The Life of Me: An Autobiography

by Clarence Edgar Johnson

The unsightly wen stayed with me until I was about 17—or whenever it was I started shaving. I couldn't bear the looks of me in the mirror as I shaved. So, one afternoon I drove over to the Stamford Sanitarium and asked a doctor to remove it. He got me on the operating table and then asked me if I wanted him to put me to sleep.

I told him, "No, I want to watch what you are going to do to me."

So he handed me a mirror and began whittling on me. And when he had finished the operation, he sewed me up, stuck a patch over the place, and told me to let someone else drive me back to Hamlin. But since it was only 22 miles, and since I had driven over there alone, and since there was no one to drive me back, I drove myself back and I've been disobeying doctors ever since.

But, we're getting ahead of our story. Let's get back to our younger days when my little sister was about two years old and she had two or three brothers who were not much older. One of those brothers noticed, as most little brothers do sooner or later, that there was a difference in his and her ways of draining water.

For example, when he had to go, he would merely stand behind a tree or go around behind the smokehouse, let it flow and watch it fall. Or he might play fireman up the side of the smokehouse wall. Or maybe aim at a beetle or a red ant and watch him struggle to survive.

On the other hand, his little sister would squat and her dress would hide the entire operation. But the day he became curious about her method of operation and got nosy enough to peep to see what was taking place, he committed the unpardonable sin. And it would have caused extreme pain in the region of the lower hind part of that small boy if his mother had learned of what he had done. What she would have done to him would have been a big price for a little boy to have to pay for a little knowledge that most little boys get for free these days. But he didn't get caught. That was the beginning of a lot of secret things that little boy did throughout his childhood—secrets he didn't share with anyone.

We four boys went out together most of the time, both to work and to play. But at the Exum place, Ollie Mae was getting big enough to want to go with us when we went to play. Her presence created a little problem we boys hadn't had before, especially when there wasn't a good hiding place.

I remember one day out in the pasture where there were no trees or bushes to hide behind, one of the smaller boys had to drain his water and he solved his problem in his own way. He simply said, "Ollie Mae, look the other way." She did, then he turned his back and minded his little business.

In the fall of the year, we often missed some schooling because of so much cotton to be picked. However, we didn't lose as much time from school as some of the families around us. Many a time we would eat an early breakfast, go to the cotton patch and pick for an hour or two and then go directly from there to school. In the afternoons we would go directly from school to the cotton patch, pick cotton until dark and then go home for supper.

In my boyhood days, eating breakfast or supper in daylight was a luxury many of us couldn't afford. Cotton picking often went on until spring and sometimes we'd have to lose a few days of schooling in the spring in order to get the last of the cotton out of the field in time for planting.