BOOKS, FOLKLORE, MEDICINE AND DREAMS
As I said earlier, I got along okay in school. But throughout
school I was a slow reader. And this reading slowness has
plagued me all my life. It even caused me quite a bit of trouble
in college. As a small boy, when Santa Claus brought me a book,
I was a little disappointed. I'd much rather have gotten some
kind of a toy, especially one with wheels that would roll.
We kids learned early in life how to do things, purely a matter
of survival. But learning the "why" of things often came through
reading and I was the slowest of readers. Even in high school I
read very slowly, but I got what I read tolerably thorough.
I never read my history more than one time and I made "A"
throughout the course. The same was true with stories and other
readings. In college I only read my history once. And I didn't
even review for the final test and came out with a "C."
There were a few books on the shelves in our house when I was a
boy. Some had pictures, so I looked at them. Some didn't have,
so I didn't look at them. And I certainly didn't read them.
There were two books which stood out in our home, always
available and close at hand. They were the Bible and the Sears,
Roebuck Catalog. There were times when these two rivaled each
other in importance. Yet they were both necessary, the Bible for
living and dying and the catalog for "What ye shall put on." And
then the catalog, after a new one took its place each year,
became the forerunner of what we now know as bathroom tissue.
Each autumn after the first bale or two of cotton had been sold,
Papa and Mama would get the catalog down and make up an order
that would fill a wooden box half the size of a coffin. Then we
would wait two or three weeks for the shipment to come from
Dallas. Finally a postcard would come from the railroad depot in
Hamlin stating that the shipment had arrived. The next time Papa
was in town in his wagon, he would go by and pick it up.
That night after supper we would all gather around for the grand
opening. There was something in the box for one and all.
There was a pair of work shoes for each, and that pair would have
to last until the fall of next year. Last year's would do to
wear to school awhile yet. The new ones would do to wear for
Sundays until they began to look worn, then we could wear them to
school. And they would last a long time if we would pull them
off as soon as we got in from school in the afternoons, and wear
our old ones for doing chores. We could still wear our school
shoes for Sunday by shining them up a bit. And of course, come
March the weather would be warm enough to go barefooted most of
the time.
There was underwear in the box, winter-weight that is. We didn't
wear any in summer--just overalls and a shirt, that's all--well,
sometimes a straw hat. And naturally we wore a cap in winter,
with ear flaps. Each of us would get two suits of the underwear,
unless some of the smaller kids could wear some hand-me-downs,
and unless the hand-me-downs had already been handed down too
many times and were too far gone.
The winter caps came in the big box too, and two pairs of pants
for each boy, caps and pants all corduroy. Needless to say, the
pants were the knee length kind, known as knickers, gathered with
elastic above the knees. There were long pants for boys in their
late teens, and those came down to their shoe tops. There were
socks too. Socks were short and worn only by men and the big
boys with long pants. Most of us boys got stockings which met
the knickers above the knees. They were held up by garters of
black elastic. The elastic also came in the box--yards of it.
And the garters were made to individual sizes by our mother whose
hands were never idle. There might have been shirts in the big
box, though I think Mama made most all our shirts.
The corduroy knickers stood out full above the knees due to the
gathering by the elastic. That caused the legs of the breeches
to rub together when we walked, and that rubbing caused a
swishing noise each time we took a step. As we walked to school,
most of the boys went step, step, stepping along, but we Johnsons
went swish, swish, swishing along. And everyone could hear that
we were wearing our new corduroy breeches.
There were things for the girls in the shipment too, and for
Mama. But I didn't know what they got, except maybe a bundle of
cloth or two or three, to be made into dresses. I suppose they
also made what they wore under the dresses. But that was top
secret as far as we boys were concerned. However, that didn't
bother me. I was by women's clothing about like I was by Santa
Claus--not very inquisitive. My field of research didn't include
girls' clothing.
As I grew older, of course, my attitude changed. I became
somewhat interested in broadening my knowledge of girls and their
surroundings. And so, with a feeling of guilt, and in strictest
privacy, I turned to the women's section of the Sear, Roebuck
Catalog for research and knowledge of the innermost secrets about
women's wear.
Now, in that big box from Sears, Roebuck there would be blue
denim for homemade overalls. There would be pots and pans for
the kitchen, and gingham and calico and elastic and needles and
thread. And there'd be a side or two of black harness leather
for making new lines and new traces and for repairing the old
ones. Papa also used the same leather for shoe soles and heels.
There'd be shoe tacks and harness thread; bolts, nuts, and copper
rivets; leather lace for saddles, beeswax, welding flux and axle
grease; ropes for handling cows and horses, carpenter tools and
horse shoes.
And one year, for Frank and Susie, there was a phonograph and
some records. Only I think the phonograph came in a separate
shipment later in the fall--perhaps for Christmas.
One of the favorite records for us smaller kids was "The Preacher
and the Bear." After awhile those of us who couldn't read could
pick out that record easily because all the letters were worn off
the label. Even people who could read couldn't read that one
because there was no reading on it. We little kids had worn it
all off with our fingers making it go round and round.
In those days research and technology had not advanced to the
point where they could make a spring that wouldn't break. Watch
springs broke in those days. Cultivator seat springs broke.
Screen door springs broke. And when automobiles came along,
their springs broke.
This phonograph had a wind-up spring, so it broke too. That's
when we kids started putting our fingers on the label part of the
record and turning it ourselves. Fingers got as good reception
as a spring, so we soon wore the label off playing our favorite
record
Sorry I wandered. Let's get back to the big box. In the box I
remember there was a big bolt of cotton-sack ducking. We started
picking cotton in the fall with last year's old leftover sacks.
But now it was time for new sacks. The old ones would make good
short sacks for the little kids. The big new sacks would be for
those who picked the most cotton.
I didn't know it at the time but I learned later that the story
they used to tell us about Santa being overloaded on Christmas
Eve and couldn't bring all the toys was just not true. The fact
was that Santa had ordered from Sears, Roebuck and they were out
of some of the items and would have to ship them later. And by
the time those items arrived in Hamlin, Santa had to deliver them
a night or two later.
One year, in the big box, there was a set of shoe lasts and a
stand, for repairing all sizes of shoes. I don't remember when
we got the set. I think maybe it came to live with the family
before I did and it was as good as new after I was a grown man.
When Papa put new half soles on our shoes, he would punch holes
with an awl and we little kids always wanted to place the shoe
tacks in the holes. Our helping didn't delay his work a great
deal--and he was always kind and patient with us as we labored
with him and got in his way.
Many of the items in the big box were surprising to us kids, but
a blue denim jacket was no surprise to Papa, because he was the
one who made out the order in the first place. He also got
socks-
-a bundle of twelve pairs of gray Rockford work socks, also sock
supporters, suspenders, and sleeve holders. Somewhere tucked
away among other relics of olden days, I think I still have a
pair of old sleeve holders.
You ask, "What are sleeve holders?" Oh, I thought everybody knew
about sleeve holders. In those days you didn't buy a shirt with
sleeves the length you wanted. You just bought a shirt. All the
sleeves were the same length--long enough for the longest arms.
Then you put on the little elastic holders and let them hold your
sleeves up to the desired length. They were fancy little
miniature garters to wear over your shirt sleeves above the
elbows.
I have on my shelf a copy of the 1902 Sears, Roebuck Catalog and
I checked up to see if the socks I mentioned really were Rockford
Brand. They were--and the price was 55 cents for one dozen
pairs.
In the big box there were also such items as safety pins, fruit
jar lids, Kodak film, Daisy fly poison, lamp wicks, and
sometimes, a few views for our stereo-scopes.
I'm sure there were other things in the big box. I just can't
remember all that was in it. One thing for sure, if we just had
to have it, it was in there. If we didn't have to have it, we
didn't order it.
Now, a couple of nonessentials that were left off the order were
bicycle tires. Papa knew that the old tires wouldn't hold air
and he knew they couldn't be patched. But he knew they would
hold cotton. So, he showed us how and we stuffed them full of
cotton. And then we wrapped tire tape over the holes to keep the
cotton in. And we wrapped tire tape around the tires and rims to
hold the tires on the rims.
You may ask, "Wasn't it hard to pedal?" Boy! I'll say it was
hard to pedal. But I didn't care. I couldn't reach the pedals
anyway. Someone had to push me on it. But I didn't have to push
anyone because I was too little to push anyone. And the old bike
landed in the junk pile before I was big enough to push any of
the smaller ones on it.
Frank was through with the old bike when he handed it down to us
smaller kids. He had gotten himself a motorcycle. I believe it
was an Excelsior by name, although I think it was by name only.
It turned out to be not so hot.
The next thing I knew Frank owned a Buick automobile. I think he
bought it from Uncle Simpson Johnson. It had a four cylinder
engine, a spare tire, and a top that would fold down for easier
going when facing the wind. The top could be put up to keep off
the rain and sunshine. It was the model which had the two
leather straps running from the front corners of the top down to
the frame on both sides of the radiator.
Another thing I remember from my youth has to do with crazy
sayings which mean nothing in fact. Some of them are about as
scientific as a black cat causing bad luck if he crosses your
path.
Anyway, most of the parents in our neighborhood didn't want their
kids going out in the hot sun bareheaded. They would tell the
kids, "If you go out bareheaded, the old buzzards will puke on
your head."
One Sunday we were visiting Uncle Andrew's family. At least ten
of us boys and girls started out into the pasture and someone
noticed that Lela, the youngest girl, didn't have her bonnet on.
The older ones told her the buzzards would puke on her head if
she didn't go back and get her bonnet.
About 55 years later, Lela told me that she had always had a kind
feeling toward me since that day because I was the only one of
the whole bunch who would wait for her. All the others ran off
from us and left us to catch up as best we could.
When we threw a stick and it went end over end or round and round
sideways, that was just plain throwing a stick. But if we
pointed one end forward and shoved the stick forward by a thrust
on the back end of it, our scientific name for that operation was
"puking" the stick. And we might start one end of a stick
through a hole in a fence or over a fence and "puke" it through
or over in the same manner.
Another thing grown-ups told us kids was, "If you want to see the
wind, you've got to suck the old sow." Well, I wanted to be able
to see the wind, but that seemed a little far out, even to me.
And before I got around to qualifying, I learned that they were
fibbing to us about it. You still couldn't see the wind.
Here's another one for you. When we killed a snake, we kids
wondered why he wouldn't stop wiggling. We could even cut his
head off and he would keep right on wiggling. They told us a
snake wouldn't stop wiggling till sundown, unless you turn him
over and make him lie on his back, then he would stop wiggling.
Trouble was, we couldn't get him to lie on his back. Even with
his head off, he would keep rolling back over on his stomach, as
long as he could wiggle.
On the Exum farm, our house was about a half-mile from Grandma's
two-story house. One day Mama sent me to Grandma's. I don't
remember what I went for, but I do remember that when I got
there, I couldn't find Grandma anywhere. I went all through the
house looking for her.
I didn't find her but I found a full box of matches on one end of
her sewing machine, where she always kept them. Now, everyone
knows that all little boys like to play with matches. And since
I was one of those little boys, I, too, liked to play with
matches, especially since I knew I was not supposed to touch
them.
So, I got a handful and went outside. As I went, I struck them
on the porch wall, on the porch posts, on the bricks along the
flower beds and on the front yard fence. Soon I was out of
matches and had to go back for more.
I figured that if a little handful of matches was that much fun,
a big handful would be a lot more fun. My second handful was
really full.
This time I went out in the sand outside the yard and stood up a
row of matches in the sand with their tops up and close enough
together that the breeze would blow the flame from match to
match. Then I lighted the match on the up-wind end of the row.
It worked perfectly and it was fun watching the flame leap from
match to match all the way to the far end.
I reasoned that too many missing matches would cause grown-ups to
become curious and begin asking questions. And since they knew
that I had gone to Grandma's that day, I would be the first one
they would question. So I limited my match pleasure to three
handfuls and then went home.
I still don't know why I was sent to Grandma's that day, but I
remember I was glad I went. I came back with a deep, dark secret
of my own and a pleasurable memory to add to my storehouse.
In our youth, if any of us kids complained of feeling a little
under the weather, we were given a "scientific" medical
examination at bed time. We had to stick out our tongue for our
parents to look at. If there was the least bit of white coating
on the tongue, it meant we must take a calomel tablet and go to
bed.
I'm not sure I am spelling "calomel" correctly because I failed
to find the word in my small dictionary. And I sort of doubt
that our family doctor knew how to spell it. But it's just as
well. I have yet to find a doctor who can write so anyone can
read what he wrote anyway.
But anyhow, that was the science of medicine in our family--if
the tongue is coated, take a pretty little pink tablet and wash
it down with a glass of water.
I hated even the thought of taking one. The slightest taste of
one gagged me. To prevent vomiting in the kitchen, I would ask
Mama if I could go out on the porch and take mine.
Now, I knew I wasn't apt to vomit on the kitchen floor, but Mama
didn't know it. Another thing she didn't know was that there was
a knothole in the porch floor, under which, as years went by, a
small mound of pink tablets grew into a large mound.
They never caught me putting the tablets through the hole because
it was always dark. No one ever took calomel in the daytime,
unless he had nothing else to do but sit around and wait for a
call to the bathroom, which was way out back in the cold--always
cold. Not one of us ever had a coated tongue in the summertime.
Mama would say, "Hurry, now, it's cold out there." I knew full
well it was cold out there. But I wasn't about to take that
little pink tablet. I was determined to go through ice or snow
or any other bad weather rather than have that little tablet go
through me. It didn't take long for me to put a tablet through a
knothole, throw a glass of water out into the yard, and get back
into the warm kitchen. I don't know how the other kids made out.
The knothole was my own secret which I shared with no one.
Looking back, I can easily see that I should have let the entire
family in on my secret. They could have saved the cost of the
tablets as well as those miserable early morning trips to the
cold bathroom. And as it turned out, the white coating on my
tongue disappeared during the night the same as theirs did.
I was about eight years old at the time--that is, at the time I
learned to use the knothole. I enjoyed it until we moved away
from the Exum place. By the time I was 12 or 14, I began to
understand the scripture where it reads, "As a man thinketh, so
is he." The scriptures proved to be true. I thought I didn't
want to take the tablets, so I didn't. I thought I would get
well, so I did.
Another verse reads, "The Lord will provide." We often overlook
the little things the Lord does for us, like putting knotholes in
the most convenient places. Fifty years later, I learned that at
age eight I was a Christian Scientist. They too, are a group of
people who do not believe in taking medicine.
Many years later, when I was 40 years old, a neighbor told me he
had fleas under his house and he wondered if I might know how to
get rid of them. I told him, "Try Calomel. I used it when I was
a kid and we didn't have fleas under our house."
When I was quite a small boy, a number of us were hoeing cotton
one day. We had stopped at the end of the rows to get a drink
and sharpen our hoes. Playfully, Frank picked me up and
pretended he was going to throw me over the fence and out into
the county road. Well, he swung me over the fence and stood me
on my feet down in some weeds. And there between my feet was a
beautiful little pocket knife.
This seemed almost too good to be true. I was the happiest
little boy in the whole wide world. I guess every boy wants a
pocket knife, and I had one--all my very own.
The others all looked at the knife and wished they had one like
it. Jokingly, Frank said the knife was half his because, if he
hadn't pitched me over the fence, I wouldn't have found it. So,
a few days later, when he asked if he could borrow it, naturally,
I loaned it to him, not because I thought it was half his, but
because he was my brother and wanted to borrow it.
Frank was going to school at Hamlin at that time and when I
thought it was time for him to return my knife, he told me that a
boy in town had borrowed it and wouldn't give it back. And that
was the end of my knife.
Now, did I hate Frank for what he had done? Of course not. I
was too young to hate. Hurt, yes, but hate, never! I still
loved Frank just as much as I ever did. And it was the same when
he had to correct me. I loved him just as much while he was
whipping me as I did before he began and after he stopped.
At any rate, my little knife was gone for sure. But a few weeks
later, I dreamed one night that I found another knife, just about
like the first one. And, as before, I dreamed I found it by the
fence at the end of our cotton rows. I dreamed I put the knife
in my pocket. The next morning when I woke up, I went and
searched my pockets, but the knife wasn't there.
A few weeks later I dreamed of finding still another pocket
knife. And I dreamed that I remembered having dreamed of finding
the first one but had lost it by putting it in my pocket instead
of holding onto it. So this time I clutched it tightly in my
hand. This time, I reasoned, it could not possibly get away from
me, even though I seemed to know I was dreaming. I felt sure
there just had to be a way to pass from asleep to awake and bring
that knife with me. But when I woke up, I was disappointed again
and had to conclude that it just couldn't be done.
After that decision, I began putting my dreams to better use.
When I dreamed a dream, and I seemed to realize that I was
dreaming, I would do things to entertain other kids--things no
one else could do, like sliding down the roof of a big barn,
dropping off the edge, and just before I hit the ground, I would
close my eyes so the fall wouldn't hurt me.
At other times I would tease a vicious bull until he would chase
after me, and just before he hit me I would laugh at him and
close my eyes. He couldn't even find me, let alone hurt me.
Often I would open my eyes and get him to charge again, only to
lose me and miss me when I closed my eyes.
Our youngest son is named Larry. And after he was a grown man, I
dreamed that he and I were going some place in a Model T Ford car
on a highway in Texas. It had been raining for weeks and was
still raining. The highway was muddy and the ruts were so deep
our axles were dragging. We were wet, cold, tired, and stuck in
a mud hole. Then the truth came to me. I got in the car and
called to Larry to get in out of the rain and take it easy. He
was puzzled, but he got in the car, sat down, and asked, "Why?"
I told him, "Relax and rest, I'll wake up in a few minutes and
everything will be all right. I'm dreaming all this. We're not
stuck out here in the mud. It's not raining on us. There are no
unpaved highways in Texas and no Model T cars on them. I'm
dreaming that you are out here in this wet and cold with me. You
are not really here. You can't even hear me talking to you. You
are lying up somewhere in a nice warm bed. Come to think of it,
so am I."
I woke up sometime later and found things to be just the way I
had described them to Larry in my dream.
Another time I dreamed that Ima, my wife, and I were touring in
the mountains. We had stopped at a lookout point and were
looking into the valley below. Dinosaurs were grazing down there
and walking around. One cute little fellow, with a neck about as
long as four telephone poles, came toward us and stuck his head
up over the rock banister where I stood. Ima had gotten scared
and ran to the car. I called to her, "Ima, don't be afraid.
Come back and let's pet him. You know we're dreaming because
these things have been extinct for thousands of years. Come on,
he won't hurt us and we'll be the only people living who ever
petted one--or even saw one."
In high school we were told that a long dream might take place
within a few seconds. But I already knew it from first-hand
experience.
I was about nine years old when I had such an experience. One
day I was riding in the back seat of our Reo car. Papa was
driving at about his regular speed of twelve miles per hour down
a country road. I was sleepy but still awake when we crossed Dry
Callie Creek on a noisy bridge.
Then I fell asleep and dreamed we went places and did things that
would have taken a couple of hours in real life. When I woke up,
I thought I had slept all the way to town and almost all the way
back home. I was disappointed because I had planned to buy some
candy while we were in town.
I looked around to see how far we were from home only to find
that we were about two hundred yards from the noisy bridge, and
were still on our way to town.