After we Johnsons got a little money ahead, we made some improvements on our house. For one thing, we added a long back porch, all glassed-in with windows the entire length of it. Then we added a bathroom with all the fixtures. And on the back porch we put a lavatory to wash our face and hands in, when the bathroom door happened to be locked. Sometimes we kids would come in to wash up after unloading a load of hay, and when two or three of us were using the lavatory at the same time, one of us might casually flip a few drops of water in another one's face. Now that usually called for retaliation, which took place immediately. And that in turn called for counter-retaliation with a lot more than just a few drops of water—perhaps a big handful and then a cupful.
By this time we usually heard from Mama from wherever she happened to be, as she shouted, "Stop that." And if she came out to enforce her command, she might get some of the same. Of course Mama knew what she would get into, and I really think she wanted into it. She only pretended she wanted us to stop. It made it funnier that way and it relieved her of the responsibility for having instigated the action. Mama had running water in the kitchen which was just as wet as the water we had on the porch and there was a 50-50 chance that she had some already drawn up in a stew pan. So when she said, "Stop it," she may as well have said, "Stop it after we all get wet." We usually ended up being as wet as if we had jumped in the lake, and everyone laughing.
This was the age of cars and we had our share of them through the years. The same old Dodge that ran over Albert and killed the hen for supper had a magneto that kept giving trouble, and it cost a fortune to have it repaired each time. This was before I had learned much about cars. In fact, this old car taught me a lot about other cars to come.
The car had a battery. So, I thought I could use Model T coils to make the spark and use the mag as a distributor. That would be less expensive than trying to keep the mag in repair. I got it all rigged up and it worked some, but it was not a success. The battery didn't fire the Model T coils well enough. That was another one of my ideas I flunked out on.
There was a farm family in our neighborhood by the name of Owen. And in that family was a boy named Bill. My brother Frank ran around quite a bit with Bill. Pretty soon Bill's sister, Mattie, got to running around with Frank. Bill had a younger brother named Joe, and I got to running around with Joe. To complicate things still further, Joe had a younger sister named Faye, and she got to running around with me. That seems like a lot of running around for just a few kids, but it happens that way sometimes.
One day I was out on the farm visiting with Joe, and now and then
I was glancing in the direction of Faye when Joe and I discovered
Frank's trunk in Mattie's bedroom, which was quite all right
since Frank and Mattie were married by this time.
Joe and I knew that Frank kept a 45 revolver in the bottom of his trunk. We also knew that Frank and Mattie were not home that day. Faye and her parents were home but they didn't know that Joe and I were prowling in Frank's trunk. We were whispering and tiptoeing.
We took the 45 and a bunch of shells and slipped off out into the pasture to shoot something. A gallon can was the only thing that would sit still for us, so we fired at it. We tried and tried but decided we must be too far away; we never did hit it. I had thought that a 45 would shoot as far as six or eight steps, but I guess not. Or it could be we missed because the gun kept kicking up at the front end every time we pulled the trigger.
Anyway, we didn't know that Frank had returned home and we were so wrapped up in our target practice that we didn't see him until he was right upon us. Then it was too late to run. And for one time in my life I couldn't think of anything to say. We just stood there in surprise, prepared for the worst. Then we got a bigger surprise. Frank walked up to us and said, "There are plenty of shells in the bottom of my trunk when you run out." And with that, he gave us a few pointers on firing a pistol and walked away.
Before Papa got his freight line from Hamlin to Stamford, he had one truck and was looking for anything to haul that would help us make a living. He took one job of hauling that shouldn't happen to a dog. There was a man buying maize heads one summer and shipping them by rail to somewhere. This was the surplus maize farmers had left from last year's crop, after they had used all they needed for feed through the winter and spring. The man bought the maize from farmers and then told us where to go pick it up. Then we hauled it from the farms and loaded it into railroad boxcars.