When other cars drove by along the road, Old Scotch would pay no attention to them. We had taught him not to chase cars. But when either of those Buicks came along, he would run out to greet it a quarter-mile away. He also accepted Robert as a personal friend as well as a friend to our family.
Then one day Old Scotch didn't come when we called him. Nor did he come the next day. We had no idea where he had gone nor why. Of course, we kept hoping that some day he would return. But days became weeks and weeks became months and the dog was still missing. By this time we had given up all hope of ever seeing him again.
Papa and Mama taught us to be nice to our animals and taught us how to get Old Scotch to obey us. And there seemed to be no end to the little things they taught us how to do. In a jiffy they could cut a slot in the side of a pumpkin leaf stem and make us a horn to blow. They showed us how to put a chicken's head under his wing, swing him a few times and lay him down on the ground, fast asleep. Papa taught us how to tie a certain kind of a knot in a rope for one occasion and another kind for another purpose. And he taught us how to make a loop for roping calves.
We owed a lot to our parents for making our lives pleasant and exciting. They were among the most respected parents in our community. They were leaders—not in organizations concerned with business or big government, nor in local clubs, but they were upstanding church-goers with high standards of moral character and integrity. As in play, so in life, they wanted their children to abide by a set of rules which would lead them into a good life—a life of knowledge of the difference between good and evil, with a desire to do the good and shun the evil.
They may not have thought of God as some of us do today but I am sure they did what they thought was right, and they did it with consistency and sincerity. More than that we have no right to ask.
Some families have their own little unique customs. I suppose we were one of those families. When visiting with other families, it seemed odd to me to hear them call their babies by their given names. We always called our youngest one "Baby" until the next one arrived. Then we called the new one "Baby" and the one before him had to take on his rightful name.
This went on until my younger brother was born. Joel, just older than I, couldn't say Clarence, so he called me Big Baby and he called the new one Baby. No, he wasn't slow about learning to talk. You see, we didn't give him much time. He was only sixteen months old when I came along, and he was just three when the new one came. Another custom not common to all families was, we smaller ones wore dresses around home for the first three or four years of our lives. It made diapering much easier and saved a lot of laundering. Come to think of it, I never heard of diapers until I was almost grown. They were not diapers, they were breeches—in our family they were "britches." That's the only thing I ever heard them called until I was a mature man.
We were poor people, living the simple life. I wasn't any poorer than the rest of my family, but I was the simplest one.
We also had this custom of competing among ourselves. In most everything we did, there was an element of competition and hurry. Our parents had a way of causing us kids to apply pressure to each other. They found that it worked better than when parents tried to force kids to work faster.
In the cotton patch you could hear us kids saying such things as, "I picked more cotton than you did." Or if we were hoeing you might hear something like, "Come on, Slow Poke."