The Life of Me: An Autobiography

by Clarence Edgar Johnson

We didn't have much time nor money for such trips. We were too busy farming and raising cattle. The pasture on our Royston farm was a mile and a half long, and when Dennis was three years old he often went with me to drive the milk cows home in the afternoons. He usually walked all the way there and half way back. Then he would ride my back the rest of the way home. Just as my father and I did a lot of things together when I was a small boy, so did my children and I do a lot of things together

While we lived on the Royston farm, Ima was telling me about the death of a kinsman at Gordon. Ima didn't attend the funeral but many of her people did. Families had gathered from far and near to pay their respects and to attend the funeral the next day. The house where visiting was taking place that night had no electric lights but was lighted instead by kerosene lamps. Ima's sister, Mary Beth, was five years old at the time, and when one of the men struck a match to light his pipe, she said, "Oooooh! Don't it get light when you strike a match."

The story is told that just before it got dark that night, one woman, perhaps an Aunt Minnie or an Aunt Hattie,—she was blessed with an oversupply of aunts by both names—anyhow, one of the women went out on the back porch and, looking toward the outhouse, said, "I want to get a good view of that outhouse before dark. I have an idea I'll have to make a beeline for it before morning and it's going to be dark."

Well by midnight all were bedded down, on beds, on cots, on pallets, in hallways and in corners. Then for the next three or four hours all was relatively quiet except for snoring and other occasional noises made unintentionally.

Then there was the movement of a person—perhaps a woman—maybe the same woman who took a good look across the back yard just before dark. It was dark in the house now, and she couldn't be seen, but her movement could be followed by your ears as the floor squeaked and groaned under her weight, as she tiptoed between the pallets and through the hall door, getting faster now as she neared the back porch, and still faster as she left the porch and crossed the back yard. Then suddenly and without warning there was the noise of a heavy soft object against a clothes line, followed by the noise of the same soft object as it fell flat on the ground. And then, after a moment of silence, there came the voice of a woman sitting on the ground and saying, "Oh well, I wouldn't have made it anyway."

I have a lot of memories of things that happened at Royston when our kids were growing up. I was working on the windmill down in the field one day, about a half-mile from our house. I needed a wrench from home and I needed Ima to help me a little. It was getting late and I wanted to keep working, so I sent Dennis and Anita in the car to get Ima and the wrench. I told Dennis not to try to turn the corner up by the barn, but to switch off the motor there and walk to the house and tell Ima what I needed. I put the two kids in the front seat of the car, then I put the car in low gear, got it started toward home, and then I got out.

Dennis was upwards of five years old, at least past four. He could drive the car by getting up in the seat on his knees. All he had to do was guide it and switch off the motor when he got to where he was going. But Dennis thought he was smarter than I was. He still thinks that at times even now. I can't seem to convince him otherwise.

Anyway, he thought he could turn the corner by the barn, and he almost did. But he sideswiped a fence, taking a post or two with him until the car got so involved in the barbed wire it couldn't go any further and the motor died.

The little wreck scared both of the kids. They got out of the car and went to the house, Dennis crying and Anita trying to tell Ima what had happened. Ima was about as upset as a wet hen in a rainstorm as Anita told her, "Car run in pense." Ima was still upset when she drove the car back to the windmill. She seemed to think I had done something wrong. How was I to know that Dennis wasn't as smart as I had been at his age? My goodness, I was planting with a two-row planter before that age. Was Ima going to admit that her son wasn't as smart as his pa?

I had always wanted to become a school teacher. I thought I had the ability to teach kids a lot of things. At times it seemed hopeless but I kept trying and some of my ideas worked. When Dennis was about four, Ima saw him reach up under a car fender, break off a chunk of dried mud and start eating it. She scolded him and told him to stop it. But after Ima went in the house I took Dennis around the other side of the car, where Ima couldn't see us from her kitchen window, and showed him a lot of good lumps of dried mud and I told him he could eat all he wanted. He ate a little and quit, and we never caught him eating any dirt after that.