The Life of Me: An Autobiography

by Clarence Edgar Johnson

Another burglar visited me while I was working at another filling station. I was sleeping in the station, way up on top of a tire rack. The kid woke me up prying up the back window. I watched him come in and go to the cash register. He had his back to me and didn't even know I was there. I had no gun or anything, not even a ball bat. We were not expecting burglars. Rather, we offered all night emergency service and I slept there to serve anyone who was caught in an emergency.

Well, since I had no gun, I reached up on a shelf and got a bottle of shellac in each hand and told the boy to stay where he was and raise his hands. He obeyed, which was both a surprise and a relief to me. Then I climbed down, turned on all the lights inside and outside and waited for the nightwatchman to come by. The boy was about 16, and well behaved. I didn't have to capture him—didn't even touch him. We talked and he waited patiently. We learned later that he had broken into three stations that night in Hamlin and had gotten less than fifty cents, poor kid.

We were living in town but we still liked to go hunting out in the country once in awhile. One day Earl, Joel and I had been out shooting rabbits and prairie dogs with our 22 rifles. When we came back, Earl got out of the car downtown and asked Joel to take his gun in the house when we got home. His gun was the hammerless type; you couldn't easily tell when it was loaded or unloaded. When Joel carried his own gun and Earl's gun into the house, Mama said, "Oh, I'm so afraid of guns! Are you sure they are unloaded?"

Joel told her that he was sure about his own, but he didn't know about Earl's. Then he aimed Earl's at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. It shot a hole through the ceiling, and Joel turned to Mama and calmly said, "Now it's unloaded."

Do I always have to tell you what Mama said? Can't you just imagine?

Now, Joel didn't only shoot small holes through ceilings; one day he was sitting in his room with his pump shotgun lying across his lap. He had finished cleaning it and was throwing shells in and out of the barrel, distributing oil to all working parts. He must have gotten some of the oil on his thumb, because it slipped off the hammer accidentally and fired one of the shells, and it made the prettiest little round hole—about an inch across— through the inside window facing, the shiplap wallboard, the outside weatherboarding and the outside window facing. Fortunately, there was no one out in the yard at that place at that time. Joel argued that the added ventilation would contribute to his better health.

Joel also had his fling at truck driving for Papa. On one particular day he was driving on a dirt road, and I really think the road was wet and slick, but rumor has it that he just might have gone to sleep. Anyhow, his truck wound up in a ditch. It didn't roll all the way over, but it leaned over against the far bank with two wheels up in the air. His cargo was scattered along a farmer's fence and some of it went through the fence into the pasture. But Joel was lucky. The only damage suffered was loss of time, a lot of work, and one torn sack of flour.

We owned a lot of trucks through the years, but Papa's first truck, which he had let Frank have, and which Frank had let Papa have back later, was a Master by name. It really was a good truck in its day. It had no battery; a magneto fired the plugs to make the engine run and a presto gas tank on one running board furnished gas for the headlights. When night came, you pulled over and stopped, turned on the presto gas, and lighted the headlamps with a match.

Now, presto lights were not the best lights in the world. They were not so much for lighting the way to see where you were going as they were to let others see that you were coming. At today's speed it seems that presto lights might not show more than a few feet ahead. A fast driver of today might have to slow up to allow the light beams to get on out front a little way.

Anyhow, that's the way it was one night when Papa was driving and I, too young to drive, was keeping him company. We were in a little town somewhere in Texas and as you know, every little town has a river running through it, or at least a small creek. I have never been able to understand why people want to run a stream through their city. They know that when the city grows larger, the mayor will have trouble getting enough money to build bridges over it. And each and every bridge is going to be a traffic hazard. Now, this bridge in this little town was not much longer than our truck but it served its purpose; it was a hazard.