The Life of Me: An Autobiography

by Clarence Edgar Johnson

For instance, we boys were roping and riding horses one Sunday in our horse lot. We had one little mule colt about a year old that was a real pet, and at times somewhat of a pest. He was gentle and liked to be curried and petted. And naturally we enjoyed feeding and petting him. But on this particular day we were roping and riding and, in general, scaring the horses, and some of the time the horses were scaring us.

When the going got too rough for the little mule colt, he took off and jumped the fence. Now we didn't want him to run away, we wanted him back in the pen. So we thought we'd better get after him in a hurry. But our hurrying wasn't necessary. Before any of us could even get out of the pen, he was back at the gate, looking over it and wanting back in. We opened the gate and let him in and the fun started all over again.

Of course we had neighbors on the plains, some near and some not so near. One neighbor was the Nolan family. They had four or five kids, and a reputation for stealing at times. I was told one farmer missed some oats and corn from his barn one time. And about that same time the Nolans began feeding their horses oats and corn. Most of us couldn't afford such feed for our horses, and the Nolans were poorer than the most of us. They said some wolf hunters had given them the feed because they didn't want to have to carry it back home. The Nolans explained that the hunters said the corn was to keep their horses fat and the oats were to make them long-winded for chasing wolves.

One of our roads to Lamesa went by the Debnam place, the home of another neighbor. One of the Nolan boys often walked to town for the mail. It was only eight miles. Mr. Hamilton told us that one day the boy was riding with him in a wagon, and when they were near the Debnam home, the boy pointed way over toward some sand drifts and exclaimed, "Look, I see a hammer handle!" Mr. Hamilton stopped the wagon and let the boy go get it. Only the tip of the handle could be seen. It seemed quite obvious he could not have known it was a hammer handle from that distance unless he had seen it before with more of it showing. Anyway, he pulled it out of the sand and shouted, "And there's a hammer on the other end of it!" We thought maybe he had stolen the hammer from someone and had buried it there so he could pretend to find it later.

Some time later we Johnson kids were hoeing in the cotton patch with the Nolan kids and their mother. And as usual, we talked about everything, including the hammer incident. And I, as could be expected, not having mastered the art of keeping my big mouth shut, said, "Yes, and we know where you got the oats and corn."

What happened next took me by surprise. Now, it's one thing to have an older brother whip you in the cotton patch when you yell to him, "Come and make me!", as I told you earlier. But it's altogether a much more serious situation when you look up to see a mad mother coming toward you with a hoe raised high in the air and with fire in her eyes. I believe to this day, if I had been wearing shoes, they might have delayed me just enough to have allowed her to hit me. But I was barefooted and I took off like Moody's goose. The woman slammed her hoe down where I had been, but wasn't any more.

We didn't visit the Nolans much, especially for meals. In fact, I think we only ate one meal at their house, and that was before she got after me with the hoe. At the close of the meal, Mrs. Nolan went around the table pouring up the few drops and swallows of milk which were left in each and every drinking glass, explaining that there was no need to waste anything, she would use the milk to make bread next time. So, I can't remember ever going back to the Nolans for a meal after that.

Along with all our other activities, we had to get a little book learning. So we four boys went to Ballard School, three-and-a- half miles away. It was a two-room school house but we had classes in only one room. The teacher lived in the other room with her little five-year-old girl, her two-year-old boy, and a pig. The little boy needed attention periodically, you know, like bathroom attention. Sometimes his mother took him to the bathroom and sometimes one of the older girl students took him. And if you think the bathroom was in the house, you are wrong. Now the pig needed to go to the bathroom too at times. But he didn't go anywhere—he just used the bathroom wherever he happened to be at the time. Nor did he seem to understand that one room was the schoolroom and the other room was his. He didn't seem to realize he was a pig. He thought he was a "people" like the rest of us. And when his little brother and sister were in the schoolroom, that little pig wanted to be in there too. Needless to say, when he brought his bathroom activities into the schoolroom, he disrupted the entire learning process as prescribed by the school board and the State Education Agency.

Ollie Mae was not quite seven when we boys started to school at Ballard in the fall of 1917. Mama thought it was too far for her to have to walk. So she taught Ollie Mae at home through the third grade. Our little sister was deprived of all the higher learning we others got at Ballard.

It wasn't all book learning at Ballard either. One day a couple of girls had to "be excused." In a minute or so, they came running back into the schoolroom with the news that there was a rattlesnake in their closet. (In those days they were closets, not toilets. And no one had ever heard of "rest rooms.") Anyway, we got out there as fast as possible, some through the doors and some jumped out the windows. Sure, we killed the snake all right, but it was hard for us to settle back down to school work.