The Life of Me: An Autobiography

by Clarence Edgar Johnson

We kids learned early in life how to do things, purely a matter of survival. But learning the "why" of things often came through reading and I was the slowest of readers. Even in high school I read very slowly, but I got what I read tolerably thorough.

I never read my history more than one time and I made "A" throughout the course. The same was true with stories and other readings. In college I only read my history once. And I didn't even review for the final test and came out with a "C."

There were a few books on the shelves in our house when I was a boy. Some had pictures, so I looked at them. Some didn't have, so I didn't look at them. And I certainly didn't read them.

There were two books which stood out in our home, always available and close at hand. They were the Bible and the Sears, Roebuck Catalog. There were times when these two rivaled each other in importance. Yet they were both necessary, the Bible for living and dying and the catalog for "What ye shall put on." And then the catalog, after a new one took its place each year, became the forerunner of what we now know as bathroom tissue.

Each autumn after the first bale or two of cotton had been sold, Papa and Mama would get the catalog down and make up an order that would fill a wooden box half the size of a coffin. Then we would wait two or three weeks for the shipment to come from Dallas. Finally a postcard would come from the railroad depot in Hamlin stating that the shipment had arrived. The next time Papa was in town in his wagon, he would go by and pick it up.

That night after supper we would all gather around for the grand opening. There was something in the box for one and all.

There was a pair of work shoes for each, and that pair would have to last until the fall of next year. Last year's would do to wear to school awhile yet. The new ones would do to wear for Sundays until they began to look worn, then we could wear them to school. And they would last a long time if we would pull them off as soon as we got in from school in the afternoons, and wear our old ones for doing chores. We could still wear our school shoes for Sunday by shining them up a bit. And of course, come March the weather would be warm enough to go barefooted most of the time.

There was underwear in the box, winter-weight that is. We didn't wear any in summer—just overalls and a shirt, that's all—well, sometimes a straw hat. And naturally we wore a cap in winter, with ear flaps. Each of us would get two suits of the underwear, unless some of the smaller kids could wear some hand-me-downs, and unless the hand-me-downs had already been handed down too many times and were too far gone.

The winter caps came in the big box too, and two pairs of pants for each boy, caps and pants all corduroy. Needless to say, the pants were the knee length kind, known as knickers, gathered with elastic above the knees. There were long pants for boys in their late teens, and those came down to their shoe tops. There were socks too. Socks were short and worn only by men and the big boys with long pants. Most of us boys got stockings which met the knickers above the knees. They were held up by garters of black elastic. The elastic also came in the box—yards of it. And the garters were made to individual sizes by our mother whose hands were never idle. There might have been shirts in the big box, though I think Mama made most all our shirts.

The corduroy knickers stood out full above the knees due to the gathering by the elastic. That caused the legs of the breeches to rub together when we walked, and that rubbing caused a swishing noise each time we took a step. As we walked to school, most of the boys went step, step, stepping along, but we Johnsons went swish, swish, swishing along. And everyone could hear that we were wearing our new corduroy breeches.