Chapter 9 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.