Now you may think I'm a male chauvinist, listing Ima along with my other property that I took. But I didn't mean it that way. I simply meant to list her with the items I took. You see, I had to take her, she wouldn't go voluntarily.
During that month, we slept in a bed on top of our car. We had all the tools we needed for repairing the binder right in the middle of any field. And we always had plenty of hot bath water right from the tractor radiator. It was clean water—we put in fresh clear water daily.
We also found other ways to pick up a few extra dollars. When World War II was in full swing and scrap metal was bringing a good price, we took a few loads of scrap to Sweetwater and sold it. While unloading there one day, I noticed an old Buick car in the scrap pile. I looked it over, and the more I looked at it the better it looked to me. Finally I paid the man $30 for it, pumped up the tires, put in a one-dollar battery and drove it home. It proved to be one of the best running cars I had ever owned. We drove it two years and then swapped it off for a $45 milk cow.
It seems that about half the years we lived at Royston were dry years and that about half of every wet year was dry. So there were a lot of dry times when I was not farming because there was no farming to be done. On one of those occasions I rented an old blacksmith shop at Royston—nothing in it, just four walls and a roof. I think I paid two dollars a month for the use of it, which was all it was worth, considering the sandy dirt floor that came with it, and with no windows for light. It had big doors at one end for cars to come through, some of which I repaired and some I wrecked out and sold for parts. In addition, I stocked and sold a few new parts too.
Wes Kennedy came into my shop one day and showed me some auto light bulbs he had bought at Sweetwater at 20 cents each. And he added, "Some places get 35 cents for them."
I showed him the same kind of bulbs in my shelves which I was selling at 15 cents. He looked at them and said, "I didn't know you sold light bulbs. You mean you sell them for 15 cents?"
I told him, "Yes, they cost me 8 cents, and I've got to make a little profit on them to stay in business."
Of course, we laughed at Wes, and he laughed with us, for thinking he had found such a big bargain at Sweetwater, and had overlooked a bigger bargain right at home.
This shop work went on for about three months. Then one day it rained and I closed up shop and went back to farming. Instead of working at a dollar a day, I cleared about $3 a day in the shop.