HAUL MAIZE, REPAIR TRUCKS, TURN TRUCKS OVER
While I was running around I was getting a lot of experience,
some knowledge, and perhaps a little wisdom. But I didn't seem
to be getting rid of all my stupidity. Perhaps stupid is not the
word to use here. I don't really believe I was a stupid kid.
But let's just say I was a normal boy who did stupid things at
times.
Anyway, when I look back on some of those things I did in my
younger days, as well as some in my older days, it causes me to
be a little more lenient with youngsters these days who sometimes
do things without thinking. I have not always taken time to look
back on my own mistakes
For instance, after I was old enough to hitch a team to a wagon
and haul cottonseed from the Neinda gin to the oilmill at Hamlin,
I was still not smart enough to cover up all my crazy deeds.
What did I do this time? Nothing much, really.
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.
After we Johnsons got a little money ahead, we made some
improvements on our house. For one thing, we added a long back
porch, all glassed-in with windows the entire length of it. Then
we added a bathroom with all the fixtures. And on the back porch
we put a lavatory to wash our face and hands in, when the
bathroom door happened to be locked. Sometimes we kids would
come in to wash up after unloading a load of hay, and when two or
three of us were using the lavatory at the same time, one of us
might casually flip a few drops of water in another one's face.
Now that usually called for retaliation, which took place
immediately. And that in turn called for counter-retaliation
with a lot more than just a few drops of water--perhaps a big
handful and then a cupful.
By this time we usually heard from Mama from wherever she
happened to be, as she shouted, "Stop that." And if she came out
to enforce her command, she might get some of the same. Of
course Mama knew what she would get into, and I really think she
wanted into it. She only pretended she wanted us to stop. It
made it funnier that way and it relieved her of the
responsibility for having instigated the action. Mama had
running water in the kitchen which was just as wet as the water
we had on the porch and there was a 50-50 chance that she had
some already drawn up in a stew pan. So when she said, "Stop
it," she may as well have said, "Stop it after we all get wet."
We usually ended up being as wet as if we had jumped in the lake,
and everyone laughing.
This was the age of cars and we had our share of them through the
years. The same old Dodge that ran over Albert and killed the
hen for supper had a magneto that kept giving trouble, and it
cost a fortune to have it repaired each time. This was before I
had learned much about cars. In fact, this old car taught me a
lot about other cars to come.
The car had a battery. So, I thought I could use Model T coils
to make the spark and use the mag as a distributor. That would
be less expensive than trying to keep the mag in repair. I got
it all rigged up and it worked some, but it was not a success.
The battery didn't fire the Model T coils well enough. That was
another one of my ideas I flunked out on.
There was a farm family in our neighborhood by the name of Owen.
And in that family was a boy named Bill. My brother Frank ran
around quite a bit with Bill. Pretty soon Bill's sister, Mattie,
got to running around with Frank. Bill had a younger brother
named Joe, and I got to running around with Joe. To complicate
things still further, Joe had a younger sister named Faye, and
she got to running around with me. That seems like a lot of
running around for just a few kids, but it happens that way
sometimes.
One day I was out on the farm visiting with Joe, and now and then
I was glancing in the direction of Faye when Joe and I discovered
Frank's trunk in Mattie's bedroom, which was quite all right
since Frank and Mattie were married by this time.
Joe and I knew that Frank kept a 45 revolver in the bottom of his
trunk. We also knew that Frank and Mattie were not home that
day. Faye and her parents were home but they didn't know that
Joe and I were prowling in Frank's trunk. We were whispering and
tiptoeing.
We took the 45 and a bunch of shells and slipped off out into the
pasture to shoot something. A gallon can was the only thing that
would sit still for us, so we fired at it. We tried and tried
but decided we must be too far away; we never did hit it. I had
thought that a 45 would shoot as far as six or eight steps, but I
guess not. Or it could be we missed because the gun kept kicking
up at the front end every time we pulled the trigger.
Anyway, we didn't know that Frank had returned home and we were
so wrapped up in our target practice that we didn't see him until
he was right upon us. Then it was too late to run. And for one
time in my life I couldn't think of anything to say. We just
stood there in surprise, prepared for the worst. Then we got a
bigger surprise. Frank walked up to us and said, "There are
plenty of shells in the bottom of my trunk when you run out."
And with that, he gave us a few pointers on firing a pistol and
walked away.
Before Papa got his freight line from Hamlin to Stamford, he had
one truck and was looking for anything to haul that would help us
make a living. He took one job of hauling that shouldn't happen
to a dog. There was a man buying maize heads one summer and
shipping them by rail to somewhere. This was the surplus maize
farmers had left from last year's crop, after they had used all
they needed for feed through the winter and spring. The man
bought the maize from farmers and then told us where to go pick
it up. Then we hauled it from the farms and loaded it into
railroad boxcars.
You may not know it, but each and every maize seed has a little
stinger on it. These stingers are bad enough when you get the
heads out of the field in the fall and fork them into a storage
bin. In the fall you are working most of the time out in the
open air. But when that feed lies in storage all winter, it
dries out month after month and it collects dust from West Texas
weather and from the grains themselves where mice, rats, and
birds have eaten, slept and roosted. And then, when you load it
into a truck, you have to get in the storage bin, under a sheet
metal roof, with a blazing sun bearing down on the roof. And
each little stinger on each grain is harder and more brittle than
it was in the fall, and all these stingers break off the seeds
more easily, more of them mix in with the dust, and they get into
your eyes, your nose, down your collar and lodge in the wrinkles
of your stomach, and they get in under your arms and around the
tops of your shoes and they dig into your ankles. Eventually,
there is not any place on your body that doesn't sting and itch.
What's more, the stinging and itching goes on after a bath. Now
I believe you will agree with me--it shouldn't happen to a dog.
When you have a job like that, you hate it, you detest it, and
you dread having to face it the next day. But you do it, and you
keep on doing it until the job is finished, because you like to
eat, and the job pays money and you have to earn money in order
to eat.
Do you get the picture? Well, wait a minute, I'm only half
through. We have yet to haul the maize to the railroad car, fork
it into the car, then get into the car and pitch it all the way
back to both ends and all the way to the ceiling. Did you ever
work in a boxcar on a hot day in summertime? You choke on dust,
you sweat, and each and every drop of sweat becomes a parking lot
for dust and maize stingers that show no mercy.
Of course it helps to get home after a day of such torture and
get a good bath. But some of the cars we loaded were in Roby.
After a day of agony, we had to drive 22 miles over rough,
crooked roads in a slow truck before we could get a bath.
In war, I have heard of torturing prisoners to get information
from them. I have often wondered if they have thought of trying
the maize-torture treatment.
There were other better jobs of course. One of my first jobs on
Saturdays during my school years, aside from working for Papa,
was in a grocery store. Mr. Gay was operating the Farm Bureau
store. He offered me a job and I took it.
Come Saturday morning, Mr. Gay put me to sacking up beans, peas
and potatoes in paper bags, getting them ready to sell. During
the day we ran out of one item and a customer asked me where he
would find another grocery store. I told him, but when the rush
was over and we were alone, Mr. Gay told me never to send a
customer to our competitor. He said tell them to try the drug
store up on the corner. Then he added, "And if we run out of
coffee, sell them split peas."
At the end of that first Saturday Mr. Gay paid me three dollars.
I told him that was twice as much as he had offered me. He said
he had fired two boys he was paying $1.50 each and that I did
more work than both of them together. He paid me three dollars a
day all the time I worked for him.
Another job in my younger days was working at Hudson's Filling
Station for Sox and Red Hudson. The pay was ten cents an hour--
keep my own time and pay myself from the cash register every
Saturday night.
We did some overhauls and a lot of tune-up work. One farmer had
a Model T Ford that had a weak magneto. It would run only on the
battery and Fords didn't run good except on mag. He needed $21
for a motor overhaul. But he was a poor boy and didn't have that
kind of money. So I asked him if I might take a look at his coil
points. He told me I couldn't do them any good, he had just come
from the Ford garage where a mechanic had adjusted them. But Sox
told him, "Let Clarence look at them, he won't do them any harm."
Now, the Ford mechanic only knew how to set the points for a
strong magneto, and this mag was weak. I knew that a weak mag
needed a weak diet, so I adjusted his points so that a weak mag
would fire them. Fifteen minutes later the man drove away with
his car running like a new one--on the magneto. A year later he
was still running on the mag and had not had the motor
overhauled. What did we charge the man? Nothing. He was a
regular customer, and we did little things like that for our
customers.
Speaking of repairing, one night I was driving a truck from Ft.
Worth to Hamlin. The rotor in the distributor was a slip-on
thing made of bakelite. I knew it was cracked but it was still
working well. However, before I got home it broke into a lot of
little pieces so small there was no way to use any part of it.
It happened at night and caught me without a flashlight, way out
in the country between towns. Working in the dark, feeling my
way, I wrapped adhesive tape all over the upper end of the shaft.
Then I stuck part of a safety pin through the tape to what I
thought was about the right distance, and it worked. It gave no
more trouble all the way home.
For some reason that same truck kept burning out bearings in the
back connecting rod. Each time it happened, it cost $26 to have
a mechanic repair it. The next time it burned out, I asked Papa
to let me repair it. I figured there had to be a reason for this
continuing trouble, and it seemed that mechanics were not hunting
the cause, but were only replacing the bearing each time. I had
been thinking about the thing and I sort of figured I knew what
was wrong, and I thought I knew more than the general run of
mechanics. But Earl told Papa not to let me try repairing it.
He said, "Clarence is not a mechanic; he can't do that job."
And Papa told him, "It looks like the ones who have been trying
it are not mechanics either. At least it won't cost me $26."
So Papa let me do the repair work, and that was the last time
that bearing ever gave trouble. We drove the old truck for years
and then sold it to Calvin Carriker for a farm truck. The
bearing lasted the life of the truck, and unless someone looked
in after the truck was junked, no one knows how I remedied the
problem. I can't help it if I'm smarter than the average
mechanic--and Earl.
You may think I'm bragging. Of course I'm bragging. But it's
all right to brag on yourself; the Bible says so, according to a
Baptist deacon I knew in Arkansas. He would quote, "Blessed is
the man who tooteth his own horn, because, if a man tooteth not
his own horn, lo, it shall not be tooted." And if you asked him
where he finds that in the Bible, he would say, "In the book of
Fizzlums."
Now, I guess you are wondering where in the Bible is this book of
Fizzlums. Well, the deacon and I both knew an old man, a good
man who read his Bible but didn't go to church much, and he had a
very limited formal education. However, he remembered that in
English spelling, Ph is pronounced like F. So when he came to
Psalms in the Bible, he got a little confused and got Ph and Ps
mixed up and tried to pronounce Psalms as though it were spelled
Falms. Now, you've got to admit that is a hard word to
pronounce. But the old man had worked on it for years and it
finally became "Fizzlums". And that's where the deacon found the
horn-tooting scripture.
At one time Jones County was one of the most productive cotton
counties in Texas. Hamlin was in the heart of cotton country.
In cotton picking time Black people came from East Texas by the
hundreds to help pick the cotton. Most of them who had cars had
Ford cars. Now the headlights on Fords were a constant source of
trouble, especially if kids riding on the front fenders happened
to accidentally kick the wires loose from the headlights. Most
mechanics wanted to repair the lighting system with a lot of new
parts at a cost of maybe two dollars to four dollars. But each
cottonpicker told other cottonpickers that there was a boy (me)
down there at Hudson's Filling Station that would fix their
lights for maybe a quarter--not over 50 cents.
And so it came to pass that, on Saturday nights a lot of lights
needed fixing so that a lot of hard-working boys could do a lot
of stepping out with a lot of girls. Most of them didn't need
lights during the week. But Saturday was payday, time to
celebrate and have a good time. And besides, the next day was
Sunday, a day of rest. No one picked cotton on Sundays.
I usually made quite a few quarters on Saturday nights after my
regular hours. As a matter of fact, I often made more money
after my quitting time than I had made all day, because after
that time, all I took in for labor was mine.
But even this filling station work wasn't all rosy. One night a
burglar broke into our station. He came in through a back window
and took a few little things, including some money. The next day
I made a switch that would turn on a light when the window was
raised, and I slept in the back room. We knew he would be
frightened away by a light switching on, so I hid the bulb down
in my pajamas so it would wake me up but not light up the room.
The burglar came back one night and raised the window, but he
didn't come in. He left the window up and ran. We didn't catch
him but he stopped visiting us.
Another burglar visited me while I was working at another filling
station. I was sleeping in the station, way up on top of a tire
rack. The kid woke me up prying up the back window. I watched
him come in and go to the cash register. He had his back to me
and didn't even know I was there. I had no gun or anything, not
even a ball bat. We were not expecting burglars. Rather, we
offered all night emergency service and I slept there to serve
anyone who was caught in an emergency.
Well, since I had no gun, I reached up on a shelf and got a
bottle of shellac in each hand and told the boy to stay where he
was and raise his hands. He obeyed, which was both a surprise
and a relief to me. Then I climbed down, turned on all the
lights inside and outside and waited for the nightwatchman to
come by. The boy was about 16, and well behaved. I didn't have
to capture him--didn't even touch him. We talked and he waited
patiently. We learned later that he had broken into three
stations that night in Hamlin and had gotten less than fifty
cents, poor kid.
We were living in town but we still liked to go hunting out in
the country once in awhile. One day Earl, Joel and I had been
out shooting rabbits and prairie dogs with our 22 rifles. When
we came back, Earl got out of the car downtown and asked Joel to
take his gun in the house when we got home. His gun was the
hammerless type; you couldn't easily tell when it was loaded or
unloaded. When Joel carried his own gun and Earl's gun into the
house, Mama said, "Oh, I'm so afraid of guns! Are you sure they
are unloaded?"
Joel told her that he was sure about his own, but he didn't know
about Earl's. Then he aimed Earl's at the ceiling and pulled the
trigger. It shot a hole through the ceiling, and Joel turned to
Mama and calmly said, "Now it's unloaded."
Do I always have to tell you what Mama said? Can't you just
imagine?
Now, Joel didn't only shoot small holes through ceilings; one day
he was sitting in his room with his pump shotgun lying across his
lap. He had finished cleaning it and was throwing shells in and
out of the barrel, distributing oil to all working parts. He
must have gotten some of the oil on his thumb, because it slipped
off the hammer accidentally and fired one of the shells, and it
made the prettiest little round hole--about an inch across--
through the inside window facing, the shiplap wallboard, the
outside weatherboarding and the outside window facing.
Fortunately, there was no one out in the yard at that place at
that time. Joel argued that the added ventilation would
contribute to his better health.
Joel also had his fling at truck driving for Papa. On one
particular day he was driving on a dirt road, and I really think
the road was wet and slick, but rumor has it that he just might
have gone to sleep. Anyhow, his truck wound up in a ditch. It
didn't roll all the way over, but it leaned over against the far
bank with two wheels up in the air. His cargo was scattered
along a farmer's fence and some of it went through the fence into
the pasture. But Joel was lucky. The only damage suffered was
loss of time, a lot of work, and one torn sack of flour.
We owned a lot of trucks through the years, but Papa's first
truck, which he had let Frank have, and which Frank had let Papa
have back later, was a Master by name. It really was a good
truck in its day. It had no battery; a magneto fired the plugs
to make the engine run and a presto gas tank on one running board
furnished gas for the headlights. When night came, you pulled
over and stopped, turned on the presto gas, and lighted the
headlamps with a match.
Now, presto lights were not the best lights in the world. They
were not so much for lighting the way to see where you were going
as they were to let others see that you were coming. At today's
speed it seems that presto lights might not show more than a few
feet ahead. A fast driver of today might have to slow up to
allow the light beams to get on out front a little way.
Anyhow, that's the way it was one night when Papa was driving and
I, too young to drive, was keeping him company. We were in a
little town somewhere in Texas and as you know, every little town
has a river running through it, or at least a small creek. I
have never been able to understand why people want to run a
stream through their city. They know that when the city grows
larger, the mayor will have trouble getting enough money to build
bridges over it. And each and every bridge is going to be a
traffic hazard. Now, this bridge in this little town was not
much longer than our truck but it served its purpose; it was a
hazard.
When a car with electric lights turned a corner and faced us, we
were blinded and our presto lights seemed to go out altogether.
They didn't even shine down as far as the road at our front
wheels. Nor did they show us the bridge with its little wooden
banisters. Well, I did see one banister a little--not much--but
Papa didn't see it at all. He didn't even know there was a creek
nor a bridge ahead of us.
As a matter of fact, Papa couldn't see the road or anything. But
he figured that was not reason enough for him to stop and let the
car with bright lights go by. He wasn't going more than ten
miles an hour and he was reasonably certain there was nothing in
the road to run over or bump into. All would be well just as
soon as those bright lights got out of his eyes.
But the bridge got to us before our lights showed it to Papa, and
our two right wheels didn't even touch the bridge. Our bumper
took the entire banister and laid it out in the road ahead of us.
Our front axle skidded all the way across the creek, riding the
edge of the bridge. Our right front wheel went sailing across
the stream in mid-air and rolled onto solid ground before our
truck had time to turn over and fall off the bridge into the
creek. So there we were, the two front wheels on solid ground,
the left rear wheel on the shaky bridge, and the other rear wheel
dangling in space over a creek of running water.
As we came to an abrupt stop, with the truck leaning and rocking
right and left, Papa asked, "What was that?"
I told him, "You missed a bridge."
He said, "I didn't see a bridge."
By this time the car with the bright lights had gone away and we
were left alone hanging over the side of a small bridge over a
small stream in a small town.
The truck was leaning sharply toward my side. It had no doors,
only curtains for bad weather. And since the weather was good,
the curtains were stored away under the seat. Papa could get out
easily on his side. I climbed out on the running board on my
side, then up over the front fender, and jumped down off the
front bumper. By this time our presto lights had gotten out
front again and were shining their beams to show me where to
jump.
We got a man to try to pull our truck off the bridge with his
truck, but his truck couldn't drag ours. However, he finally got
our truck off the bridge by lunging against the chain six or
eight times, moving our truck a few inches each time.
Nothing was damaged except the bridge banister. We had already
pitched it out of the road, so we paid the nice man for his
services and drove on our way. I never did learn who repaired
the banister. It couldn't have been the mayor; the town wasn't
big enough for a mayor.
Joel was not alone in this business of turning trucks over. As I
have just told you, Papa tried hard to turn one over into a
creek, but failed. Then he got another chance some time later
and made it okay. Dode and Albert also contributed their bit
toward making it a family affair.
Albert was driving down a dirt road with a full load of freight.
He didn't know that a rain cloud had crossed the road ahead of
him, dumping its water on the road. No cars had driven over the
wet road since the shower, so it didn't show to be anything but a
nice dry road. But the road was slick and it came as a surprise,
and Albert found his truck skidding out of control. It turned
sideways and scooted until it had almost stopped, then it lay
over on its side very gently, so as not to damage any of its
cargo as it poured it out onto the road. The truck was not
damaged either. There was only one little bit of damage.
Included in his load was a small mirror which he placed on the
seat beside himself for safety. It got broken.
A part of the road between Roby and Rotan was graveled, and along
the graveled part were two rounding curves which were quite an
improvement over the sharp turns so common in those days. You
could sail right on around the curves without slowing down much,
since we didn't get up an awful lot of speed any time, even on
straight roads.
One day a fellow who was riding with Dode bet him he couldn't go
around both curves and not get under 25 miles an hour. The bet
was on--perhaps a dime or maybe a cold drink. He made it around
the first curve okay, but the gravel was heavier on the second
curve and the truck lost its footing, skidded, and turned over.
It just lay over on its side and didn't hurt anything except
maybe Dode's pride, and of course he lost his bet.
When Papa was just getting into the trucking business, he had two
trucks, and one of them was a Maxwell. I think he bought out a
truck line from somebody and inherited the old truck, or maybe
the man gave it to him. I can't really believe Papa bought it.
If he did, anything he gave for it was too much. It didn't have
enough power to pull the hat off your head without getting a run
on it. Anyway, one time Papa had it loaded with something and
was hauling it to somewhere. Now, on this road to somewhere
there was a hill he was supposed to go up. But the old Maxwell
just couldn't make it up; it went as far as it could and stopped.
That was when Papa learned that the brakes would hold better
going forward than backward. Going backward the brakes were as
weak as the motor. They simply wouldn't hold it. The brakes and
the gears together wouldn't hold the Maxwell and the load. The
truck, the load, and the driver all went slowly backward down the
hill.
Now to keep from backing off a bluff on one side of the road,
Papa steered the truck toward the mountain on the other side.
When it backed up on the side of the mountain a way, it leaned so
much it turned over and dumped the load right in the middle of
the road.
As I said, the old Maxwell was not powerful. When you got it
loaded, it would take a mile of straight level road for it to get
up to 25 miles an hour. So when we got up a little speed we sure
hated to have to slow down for anything.
So it was one day with Joel or Albert driving and I was co-pilot.
I really believe it was Joel driving because there was a time
when Albert was too little to drive, not for long, mind you, but
for awhile.
Anyway we had just gotten up speed when, way down the road ahead
of us, one farmer in a Ford car and another one in a wagon
stopped in the road to talk with each other. They were stopped
with their front ends--their vehicles that is--headed toward us
and outward, one toward one ditch and the other one toward the
other ditch. Their back wheels were about far enough apart for a
truck to go between, or was there room? As we came nearer, it
looked doubtful. But then, they could see us coming and they
were still in their vehicles and ready to drive on. We thought
surely one of them would drive forward a step or two and that
would make plenty of room for us to go between them. There was
certainly not room to go around them on either side.
With the two rigs aimed outward, they were like a big funnel,
with us heading into the big end, and their two hind wheels
forming the little end of the funnel. By this time it was plain
to see that neither man had any intention of moving his rig.
Also, by this time, other things became obvious. First, it was
too late to stop; our brakes were not that good. Second, there
was not room to go between them without hitting. Third, there
was enough room to go between by hitting both vehicles just the
right amount. So my driver said, "Hang on." Then he aimed at
the center of the funnel and kept the gas feed down to the
floorboard.
The fenders on the old truck, just in normal driving, flopped
like a crow's wings trying to fly upstream in a sandstorm. The
engine hood had the sides removed to let more air through, and
the top part of the hood was tied on with haywire. Now, when our
front fenders came in contact with the Ford car and the wagon
wheel, they went way up and came way back down, and their
flopping broke the wire that held the hood on. I thought sure
the hood would blow up against the windshield, but it didn't.
The old truck had no doors, just curtains, and they were not in
use. I grabbed a left hand full of windshield post, stepped my
right foot out on the running board, leaned out over the hood and
wrestled it back down into place. I was the main reason it
didn't blow up against the windshield.
We didn't lose any speed, so by the time I got the parts of the
hood back into place we were too far away to see whether the
farmers were angry, disgusted, or just plain surprised--more than
likely all three.
This little incident took place a couple of miles out of Stamford
on our way to Hamlin. This was Earl's daily run, but on this
particular day Earl had more freight than he could haul and had
phoned for us to come to Stamford for the second load. Joel and
I had driven over and got it.
When we got to Hamlin with our load we told Earl what had
happened. And the next day, Earl was stopped and confronted by
two not-so-happy farmers. They seemed to think that he was the
one who had done unto them what Joel and I had done. But Earl
convinced them that it couldn't have been him, he was in Hamlin
at that time of the day, and he could prove it. Moreover, he
drove a Dodge truck, not a Maxwell. Thanks to Earl, they never
did learn who ran their little roadblock.
On another occasion, Earl and I were going back home from
somewhere in an empty truck and Earl was driving. But then when
he discovered a bumblebee in the cab with us, it only took Earl
about two seconds to quit driving. In that two seconds he pulled
the emergency brake lever back as far as he could and the ratchet
held it there. Then he opened his door with his left hand,
stepped his left foot out on the runningboard, his right foot
shoved the brake pedal down and his right hand steered the truck
while it hurried to a sliding stop. Neither of us got stung and
the bee got away. But the big surprise was the sudden appearance
of a whole flock of red apples rolling along the road from behind
us, some of them continuing on their way down the road ahead of
us.
Then suddenly there was this stranger getting out of his pickup
truck--the pickup that had bumped into the back of our truck, the
pickup that had been loaded with big red apples. The stranger
came up to Earl and asked why he had stopped so quickly right in
the middle of the road without any warning. Earl seemed to be
completely out of good answers at the time. So he sort of
hesitated and sheepishly looked around as if searching for some
kind of an answer, and there it was as big as day--a railroad
across the road in front of us with the usual sign reading, STOP,
LOOK, and LISTEN. Earl pointed to the sign and told the man he
was obeying the sign. The stranger calmed down, and he and his
boys began picking up apples.
We would haul just about anything in those days if it wasn't
against the law. One time Earl and I loaded a truck with East
Texas ribbon cane molasses from a railroad car in Hamlin and
helped the owner peddle it from town to town. He didn't sell it
all the first day so we stayed over in Throckmorton that night.
Earl and I slept in the back of the truck on the cases of
molasses. We spread a couple of quilts under us and a couple
over us, then we spread a tarp over the quilts and molasses and
all. Next morning we also had a couple of inches of snow on top
of the tarp. Rough, you say? Sure, a little, but it sure beat
hauling maize all to pieces.
While the others of us were doing all this hauling, Frank had
opened a garage in Hamlin and was doing mechanical work. One day
Frank was going to be away and he asked me to take over for him
that day. There was only one mechanical job to do, unless others
showed up. It was an Overland Whippet with a loose timing chain.
The loose chain had let the camshaft get out of time with the
crankshaft. Frank asked me to fix it for the man.
He explained to me that the way to do the job was to take the
radiator off, take the front end of the motor loose from the
frame, jack up the motor, take off the timing gear cover, put the
sprockets back in proper timing, and then replace all that stuff
I had taken off.
Now Frank knew there was no need to tell me how to do the job. I
already knew how. And he should have known that I would do it my
way as soon as he was gone. His way was a long drawn-out bunch
of foolishness, involving a lot of work. And that work would
cost a poor man a lot of money which he didn't have. The man was
a stranger to me but I knew he was poor, because he owned a
Whippet. No man could own a Whippet very long and not be poor.
So I did the job the easy way.
I unscrewed a small plug from the timing gear cover, stuck a
screwdriver through the hole and jumped the sprockets back into
proper timing. Then I screwed the plug back in and charged the
man a dollar. When Frank returned, he was not at all happy with
what I had done. He said, "That's not the way to time a car."
I said, "Maybe not, but it makes happy customers." And that's
the one thing Frank needed a lot more of.