Part 13 (2/2)

It was the end of the year now, and tiive it up We gave it up and moved back to the farm at Lamesa We moved west the first tions It was January, 1919 and the weather was cold

If I had known then what I kno, I think I on trip coo when the Johnsons ons At least this ti a herd of cattle, only one old uess the coldest night was the one we spent in an old rundown schoolhouse, after chasing the skunks and roadrunners out It was so it was al a few ot around behind Gail Mountain out of the cold wind, and built a fire to warm by

CHAPTER 9

BACK TO OUR LAMESA FARM IN 1919; SCHOOL AT BALLARD

So wefarm near Lamesa and farmed there in 1919 Susie and Dode ot a job in town

After those two dry years on the plains, there seemed to be more coyotes than ever, at leastht and hunters had taken their toll of rabbits and I guess it was harder for the coyotes to find so to eat They would coht in search of food Old Scotch ed to keep them away from our chickens, but he was no match for two or three of theh 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 hiain When there werestay in his place

Now I guess you are wondering e didn't shoot the coyotes when they came that close The answer is simple Coyotes are not stupid They can tell a boy froun They siun 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 ti like as powerful as the poe 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 tis and rattlesnakes

You see, we did a lot of target practice with our guns Sometimes ould 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 ht cents for a box of 50

No one could deny that ere pretty good One ood 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 sood-looking the girls wouldn't leave him alone So he sort of drifted away fro good He wound up selling , 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 tooden spools One spool moved up and down, the other one was stationary at the lower end of the pipe When the wind blew the round, up through a little pipe, out through another pipe and into a sh The mill must have been about two or three feet tall, tower and all And the water it puinary cows

Joel also made a submarine out of a piece of two-by-four luh it from one end to the other for a rubber-band h, 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 re Spring And naturally it had to go back daily or else it wouldn't be there to co ers when there were any anted to be hauled It was a seven-passenger car And by placing a board across the juers with ease, all of the cars had a lot of room between the front seat and the back seat, so 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 giveunusual about apassengers along with the ers according to color and race at that date in our history Some were not allowed to ride inside the car with those ere coro or a Mexican passenger, he or she had to ride on a seat on the running board and hold onto the windshi+eld 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 thata part for our car We had planned a trip to Hao, the car broke a tooth off the ring gear in the differential The garage ear The parts et it on the mail car that very day It would be in Lamesa by noon, he proear didn't Nor did it coain and learned that the ear 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 ent to Hareat big story here But a boy re like this when he is 13 years old and he wanted to go to Hao

I re on an old tire that elled 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 Laood deal on one in Haht 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 125other things I rereat nureat distance you could see Almost every farm house had a windmill, and more than half the houses in town had mills It seeh 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 hohty bare You could see as far as your eyes could stretch A newcoht 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 laere tindh 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