We were looking for most any honorable way to pick up an extra dollar. I have seen Papa and Mama take a 22 rifle and a lunch and some horse feed for their team and go out in a wagon and stay all day, while we kids were in school. Before night they would come home with rabbits piled eight or ten inches deep all over the wagon bed.
One man bought a single-shot 22-rifle and some shells on credit— about eight dollars worth. In one week he brought in enough rabbits to pay off the debt. That was one time you might say rabbits saved our lives.
During the dry weather, while we were slowly losing about everything we ever had, Papa hired out to haul cottonseed cake in his wagon to ranchers somewhere west of Lamesa. I didn't know where he was taking it but there were times I didn't see him more than once or twice a week.
Monroe Hamilton was one of our neighbors. He and his family lived about a mile from us. During the drought of 1917 his work horses got so weak and poor that they became exhausted while plowing in the field. They stopped in the middle of the field and had to be unhitched and walked home. He began feeding them more and working them less while they regained their strength. Mid-afternoon was about as long as they could keep working.
By the time the horses were strong enough to work all day again, they had become accustomed to stopping their work about mid- afternoon and they refused to pull the plow after that time of day.
One day Monroe became so unhappy with them that he unhitched them in the field where they had staged their sit-down strike, drove them to the barn, hitched them to his wagon and trotted them eight miles to Lamesa to get the mail. Then he trotted them eight miles back home. They had never experienced becoming exhausted while pulling a wagon out on the road. They were not smart enough to pull a sit-down strike anywhere except plowing in the field.
During World War I, Frank wanted to join the Army. But Mama and Papa did their part in talking him out of it. He was too young to be drafted. But he wasn't at home much after that. He worked here and there in defense work. He told us he worked awhile in a powder factory in West Virginia. After the war was over, he came home in 1919 and worked some for Dawson County, doing some mechanical work on a road grader tractor. Finally, Papa bought a big truck and let Frank take it and go wherever he could find a job, hauling whatever anyone would pay him to haul.
Another source of income for us during the dry weather was in gathering and selling dry bones. There was a ready market for bones in Lamesa. A lot of cows had died here and there due to dry weather and cold weather. We hauled and sold quite a few bones.
We also salvaged a lot of rawhides—dry rawhides. We couldn't sell them but we could use them ourselves. They were hard and stiff, but by soaking them in water we were able to straighten them out, cut them into strips and use the strips for braiding whips and making other useful articles to be used on the farm.
Despite all the work, we boys had some time off for fun and adventure. There were times after rains when it was too wet to plow. But then there might be bushes to be grubbed or we might have to build fence or maybe chop wood or do any one of a dozen things that kept bobbing up to be done. If and when we got all those things done, and then if it was still too wet to plow or hoe weeds, then we had some time off for ourselves. Also on Saturday afternoons we took time off, unless there was something which just had to be done.