Part 19 (2/2)

In the early 1920's many of our inter-city buses were marked ell-painted names, such as MISS DALLAS or MISS ABILENE Well, I had a Model T Ford touring car and I thought I ood used tires off a big Buick They were about four sizes too big for the Ford, but I put them on anyway And with only ten pounds of air in the tires, it rode very smoothly and it looked like a clubfooted horse

Then I cut the top down small to cover only the back seat And I put a windshi+eld on the back of the front seat That made tindshi+elds, one in front of the driver and one in front of the passengers in the back seat Itout in the sun and weather To top it all off I painted her name on both front doors-MISS FORTUNE Of course we kids had a million dollars worth of fun with it

After we Johnsons got a little money ahead, we , we added a long back porch, all glassed-in s the entire length of it Then we added a bathroom with all the fixtures And on the back porch we put a lavatory to wash our face and hands in, when the bathroom door happened to be locked So a load of hay, and when two or three of us were using the lavatory at the saht casually flip a few drops of water in another one's face Now that usually called for retaliation, which took place immediately And that in turn called for counter-retaliation with a lothandful and then a cupful

By this time we usually heard from Mama from wherever she happened to be, as she shouted, ”Stop that” And if she caet soet into, and I really think she wanted into it She only pretended she wanted us to stop It made it funnier that way and it relieved her of the responsibility for having instigated the action Ma water in the kitchen which was just as wet as the water we had on the porch and there was a 50-50 chance that she had some already drawn up in a stew pan So when she said, ”Stop it,” she et wet” We usually ended up being as wet as if we had jue of cars and we had our share of thee that ran over Albert and killed the hen for supper had atrouble, and it cost a fortune to have it repaired each time This was before I had learned ht me a lot about other cars to coht I could use Model T coils toas a distributor That would be less expensive than trying to keep the ed up and it worked some, but it was not a success The battery didn't fire the Model T coils well enough That was another one of my ideas I flunked out on

There was a farhborhood by the name of Owen And in that family was a boy named Bill My brother Frank ran around quite a bit with Bill Pretty soon Bill's sister, Mattie, got to running around with Frank Bill had a younger brother na around with Joe To coer sister na around witharound for just a few kids, but it happens that way so with Joe, and now and then I was glancing in the direction of Faye when Joe and I discovered Frank's trunk in Mattie's bedrooht since Frank and Mattie were married by this time

Joe and I knew that Frank kept a 45 revolver in the bottom of his trunk We also knew that Frank and Mattie were not home that day Faye and her parents were ho in Frank's trunk We hispering and tiptoeing

We took the 45 and a bunch of shells and slipped off out into the pasture to shoot so that would sit still for us, so we fired at it We tried and tried but decided we ht that a 45 would shoot as far as six or eight steps, but I guess not Or it could be weup at the front end every tier

Anye didn't know that Frank had returned hoet practice that we didn't see hiht upon us Then it was too late to run And for one ti to say We just stood there in surprise, prepared for the worst Then we got a bigger surprise Frank walked up to us and said, ”There are plenty of shells in the bottoave us a few pointers on firing a pistol and walked away

Before Papa got his freight line fro for anything to haul that would help usthat shouldn't happen to a dog There was athem by rail to somewhere This was the surplus maize farmers had left from last year's crop, after they had used all they needed for feed through the winter and spring The o pick it up Then we hauled it from the farms and loaded it into railroad boxcars

You may not know it, but each and every ers are bad enough when you get the heads out of the field in the fall and fork the most of the tie all winter, it dries out month after month and it collects dust frorains themselves where mice, rats, and birds have eaten, slept and roosted And then, when you load it into a truck, you have to get in the storage bin, under a sheetdown on the roof And each little stinger on each grain is harder and ers break off the seeds et into your eyes, your nose, down your collar and lodge in the wrinkles of your stoet in under your ar into your ankles Eventually, there is not any place on your body that doesn't sting and itch What's oes on after a bath Now I believe you will agree withWhen you have a job like that, you hate it, you detest it, and you dread having to face it the next day But you do it, and you keep on doing it until the job is finished, because you like to eat, and the job pays money and you have to earn et the picture? Well, wait a h We have yet to haul the et into the car and pitch it all the way back to both ends and all the way to the ceiling Did you ever work in a boxcar on a hot day in summertime? You choke on dust, you sweat, and each and every drop of sweat becoers that show no et hoood bath But soony, we had to drive 22 h, crooked roads in a slow truck before we could get a bath

In war, I have heard of torturing prisoners to get inforht of trying the maize-torture treatment

There were other better jobs of course One ofrocery store Mr Gay was operating the Farm Bureau store He offered , Mr Gay put etting the the day we ran out of one iterocery store I told him, but when the rush was over and ere alone, Mr Gay told me never to send a custo store up on the corner Then he added, ”And if we run out of coffee, sell them split peas”

At the end of that first Saturday Mr Gay paid me three dollars I told him that ice as much as he had offered150 each and that I did ether He paid me three dollars a day all the tier days orking at Hudson's Filling Station for Sox and Red Hudson The pay was ten cents an hour- keep ister every Saturday night

We did some overhauls and a lot of tune-up work One farneto It would run only on the battery and Fords didn't run good except onHe needed 21 for a motor overhaul But he was a poor boy and didn't have that kind of ht take a look at his coil points He told ood, he had just coe where a mechanic had adjusted them But Sox told him, ”Let Clarence look at them, he won't do them any harm”

Now, the Ford neto, and thisneeded a weak diet, so I adjusted his points so that a weakwould fire them Fifteenlike a new one-on theand had not had theHe was a regular custos like that for our custo a truck from Ft Worth to Ha made of bakelite I kneas cracked but it was still working well However, before I got home it broke into a lot of little pieces so small there was no way to use any part of it It happened at night and caught ht, way out in the country between towns Working in the dark, feeling my way, I wrapped adhesive tape all over the upper end of the shaft Then I stuck part of a safety pin through the tape to what I thought was about the right distance, and it worked It gave no more trouble all the way ho out bearings in the back connecting rod Each time it happened, it cost 26 to have a mechanic repair it The next tiured there had to be a reason for this continuing trouble, and it see the cause, but were only replacing the bearing each tiured I kneas wrong, and I thought I knew eneral run ofit He said, ”Clarence is not a mechanic; he can't do that job”

And Papa told hi it are not mechanics either At least it won't cost me 26”

So Papa letever gave trouble We drove the old truck for years and then sold it to Calvin Carriker for a far lasted the life of the truck, and unless someone looked in after the truck was junked, no one kno I remedied the problee mechanic-and Earl