The Life of Me: An Autobiography

By the summer of 1918 we were about finished in our new venture. There was no grazing and no money for livestock feed. Cows and horses gra

g cattle and drove them to the railroad stockyards at Lamesa. That was a slow exodus. They were so poor and weak some fell by the wayside and didn't

rm, and the rest of us moved to a farm near the community of Abbie, about nine miles east of Hamlin. We b

most of our money, our cattle, quite

and went to Wichita Falls, Texas, where the government was building an aviation camp to train

a. While he was attending to some business, we boys got out of the car and were looking at newspapers out in fr

e papers when a stranger came by and told us, "You boys can have all the funny

The funnies were just what we wanted. And we were getting more than our share when a friend, Harry Stacy, came along and informed us that, "If yo

respected Harry and I knew he had almost as much authority to spank us boys as Frank had. At least he was concerned ab

r tent didn't leak from the top, but it might as well have. Water soaked the ground and came up in our ten

aded us all up and drove all one Saturday night. We arrived at the farm about daybreak. We hurried to

e he just had to make a living for us. He had to go back. So we all loaded back into the car and d

g so much money in the cotton patch that our parents reasoned that we all, working together in the cotton pa

an. Before we got there we saw that the cotton was really good-fields were white beyond our ex

vered by one of the older boys when we stopped for one of the little ones to hide behind a bush. Naturally, we couldn't just drive o

e car who were younger. And no two little kids ever have to "go" at the same time. So it was stop here for one and

ges with gasoline pumps out in front on the curbs and two-holers out back by the all

Papa had gone to a garage to get the carburetor adjusted on his car. Joel and I went with him. And since it too

he had little boys of his own. At any rate, when he saw us whispering something in Papa's ear, the

ank six-feet high on the wall, with a lever extending outward from the top of it and a long cord hanging down from the lever. We couldn't figure anything else t

ng up fast. We couldn't stop the flow of water. True, we had pulled on the cord to start it, but we couldn

ugh the upstairs floor, or maybe down the stairway. But it didn't run over. We had gotten scared all for nothing.

familiar with the sound-it had happened before. But we drove on, listening to the click, click, in the car's rear end every time the wheels wen

ountry we had been searching for. So we spotted a large patch of white cotton and inquired about picking it. The man s

ded him. He brought a team of mules and towed our car to his place. We unloaded and bega

we had finished picking Mr. Hammond's cotton the gear came by mail. Papa jacked up t

r us. We were making from $30 to $40 a day. The work was hard b

picking more cotton in a day than I had ever picked before. I enjoyed figuring how much I picked and how much money I

tmas. We didn't go by our farm at Abbie, but went west into

gh the worst of the sand but detoured many miles out of the way to go around it. In some places the sand was higher than our car top. One man who owned some of the sandiest land had a road through his pasture so

he country there is just one way to get from Oklahoma to Texas and that is to cross the river. And I don't know of anyo

e I had never seen a concrete bridge, and didn't know at that time they would have such things in my lifetime. Anyway, there was this nice bridge across the big

across the river-well, yes, the driver rode-that was Papa, but the rest of us didn't ride. Papa was smart. He was not only smart, he was the only one who could drive the car. The rest of us didn'

therwise, why would we Johnsons have been down there pushing in the mud when other cars were crossing on the bridge? And why did that man at the bridge show Papa h

ad. Matter of fact, we didn't even stop, that is, Papa didn't, except for us to c

uth toward Lamesa. We stayed awhile with Susie and

e it up. We gave it up and moved back to the farm at Lamesa. We moved west the first time b

h another cold January 21 years ago when the Johnsons moved back to Texas from Oklahoma in wagons. At least

nners out. It was somewhere in the bad lands near Gail. The next morning it was almost too cold to travel. After