The Life of Me: An Autobiography

by Clarence Edgar Johnson

Speaking of repairing, one night I was driving a truck from Ft. Worth to Hamlin. The rotor in the distributor was a slip-on thing made of bakelite. I knew it was cracked but it was still working well. However, before I got home it broke into a lot of little pieces so small there was no way to use any part of it. It happened at night and caught me without a flashlight, way out in the country between towns. Working in the dark, feeling my way, I wrapped adhesive tape all over the upper end of the shaft. Then I stuck part of a safety pin through the tape to what I thought was about the right distance, and it worked. It gave no more trouble all the way home.

For some reason that same truck kept burning out bearings in the back connecting rod. Each time it happened, it cost $26 to have a mechanic repair it. The next time it burned out, I asked Papa to let me repair it. I figured there had to be a reason for this continuing trouble, and it seemed that mechanics were not hunting the cause, but were only replacing the bearing each time. I had been thinking about the thing and I sort of figured I knew what was wrong, and I thought I knew more than the general run of mechanics. But Earl told Papa not to let me try repairing it. He said, "Clarence is not a mechanic; he can't do that job."

And Papa told him, "It looks like the ones who have been trying it are not mechanics either. At least it won't cost me $26."

So Papa let me do the repair work, and that was the last time that bearing ever gave trouble. We drove the old truck for years and then sold it to Calvin Carriker for a farm truck. The bearing lasted the life of the truck, and unless someone looked in after the truck was junked, no one knows how I remedied the problem. I can't help it if I'm smarter than the average mechanic—and Earl.

You may think I'm bragging. Of course I'm bragging. But it's all right to brag on yourself; the Bible says so, according to a Baptist deacon I knew in Arkansas. He would quote, "Blessed is the man who tooteth his own horn, because, if a man tooteth not his own horn, lo, it shall not be tooted." And if you asked him where he finds that in the Bible, he would say, "In the book of Fizzlums."

Now, I guess you are wondering where in the Bible is this book of Fizzlums. Well, the deacon and I both knew an old man, a good man who read his Bible but didn't go to church much, and he had a very limited formal education. However, he remembered that in English spelling, Ph is pronounced like F. So when he came to Psalms in the Bible, he got a little confused and got Ph and Ps mixed up and tried to pronounce Psalms as though it were spelled Falms. Now, you've got to admit that is a hard word to pronounce. But the old man had worked on it for years and it finally became "Fizzlums". And that's where the deacon found the horn-tooting scripture.

At one time Jones County was one of the most productive cotton counties in Texas. Hamlin was in the heart of cotton country. In cotton picking time Black people came from East Texas by the hundreds to help pick the cotton. Most of them who had cars had Ford cars. Now the headlights on Fords were a constant source of trouble, especially if kids riding on the front fenders happened to accidentally kick the wires loose from the headlights. Most mechanics wanted to repair the lighting system with a lot of new parts at a cost of maybe two dollars to four dollars. But each cottonpicker told other cottonpickers that there was a boy (me) down there at Hudson's Filling Station that would fix their lights for maybe a quarter—not over 50 cents.

And so it came to pass that, on Saturday nights a lot of lights needed fixing so that a lot of hard-working boys could do a lot of stepping out with a lot of girls. Most of them didn't need lights during the week. But Saturday was payday, time to celebrate and have a good time. And besides, the next day was Sunday, a day of rest. No one picked cotton on Sundays.

I usually made quite a few quarters on Saturday nights after my regular hours. As a matter of fact, I often made more money after my quitting time than I had made all day, because after that time, all I took in for labor was mine.

But even this filling station work wasn't all rosy. One night a burglar broke into our station. He came in through a back window and took a few little things, including some money. The next day I made a switch that would turn on a light when the window was raised, and I slept in the back room. We knew he would be frightened away by a light switching on, so I hid the bulb down in my pajamas so it would wake me up but not light up the room. The burglar came back one night and raised the window, but he didn't come in. He left the window up and ran. We didn't catch him but he stopped visiting us.