The Life of Me: An Autobiography

oken of as the Flint place, because we sold it to a family nam

om the Flint place, I remember only a few t

t 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 nest

the nest. The ones she was setting on to hatch out little chickens were marked all over with a

uth 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 o

ollege English, the teacher had us making sentences using certain double

ke, "The cow wouldn'

nd when I asked her why, she said, "A cow can

know your English, but you

to the Fl

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 clo

field. It wasn't far from our house. Sometimes I would go take him a drin

ig hole he dug around the bottom of a big tree. The dirt was damp and cool in the

ld leave me at the house to watch after Albert while she took Papa a drink. But i

y taught me how to break the peas off the vines without breaking the vines. Mama could pick them so easily, with just t

could do so many things, an

s I remember from my early childhood have been almost forgotten and I now remember them through special e

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 pl

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 a

ht. And while he was standing there holding to her dress for support, before Mama put his breakfast away, bac

y a step or so and looked up at her and thought

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 mo

ask myself, "What the heck? Who cares anyway?" And always that

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 w

strong wind hit it and leaned it way over, but it didn't blow it all the way down. Papa

ront of the house and an L-shaped porch on the back. There were flower beds and flowers in our front yard, and

heat and the winter cold. The horse lots and cow lots were on the south side of the barn, with s

the land. But it was high enough to get up on and see Uncle Andrew's house and Grandma's house. I couldn'

round and make the big iron rollers squeeze the juice out of the cane stalks. The juice would run down a spout a

lp Papa keep putting cane stalks through the big rollers. Joel would help a

put them in pens by the barn. When we finished squeezing the juice out, we wo

and we would put it in big jugs and take it down in the cellar.

of the hill. The wind had been blowing and lots of sand had drifted up in piles by the woodpile. Some o

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

, what time he wasn't in the stack lot. That's probably the reason I always remember

ing home from church or from Uncle Andrew's. We drove up from the west and as

e from church because we were all d

ut 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

m, they always trotted. Even when we drove 18 miles to Anson to visit the Hood family on

his share of the grain from the bundles

ma 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 neve

answer, "Why, Willie and you children always ro

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

there. I don't remember what Papa said, if anything, but I do remember that Mama expressed her disapproval of Old

an 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.

e. 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 wa

e 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 t

hought could be used to do a better job on the farm, he would get it, if at all possib

cultivator-planter. He could cultivate his young feed or cotton and, at the same time,

himself. That was ingen

stay on the rows. And they knew that "whoa" meant stop, even when a three-year-old said it. What's more, Papa was plo

n't sound so f

hey had a man in their community who used a dog to do his plowing for him. It's true. And the man

furrow all day long and the man only had to sit there hour after hour doing nothing. Then he got t

go start them again. So, next he put his little dog on the plow seat. The dog liked to

-the very idea-a dog plowing while his

't have a dog,

hom we say it. When I start talking with a man, t

ue, all Texans are capable of lying, but they are not all lia

inks I am telling a big Texas lie. But if the man is from Oklahoma, I sometimes have to lie just a lit

titude, a broad open expanse of freedom and liberty known only to Texans. It's a

ace. Here are a couple which took place before my time

f- mile from our house over to Uncle Andrew's. Now, Uncle Andrew chewed tobacco and Frank knew it. So, Frank found it easy to ge

to make sure she took enough for both of them. But, now that they had the tobacco in their possessi

ch 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 t

co didn't affect Frank at all, but before they g

she was sick. And she was sure she

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 particu

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

angry but mostly just idle, so th

. Susie had never been allowed to taste snuff, but she reasoned that i

e 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

what the devil showed to Susie when he told her she ought to climb up on the kit

n't give up. She climbed back down and put a chair up on the cabinet. Then she climbed up in the bottom chair to

o have to climb all the way back up to put the snuff back on the shelf over t

got down from the chairs and the cabinet. She only remembers that, when she began to regain