Yes, we found the room all right—and we used "the thing" in the room. But then we had a little trouble figuring out how to operate the thing. There was a wall-tank six-feet high on the wall, with a lever extending outward from the top of it and a long cord hanging down from the lever. We couldn't figure anything else to do, so we tried pulling on the cord. That was the secret—it worked. Water came down from the wall-tank into the bowl with a world of fury and gusto and noise.
Now we had another problem—should we have pulled the cord? We began to wish we had not. The bowl was filling up fast. We couldn't stop the flow of water. True, we had pulled on the cord to start it, but we couldn't push up on the cord to stop it. The bowl was almost full now and the water showed no signs of stopping.
Just before the bowl ran over we ran downstairs. We looked back, expecting to see the water come flowing down through the upstairs floor, or maybe down the stairway. But it didn't run over. We had gotten scared all for nothing. It was years later that we learned about indoor plumbing having automatic cutoffs on the water supply to the bowls.
Now getting back to our trip—before we found a farmer who needed us, one tooth broke off the ring gear in the differential of our car. We were familiar with the sound—it had happened before. But we drove on, listening to the click, click, in the car's rear end every time the wheels went around. Soon it ceased to be a click, click, and became a wham, wham. That meant there were two teeth off. It sounded bad; we couldn't go on.
With the differential sounding like it might go to pieces at any minute, we decided that perhaps this was the cotton country we had been searching for. So we spotted a large patch of white cotton and inquired about picking it. The man said he didn't need hands, but he thought Mr. Hammond wanted some pickers. He lived about three miles on down the road.
We phoned Mr. Hammond and found that we were in luck. He wanted us, and we certainly needed him. He brought a team of mules and towed our car to his place. We unloaded and began picking immediately, and before nightfall we had gathered hundreds of pounds of cotton.
Papa caught a ride to Durant the next day and ordered a ring gear for the car. Before we had finished picking Mr. Hammond's cotton the gear came by mail. Papa jacked up the car, crawled under and made the repair right there in the cotton field by our camp.
When we finished that patch, there were other fields waiting for us. We were making from $30 to $40 a day. The work was hard but we didn't mind. We were finally getting a little money ahead.
I was twelve, and even at that age, I enjoyed helping the family do what I knew had to be done. I was growing up. I was picking more cotton in a day than I had ever picked before. I enjoyed figuring how much I picked and how much money I was making. I knew it wouldn't be my money, but I found pleasure in knowing how much I was adding to the family income.
We quit picking cotton in time to get to Lamesa before Christmas. We didn't go by our farm at Abbie, but went west into the Texas panhandle. Then we turned south to our Lamesa farm.