Part 11 (1/2)

Papa had two rancher brothers, Joe and Simpson, who had remained in the cattle business when all the rest of the Johnsons went to far So he got the urge to get back to growing more cattle and not so much cotton

This was not just a far-out drea After all, he had been in the cattle business with his father until the time they all moved back to Texas fro because it required far less capital to be a far out on his own

But now he had accuht it was tih cows and calves to afford a better future for him and his family This was not just a wild adventure He kneas easier to grow a dollar's worth of calves than it was to grow a dollar's worth of cotton

We had prospered greatly during our six years on the Exu in Jones County were liood pasture land had been cleared and put into cultivation But on the West Texas plains there was a and yet not too expensive for pasture land

So in 1916 Papa went to that land of proht a section of unimproved land ten miles southwest of La It was part of the old Higginbotha sold piece-by-piece for farrow feed and cattle

Now Papa kneould have to have a place to live He knew he couldn'ton it So he also bought another se one It was fairly well improved His plan was to live on the small farm while he sent us kids to school, built five miles of wolf proof fence around the new land, had a well drilled, put up a windht- room, two-story house to live in He did all this on the new land

With that much co a small barn, chicken house, car shed, tool house, storm cellar, wash house, an out house, a yard fence, field fences and cross fences This all took quite a spell but by this time the place was fairly well i to either farm we moved into the house on the small farm in the dead of winter Dode and Susie moved in with us-or rather, we moved in with them The plan was for thee place We would live with Dode and Susie until we made the other place livable

There ere, all of us, in the cold winter, waiting for the weather to cooperate so we could begin i the raw land

Meanwhile the family who sold us the small farm with the house on it, and who had planned to be moved out by this date, had notoutside They were not in a big hurry to move out But they were kind to us and shared with us what they had-which was ours of course

There were four in their family They retained the kitchen with a cookstove in it, the livingroo stove in it, and a bedroom They let us have two small rooms in which to store our furniture and cook and eat and sleep

There was no flue for a stove in our part of the house We ran a stovepipe out through oneand attached the lower end of it to a s stove so we could fry flapjacks and heat the roo direction, the fire smoked up our rooms and we had to ai with the direction the as going

It seems that the family in the other part of the house was named Stewart-Mr and Mrs Stewart and their two kiddos Boy! Did they deal us reater portion of our house with us I think I would hate everybody naht name

Man, it was cold! As I said, there were four of theood stoves in two of the rooms And in the two rooms that we had there was Papa, Mama, Susie, Dode, Earl, Joel, Albert, Ollie Mae, William Robert, and me-ten of us And out in the pasture were all our cows and horses, practically freezing to death Mr Steas using our sheds for his cows and horses

Papa had bought two or three carloads of cows in Jones County and had shi+pped theoods and fars could have been worse” Well this tis could ever be worse But rong They did get worse; 1917 was a dry year

We kids went to school while Dode and Papa went about fare one The dry weather prevailed throughout the year Grazing dried up and cattle got poor Papa did what he could to feed his family and his livestock

The United States was at ith Ger rabbits Jackrabbits brought ten cents each and cottontails brought six or eight cents When we killed a rabbit, all we had to do was cut open his abdo his intestines out Then we pitched the rabbits into the wagon and took the for most any honorable way to pick up an extra dollar I have seen Papa and Mama take a 22 rifle and a lunch and soon and stay all day, while we kids were in school Before night they would coht or ten inches deep all over the wagon bed

One le-shot 22-rifle and soht dollars worth In one week he brought in enough rabbits to pay off the debt That was one ti the dry weather, while ere slowly losing about everything we ever had, Papa hired out to haul cottonseed cake in his wagon to ranchers so it but there were times I didn't see him more than once or twice a week

Monroe Hahbors He and his faht of 1917 his work horses got so weak and poor that they beca in the field They stopped in the middle of the field and had to be unhitched and walked ho theth Mid-afternoon was about as long as they could keep working

By the tiain, they had beco their work about mid- afternoon and they refused to pull the plow after that time of day

One day Monroe became so unhappy with theed their sit-down strike, drove theht htexhausted while pulling a wagon out on the road They were not s in the field

During World War I, Frank wanted to join the Ar hi to be drafted But he wasn't at home much after that He worked here and there in defense work He told us he worked awhile in a powder factory in West Virginia After the as over, he ca sorader tractor Finally, Papa bought a big truck and let Frank take it and go wherever he could find a job, hauling whatever anyone would pay hi the dry weather was in gathering and selling dry bones There was a ready market for bones in Lamesa A lot of cows had died here and there due to dry weather and cold weather We hauled and sold quite a few bones

We also salvaged a lot of rawhides-dry rawhides We couldn't sell them but we could use the thehten the whips andother useful articles to be used on the farm