather, we had a shed to shelter it. Our barn was second to none in our neighborhood, especially by the time we finished building sheds and stalls on both sides of it. Later on, we got a car and built a shed for it. We didn't call it a garage, it was a car shed. And one time Papa bought another house, moved it up beside ours, and joined them together.

We had a good well of water, a big windmill, and a cypress water tank on a tower about ten feet tall. The tower under the tank was boarded up on all four sides to form a room that was used for keeping milk, butter, watermelons, and other things cool. Screened windows allowed the wind to pass through. That was about the coolest place on the farm.

Next to the windmill was a garden, fenced rabbit proof and irrigated with water from the well. Every summer we had roasting ears, popcorn, cantaloupes, watermelons, peanuts, okra, squash, pumpkins, and more kinds of beans and peas than I can name.

The barn was filled with feed heads, corn, and cottonseed, both for planting and for feeding. There was room in the barn and adjoining sheds for horses, cows, chickens and hogs. And up in the loft, there were peanuts still on the vines.

Some of our neighbors had given up trying to grow peanuts because rabbits ate so many of the vines. It was all but impossible to keep the rabbits out of the patch. But we always grew peanuts anyway. When neighbors asked Papa how he managed to grow so many good peanuts, he told them he just planted enough for the rabbits and the youngsters too. I can't remember when we didn't have enough peanuts in the barn loft to last all winter. We stored them on the vines and then we picked them off as we needed them, and fed the vines to the stock.

I remember one sunny afternoon, four or five of us boys were sitting up in the barn over the horse stalls eating peanuts. I was sitting on a board that was nailed to the underside of the ceiling joists. Well, the nails pulled out of the board and I fell to the ground and hit my head on a wooden block. The block proved to be tougher than my head. It cut a two-inch gash in my scalp above my right ear. Papa took me to our family doctor and had it sewed up.

The story was told on us boys that, when we were all little, a mule kicked one of us in the head, and that boy was never quite normal after that. But then, as we grew older, we all got to acting so much alike that Mama and Papa couldn't tell which one of us the mule had kicked.

Many years later, during the depression of the 1930s, a neighbor was giving me a homemade haircut one Sunday afternoon and, when he discovered the scar on my head, he laughed and said, "Now I know which one the mule kicked."

Now let's get back to the story of when I was a boy on the Exum farm. I started to school when I was seven. In fact, most kids started at seven in those days. And since I was seven when school started in September, that meant I had been seven since last January 11th. In other words I was almost eight.

While we lived at the Exum place, we went to school at Wise Chapel, which was about three miles northeast of our home. In winter we faced cold northers many mornings, and in the afternoons, we often faced strong southwesterly winds on our way home.

As we walked to school, other pupils from other farms joined us, and then still others. By the time we arrived at school, there might be as many as 20 of us in one bunch. One of the families whose kids walked with us was the Bruner family. Papa's younger brother, Ed, married Eva Bruner.

What do you mean, "Did we walk that three miles to school?"

Of course we walked—except maybe two or three times a year when the weather was extremely bad.

I might as well take time right here to mention another little incident which took place along our school trail. It involved one of the Bruner boys. And what happened to that boy should never happen to anyone. But when you get that many school kids in one bunch, most anything is apt to happen, and it did this time.

In the first place, I guess school trails shouldn't cut across pastures, but they did. In the second place, I haven't been able to figure out why God made prickly pears, but He did. In the third place, if school kids are going to use the trails which wind in and out among the thorny bushes and cactus plants, they should never scuffle near prickly pears, but they did. And in the fourth place, if a boy scuffles and falls down, he should never sit right flat down in a prickly pear, but he did.

After he got up, he went straight home. His mother took the tweezers and removed all the large thorns and many of the small ones. Then they took him to Mama because, they said, her eyes were better. She removed all she could see, which left the boy in fairly good shape, I suppose, all things considered.

What we now know as kindergarten was unknown when I started to school. Beginners started in the Primer, and the Primer was not a grade in school—it was a book. As Webster defines it, "an elementary book for teaching children to read."

We went to school to learn to read, write, spell, and work arithmetic problems—and to obey the teacher.

We also learned many other things that were not a part of the regular curriculum and which were not necessarily sanctioned by those in authority. We grouped them all together and called them "recess."

In my first year, I went through the Primer, the first grade, and far into the second grade. I was almost ready for the third grade at the beginning of my second year. According to my teacher and my parents, I was smart and well behaved. I was a good little boy.

Even at that early age, the teacher granted me special privileges and I was in love with her. My love and admiration for all teachers, especially women teachers, went with me all through high school and college, at times causing my wife some displeasure.

During that first year in school, one side of my face became paralyzed. I was an ugly sight, especially when I laughed or smiled. Half of my face would smile and the other half would just hang there, doing nothing.

The doctor prescribed some red medicine that Susie carried to school every day and poured some down me ever-so-often. It tasted awful. I was glad it was a beautiful red color. I don't believe I could have stood it if it had been brown.

Anyway, I slowly got over most of my ailment, but I'm sure it was hard for my family to get rid of the horrible picture my condition had printed on their memories.

Unfortunately, my paralysis was not my only ugliness. I was born with a "wen" in the corner of one eye next to my nose. It was a lump about the size of the end of my thumb—that of course, depending on what age I was when you measured the end of my thumb, and how much of my thumb you included in the measurement. After all, how much of a thumb can you measure and still call it the end.

At any rate, I was far from beautiful, even before the sagging of half my face.

Not so with the rest of my family. Papa was stately, superior in quality, as generous as he was elegant, and he was a handsome man.

Mama was a lovely woman. I can remember back to when she was about 33, and I can imagine how beautiful she must have looked to Will Johnson 15 years earlier. When I was very young, I liked to watch her do her long hair up into one big plat, then coil it round and round on top of her head and pin it so it wouldn't come down.

Frank was handsome and admirable in the eyes of a younger brother my age. Susie was a good-looking girl. However, all girls looked good to me—as they were supposed to. Earl's presence would improve the looks of almost any group of kids. And Joel was downright pretty, that is, for a boy. Although Albert and William Robert were younger than I, and at times little more than pesky little brothers, still I could easily see that they both had something to be desired far above that which looked back at me from my mirror. And of course, Ollie Mae was as beautiful as anything I had ever seen until I became 18 and fell in love.

The unsightly wen stayed with me until I was about 17—or whenever it was I started shaving. I couldn't bear the looks of me in the mirror as I shaved. So, one afternoon I drove over to the Stamford Sanitarium and asked a doctor to remove it. He got me on the operating table and then asked me if I wanted him to put me to sleep.

I told him, "No, I want to watch what you are going to do to me."

So he handed me a mirror and began whittling on me. And when he had finished the operation, he sewed me up, stuck a patch over the place, and told me to let someone else drive me back to Hamlin. But since it was only 22 miles, and since I had driven over there alone, and since there was no one to drive me back, I drove myself back and I've been disobeying doctors ever since.

But, we're getting ahead of our story. Let's get back to our younger days when my little sister was about two years old and she had two or three brothers who were not much older. One of those brothers noticed, as most little brothers do sooner or later, that there was a difference in his and her ways of draining water.

For example, when he had to go, he would merely stand behind a tree or go around behind the smokehouse, let it flow and watch it fall. Or he might play fireman up the side of the smokehouse wall. Or maybe aim at a beetle or a red ant and watch him struggle to survive.

On the other hand, his little sister would squat and her dress would hide the entire operation. But the day he became curious about her method of operation and got nosy enough to peep to see what was taking place, he committed the unpardonable sin. And it would have caused extreme pain in the region of the lower hind part of that small boy if his mother had learned of what he had done. What she would have done to him would have been a big price for a little boy to have to pay for a little knowledge that most little boys get for free these days. But he didn't get caught. That was the beginning of a lot of secret things that little boy did throughout his childhood—secrets he didn't share with anyone.

We four boys went out together most of the time, both to work and to play. But at the Exum place, Ollie Mae was getting big enough to want to go with us when we went to play. Her presence created a little problem we boys hadn't had before, especially when there wasn't a good hiding place.

I remember one day out in the pasture where there were no trees or bushes to hide behind, one of the smaller boys had to drain his water and he solved his problem in his own way. He simply said, "Ollie Mae, look the other way." She did, then he turned his back and minded his little business.

In the fall of the year, we often missed some schooling because of so much cotton to be picked. However, we didn't lose as much time from school as some of the families around us. Many a time we would eat an early breakfast, go to the cotton patch and pick for an hour or two and then go directly from there to school. In the afternoons we would go directly from school to the cotton patch, pick cotton until dark and then go home for supper.

In my boyhood days, eating breakfast or supper in daylight was a luxury many of us couldn't afford. Cotton picking often went on until spring and sometimes we'd have to lose a few days of schooling in the spring in order to get the last of the cotton out of the field in time for planting.

But our work was not always hard field work. Sometimes there was more pleasant work to be done, like going with Papa in the wagon to haul a load of wood, or maybe to haul a hog over to a neighbor's.

That kind of work was more or less dangerous when too many small boys went along. So some of us smaller ones would have to stay home with Mama.

Papa always kept a box of sugar stick candy locked in the bottom of his trunk for the purpose of bribing us smaller ones on those occasions. I really shouldn't call it bribery; rather, it was a consolation offered to us younger ones who had to stay home.

When Papa would go somewhere alone in the wagon, it didn't hurt us so much. Mama would explain that he was going on a mission where little boys were not supposed to go, and we would accept it gracefully, since we all had to stay home. But if one or two of the boys rode away with him, that was hard for us smaller ones to bear.

But we couldn't throw a fit, because fits were not allowed in our family. We just had to suffer the heartbreak in silence and a fair amount of dignity. And as they would drive away, it seems I can still hear Mama saying to us, "Come on, children, let's go get a stick of candy." And of course, that would help our feelings somewhat, bless our little hearts.

Sometimes the smaller children would each get a stick of candy for staying home while the larger ones went down on the creek in Grandma's pasture. However, wading in water in our own pasture after summer rain showers usually included all of us, the youngest and all. It was understood that the oldest of the bunch was always the boss and had the responsibility for the safety and well-being of the entire party.

Whether we were working or playing, that rule of command held true in our family. And it was not the only ironclad ruling in the Johnson family—rulings which stood through the years without question and with no thought of breaking.

We always had a set of four boxing gloves. I say always because I can't remember when we didn't have them. And in boxing, we obeyed the rules of not hitting in the face nor below the belt. Another strict rule was, "Don't get mad at your opponent when he is giving you a beating. If you get mad, you mustn't play anymore." The same held true in wrestling. If you couldn't stand to be pinned down, you just didn't wrestle.

You can bet your boots, we all boxed and we all wrestled. No one wanted to be left out of the action. And the only way to stay in the action was to obey the rules and take whatever the other one dished out.

This didn't mean that the big kids were unmerciful to the little ones. There was another rule, "Don't hurt the little ones. Don't hold the little one down after he yells 'calf rope.' Back away and let him have a new start."

We all played "rough and rowdy," but always with smiles on our faces. And the rules of fair play applied to our animals also.

We had a big dog that was part Collie and part Shepherd. He grew up with us kids and became one of the family. We named him Scotch. Papa brought him to us kids at the Exum place when he was a wee, little woolly ball of bouncing, playful puppy. Papa had given five dollars for him, which was a lot of money for our family in those days. He was the only dog our family ever owned.

According to his bloodlines, he was half Collie and half Shepherd, but according to us Johnson kids, he was just all dog— a gentleman canine of the highest order, a true friend, guardian and protector of children, truly a little boy's best friend.

We were taught never to abuse Old Scotch while he was a puppy, and as he grew older, we couldn't abuse him, he wouldn't allow it. And we were told never to call him without a good reason, such as to feed him, play with him or let him go hunting with us. Papa told us that if the dog trusted us, he would obey us better.

I guess that was good advice. At any rate, Old Scotch obeyed orders and commands better and more promptly than any other dog I have ever seen, either in or out of the movies. He even obeyed requests which were not meant as commands.

We kids didn't really know how to train the dog. We just let him grow up with us and by the time he was a year old, he was smarter and better looking than most of us kids.

However, we did teach Old Scotch to do a few simple little tricks- -nothing spectacular. He would sit down when we told him to. And he would hold still while we placed a small stick on top of his nose, and remain still until we counted to three. Then at the count of three, he would quickly flip it off his nose and catch it in his mouth. Then of course, he expected a pat of congratulations and a kind word or two.

We taught him to keep the chickens off the porch and out of the yard. That was an easy job. He soon learned to do it without having to be told.

We kids liked to sit under the steering wheel of our car and pretend we were driving. Soon Old Scotch was doing the same thing. Sometimes when we kids opened the car door, we would have to hurry or Old Scotch would beat us to the steering wheel. He was only playing with us kids when he did that. He wouldn't do Papa that way.

One of his favorite games was to take a stick in his mouth and challenge us to a game of wolf-over-the-river. He liked for us to try to catch him and take the stick. He also liked to play catch—but only with a rubber ball. We would pitch the ball to him and he would catch it and return it to us. However, there was a strict rule in this game—never throw a hard ball to him, because that would hurt his teeth and he would begin to distrust and disobey us.

He learned not to trust some of the neighbor kids. They sometimes threw him a hard ball. They didn't "Do unto Old Scotch as they would have Old Scotch do unto them."

At times we would offer the dog something to eat that he had never seen nor tasted before, and if he wasn't sure of it, he might reject it. But he seemed to have enough faith in us boys to think that, if he could see us eat some of it, then he would not be afraid to try it. So, we would let him see us eat some of it, or at least we would pretend to eat it.

Our dog didn't have the long Collie-like nose, but rather a beautiful short nose like the Alaskan Husky. Nor was his coat long and stringy but was short and heavy, more like the wool of a sheep before shearing. His color was a deep reddish brown, with just the right touches of white about the head. His body was round and full. His shoulders and hips were broad, as though somewhere in his ancestry there was most certainly a St. Bernard.

Old Scotch couldn't bear the sound of thunder. During a thunderstorm he wanted to go in the house and get under a bed. That's the only time we ever let him in the house. The noise must have hurt his ears. Firecrackers affected him the same way. He would tolerate the noise of a rifle when he was out hunting with us, but he wouldn't allow even his best friends to aim anything at him.

Needless to say, we would never aim a gun at him any more than we would aim one at each other. But a broomstick or a hoe handle was like a gun to Old Scotch. When we aimed something at him, he wouldn't bite us to really tear us apart, but he would certainly bite hard enough to make us drop the object we were pointing at him. He would growl in a way that told us for sure that he would not allow anyone to point anything at him.

Old Scotch saved us many a step and earned his keep many times over. We kept our milk-pen calves in the lot through the day. Then we kept our milk cows in the lot at night and let the calves run out to graze. Next morning we would tell Old Scotch to go get the calves and he would. He wouldn't get the horses nor the other cows—only the milk-pen calves.

After we ate breakfast and did the morning chores and were ready to harness the horses for plowing, we would send Old Scotch after the horses and he would get only the horses, no cows nor calves. In the afternoon we would tell him to go get the milk cows and he would bring only the cows, no horses.

When we called our dog, we didn't say, "Here, Scotch! Here, here, here." The word we used wasn't "here," it was "how." And no matter how far away he was, he would come immediately when he heard us call. He only paused long enough to make sure it was one of our family calling him and to get the direction from which the call came.

And when he came to us, he didn't come walking nor trotting, but loping. And he didn't stop a few steps away nor lower his head and ears, nor did he approach with his tail down. He bounced right up beside us, full of life and gusto as if to ask, "Oh boy! What kind of excitement do you have planned for me this time?"

It's a common thing to see a two-car family in the 1970's, but we were a two-car family as early as 1916. We still had the Reo and Papa bought a Big Six seven-passenger Buick touring car. Old Scotch knew that Buick by sound. Uncle Robert had a Little Six Buick that sounded almost like the Big Six. Our dog could recognize the sound of those Buicks a half-mile away.

When other cars drove by along the road, Old Scotch would pay no attention to them. We had taught him not to chase cars. But when either of those Buicks came along, he would run out to greet it a quarter-mile away. He also accepted Robert as a personal friend as well as a friend to our family.

Then one day Old Scotch didn't come when we called him. Nor did he come the next day. We had no idea where he had gone nor why. Of course, we kept hoping that some day he would return. But days became weeks and weeks became months and the dog was still missing. By this time we had given up all hope of ever seeing him again.

Papa and Mama taught us to be nice to our animals and taught us how to get Old Scotch to obey us. And there seemed to be no end to the little things they taught us how to do. In a jiffy they could cut a slot in the side of a pumpkin leaf stem and make us a horn to blow. They showed us how to put a chicken's head under his wing, swing him a few times and lay him down on the ground, fast asleep. Papa taught us how to tie a certain kind of a knot in a rope for one occasion and another kind for another purpose. And he taught us how to make a loop for roping calves.

We owed a lot to our parents for making our lives pleasant and exciting. They were among the most respected parents in our community. They were leaders—not in organizations concerned with business or big government, nor in local clubs, but they were upstanding church-goers with high standards of moral character and integrity. As in play, so in life, they wanted their children to abide by a set of rules which would lead them into a good life—a life of knowledge of the difference between good and evil, with a desire to do the good and shun the evil.

They may not have thought of God as some of us do today but I am sure they did what they thought was right, and they did it with consistency and sincerity. More than that we have no right to ask.

Some families have their own little unique customs. I suppose we were one of those families. When visiting with other families, it seemed odd to me to hear them call their babies by their given names. We always called our youngest one "Baby" until the next one arrived. Then we called the new one "Baby" and the one before him had to take on his rightful name.

This went on until my younger brother was born. Joel, just older than I, couldn't say Clarence, so he called me Big Baby and he called the new one Baby. No, he wasn't slow about learning to talk. You see, we didn't give him much time. He was only sixteen months old when I came along, and he was just three when the new one came. Another custom not common to all families was, we smaller ones wore dresses around home for the first three or four years of our lives. It made diapering much easier and saved a lot of laundering. Come to think of it, I never heard of diapers until I was almost grown. They were not diapers, they were breeches—in our family they were "britches." That's the only thing I ever heard them called until I was a mature man.

We were poor people, living the simple life. I wasn't any poorer than the rest of my family, but I was the simplest one.

We also had this custom of competing among ourselves. In most everything we did, there was an element of competition and hurry. Our parents had a way of causing us kids to apply pressure to each other. They found that it worked better than when parents tried to force kids to work faster.

In the cotton patch you could hear us kids saying such things as, "I picked more cotton than you did." Or if we were hoeing you might hear something like, "Come on, Slow Poke."

The plan worked well. No one wanted to be outdone by a brother, especially a little brother. And if a little brother could outshine a big brother, even just once in awhile, that was a real feather in the little one's cap.

Oh, yes! There was hurry and there was pressure. But it didn't seem to get us down as it does some people today. We had no psychologists in those days to tell us that pressures would warp a kid's brain. We didn't know that competition and hurry would drive us crazy until these educated people told us about it.

So we lived hard, we worked hard, and we played hard. Then we were able to go to bed and sleep hard. Never in my life did I ever hear Mama or Papa say, "I didn't sleep well last night, because I felt tense and worried."

There was really nothing to worry about like there is today. They didn't worry that we kids might go away from home and get into trouble. We didn't have to leave home to get into trouble. We kids made our own trouble right at home. We had a lot of fun doing a lot of different things. Most of our troubles were brought on accidentally, we didn't deliberately plan them.

There was no worry about the family losing anything, we had nothing to lose. No one would steal from us because no one wanted what we had. So, whatever pressures we might encounter during the day were dispelled during a night of welcome rest.

In the cotton patch Mama and Papa encouraged us to see who could pick 100 bolls first. The first one to pick his 100 bolls would call out, "hundred." Then each of the others would call out the number of bolls they had picked during the same time.

This competition got more bales of cotton to the gin in a shorter period of time. But, as in all activities where kids are involved, we sometimes had little disagreements.

I had this thing of humming or singing a song while I picked cotton and counted my bolls. I found that the mental work I was doing was relaxing and it allowed my hands to do their work faster. And now, 65 years later, I learn that I was doing something a little bit kin to what they call Yoga.

At any rate, it really worked for me. I could pick cotton faster than a brother or two who were older than I was. Now, I didn't necessarily use my system in order to get more of the family cotton picked. I used it mainly just to beat my older brothers picking cotton, and that not for very long at a time.

But my little scheme backfired on me. One of those brothers couldn't stand to be outdone by a younger brother. He told Mama and Papa that I was lying and cheating, because he knew I couldn't count bolls while I sang a song. But he was wrong. I could. Anyway, nothing I could say would make him believe me. I began to become an outcast among some of my brothers early in life. I believe there were times when some of them would have been glad to "sell me into slavery" as Joseph's brothers did him.

But my parents didn't seem to doubt my word. I really believe they understood that I could do a thing or two that some of the others could not do—and perhaps were not at all interested in doing.

I believe little things like that were the beginning of a wee bit of an unconscious rift between some of my brothers and me, and at the same time, the making of a stronger bond between my parents and me.

Looking back, I remember many times when Papa and I were doing things together and there was no one else around. I really don't know why I was the only one there a lot of times. Maybe I just wanted to be in good company. I loved and admired Papa and I thought he was the best and nicest man in the world. Or perhaps I was with Papa because of my inquisitive mind concerning mechanical things, like,

"How do you shoe a horse?"

"How do you tighten a loose wagon tire?"

"How do you make a row-binder do what you want it to do when the manufacturer couldn't seem to do it?"

I watched him do all these things and many more. And many of the things he did fascinated me.

The situation was much the same between Mama and me.

"How do you churn milk and make butter?"

"How do you 'take up' the butter after it is churned?"

"How do you make those beautiful decorations on it later?"

"How do you weave a carpet on Grandma's loom?"

It seems I was always watching a lot of these goings-on while the other kids were somewhere else doing whatever they liked to do. And Mama and Papa were never too busy to answer my questions. I realize now how much more I could have learned if I had only known how and when to ask more questions.

It seems that my parents favored and petted me at times. I'm not sure they did. If they did, perhaps it was because they felt sorry for their little ugly duckling. And maybe I only imagined they were especially nice to me. Maybe they were that nice to everyone. Perhaps they were nice to me just to have me around handy when they needed me to help them just a little bit.

This latter seems to be the most reasonable argument, after considering some of my stupid exploits and my senseless reasoning throughout my life.

Yet, it just might be possible that they were partial to me on account of the wen, and later on, my paralysis—these factors coupled with the fact that within the last four years along about the time I was born, they had suffered the loss of a two-year-old son, a two-week-old daughter, Mama's favorite brother, Hugh, and Grandpa Johnson.

Who can measure the thoughts of loving parents as they view their newborn child for the first time, anxious to know whether he or she is beautiful and healthy and without blemish.

And who knows the anxiety of parents who, after seeing their child with blemish, must wonder how his condition will affect his relationship with others, how it will affect his outlook on life, and whether it might grow worse and shorten his days.

The Life of Me: An Autobiography