I remember once one of my brothers and I bought a big box of matches in Neinda and lighted the weeds and grass along the fence rows from there almost to Hamlin. We would strike the matches and throw them into the grass and weeds. It's a wonder we didn't set our load of cottonseed on fire. It was after dark and the fires made beautiful fireworks. We even wondered why farmers didn't do this more often. We thought we were really doing them a favor, cleaning up their fence row. And it was a lot of fun.
"And with all thy getting, get understanding." Well, we got some understanding when a farmer drove up beside our wagon in his car, and very politely explained that he realized we boys had not thought about the fence posts we were burning and the wires we were damaging by heating them too much. Then he added that he knew our daddy, and he knew that Papa wouldn't want us to do what we were doing. Then he promised not to tell Papa, if we wouldn't set any more fires.
He was right; we hadn't thought of the damage we were doing. We were sorry, of course. And we certainly didn't want to do anything that would reflect on Papa and the family's good name. Nor did we want Papa to know what we had done. I guess he never found out or he would have said something to us about it.
While we lived in Hamlin, Papa had an old farm twelve miles northwest of town. The field was covered in Johnson grass and we tried to help the grass grow by plowing the field every year. We had a breaking plow, a mowing machine, a hay rake and a hay baler, all horse-drawn. We baled the hay and stored it to sell in winter when it would bring a better price. There was an old rundown house on the farm. I went out to plow the field at times and I slept in the house rather than drive back and forth to Hamlin. There were no near neighbors. It was way, way out, and staying there at night proved to be challenging and quite scary.
The doors of the old house were only half there—sagging, splintered, and broken, and the windows were all broken out.
Noises jumped out at me from every dark corner. The silence seemed to amplify every noise. Mice sounded like jungle beasts and packrats made loud noises like goats playing on the roof. Daybreak was always welcome, melting the darkness and pushing back the veil of fear.
The warehouse which my brother Earl still uses as a freight depot was originally built for hay storage. In haying season we baled the hay and hauled it to that hay barn. In the hay field, we usually had, among other things, canned pork and beans for dinner. Once in awhile we had pork and beans at home for a meal, but Albert said they didn't taste good unless he was sitting on a bale of hay.
Papa also had another farm twelve miles south of Hamlin, in deep shinnery sand. I'm not sure how he got hold of it nor why he owned it. I think he had to take it in on a land deal of some sort in order to get the other party to take something off his hands that he had and didn't want. Now he had a sandy farm on his hands that he couldn't use and didn't want. There wasn't much of anything of value on the land—a rundown peach orchard and a half-dugout. There was a dug well by the house four feet across and 60 feet deep. There was never any water in it, but 100 yards away out in the orchard was another well about three feet deep with water standing within a foot of the top of the ground. There was no cover over it; you just walked up and dipped a bucket of water any time you wanted it. And when you were not dipping, the cows and horses could drink from it.
In the early 1920's many of our inter-city buses were marked with well-painted names, such as MISS DALLAS or MISS ABILENE. Well, I had a Model T Ford touring car and I thought I might just as well join the parade. First I got a set of good used tires off a big Buick. They were about four sizes too big for the Ford, but I put them on anyway. And with only ten pounds of air in the tires, it rode very smoothly and it looked like a clubfooted horse.
Then I cut the top down small to cover only the back seat. And I put a windshield on the back of the front seat. That made two windshields, one in front of the driver and one in front of the passengers in the back seat. It made a beautiful limousine, with the driver sitting out in the sun and weather. To top it all off I painted her name on both front doors—MISS FORTUNE. Of course we kids had a million dollars worth of fun with it.