The Life of Me: An Autobiography

by Clarence Edgar Johnson

Now I was faced with still another problem, would the machine ever run again? I doubted it, not for days anyway. But it was a long way to anywhere from this place. If the motor wouldn't run, I would really be in trouble. It would be too hard to push in the mud. I had nothing to eat, there was not a house in sight, and there was certainly no place to spread a blanket to sleep through the night. So I had to try something, but what? While I was trying to find the answer to that question, I got straddle of the little Scout to sit and rest and think. Then, mostly through force of habit, and with no faith nor hope whatsoever, I gave the starter a kick. It didn't start but it sounded like it had always sounded, not bad, not full of muddy water. I figured even if it wouldn't start, another kick wouldn't harm it. So I gave it a second try. It still didn't start.

Then I remembered that there had been times under normal circumstances when it required four or five kicks to start the motor. So with that in mind, the faith and hope which I had rejected a short time before, were feebly creeping back into my mind. And with that change in my attitude, I kicked the starting pedal the third time. Well, you can't imagine my surprise when it started and ran like a new cycle on that third try. I was thrilled and overjoyed. I had always had faith in myself, but until now I had never had that much faith in motors. After that, I felt there was no place I couldn't go with a machine like that working for me.

I crossed the big water on the railroad bridge and then got back on the muddy highway. The next time I came to a dip with a lot of water in it, I walked right through with that little Scout puffing along beside me. When water came up over the exhaust pipe, it kept puffing right along. Then water got up over the magneto, then over the spark plugs, and the motor never missed a shot. However, I watched closely to see that water didn't get into the carburetor suction. Everything else was under water and the motor still ran perfectly. She was a real little Scout. If she could have cooked, I would have married her.

But years later when I finally did get married, I could easily see that I would have gotten very little comfort from snuggling up to a wet motorcycle on a cold winter night.

The road and the rain were the same all the way to McCamey. There was an oil boom out there. Jobs were plentiful. Crime and violence were apt to show up at any time. They told me a man was shot down in the street the day before I got there. I couldn't prove it if I had wanted to. They had already carried him away, and I didn't look for the man who shot him.

I got a job with the Sun Oil Company and worked two days. The hottest sun that ever hovered over a desert came out to greet us early in the morning and remained all day. By midafternoon it was unbearable. In those two days I decided that cutting grease- wood to clear a right-of-way for a pipe line was not for me. I would much rather do carpenter work. The wage for carpenters was nine dollars a day; helpers got six dollars. I was not a carpenter, so I thought it best to tell the truth. I signed on as a helper.

They were just about to start building a bunk house when I went to work. The carpenters came to me with a problem none of them could solve. They knew how long to build the house and they knew how many windows to put in it and they knew how wide each window was, but they couldn't figure out how much space to leave between the windows. They asked me if I was good at math and could I figure it out for them. I was good, I could figure it out for them, I did figure it out for them, then we went to work on the house.

After working at that job a few days, I decided that carpentering in McCamey was not to be my vocation either. I was a home-loving boy and McCamey was not my home. A dollar a day in Hamlin appealed to me more than six dollars a day in McCamey. In the first place I didn't really want to work. I mostly wanted to run around a little, see a little of the outside world and see how other people had to work.

By this time I was running low on money and payday was a week away. I had to decide quickly whether I wanted to work here or go home. If I stayed, the company would advance me a little money for board until payday. But my real question was, did I want to work that long. I couldn't afford to get too low on money and be forced to stay until payday, if I really wanted to go home. It took about three minutes for me to make up my mind. During that three minutes I counted my money and found almost enough to take me home. My decision was final, I was going to Hamlin. It was after work hours and the office was closed. But they had my address and knew where to send my pay, come payday.

Again I counted my money. It hadn't increased at all. I couldn't get all the way home on it, but I could get a lot closer than I was at the time. It was 240 miles to Hamlin. I would have to eat at least one meal and I would have to spend a night on the road somewhere. I counted my money a third time. Would you believe it, 95 cents, that's all. It seemed mighty small and weak, considering what all I was planning for it to do for me. But there was really nothing to worry about; I had a half-tank of gas and I wouldn't need more than a quart of oil. With any luck at all I figured I ought to get close to Sweetwater before I ran out of money and gas and oil. And Sweetwater was only 45 miles from Hamlin.