Part 12 (2/2)
Papa bought the nine packages and we all laughed at how far that was frootten married about the time we moved to Lamesa And with her away from ho so irl still at home, and she was too little to be of much help And since Mama's kitchen work extended to the arden, the wash house, the clothes line, the ironing board, the yard and a few other odd jobs about the place, she had to cut all the corners she could
She never put our eating dishes up in the cabinet After she washed the table and covered them with a cloth So, she didn't have to place the dishes at ot our own plates and tools And we took only the tools we needed There was no need to have to wash a knife, a fork and a spoon when a spoon was all we needed to use
We grew up not knowing there were different forks to use for different things We used the rule of instinct in choosing the tool to use That is, ”If it's hard, use a knife, if it's soft, use a fork, and if it's wet, use a spoon-except in the case of molasses You sop molasses up with a piece of biscuit”
To save ti table-the salt, sugar, pepper, syrup, honey, vinegar, pepper sauce and other such things These were all covered with the saerator Nothing would spoil at our house, we ate it before it had time to spoil
Mama needed help to wash the dishes after supper But boys don't like to wash dishes So Ma She came up with an ultimatum: ”You wash your own supper dishes or eat out of your same plates for breakfast”
This was a boy's drea ofmy plate clean We all did We could lick our spoons as clean as any woman could wash them in a dishpan And I seldom used any tool except a spoon Plates were no probleh biscuit rind in the hands of a growing boy could just about put a soap factory out of business And no matter what he sopped out of his plate, it added flavor to his biscuit
When ere through licking and sopping, each of us would place our spoons on the table at our respective places, turn our plates upside down over the The last one to finish would help Mama spread a cloth over the entire table and the job was completed Mama was out of the kitchen in no ti on our plates that we couldn't eat Now that habit was paying off
CHAPTER 8
MOVED TO JONES COUNTY; PICKED COTTON IN OKLAHOMA
The dry weather still prevailed, and in spite of all our efforts to earn extradeeper into trouble month by month By the summer of 1918 ere about finished in our new venture There was no grazing and no rass, taking in sand with each bite Sand clogged their stomachs and they died with sand colic Many died but a few didn't
So else After a long heart-breaking battle against the ele cattle and drove them to the railroad stockyards at Lamesa That was a slow exodus They were so poor and weak some fell by the wayside and didn't finish the ten-mile drive Most of theot for theotten ot rid of the Buick car Susie and Dode e farm, and the rest of us moved to a farm near the coht out a crop from someone in mid-summer It, too, proved to be a failure-we made three bales of cotton
In that year and a half we had lost most of our money, our cattle, quite a few of our horses and our best car
After the crop failure at Abbie we had to try soain So we loaded the Reo car and went to Wichita Falls, Texas, where the govern an aviation ca on Papa hired on as a carpenter at six dollars a day
Let reen-horn country boys went to don Wichita Falls with Papa While he was attending to so at newspapers out in front of a drug store It ht because the newsracks were full of Sunday funny papers
We were keeping hands off and just seeing e could see without touching the papers when a stranger came by and told us, ”You boys can have all the funny papers you want They only want the newspapers Help yourselves to all you want”
Boy! We were sure pleased to hear that I was beginning to believe that city life wasthan the country life ere used to The funnies were just anted And ere gettingand inforet put in jail, you better put those papers back in the racks and get in that car in a hurry” We did what he told us to do
Harry was one of Frank's buddies He and Frank were carpentering out at the aviation camp As far as I was concerned, I respected Harry and I knew he had almost as much authority to spank us boys as Frank had At least he was concerned about our well-being We didn't know that a stranger would lie like that to country kids just to see theet into trouble
Anyhile Papa carpentered we lived in a tent-and it rained and rained and rained, week after week Our tent didn't leak froround and ca et You could al water out of the air in our tent
Mao home to our farm at Abbie So Papa loaded us all up and drove all one Saturday night We arrived at the faret unloaded so Papa could drive back to Wichita Falls Sunday and be there ready to work Monday