Chapter 3 AT THE EXUM FARM AFTER I WAS FIVE

We, the Will Johnsons, owned this first farm 12 years. Then in the fall of 1910, Papa bought the Exum farm, just east of us. It was much larger and it fitted our needs better. There were 332 acres in the place, and we paid $9,000 for it.

When January rolled around, it was time for us to move onto the Exum place. And on the day we moved that half-mile, I had to stay at our old home. I was allowed to help load the wagons at our old farm, but they wouldn't let me go with them to our new home to unload the wagons. Of course, that hurt my feelings terribly.

But I was hurt even worse when one of the older boys came running back to the house to get a gun to kill a skunk down on the creek-and Mama wouldn't let me go with him.

She said, "No, you can't go. You're too little."

I didn't understand how Mama could be so mistaken in my size. I was as big as most of the other boys, I thought, and smarter than some of them.

After we got moved to the new home, again Papa set out to build whatever buildings we needed to suit our wants. There was already a house and a good size barn. And when Papa finished building, there were shelters for tools, livestock, poultry, and a blacksmith shop.

He made a large, roomy cellar at our new home. I can't remember ever having to go to the cellar because of a storm, but it was there just in case. And it was good for storing fruits, vegetables, and canned goods.

One time Papa brought home a stalk of bananas and hung it down in the cellar. Down there it would be protected from the heat of the days and the freezing nights. Papa explained to us that we should eat the ripest bananas first before they got too ripe and had to be thrown away. Then some of the older kids jokingly told that Papa said, "Eat the rotten ones first and wait till the others rot to eat them."

We were poor in terms of money, yet we had as much as or more than the average family in our community. Papa was a carpenter, a blacksmith, a good farmer. And when automobiles came along, he became a mechanic.

We never left our hack out in the weather, we had a shed to shelter it. Our barn was second to none in our neighborhood, especially by the time we finished building sheds and stalls on both sides of it. Later on, we got a car and built a shed for it. We didn't call it a garage, it was a car shed. And one time Papa bought another house, moved it up beside ours, and joined them together.

We had a good well of water, a big windmill, and a cypress water tank on a tower about ten feet tall. The tower under the tank was boarded up on all four sides to form a room that was used for keeping milk, butter, watermelons, and other things cool. Screened windows allowed the wind to pass through. That was about the coolest place on the farm.

Next to the windmill was a garden, fenced rabbit proof and irrigated with water from the well. Every summer we had roasting ears, popcorn, cantaloupes, watermelons, peanuts, okra, squash, pumpkins, and more kinds of beans and peas than I can name.

The barn was filled with feed heads, corn, and cottonseed, both for planting and for feeding. There was room in the barn and adjoining sheds for horses, cows, chickens and hogs. And up in the loft, there were peanuts still on the vines.

Some of our neighbors had given up trying to grow peanuts because rabbits ate so many of the vines. It was all but impossible to keep the rabbits out of the patch. But we always grew peanuts anyway. When neighbors asked Papa how he managed to grow so many good peanuts, he told them he just planted enough for the rabbits and the youngsters too. I can't remember when we didn't have enough peanuts in the barn loft to last all winter. We stored them on the vines and then we picked them off as we needed them, and fed the vines to the stock.

I remember one sunny afternoon, four or five of us boys were sitting up in the barn over the horse stalls eating peanuts. I was sitting on a board that was nailed to the underside of the ceiling joists. Well, the nails pulled out of the board and I fell to the ground and hit my head on a wooden block. The block proved to be tougher than my head. It cut a two-inch gash in my scalp above my right ear. Papa took me to our family doctor and had it sewed up.

The story was told on us boys that, when we were all little, a mule kicked one of us in the head, and that boy was never quite normal after that. But then, as we grew older, we all got to acting so much alike that Mama and Papa couldn't tell which one of us the mule had kicked.

Many years later, during the depression of the 1930s, a neighbor was giving me a homemade haircut one Sunday afternoon and, when he discovered the scar on my head, he laughed and said, "Now I know which one the mule kicked."

Now let's get back to the story of when I was a boy on the Exum farm. I started to school when I was seven. In fact, most kids started at seven in those days. And since I was seven when school started in September, that meant I had been seven since last January 11th. In other words I was almost eight.

While we lived at the Exum place, we went to school at Wise Chapel, which was about three miles northeast of our home. In winter we faced cold northers many mornings, and in the afternoons, we often faced strong southwesterly winds on our way home.

As we walked to school, other pupils from other farms joined us, and then still others. By the time we arrived at school, there might be as many as 20 of us in one bunch. One of the families whose kids walked with us was the Bruner family. Papa's younger brother, Ed, married Eva Bruner.

What do you mean, "Did we walk that three miles to school?"

Of course we walked-except maybe two or three times a year when the weather was extremely bad.

I might as well take time right here to mention another little incident which took place along our school trail. It involved one of the Bruner boys. And what happened to that boy should never happen to anyone. But when you get that many school kids in one bunch, most anything is apt to happen, and it did this time.

In the first place, I guess school trails shouldn't cut across pastures, but they did. In the second place, I haven't been able to figure out why God made prickly pears, but He did. In the third place, if school kids are going to use the trails which wind in and out among the thorny bushes and cactus plants, they should never scuffle near prickly pears, but they did. And in the fourth place, if a boy scuffles and falls down, he should never sit right flat down in a prickly pear, but he did.

After he got up, he went straight home. His mother took the tweezers and removed all the large thorns and many of the small ones. Then they took him to Mama because, they said, her eyes were better. She removed all she could see, which left the boy in fairly good shape, I suppose, all things considered.

What we now know as kindergarten was unknown when I started to school. Beginners started in the Primer, and the Primer was not a grade in school-it was a book. As Webster defines it, "an elementary book for teaching children to read."

We went to school to learn to read, write, spell, and work arithmetic problems-and to obey the teacher.

We also learned many other things that were not a part of the regular curriculum and which were not necessarily sanctioned by those in authority. We grouped them all together and called them "recess."

In my first year, I went through the Primer, the first grade, and far into the second grade. I was almost ready for the third grade at the beginning of my second year. According to my teacher and my parents, I was smart and well behaved. I was a good little boy.

Even at that early age, the teacher granted me special privileges and I was in love with her. My love and admiration for all teachers, especially women teachers, went with me all through high school and college, at times causing my wife some displeasure.

During that first year in school, one side of my face became paralyzed. I was an ugly sight, especially when I laughed or smiled. Half of my face would smile and the other half would just hang there, doing nothing.

The doctor prescribed some red medicine that Susie carried to school every day and poured some down me ever-so-often. It tasted awful. I was glad it was a beautiful red color. I don't believe I could have stood it if it had been brown.

Anyway, I slowly got over most of my ailment, but I'm sure it was hard for my family to get rid of the horrible picture my condition had printed on their memories.

Unfortunately, my paralysis was not my only ugliness. I was born with a "wen" in the corner of one eye next to my nose. It was a lump about the size of the end of my thumb-that of course, depending on what age I was when you measured the end of my thumb, and how much of my thumb you included in the measurement. After all, how much of a thumb can you measure and still call it the end.

At any rate, I was far from beautiful, even before the sagging of half my face.

Not so with the rest of my family. Papa was stately, superior in quality, as generous as he was elegant, and he was a handsome man.

Mama was a lovely woman. I can remember back to when she was about 33, and I can imagine how beautiful she must have looked to Will Johnson 15 years earlier. When I was very young, I liked to watch her do her long hair up into one big plat, then coil it round and round on top of her head and pin it so it wouldn't come down.

Frank was handsome and admirable in the eyes of a younger brother my age. Susie was a good-looking girl. However, all girls looked good to me-as they were supposed to. Earl's presence would improve the looks of almost any group of kids. And Joel was downright pretty, that is, for a boy. Although Albert and William Robert were younger than I, and at times little more than pesky little brothers, still I could easily see that they both had something to be desired far above that which looked back at me from my mirror. And of course, Ollie Mae was as beautiful as anything I had ever seen until I became 18 and fell in love.

The unsightly wen stayed with me until I was about 17-or whenever it was I started shaving. I couldn't bear the looks of me in the mirror as I shaved. So, one afternoon I drove over to the Stamford Sanitarium and asked a doctor to remove it. He got me on the operating table and then asked me if I wanted him to put me to sleep.

I told him, "No, I want to watch what you are going to do to me."

So he handed me a mirror and began whittling on me. And when he had finished the operation, he sewed me up, stuck a patch over the place, and told me to let someone else drive me back to Hamlin. But since it was only 22 miles, and since I had driven over there alone, and since there was no one to drive me back, I drove myself back and I've been disobeying doctors ever since.

But, we're getting ahead of our story. Let's get back to our younger days when my little sister was about two years old and she had two or three brothers who were not much older. One of those brothers noticed, as most little brothers do sooner or later, that there was a difference in his and her ways of draining water.

For example, when he had to go, he would merely stand behind a tree or go around behind the smokehouse, let it flow and watch it fall. Or he might play fireman up the side of the smokehouse wall. Or maybe aim at a beetle or a red ant and watch him struggle to survive.

On the other hand, his little sister would squat and her dress would hide the entire operation. But the day he became curious about her method of operation and got nosy enough to peep to see what was taking place, he committed the unpardonable sin. And it would have caused extreme pain in the region of the lower hind part of that small boy if his mother had learned of what he had done. What she would have done to him would have been a big price for a little boy to have to pay for a little knowledge that most little boys get for free these days. But he didn't get caught. That was the beginning of a lot of secret things that little boy did throughout his childhood-secrets he didn't share with anyone.

We four boys went out together most of the time, both to work and to play. But at the Exum place, Ollie Mae was getting big enough to want to go with us when we went to play. Her presence created a little problem we boys hadn't had before, especially when there wasn't a good hiding place.

I remember one day out in the pasture where there were no trees or bushes to hide behind, one of the smaller boys had to drain his water and he solved his problem in his own way. He simply said, "Ollie Mae, look the other way." She did, then he turned his back and minded his little business.

In the fall of the year, we often missed some schooling because of so much cotton to be picked. However, we didn't lose as much time from school as some of the families around us. Many a time we would eat an early breakfast, go to the cotton patch and pick for an hour or two and then go directly from there to school. In the afternoons we would go directly from school to the cotton patch, pick cotton until dark and then go home for supper.

In my boyhood days, eating breakfast or supper in daylight was a luxury many of us couldn't afford. Cotton picking often went on until spring and sometimes we'd have to lose a few days of schooling in the spring in order to get the last of the cotton out of the field in time for planting.

But our work was not always hard field work. Sometimes there was more pleasant work to be done, like going with Papa in the wagon to haul a load of wood, or maybe to haul a hog over to a neighbor's.

That kind of work was more or less dangerous when too many small boys went along. So some of us smaller ones would have to stay home with Mama.

Papa always kept a box of sugar stick candy locked in the bottom of his trunk for the purpose of bribing us smaller ones on those occasions. I really shouldn't call it bribery; rather, it was a consolation offered to us younger ones who had to stay home.

When Papa would go somewhere alone in the wagon, it didn't hurt us so much. Mama would explain that he was going on a mission where little boys were not supposed to go, and we would accept it gracefully, since we all had to stay home. But if one or two of the boys rode away with him, that was hard for us smaller ones to bear.

But we couldn't throw a fit, because fits were not allowed in our family. We just had to suffer the heartbreak in silence and a fair amount of dignity. And as they would drive away, it seems I can still hear Mama saying to us, "Come on, children, let's go get a stick of candy." And of course, that would help our feelings somewhat, bless our little hearts.

Sometimes the smaller children would each get a stick of candy for staying home while the larger ones went down on the creek in Grandma's pasture. However, wading in water in our own pasture after summer rain showers usually included all of us, the youngest and all. It was understood that the oldest of the bunch was always the boss and had the responsibility for the safety and well-being of the entire party.

Whether we were working or playing, that rule of command held true in our family. And it was not the only ironclad ruling in the Johnson family-rulings which stood through the years without question and with no thought of breaking.

We always had a set of four boxing gloves. I say always because I can't remember when we didn't have them. And in boxing, we obeyed the rules of not hitting in the face nor below the belt. Another strict rule was, "Don't get mad at your opponent when he is giving you a beating. If you get mad, you mustn't play anymore." The same held true in wrestling. If you couldn't stand to be pinned down, you just didn't wrestle.

You can bet your boots, we all boxed and we all wrestled. No one wanted to be left out of the action. And the only way to stay in the action was to obey the rules and take whatever the other one dished out.

This didn't mean that the big kids were unmerciful to the little ones. There was another rule, "Don't hurt the little ones. Don't hold the little one down after he yells 'calf rope.' Back away and let him have a new start."

We all played "rough and rowdy," but always with smiles on our faces. And the rules of fair play applied to our animals also.

We had a big dog that was part Collie and part Shepherd. He grew up with us kids and became one of the family. We named him Scotch. Papa brought him to us kids at the Exum place when he was a wee, little woolly ball of bouncing, playful puppy. Papa had given five dollars for him, which was a lot of money for our family in those days. He was the only dog our family ever owned.

According to his bloodlines, he was half Collie and half Shepherd, but according to us Johnson kids, he was just all dog- a gentleman canine of the highest order, a true friend, guardian and protector of children, truly a little boy's best friend.

We were taught never to abuse Old Scotch while he was a puppy, and as he grew older, we couldn't abuse him, he wouldn't allow it. And we were told never to call him without a good reason, such as to feed him, play with him or let him go hunting with us. Papa told us that if the dog trusted us, he would obey us better.

I guess that was good advice. At any rate, Old Scotch obeyed orders and commands better and more promptly than any other dog I have ever seen, either in or out of the movies. He even obeyed requests which were not meant as commands.

We kids didn't really know how to train the dog. We just let him grow up with us and by the time he was a year old, he was smarter and better looking than most of us kids.

However, we did teach Old Scotch to do a few simple little tricks- -nothing spectacular. He would sit down when we told him to. And he would hold still while we placed a small stick on top of his nose, and remain still until we counted to three. Then at the count of three, he would quickly flip it off his nose and catch it in his mouth. Then of course, he expected a pat of congratulations and a kind word or two.

We taught him to keep the chickens off the porch and out of the yard. That was an easy job. He soon learned to do it without having to be told.

We kids liked to sit under the steering wheel of our car and pretend we were driving. Soon Old Scotch was doing the same thing. Sometimes when we kids opened the car door, we would have to hurry or Old Scotch would beat us to the steering wheel. He was only playing with us kids when he did that. He wouldn't do Papa that way.

One of his favorite games was to take a stick in his mouth and challenge us to a game of wolf-over-the-river. He liked for us to try to catch him and take the stick. He also liked to play catch-but only with a rubber ball. We would pitch the ball to him and he would catch it and return it to us. However, there was a strict rule in this game-never throw a hard ball to him, because that would hurt his teeth and he would begin to distrust and disobey us.

He learned not to trust some of the neighbor kids. They sometimes threw him a hard ball. They didn't "Do unto Old Scotch as they would have Old Scotch do unto them."

At times we would offer the dog something to eat that he had never seen nor tasted before, and if he wasn't sure of it, he might reject it. But he seemed to have enough faith in us boys to think that, if he could see us eat some of it, then he would not be afraid to try it. So, we would let him see us eat some of it, or at least we would pretend to eat it.

Our dog didn't have the long Collie-like nose, but rather a beautiful short nose like the Alaskan Husky. Nor was his coat long and stringy but was short and heavy, more like the wool of a sheep before shearing. His color was a deep reddish brown, with just the right touches of white about the head. His body was round and full. His shoulders and hips were broad, as though somewhere in his ancestry there was most certainly a St. Bernard.

Old Scotch couldn't bear the sound of thunder. During a thunderstorm he wanted to go in the house and get under a bed. That's the only time we ever let him in the house. The noise must have hurt his ears. Firecrackers affected him the same way. He would tolerate the noise of a rifle when he was out hunting with us, but he wouldn't allow even his best friends to aim anything at him.

Needless to say, we would never aim a gun at him any more than we would aim one at each other. But a broomstick or a hoe handle was like a gun to Old Scotch. When we aimed something at him, he wouldn't bite us to really tear us apart, but he would certainly bite hard enough to make us drop the object we were pointing at him. He would growl in a way that told us for sure that he would not allow anyone to point anything at him.

Old Scotch saved us many a step and earned his keep many times over. We kept our milk-pen calves in the lot through the day. Then we kept our milk cows in the lot at night and let the calves run out to graze. Next morning we would tell Old Scotch to go get the calves and he would. He wouldn't get the horses nor the other cows-only the milk-pen calves.

After we ate breakfast and did the morning chores and were ready to harness the horses for plowing, we would send Old Scotch after the horses and he would get only the horses, no cows nor calves. In the afternoon we would tell him to go get the milk cows and he would bring only the cows, no horses.

When we called our dog, we didn't say, "Here, Scotch! Here, here, here." The word we used wasn't "here," it was "how." And no matter how far away he was, he would come immediately when he heard us call. He only paused long enough to make sure it was one of our family calling him and to get the direction from which the call came.

And when he came to us, he didn't come walking nor trotting, but loping. And he didn't stop a few steps away nor lower his head and ears, nor did he approach with his tail down. He bounced right up beside us, full of life and gusto as if to ask, "Oh boy! What kind of excitement do you have planned for me this time?"

It's a common thing to see a two-car family in the 1970's, but we were a two-car family as early as 1916. We still had the Reo and Papa bought a Big Six seven-passenger Buick touring car. Old Scotch knew that Buick by sound. Uncle Robert had a Little Six Buick that sounded almost like the Big Six. Our dog could recognize the sound of those Buicks a half-mile away.

When other cars drove by along the road, Old Scotch would pay no attention to them. We had taught him not to chase cars. But when either of those Buicks came along, he would run out to greet it a quarter-mile away. He also accepted Robert as a personal friend as well as a friend to our family.

Then one day Old Scotch didn't come when we called him. Nor did he come the next day. We had no idea where he had gone nor why. Of course, we kept hoping that some day he would return. But days became weeks and weeks became months and the dog was still missing. By this time we had given up all hope of ever seeing him again.

Papa and Mama taught us to be nice to our animals and taught us how to get Old Scotch to obey us. And there seemed to be no end to the little things they taught us how to do. In a jiffy they could cut a slot in the side of a pumpkin leaf stem and make us a horn to blow. They showed us how to put a chicken's head under his wing, swing him a few times and lay him down on the ground, fast asleep. Papa taught us how to tie a certain kind of a knot in a rope for one occasion and another kind for another purpose. And he taught us how to make a loop for roping calves.

We owed a lot to our parents for making our lives pleasant and exciting. They were among the most respected parents in our community. They were leaders-not in organizations concerned with business or big government, nor in local clubs, but they were upstanding church-goers with high standards of moral character and integrity. As in play, so in life, they wanted their children to abide by a set of rules which would lead them into a good life-a life of knowledge of the difference between good and evil, with a desire to do the good and shun the evil.

They may not have thought of God as some of us do today but I am sure they did what they thought was right, and they did it with consistency and sincerity. More than that we have no right to ask.

Some families have their own little unique customs. I suppose we were one of those families. When visiting with other families, it seemed odd to me to hear them call their babies by their given names. We always called our youngest one "Baby" until the next one arrived. Then we called the new one "Baby" and the one before him had to take on his rightful name.

This went on until my younger brother was born. Joel, just older than I, couldn't say Clarence, so he called me Big Baby and he called the new one Baby. No, he wasn't slow about learning to talk. You see, we didn't give him much time. He was only sixteen months old when I came along, and he was just three when the new one came. Another custom not common to all families was, we smaller ones wore dresses around home for the first three or four years of our lives. It made diapering much easier and saved a lot of laundering. Come to think of it, I never heard of diapers until I was almost grown. They were not diapers, they were breeches-in our family they were "britches." That's the only thing I ever heard them called until I was a mature man.

We were poor people, living the simple life. I wasn't any poorer than the rest of my family, but I was the simplest one.

We also had this custom of competing among ourselves. In most everything we did, there was an element of competition and hurry. Our parents had a way of causing us kids to apply pressure to each other. They found that it worked better than when parents tried to force kids to work faster.

In the cotton patch you could hear us kids saying such things as, "I picked more cotton than you did." Or if we were hoeing you might hear something like, "Come on, Slow Poke."

The plan worked well. No one wanted to be outdone by a brother, especially a little brother. And if a little brother could outshine a big brother, even just once in awhile, that was a real feather in the little one's cap.

Oh, yes! There was hurry and there was pressure. But it didn't seem to get us down as it does some people today. We had no psychologists in those days to tell us that pressures would warp a kid's brain. We didn't know that competition and hurry would drive us crazy until these educated people told us about it.

So we lived hard, we worked hard, and we played hard. Then we were able to go to bed and sleep hard. Never in my life did I ever hear Mama or Papa say, "I didn't sleep well last night, because I felt tense and worried."

There was really nothing to worry about like there is today. They didn't worry that we kids might go away from home and get into trouble. We didn't have to leave home to get into trouble. We kids made our own trouble right at home. We had a lot of fun doing a lot of different things. Most of our troubles were brought on accidentally, we didn't deliberately plan them.

There was no worry about the family losing anything, we had nothing to lose. No one would steal from us because no one wanted what we had. So, whatever pressures we might encounter during the day were dispelled during a night of welcome rest.

In the cotton patch Mama and Papa encouraged us to see who could pick 100 bolls first. The first one to pick his 100 bolls would call out, "hundred." Then each of the others would call out the number of bolls they had picked during the same time.

This competition got more bales of cotton to the gin in a shorter period of time. But, as in all activities where kids are involved, we sometimes had little disagreements.

I had this thing of humming or singing a song while I picked cotton and counted my bolls. I found that the mental work I was doing was relaxing and it allowed my hands to do their work faster. And now, 65 years later, I learn that I was doing something a little bit kin to what they call Yoga.

At any rate, it really worked for me. I could pick cotton faster than a brother or two who were older than I was. Now, I didn't necessarily use my system in order to get more of the family cotton picked. I used it mainly just to beat my older brothers picking cotton, and that not for very long at a time.

But my little scheme backfired on me. One of those brothers couldn't stand to be outdone by a younger brother. He told Mama and Papa that I was lying and cheating, because he knew I couldn't count bolls while I sang a song. But he was wrong. I could. Anyway, nothing I could say would make him believe me. I began to become an outcast among some of my brothers early in life. I believe there were times when some of them would have been glad to "sell me into slavery" as Joseph's brothers did him.

But my parents didn't seem to doubt my word. I really believe they understood that I could do a thing or two that some of the others could not do-and perhaps were not at all interested in doing.

I believe little things like that were the beginning of a wee bit of an unconscious rift between some of my brothers and me, and at the same time, the making of a stronger bond between my parents and me.

Looking back, I remember many times when Papa and I were doing things together and there was no one else around. I really don't know why I was the only one there a lot of times. Maybe I just wanted to be in good company. I loved and admired Papa and I thought he was the best and nicest man in the world. Or perhaps I was with Papa because of my inquisitive mind concerning mechanical things, like,

"How do you shoe a horse?"

"How do you tighten a loose wagon tire?"

"How do you make a row-binder do what you want it to do when the manufacturer couldn't seem to do it?"

I watched him do all these things and many more. And many of the things he did fascinated me.

The situation was much the same between Mama and me.

"How do you churn milk and make butter?"

"How do you 'take up' the butter after it is churned?"

"How do you make those beautiful decorations on it later?"

"How do you weave a carpet on Grandma's loom?"

It seems I was always watching a lot of these goings-on while the other kids were somewhere else doing whatever they liked to do. And Mama and Papa were never too busy to answer my questions. I realize now how much more I could have learned if I had only known how and when to ask more questions.

It seems that my parents favored and petted me at times. I'm not sure they did. If they did, perhaps it was because they felt sorry for their little ugly duckling. And maybe I only imagined they were especially nice to me. Maybe they were that nice to everyone. Perhaps they were nice to me just to have me around handy when they needed me to help them just a little bit.

This latter seems to be the most reasonable argument, after considering some of my stupid exploits and my senseless reasoning throughout my life.

Yet, it just might be possible that they were partial to me on account of the wen, and later on, my paralysis-these factors coupled with the fact that within the last four years along about the time I was born, they had suffered the loss of a two-year-old son, a two-week-old daughter, Mama's favorite brother, Hugh, and Grandpa Johnson.

Who can measure the thoughts of loving parents as they view their newborn child for the first time, anxious to know whether he or she is beautiful and healthy and without blemish.

And who knows the anxiety of parents who, after seeing their child with blemish, must wonder how his condition will affect his relationship with others, how it will affect his outlook on life, and whether it might grow worse and shorten his days.