AT THE EXUM FARM AFTER I WAS FIVE
We, the Will Johnsons, owned this first farm 12 years. Then in
the fall of 1910, Papa bought the Exum farm, just east of us. It
was much larger and it fitted our needs better. There were 332
acres in the place, and we paid $9,000 for it.
When January rolled around, it was time for us to move onto the
Exum place. And on the day we moved that half-mile, I had to
stay at our old home. I was allowed to help load the wagons at
our old farm, but they wouldn't let me go with them to our new
home to unload the wagons. Of course, that hurt my feelings
terribly.
But I was hurt even worse when one of the older boys came running
back to the house to get a gun to kill a skunk down on the
creek--and Mama wouldn't let me go with him.
She said, "No, you can't go. You're too little."
I didn't understand how Mama could be so mistaken in my size. I
was as big as most of the other boys, I thought, and smarter than
some of them.
After we got moved to the new home, again Papa set out to build
whatever buildings we needed to suit our wants. There was
already a house and a good size barn. And when Papa finished
building, there were shelters for tools, livestock, poultry, and
a blacksmith shop.
He made a large, roomy cellar at our new home. I can't remember
ever having to go to the cellar because of a storm, but it was
there just in case. And it was good for storing fruits,
vegetables, and canned goods.
One time Papa brought home a stalk of bananas and hung it down in
the cellar. Down there it would be protected from the heat of
the days and the freezing nights. Papa explained to us that we
should eat the ripest bananas first before they got too ripe and
had to be thrown away. Then some of the older kids jokingly told
that Papa said, "Eat the rotten ones first and wait till the
others rot to eat them."
We were poor in terms of money, yet we had as much as or more
than the average family in our community. Papa was a carpenter,
a blacksmith, a good farmer. And when automobiles came along, he
became a mechanic.
We never left our hack out in the weather, we had a shed to
shelter it. Our barn was second to none in our neighborhood,
especially by the time we finished building sheds and stalls on
both sides of it. Later on, we got a car and built a shed for
it. We didn't call it a garage, it was a car shed. And one time
Papa bought another house, moved it up beside ours, and joined
them together.
We had a good well of water, a big windmill, and a cypress water
tank on a tower about ten feet tall. The tower under the tank
was boarded up on all four sides to form a room that was used for
keeping milk, butter, watermelons, and other things cool.
Screened windows allowed the wind to pass through. That was
about the coolest place on the farm.
Next to the windmill was a garden, fenced rabbit proof and
irrigated with water from the well. Every summer we had roasting
ears, popcorn, cantaloupes, watermelons, peanuts, okra, squash,
pumpkins, and more kinds of beans and peas than I can name.
The barn was filled with feed heads, corn, and cottonseed, both
for planting and for feeding. There was room in the barn and
adjoining sheds for horses, cows, chickens and hogs. And up in
the loft, there were peanuts still on the vines.
Some of our neighbors had given up trying to grow peanuts because
rabbits ate so many of the vines. It was all but impossible to
keep the rabbits out of the patch. But we always grew peanuts
anyway. When neighbors asked Papa how he managed to grow so many
good peanuts, he told them he just planted enough for the rabbits
and the youngsters too. I can't remember when we didn't have
enough peanuts in the barn loft to last all winter. We stored
them on the vines and then we picked them off as we needed them,
and fed the vines to the stock.
I remember one sunny afternoon, four or five of us boys were
sitting up in the barn over the horse stalls eating peanuts. I
was sitting on a board that was nailed to the underside of the
ceiling joists. Well, the nails pulled out of the board and I
fell to the ground and hit my head on a wooden block. The block
proved to be tougher than my head. It cut a two-inch gash in my
scalp above my right ear. Papa took me to our family doctor and
had it sewed up.
The story was told on us boys that, when we were all little, a
mule kicked one of us in the head, and that boy was never quite
normal after that. But then, as we grew older, we all got to
acting so much alike that Mama and Papa couldn't tell which one
of us the mule had kicked.
Many years later, during the depression of the 1930s, a neighbor
was giving me a homemade haircut one Sunday afternoon and, when
he discovered the scar on my head, he laughed and said, "Now I
know which one the mule kicked."
Now let's get back to the story of when I was a boy on the Exum
farm. I started to school when I was seven. In fact, most kids
started at seven in those days. And since I was seven when
school started in September, that meant I had been seven since
last January 11th. In other words I was almost eight.
While we lived at the Exum place, we went to school at Wise
Chapel, which was about three miles northeast of our home. In
winter we faced cold northers many mornings, and in the
afternoons, we often faced strong southwesterly winds on our way
home.
As we walked to school, other pupils from other farms joined us,
and then still others. By the time we arrived at school, there
might be as many as 20 of us in one bunch. One of the families
whose kids walked with us was the Bruner family. Papa's younger
brother, Ed, married Eva Bruner.
What do you mean, "Did we walk that three miles to school?"
Of course we walked--except maybe two or three times a year when
the weather was extremely bad.
I might as well take time right here to mention another little
incident which took place along our school trail. It involved
one of the Bruner boys. And what happened to that boy should
never happen to anyone. But when you get that many school kids
in one bunch, most anything is apt to happen, and it did this
time.
In the first place, I guess school trails shouldn't cut across
pastures, but they did. In the second place, I haven't been able
to figure out why God made prickly pears, but He did. In the
third place, if school kids are going to use the trails which
wind in and out among the thorny bushes and cactus plants, they
should never scuffle near prickly pears, but they did. And in
the fourth place, if a boy scuffles and falls down, he should
never sit right flat down in a prickly pear, but he did.
After he got up, he went straight home. His mother took the
tweezers and removed all the large thorns and many of the small
ones. Then they took him to Mama because, they said, her eyes
were better. She removed all she could see, which left the boy
in fairly good shape, I suppose, all things considered.
What we now know as kindergarten was unknown when I started to
school. Beginners started in the Primer, and the Primer was not
a grade in school--it was a book. As Webster defines it, "an
elementary book for teaching children to read."
We went to school to learn to read, write, spell, and work
arithmetic problems--and to obey the teacher.
We also learned many other things that were not a part of the
regular curriculum and which were not necessarily sanctioned by
those in authority. We grouped them all together and called them
"recess."
In my first year, I went through the Primer, the first grade, and
far into the second grade. I was almost ready for the third
grade at the beginning of my second year. According to my
teacher and my parents, I was smart and well behaved. I was a
good little boy.
Even at that early age, the teacher granted me special privileges
and I was in love with her. My love and admiration for all
teachers, especially women teachers, went with me all through
high school and college, at times causing my wife some
displeasure.
During that first year in school, one side of my face became
paralyzed. I was an ugly sight, especially when I laughed or
smiled. Half of my face would smile and the other half would
just hang there, doing nothing.
The doctor prescribed some red medicine that Susie carried to
school every day and poured some down me ever-so-often. It
tasted awful. I was glad it was a beautiful red color. I don't
believe I could have stood it if it had been brown.
Anyway, I slowly got over most of my ailment, but I'm sure it was
hard for my family to get rid of the horrible picture my
condition had printed on their memories.
Unfortunately, my paralysis was not my only ugliness. I was born
with a "wen" in the corner of one eye next to my nose. It was a
lump about the size of the end of my thumb--that of course,
depending on what age I was when you measured the end of my
thumb, and how much of my thumb you included in the measurement.
After all, how much of a thumb can you measure and still call it
the end.
At any rate, I was far from beautiful, even before the sagging of
half my face.
Not so with the rest of my family. Papa was stately, superior in
quality, as generous as he was elegant, and he was a handsome
man.
Mama was a lovely woman. I can remember back to when she was
about 33, and I can imagine how beautiful she must have looked to
Will Johnson 15 years earlier. When I was very young, I liked to
watch her do her long hair up into one big plat, then coil it
round and round on top of her head and pin it so it wouldn't come
down.
Frank was handsome and admirable in the eyes of a younger brother
my age. Susie was a good-looking girl. However, all girls
looked good to me--as they were supposed to. Earl's presence
would improve the looks of almost any group of kids. And Joel
was downright pretty, that is, for a boy. Although Albert and
William Robert were younger than I, and at times little more than
pesky little brothers, still I could easily see that they both
had something to be desired far above that which looked back at
me from my mirror. And of course, Ollie Mae was as beautiful as
anything I had ever seen until I became 18 and fell in love.
The unsightly wen stayed with me until I was about 17--or
whenever it was I started shaving. I couldn't bear the looks of
me in the mirror as I shaved. So, one afternoon I drove over to
the Stamford Sanitarium and asked a doctor to remove it. He got
me on the operating table and then asked me if I wanted him to
put me to sleep.
I told him, "No, I want to watch what you are going to do to me."
So he handed me a mirror and began whittling on me. And when he
had finished the operation, he sewed me up, stuck a patch over
the place, and told me to let someone else drive me back to
Hamlin. But since it was only 22 miles, and since I had driven
over there alone, and since there was no one to drive me back, I
drove myself back and I've been disobeying doctors ever since.
But, we're getting ahead of our story. Let's get back to our
younger days when my little sister was about two years old and
she had two or three brothers who were not much older. One of
those brothers noticed, as most little brothers do sooner or
later, that there was a difference in his and her ways of
draining water.
For example, when he had to go, he would merely stand behind a
tree or go around behind the smokehouse, let it flow and watch it
fall. Or he might play fireman up the side of the smokehouse
wall. Or maybe aim at a beetle or a red ant and watch him
struggle to survive.
On the other hand, his little sister would squat and her dress
would hide the entire operation. But the day he became curious
about her method of operation and got nosy enough to peep to see
what was taking place, he committed the unpardonable sin. And it
would have caused extreme pain in the region of the lower hind
part of that small boy if his mother had learned of what he had
done. What she would have done to him would have been a big
price for a little boy to have to pay for a little knowledge that
most little boys get for free these days. But he didn't get
caught. That was the beginning of a lot of secret things that
little boy did throughout his childhood--secrets he didn't share
with anyone.
We four boys went out together most of the time, both to work and
to play. But at the Exum place, Ollie Mae was getting big enough
to want to go with us when we went to play. Her presence created
a little problem we boys hadn't had before, especially when there
wasn't a good hiding place.
I remember one day out in the pasture where there were no trees
or bushes to hide behind, one of the smaller boys had to drain
his water and he solved his problem in his own way. He simply
said, "Ollie Mae, look the other way." She did, then he turned
his back and minded his little business.
In the fall of the year, we often missed some schooling because
of so much cotton to be picked. However, we didn't lose as much
time from school as some of the families around us. Many a time
we would eat an early breakfast, go to the cotton patch and pick
for an hour or two and then go directly from there to school. In
the afternoons we would go directly from school to the cotton
patch, pick cotton until dark and then go home for supper.
In my boyhood days, eating breakfast or supper in daylight was a
luxury many of us couldn't afford. Cotton picking often went on
until spring and sometimes we'd have to lose a few days of
schooling in the spring in order to get the last of the cotton
out of the field in time for planting.
But our work was not always hard field work. Sometimes there was
more pleasant work to be done, like going with Papa in the wagon
to haul a load of wood, or maybe to haul a hog over to a
neighbor's.
That kind of work was more or less dangerous when too many small
boys went along. So some of us smaller ones would have to stay
home with Mama.
Papa always kept a box of sugar stick candy locked in the bottom
of his trunk for the purpose of bribing us smaller ones on those
occasions. I really shouldn't call it bribery; rather, it was a
consolation offered to us younger ones who had to stay home.
When Papa would go somewhere alone in the wagon, it didn't hurt
us so much. Mama would explain that he was going on a mission
where little boys were not supposed to go, and we would accept it
gracefully, since we all had to stay home. But if one or two of
the boys rode away with him, that was hard for us smaller ones to
bear.
But we couldn't throw a fit, because fits were not allowed in our
family. We just had to suffer the heartbreak in silence and a
fair amount of dignity. And as they would drive away, it seems I
can still hear Mama saying to us, "Come on, children, let's go
get a stick of candy." And of course, that would help our
feelings somewhat, bless our little hearts.
Sometimes the smaller children would each get a stick of candy
for staying home while the larger ones went down on the creek in
Grandma's pasture. However, wading in water in our own pasture
after summer rain showers usually included all of us, the
youngest and all. It was understood that the oldest of the bunch
was always the boss and had the responsibility for the safety and
well-being of the entire party.
Whether we were working or playing, that rule of command held
true in our family. And it was not the only ironclad ruling in
the Johnson family--rulings which stood through the years without
question and with no thought of breaking.
We always had a set of four boxing gloves. I say always because
I can't remember when we didn't have them. And in boxing, we
obeyed the rules of not hitting in the face nor below the belt.
Another strict rule was, "Don't get mad at your opponent when he
is giving you a beating. If you get mad, you mustn't play
anymore." The same held true in wrestling. If you couldn't
stand to be pinned down, you just didn't wrestle.
You can bet your boots, we all boxed and we all wrestled. No one
wanted to be left out of the action. And the only way to stay in
the action was to obey the rules and take whatever the other one
dished out.
This didn't mean that the big kids were unmerciful to the little
ones. There was another rule, "Don't hurt the little ones.
Don't hold the little one down after he yells 'calf rope.' Back
away and let him have a new start."
We all played "rough and rowdy," but always with smiles on our
faces. And the rules of fair play applied to our animals also.
We had a big dog that was part Collie and part Shepherd. He grew
up with us kids and became one of the family. We named him
Scotch. Papa brought him to us kids at the Exum place when he
was a wee, little woolly ball of bouncing, playful puppy. Papa
had given five dollars for him, which was a lot of money for our
family in those days. He was the only dog our family ever owned.
According to his bloodlines, he was half Collie and half
Shepherd, but according to us Johnson kids, he was just all dog--
a gentleman canine of the highest order, a true friend, guardian
and protector of children, truly a little boy's best friend.
We were taught never to abuse Old Scotch while he was a puppy,
and as he grew older, we couldn't abuse him, he wouldn't allow
it. And we were told never to call him without a good reason,
such as to feed him, play with him or let him go hunting with us.
Papa told us that if the dog trusted us, he would obey us better.
I guess that was good advice. At any rate, Old Scotch obeyed
orders and commands better and more promptly than any other dog I
have ever seen, either in or out of the movies. He even obeyed
requests which were not meant as commands.
We kids didn't really know how to train the dog. We just let him
grow up with us and by the time he was a year old, he was smarter
and better looking than most of us kids.
However, we did teach Old Scotch to do a few simple little
tricks-
-nothing spectacular. He would sit down when we told him to.
And he would hold still while we placed a small stick on top of
his nose, and remain still until we counted to three. Then at
the count of three, he would quickly flip it off his nose and
catch it in his mouth. Then of course, he expected a pat of
congratulations and a kind word or two.
We taught him to keep the chickens off the porch and out of the
yard. That was an easy job. He soon learned to do it without
having to be told.
We kids liked to sit under the steering wheel of our car and
pretend we were driving. Soon Old Scotch was doing the same
thing. Sometimes when we kids opened the car door, we would have
to hurry or Old Scotch would beat us to the steering wheel. He
was only playing with us kids when he did that. He wouldn't do
Papa that way.
One of his favorite games was to take a stick in his mouth and
challenge us to a game of wolf-over-the-river. He liked for us
to try to catch him and take the stick. He also liked to play
catch--but only with a rubber ball. We would pitch the ball to
him and he would catch it and return it to us. However, there
was a strict rule in this game--never throw a hard ball to him,
because that would hurt his teeth and he would begin to distrust
and disobey us.
He learned not to trust some of the neighbor kids. They
sometimes threw him a hard ball. They didn't "Do unto Old Scotch
as they would have Old Scotch do unto them."
At times we would offer the dog something to eat that he had
never seen nor tasted before, and if he wasn't sure of it, he
might reject it. But he seemed to have enough faith in us boys
to think that, if he could see us eat some of it, then he would
not be afraid to try it. So, we would let him see us eat some of
it, or at least we would pretend to eat it.
Our dog didn't have the long Collie-like nose, but rather a
beautiful short nose like the Alaskan Husky. Nor was his coat
long and stringy but was short and heavy, more like the wool of a
sheep before shearing. His color was a deep reddish brown, with
just the right touches of white about the head. His body was
round and full. His shoulders and hips were broad, as though
somewhere in his ancestry there was most certainly a St. Bernard.
Old Scotch couldn't bear the sound of thunder. During a
thunderstorm he wanted to go in the house and get under a bed.
That's the only time we ever let him in the house. The noise
must have hurt his ears. Firecrackers affected him the same way.
He would tolerate the noise of a rifle when he was out hunting
with us, but he wouldn't allow even his best friends to aim
anything at him.
Needless to say, we would never aim a gun at him any more than we
would aim one at each other. But a broomstick or a hoe handle
was like a gun to Old Scotch. When we aimed something at him, he
wouldn't bite us to really tear us apart, but he would certainly
bite hard enough to make us drop the object we were pointing at
him. He would growl in a way that told us for sure that he would
not allow anyone to point anything at him.
Old Scotch saved us many a step and earned his keep many times
over. We kept our milk-pen calves in the lot through the day.
Then we kept our milk cows in the lot at night and let the calves
run out to graze. Next morning we would tell Old Scotch to go
get the calves and he would. He wouldn't get the horses nor the
other cows--only the milk-pen calves.
After we ate breakfast and did the morning chores and were ready
to harness the horses for plowing, we would send Old Scotch after
the horses and he would get only the horses, no cows nor calves.
In the afternoon we would tell him to go get the milk cows and he
would bring only the cows, no horses.
When we called our dog, we didn't say, "Here, Scotch! Here,
here, here." The word we used wasn't "here," it was "how." And
no matter how far away he was, he would come immediately when he
heard us call. He only paused long enough to make sure it was
one of our family calling him and to get the direction from which
the call came.
And when he came to us, he didn't come walking nor trotting, but
loping. And he didn't stop a few steps away nor lower his head
and ears, nor did he approach with his tail down. He bounced
right up beside us, full of life and gusto as if to ask, "Oh boy!
What kind of excitement do you have planned for me this time?"
It's a common thing to see a two-car family in the 1970's, but we
were a two-car family as early as 1916. We still had the Reo and
Papa bought a Big Six seven-passenger Buick touring car. Old
Scotch knew that Buick by sound. Uncle Robert had a Little Six
Buick that sounded almost like the Big Six. Our dog could
recognize the sound of those Buicks a half-mile away.
When other cars drove by along the road, Old Scotch would pay no
attention to them. We had taught him not to chase cars. But
when either of those Buicks came along, he would run out to greet
it a quarter-mile away. He also accepted Robert as a personal
friend as well as a friend to our family.
Then one day Old Scotch didn't come when we called him. Nor did
he come the next day. We had no idea where he had gone nor why.
Of course, we kept hoping that some day he would return. But
days became weeks and weeks became months and the dog was still
missing. By this time we had given up all hope of ever seeing
him again.
Papa and Mama taught us to be nice to our animals and taught us
how to get Old Scotch to obey us. And there seemed to be no end
to the little things they taught us how to do. In a jiffy they
could cut a slot in the side of a pumpkin leaf stem and make us a
horn to blow. They showed us how to put a chicken's head under
his wing, swing him a few times and lay him down on the ground,
fast asleep. Papa taught us how to tie a certain kind of a knot
in a rope for one occasion and another kind for another purpose.
And he taught us how to make a loop for roping calves.
We owed a lot to our parents for making our lives pleasant and
exciting. They were among the most respected parents in our
community. They were leaders--not in organizations concerned
with business or big government, nor in local clubs, but they
were upstanding church-goers with high standards of moral
character and integrity. As in play, so in life, they wanted
their children to abide by a set of rules which would lead them
into a good life--a life of knowledge of the difference between
good and evil, with a desire to do the good and shun the evil.
They may not have thought of God as some of us do today but I am
sure they did what they thought was right, and they did it with
consistency and sincerity. More than that we have no right to
ask.
Some families have their own little unique customs. I suppose we
were one of those families. When visiting with other families,
it seemed odd to me to hear them call their babies by their given
names. We always called our youngest one "Baby" until the next
one arrived. Then we called the new one "Baby" and the one
before him had to take on his rightful name.
This went on until my younger brother was born. Joel, just older
than I, couldn't say Clarence, so he called me Big Baby and he
called the new one Baby. No, he wasn't slow about learning to
talk. You see, we didn't give him much time. He was only
sixteen months old when I came along, and he was just three when
the new one came. Another custom not common to all families was,
we smaller ones wore dresses around home for the first three or
four years of our lives. It made diapering much easier and saved
a lot of laundering. Come to think of it, I never heard of
diapers until I was almost grown. They were not diapers, they
were breeches--in our family they were "britches." That's the
only thing I ever heard them called until I was a mature man.
We were poor people, living the simple life. I wasn't any poorer
than the rest of my family, but I was the simplest one.
We also had this custom of competing among ourselves. In most
everything we did, there was an element of competition and hurry.
Our parents had a way of causing us kids to apply pressure to
each other. They found that it worked better than when parents
tried to force kids to work faster.
In the cotton patch you could hear us kids saying such things as,
"I picked more cotton than you did." Or if we were hoeing you
might hear something like, "Come on, Slow Poke."
The plan worked well. No one wanted to be outdone by a brother,
especially a little brother. And if a little brother could
outshine a big brother, even just once in awhile, that was a real
feather in the little one's cap.
Oh, yes! There was hurry and there was pressure. But it didn't
seem to get us down as it does some people today. We had no
psychologists in those days to tell us that pressures would warp
a kid's brain. We didn't know that competition and hurry would
drive us crazy until these educated people told us about it.
So we lived hard, we worked hard, and we played hard. Then we
were able to go to bed and sleep hard. Never in my life did I
ever hear Mama or Papa say, "I didn't sleep well last night,
because I felt tense and worried."
There was really nothing to worry about like there is today.
They didn't worry that we kids might go away from home and get
into trouble. We didn't have to leave home to get into trouble.
We kids made our own trouble right at home. We had a lot of fun
doing a lot of different things. Most of our troubles were
brought on accidentally, we didn't deliberately plan them.
There was no worry about the family losing anything, we had
nothing to lose. No one would steal from us because no one
wanted what we had. So, whatever pressures we might encounter
during the day were dispelled during a night of welcome rest.
In the cotton patch Mama and Papa encouraged us to see who could
pick 100 bolls first. The first one to pick his 100 bolls would
call out, "hundred." Then each of the others would call out the
number of bolls they had picked during the same time.
This competition got more bales of cotton to the gin in a shorter
period of time. But, as in all activities where kids are
involved, we sometimes had little disagreements.
I had this thing of humming or singing a song while I picked
cotton and counted my bolls. I found that the mental work I was
doing was relaxing and it allowed my hands to do their work
faster. And now, 65 years later, I learn that I was doing
something a little bit kin to what they call Yoga.
At any rate, it really worked for me. I could pick cotton faster
than a brother or two who were older than I was. Now, I didn't
necessarily use my system in order to get more of the family
cotton picked. I used it mainly just to beat my older brothers
picking cotton, and that not for very long at a time.
But my little scheme backfired on me. One of those brothers
couldn't stand to be outdone by a younger brother. He told Mama
and Papa that I was lying and cheating, because he knew I
couldn't count bolls while I sang a song. But he was wrong. I
could. Anyway, nothing I could say would make him believe me. I
began to become an outcast among some of my brothers early in
life. I believe there were times when some of them would have
been glad to "sell me into slavery" as Joseph's brothers did him.
But my parents didn't seem to doubt my word. I really believe
they understood that I could do a thing or two that some of the
others could not do--and perhaps were not at all interested in
doing.
I believe little things like that were the beginning of a wee bit
of an unconscious rift between some of my brothers and me, and at
the same time, the making of a stronger bond between my parents
and me.
Looking back, I remember many times when Papa and I were doing
things together and there was no one else around. I really don't
know why I was the only one there a lot of times. Maybe I just
wanted to be in good company. I loved and admired Papa and I
thought he was the best and nicest man in the world. Or perhaps
I was with Papa because of my inquisitive mind concerning
mechanical things, like,
"How do you shoe a horse?"
"How do you tighten a loose wagon tire?"
"How do you make a row-binder do what you want it to do when the
manufacturer couldn't seem to do it?"
I watched him do all these things and many more. And many of the
things he did fascinated me.
The situation was much the same between Mama and me.
"How do you churn milk and make butter?"
"How do you 'take up' the butter after it is churned?"
"How do you make those beautiful decorations on it later?"
"How do you weave a carpet on Grandma's loom?"
It seems I was always watching a lot of these goings-on while the
other kids were somewhere else doing whatever they liked to do.
And Mama and Papa were never too busy to answer my questions. I
realize now how much more I could have learned if I had only
known how and when to ask more questions.
It seems that my parents favored and petted me at times. I'm not
sure they did. If they did, perhaps it was because they felt
sorry for their little ugly duckling. And maybe I only imagined
they were especially nice to me. Maybe they were that nice to
everyone. Perhaps they were nice to me just to have me around
handy when they needed me to help them just a little bit.
This latter seems to be the most reasonable argument, after
considering some of my stupid exploits and my senseless reasoning
throughout my life.
Yet, it just might be possible that they were partial to me on
account of the wen, and later on, my paralysis--these factors
coupled with the fact that within the last four years along about
the time I was born, they had suffered the loss of a two-year-old
son, a two-week-old daughter, Mama's favorite brother, Hugh, and
Grandpa Johnson.
Who can measure the thoughts of loving parents as they view their
newborn child for the first time, anxious to know whether he or
she is beautiful and healthy and without blemish.
And who knows the anxiety of parents who, after seeing their
child with blemish, must wonder how his condition will affect his
relationship with others, how it will affect his outlook on life,
and whether it might grow worse and shorten his days.