One day we four boys got off out behind the barn, hiding from Papa, and made shotguns out of our rifles. We would take the bullet out of a 22 shell, place the shell in the chamber, pour some powder from a shotgun shell down the barrel, stuff in a little paper for wadding, then put in a few shot from the shotgun shell, and a little more wadding to hold the shot in place. Then we would aim and fire. But the little birdshot wouldn't even go through an old rusted out washtub. After a couple of tries, I put more powder in my gun next time. They still wouldn't go through the tub. The other boys were afraid to put a lot of powder, but I wasn't. So I put twice as much powder the next time—I really put in an overdose and a few extra shot.
Well, yes, the pellets went through the tub this time for sure, but the gun went the other way—right through the stock. The metal body of the gun split the wood stock and came almost to my shoulder. Smoke filled my eyes and a cloud of smoke rose above my head like an Indian smoke signal. It seemed that maybe it was trying to tell us something, so we listened, and we stopped muzzleloading our guns.
Once during a big, big rain the swamps caught a lot of water, and ducks became plentiful on them. A neighbor man and Frank and we four boys went duck hunting. The swamps were four or five miles apart. There was a lot of water and plenty of ducks, but there were practically no trees or bushes to sneak up behind. The ducks could see us coming and fly away. We met with failure at swamp after swamp—no ducks for us, anyhow not many.
By two o'clock in the afternoon we were circling back toward home but were still about seven miles from home, and with only three little ducks about the size of quail—well, maybe a little bigger, and we were very tired and hungry. We had been walking since early breakfast. It had been a long day and we had covered many miles.
Finally we decided to eat the ducks we had. At a vacant ranch house we found a rusty syrup bucket. There was water at the windmill. And in the barn we found some cattle salt with some black stock powder mixed in it. First we built a fire. Then we picked the ducks and boiled them in the rusty bucket, salting the stew with the black and white salt. We could hardly wait for it to cook.
We had walked at least 25 or 30 miles, and if you think walking that distance in eight hours doesn't make victuals taste good, you are plum loco, no matter what they are cooked in or seasoned with. That was, beyond a doubt the best food I had ever tasted in my life. We divided the meat as equally as possible, and it came out to about one fifth as much as each of us needed. Then we drank the soup—two swallows for you, two for him, two for me, and so on, right out of the rusty bucket. When a feather came floating along, we didn't risk wasting a single drop of soup. We would let it go into our mouth, suck the juice out of it, then spit it out.
We always had some good neighbors wherever we lived. One fall we headed maize for a good neighbor. He was to pay us $2.50 for each wagon load. But the stalks had fallen down so badly in places that heading went very slowly and we couldn't make much money at it. Papa tried to get the man, Mr. Wood, to pay us three dollars a load. Mr. Wood thought we were just trying to get more pay for less work, and he wouldn't pay it, so we quit. Then Mr. Wood finished heading the maize himself. Now, I say he was a good neighbor because, when he saw how much trouble it was to head the fallen stalks, he came and paid us fifty cents extra for each load we had gathered. My parents made a practice of praising the good in people and they taught us kids that "By their fruits ye shall know them."
Yes, our parents taught us a lot of things. But there were other things which were not taught in our family. We kids just had to learn about these things as best we could. Along about my early teens, I began to learn about new-born calves and colts and babies. Up until then, all I knew was that horses and cows found their babies out in the pasture, and doctors brought babies to women at times. And about Santa Claus, I wasn't curious about him, I was just happy about him. I well remember how disappointed I was when I learned the truth about Santa. And my newly acquired knowledge about babies brought a bit of disappointment concerning the moral character of adults.
We learned some of our lessons the hard way. I remember one Sunday afternoon we boys were riding young unbroken horses while Mama was away from home and Papa was sleeping. We knew we were not supposed to ride wild horses unless Papa was with us. He had told us never to do so. It wasn't that we deliberately disobeyed Papa. It was that we thought we had learned a lot since he last told us that, and perhaps the rule didn't apply any longer. And besides, we were riding a real gentle unbroken filly.
Anyway, Joel was on the horse and we were holding the reins when she went sideways and fell and rolled over on Joel. She mashed the wind out of him and left him unconscious. It looked bad to me. There he was, just lying there doing nothing. I knew Papa would be unhappy with our disobedience, but when there is something that needs to be done, you just do it. I was scared and I hated to have to face Papa but I didn't hesitate a second. I ran as fast as I could to get him. I was about 12 or 13. Was I scared? Brave? Loyal to Joel? Trustworthy? Devoted to duty? I don't really know. I only knew there was something that had to be done and my sense of duty was stronger than my fear of having to face Papa with my confession of disobedience, so I did what had to be done.