The Life of Me: An Autobiography

by Clarence Edgar Johnson

Joel also made a submarine out of a piece of two-by-four lumber. He drilled a hole through it from one end to the other for a rubber-band motor. It would dive to the bottom of the water trough, circle around about one time and then float back up to the surface for a rewind. He could set the sheet-iron fins in different positions and make it cut di-dos in several different ways.

I remember the mail car that came up to Lamesa daily from Big Spring. And naturally it had to go back daily or else it wouldn't be there to come up again the next day. Be that as it may, besides hauling mail it also hauled passengers when there were any who wanted to be hauled. It was a seven-passenger car. And by placing a board across the jump seats, it could carry nine passengers with ease, all of them inside the car.

And what are jump seats? Big cars had a lot of room between the front seat and the back seat, somewhat like your living room at home. Jump seats were two in number and they folded down into the back of the front seat. They could be used if needed, or folded down to give more room, when not needed.

Now there's nothing unusual about a mail car carrying mail between two towns, nor about carrying passengers along with the mail. The point to notice here is the segregation of passengers according to color and race at that date in our history. Some were not allowed to ride inside the car with those who were commonly called "whites."

When there was a Negro or a Mexican passenger, he or she had to ride on a seat on the running board and hold onto the windshield post to stay on. If there was one "white," one Negro and one Mexican, there would be one riding in the car and one on each running board. The driver really had no choice in the matter. It was not his fault. It was the law of tradition—or, the law of justice working in reverse.

We used that mail car once to bring a part for our car. We had planned a trip to Hamlin and on the day before we were to go, the car broke a tooth off the ring gear in the differential. The garage man in Lamesa phoned Big Spring for a new gear. The parts man said he had the gear in stock and he would get it on the mail car that very day. It would be in Lamesa by noon, he promised.

Well, the mail car came but the gear didn't. Nor did it come the next day. They phoned Big Spring again and learned that the man who took the order for the gear had become sick suddenly and was rushed to the hospital before he could write up the order. We finally got the gear, Papa made the repair, and we went to Hamlin three days late.

Now this was no big deal-no great big story here. But a boy remembers a thing like this when he is 13 years old and he wanted to go to Hamlin three days ago.

I remember another time when we made a trip to Hamlin running on an old tire that was swelled up and about to blow out. Rather, it was trying to swell up but Papa wouldn't let it. We couldn't find a used tire in Lamesa but we figured we could get a good deal on one in Hamlin. So Papa bought a pair of leather bridle reins. Then he let the air out of the old tire, wrapped one rein through the spokes and around the bad place on the tire and buckled it down tightly. And then when he pumped air into the tire, the leather strap held the bad place in so it couldn't swell up and blow out. The strap lasted the 125 mile trip. We found the tire we needed in Hamlin.

Among other things I remember were the impressive sights on the plains, like the great number of windmills and the great distance you could see. Almost every farm house had a windmill, and more than half the houses in town had mills. It seemed there were so many mills there wouldn't have been enough wind to drive them all.