BACK TO OUR LAMESA FARM IN 1919; SCHOOL AT BALLARD
So we moved back to our big farm near Lamesa and farmed there in
1919. Susie and Dode moved to Hamlin. They quit farming and
Dode got a job in town.
After those two dry years on the plains, there seemed to be more
coyotes than ever, at least we saw more of them. The drought and
hunters had taken their toll of rabbits and I guess it was harder
for the coyotes to find something to eat. They would come almost
to our barnyard in broad daylight in search of food. Old Scotch
managed to keep them away from our chickens, but he was no match
for two or three of them at one time off out in the pasture, and
he was wise enough to know it.
I have seen him chase a lone coyote a few hundred yards away from
our house, but then that one would join another one and the two
of them would chase Old Scotch back into our yard. Then with us
to back him up, he would chase them away again. When there were
more than one, they made the dog stay in his place.
Now I guess you are wondering why we didn't shoot the coyotes
when they came that close. The answer is simple. Coyotes are
not stupid. They can tell a boy from a man, and they can also
tell whether or not the boy has a gun. They simply would not
come that close to a big boy with a gun. We kids had guns but
they were small 22 caliber. They were too small for coyotes.
And besides, the powder in the shells at that time was nothing
like as powerful as the powder we use today.
We four boys had our own guns and naturally Papa had his. Albert
was the youngest of us four. He had a gun by the time he was ten
and he killed his share of rabbits, prairie dogs and
rattlesnakes.
You see, we did a lot of target practice with our guns.
Sometimes we would sit on our front porch and shoot nailheads in
the front yard fence. We would also stand matches up in nail
holes in the fence and shoot the heads, striking the matches
without breaking the stems. Shells cost us only eight cents for
a box of 50.
No one could deny that we were pretty good. One man told that
Earl was so good with his rifle that we boys didn't climb trees
to pick peaches. He said we other kids would walk around under
the trees with buckets and Earl would shoot the stems and let the
peaches fall into the buckets. But Earl denied it, explaining
that we tried it but Papa made us quit because it bruised the
peaches when they fell.
Now Joel was a year-and-a-half older than I, and no question
about it, he was a smart boy. He was almost as smart as I was.
But he was so good-looking the girls wouldn't leave him alone.
So he sort of drifted away from his smartness and concentrated on
dressing well and looking good. He wound up selling men's
clothing, and later on, insurance. But when he was a boy on the
farm at Lamesa, I remember he made a windmill. I mean this was a
windmill to remember. He set it up on a tower and made it pump
water. And he made a real cylinder out of a piece of pipe, with
two leather valves attached to two wooden spools. One spool
moved up and down, the other one was stationary at the lower end
of the pipe. When the wind blew the mill would pump water from a
can that was buried in the ground, up through a little pipe, out
through another pipe and into a small watering trough. The mill
must have been about two or three feet tall, tower and all. And
the water it pumped would water a herd of about 20 tiny little
imaginary cows.
Joel also made a submarine out of a piece of two-by-four lumber.
He drilled a hole through it from one end to the other for a
rubber-band motor. It would dive to the bottom of the water
trough, circle around about one time and then float back up to
the surface for a rewind. He could set the sheet-iron fins in
different positions and make it cut di-dos in several different
ways.
I remember the mail car that came up to Lamesa daily from Big
Spring. And naturally it had to go back daily or else it
wouldn't be there to come up again the next day. Be that as it
may, besides hauling mail it also hauled passengers when there
were any who wanted to be hauled. It was a seven-passenger car.
And by placing a board across the jump seats, it could carry nine
passengers with ease, all of them inside the car.
And what are jump seats? Big cars had a lot of room between the
front seat and the back seat, somewhat like your living room at
home. Jump seats were two in number and they folded down into
the back of the front seat. They could be used if needed, or
folded down to give more room, when not needed.
Now there's nothing unusual about a mail car carrying mail
between two towns, nor about carrying passengers along with the
mail. The point to notice here is the segregation of passengers
according to color and race at that date in our history. Some
were not allowed to ride inside the car with those who were
commonly called "whites."
When there was a Negro or a Mexican passenger, he or she had to
ride on a seat on the running board and hold onto the windshield
post to stay on. If there was one "white," one Negro and one
Mexican, there would be one riding in the car and one on each
running board. The driver really had no choice in the matter.
It was not his fault. It was the law of tradition--or, the law
of justice working in reverse.
We used that mail car once to bring a part for our car. We had
planned a trip to Hamlin and on the day before we were to go, the
car broke a tooth off the ring gear in the differential. The
garage man in Lamesa phoned Big Spring for a new gear. The parts
man said he had the gear in stock and he would get it on the mail
car that very day. It would be in Lamesa by noon, he promised.
Well, the mail car came but the gear didn't. Nor did it come the
next day. They phoned Big Spring again and learned that the man
who took the order for the gear had become sick suddenly and was
rushed to the hospital before he could write up the order. We
finally got the gear, Papa made the repair, and we went to Hamlin
three days late.
Now this was no big deal-no great big story here. But a boy
remembers a thing like this when he is 13 years old and he wanted
to go to Hamlin three days ago.
I remember another time when we made a trip to Hamlin running on
an old tire that was swelled up and about to blow out. Rather,
it was trying to swell up but Papa wouldn't let it. We couldn't
find a used tire in Lamesa but we figured we could get a good
deal on one in Hamlin. So Papa bought a pair of leather bridle
reins. Then he let the air out of the old tire, wrapped one rein
through the spokes and around the bad place on the tire and
buckled it down tightly. And then when he pumped air into the
tire, the leather strap held the bad place in so it couldn't
swell up and blow out. The strap lasted the 125 mile trip. We
found the tire we needed in Hamlin.
Among other things I remember were the impressive sights on the
plains, like the great number of windmills and the great distance
you could see. Almost every farm house had a windmill, and more
than half the houses in town had mills. It seemed there were so
many mills there wouldn't have been enough wind to drive them
all.
Since we had moved from a land of mesquite trees and since there
were no trees on the plains--except those planted near homes for
windbreakers--this country looked mighty bare. You could see as
far as your eyes could stretch. A newcomer might wonder whether
it might strain his eyes to look so far, until he became
accustomed to it.
The town of Lamesa was a small county seat. On the courthouse
lawn were two windmills pumping water into a cypress tank high on
a tower. The tallest mill was 80 feet and the tank was 60 feet.
That was the city water supply. Some of the stores around the
square used city water and some had their own mills out back.
During the war the price of many things went higher and higher.
Gasoline was one of them. It went from eight cents a gallon up
to 29 cents a gallon. There were no drive-in service stations
then, only gas pumps on the curbs out front. And of course they
were all pumped by hand.
One farmer started home one Saturday and drove up to a gas pump
and asked, "Gasoline up again?" When they told him it was 29
cents a gallon, he said, "Put in one gallon. That will get me
home and back." Then after thinking it over for about two
seconds, he said, "No, put in a half-gallon. That will get me
home and I ain't comin' back."
And food went up too. Simpson and Jones ran a mercantile store
in Lamesa. One day a customer said to Mr. Simpson, "You know
that quarter's worth of beans you sold me last week? Well, the
sack had a hole in it and I lost two of them on the way home--and
the other one had a worm in it."
We went to town about once a week, but most of our time was spent
on the farm working, playing and going hunting. Joel was
harrowing in the field one day, walking barefooted behind a
harrow in freshly stirred soil. The harrow ran over a
rattlesnake, just a small one, about 18 inches long or so.
Well the snake was running for his very life--being tumbled and
tossed this way and that way. Joel saw the snake, so he ran way
over to the right to avoid him. About that same time, the snake
tumbled out from under the unfriendly harrow, still fighting for
survival. And he didn't care which direction he went, so long as
it was away from the harrow, so he too, shot out to the right.
Now, when the snake got tangled up with Joel's bare feet, there
were about two or three seconds when it was hard to tell whether
the boy or the snake was trying the hardest to get away from the
other. They both succeeded--momentarily. But as soon as Joel
could stop the horses and tie up the lines, he went back and
demanded that the snake pay the supreme penalty. Not that Joel
didn't appreciate the fact that the snake had not bitten him, nor
did Joel have anything personal against the snake. It was just
that, since the snake was a snake, he had to go.
Earl, Joel, Clarence (that's me) and Albert were generally spoken
of as the four boys in our family. Ollie Mae was younger than
Albert, and since she was a girl, she was sort of a different
kind of link in a long chain of boys. And William Robert was
much too young to be in our group. So we were the four boys.
Looking back, I am amazed that we four all reached adulthood. I
don't mean from germs we got from not washing our plates--I mean
because of guns and knives and rattlesnakes and wild horses and
cows.
For instance, we boys were roping and riding horses one Sunday in
our horse lot. We had one little mule colt about a year old that
was a real pet, and at times somewhat of a pest. He was gentle
and liked to be curried and petted. And naturally we enjoyed
feeding and petting him. But on this particular day we were
roping and riding and, in general, scaring the horses, and some
of the time the horses were scaring us.
When the going got too rough for the little mule colt, he took
off and jumped the fence. Now we didn't want him to run away, we
wanted him back in the pen. So we thought we'd better get after
him in a hurry. But our hurrying wasn't necessary. Before any
of us could even get out of the pen, he was back at the gate,
looking over it and wanting back in. We opened the gate and let
him in and the fun started all over again.
Of course we had neighbors on the plains, some near and some not
so near. One neighbor was the Nolan family. They had four or
five kids, and a reputation for stealing at times. I was told
one farmer missed some oats and corn from his barn one time. And
about that same time the Nolans began feeding their horses oats
and corn. Most of us couldn't afford such feed for our horses,
and the Nolans were poorer than the most of us. They said some
wolf hunters had given them the feed because they didn't want to
have to carry it back home. The Nolans explained that the
hunters said the corn was to keep their horses fat and the oats
were to make them long-winded for chasing wolves.
One of our roads to Lamesa went by the Debnam place, the home of
another neighbor. One of the Nolan boys often walked to town for
the mail. It was only eight miles. Mr. Hamilton told us that
one day the boy was riding with him in a wagon, and when they
were near the Debnam home, the boy pointed way over toward some
sand drifts and exclaimed, "Look, I see a hammer handle!" Mr.
Hamilton stopped the wagon and let the boy go get it. Only the
tip of the handle could be seen. It seemed quite obvious he
could not have known it was a hammer handle from that distance
unless he had seen it before with more of it showing. Anyway, he
pulled it out of the sand and shouted, "And there's a hammer on
the other end of it!" We thought maybe he had stolen the hammer
from someone and had buried it there so he could pretend to find
it later.
Some time later we Johnson kids were hoeing in the cotton patch
with the Nolan kids and their mother. And as usual, we talked
about everything, including the hammer incident. And I, as could
be expected, not having mastered the art of keeping my big mouth
shut, said, "Yes, and we know where you got the oats and corn."
What happened next took me by surprise. Now, it's one thing to
have an older brother whip you in the cotton patch when you yell
to him, "Come and make me!", as I told you earlier. But it's
altogether a much more serious situation when you look up to see
a mad mother coming toward you with a hoe raised high in the air
and with fire in her eyes. I believe to this day, if I had been
wearing shoes, they might have delayed me just enough to have
allowed her to hit me. But I was barefooted and I took off like
Moody's goose. The woman slammed her hoe down where I had been,
but wasn't any more.
We didn't visit the Nolans much, especially for meals. In fact,
I think we only ate one meal at their house, and that was before
she got after me with the hoe. At the close of the meal, Mrs.
Nolan went around the table pouring up the few drops and swallows
of milk which were left in each and every drinking glass,
explaining that there was no need to waste anything, she would
use the milk to make bread next time. So, I can't remember ever
going back to the Nolans for a meal after that.
Along with all our other activities, we had to get a little book
learning. So we four boys went to Ballard School, three-and-a-
half miles away. It was a two-room school house but we had
classes in only one room. The teacher lived in the other room
with her little five-year-old girl, her two-year-old boy, and a
pig. The little boy needed attention periodically, you know,
like bathroom attention. Sometimes his mother took him to the
bathroom and sometimes one of the older girl students took him.
And if you think the bathroom was in the house, you are wrong.
Now the pig needed to go to the bathroom too at times. But he
didn't go anywhere--he just used the bathroom wherever he
happened to be at the time. Nor did he seem to understand that
one room was the schoolroom and the other room was his. He
didn't seem to realize he was a pig. He thought he was a
"people" like the rest of us. And when his little brother and
sister were in the schoolroom, that little pig wanted to be in
there too. Needless to say, when he brought his bathroom
activities into the schoolroom, he disrupted the entire learning
process as prescribed by the school board and the State Education
Agency.
Ollie Mae was not quite seven when we boys started to school at
Ballard in the fall of 1917. Mama thought it was too far for her
to have to walk. So she taught Ollie Mae at home through the
third grade. Our little sister was deprived of all the higher
learning we others got at Ballard.
It wasn't all book learning at Ballard either. One day a couple
of girls had to "be excused." In a minute or so, they came
running back into the schoolroom with the news that there was a
rattlesnake in their closet. (In those days they were closets,
not toilets. And no one had ever heard of "rest rooms.") Anyway,
we got out there as fast as possible, some through the doors and
some jumped out the windows. Sure, we killed the snake all
right, but it was hard for us to settle back down to school work.
Uncle Simpson was visiting us at that time and he was on his way
to Lamesa in his car and he happened to be passing by Ballard
School when we got news of the snake. When he saw us leaving the
building as we did, he was somewhat shocked at our seeming total
disregard for discipline and order. He thought we were getting
out for recess and he was used to seeing kids march out in a
straight line and stand at attention until the teacher said,
"Dismissed." But back at home that night we told him he had
witnessed a crash operation in an emergency. He was relieved to
learn that it was not always that way at our school. We didn't
dare tell him how nearly this procedure approached the normal at
Ballard.
On our Lamesa farm, quite a lot of our raw land had catclaw
bushes on it. When clearing the land for cultivation, we would
cut the bushes off just under the surface of the ground and wait
for strong winds to roll them away like tumbleweeds. They would
cling together because of the claws on their branches, and often
long rolls of them could be seen rolling across the prairie.
Then they would collect against our fences and we would pitch
them over the fences and let them continue on their way.
And also, there were many whirlwinds on the plains--perhaps no
more than in other places we had lived, but they were more
conspicuous. I was plowing in the field one day when I saw a
whirlwind coming across the field about a hundred yards away from
me. At first it looked as though it had hit one end of one of
those rolls of catclaws and was rolling it along on the ground.
But a second look revealed that this was not the case. The roll
of bushes seemed to get shorter and shorter until it was
completely gone. All this took place within a short ten seconds
or less.
Then I realized that there had not been any catclaw bushes at
all. The whirlwind, at its bottom end, was bent at a right angle
and was whirling horizontally along on the ground. The balance
of it was standing upright. The horizontal part quickly became
shorter and shorter until the entire whirlwind was standing
upright.
Do you think I rushed to tell my family about seeing this strange
thing? Goodness no! They wouldn't have believed me. Why should
I make myself subject to being a bigger liar than I was thought
to be already? I didn't even mention this incident until I was
grown and had kids of my own half grown. I really believe to
this day this little story is one of the reasons my kids think I
am untruthful at times. I don't really expect anyone to believe
it. I sort of wish I had never told it. But it really did
happen, and I hadn't been sucking the old sow, either.
The wind blew more and stronger on the plains than it did most
places. So from the time we moved there we began to hear stories
about the wind. For instance there was the story about the
family in the covered wagon who camped one night and tied their
horses to a bush. About bedtime the wind came up and the sand
started blowing. And next morning they were surprised to learn
that the bush was really a tall tree which had been almost buried
in the blowsand. Through the night the sand had blown away and
by morning their horses were hanging 40 feet high up in the
tree--both of them dead.
Before they could cut the tree down and recover their ropes and
harness, the wind changed and the sand came back, burying the
horses and the tree.
Then there was the story about the family who went to their storm
cellar during a wind storm. The wind blew harder and harder
until the cellar shook as if by an earthquake. The man opened
the door to see what was happening. The cellar was rolling
across the prairie and the man fell out. He ran back to get in
the hole where the cellar had been, but the hole had blown away
too.
The same wind blew the man's well up out of the ground and
wrapped it around a telephone pole. Most of the water ran out
before he could get it plugged up and put a faucet in the bottom
of it. After that he didn't have to pump water, he only had to
open the faucet and let it flow.
The story was told on us boys that we were not used to the strong
wind and were always asking Papa if we could quit work and go in
the house until the wind calmed down. They told that Papa
settled the question once and for all one day. He hung a trace
chain on the clothes line and told us, "As long as the bottom end
of the chain is hanging down, go ahead and work. When the chain
blows up in a horizontal position and waves like a flag in the
wind, take off a few minutes and wait for it to settle back down
a bit."
One man told us he had a rainwater barrel by his house. And
since it hadn't rained for six months, the barrel was empty. One
night about bedtime a southwest wind hit with all its fury and
blew the barrel away. It continued to blow for three days and
three nights. There were no fences, so the barrel rolled on and
on. Then the wind changed and there came a blue norther from the
northeast. Three days and nights later, about bedtime again,
they heard something bump against their house. They took the
lantern and went out to see what it was and found that their
water barrel had returned home, but it had rolled so far it had
worn down to about the size of a nail keg.