Part 23 (2/2)

The kids played around while I unloaded the truck And after I had finished my work, I took one of the sideboards fro, and I placed it across the butte With me on one end and the kids on the other, I could see-saw them up and down and they could splash their feet in the water What could be more fun to a three-year-old and a five-year-old? We had fun and all ell until tio home

Dennis was out on the end of the board and I told hiet up first and come to ot up and alking towardI could do or say would et hiot to his feet and tried to pass Anita on the eight-inch board And of course, since Dennis was biggest, Anita went off into the water-head first I couldn't turn loose of the board quickly and jump in after her; I had to hold on while Dennis caot off the board By this tiain and I lowered the board to her She crawled upon it and ca Excitedly she said, ”Daddy, me pick up o swi because the weather and water were both too cold But inside the truck cab, with the glasses up, it was hot So I put Anita up in the seat with all her clothes off and she was coot home and we put them back on her I sort of hoped that Ima wouldn't have to know about the accident, but do you think Anita could keep it secret? Goodness no! She had to go and tell Ima the whole story, in her own small way

I worked off-and-on for Calvin Carriker all the years we lived at Royston Along with his far station, and the post office Ed Leorked full ti a stripped down Model T Ford, and there was so with the T which Ed had not been able to reh speed it ran okay When I speak of high and low speeds, I'hborhood of, ”Under ten miles an hour it skipped and over fifteen it didn't”

One day after a rain, Calvin asked et the old car to running better, since it was too wet to work in the field I asked Ed what all he had done to the motor, and after he told me, I told him it had a broken piston But Ed said he had looked at the pistons when he had the head off grinding the valves, and the pistons were okay

I told hih it once askets, and ground the valves You have replaced everything that could cause it to skip on one cylinder except a bad piston”

Then Calvin said to ets a piston fro at the pistons from the top, Ed couldn't see the broken piston, but e took it out, we found it broken on one side all the way froroove We replaced that one bad piston and the old car ran okay

There were other troubles with automobiles in those days Today soood old days and tell of hoere born during the horse-and-buggy days and hoe lived through the Model T era, the Great Depression of the 1930s and into the Jet Age However, enerations about the ”broken-fender” age and the ”drain-your-car-every-night” era These two periods overlapped to a considerable degree and ran concurrently much of the ti board at one end and the other end of the fender was allowed to vibrate and flop up and down-especially on rough roads, and there were no sin to break directly above each wheel This called for a welding job to repair the break Then a feeeks later the fender was beginning to break again in the same place And this called for yet another repair job, and this went on and on throughout the entire life of the car It happened to all cars alike-the Essex, the Nash, the Whippet, and even the Hupe lasted from about 1928 until the late 1950s, and for me it extended into the 1960s because the only cars I could afford were old and well used and the fenders had been repaired by any number of other previous owners

Why didn't fenders break before 1928? A nuhter, and therefore they didn't flop and bend and break Further enough to run far enough to break their fenders The fenders outlastedthe drain-your-car-every-cold-night age Wood alcohol was about the only antifreeze we had, and it would boil away easily Also it would evaporate and it was expensive, Further a heavy load, you never knehether you still had enough alcohol to protect your motor from a freeze-up Nor did we have efficient weather forecasts telling us just how cold it was going to get beforeTherefore, most of us didn't use alcohol We just used water and drained it out in cold weather

So, all cars had a handy little faucet under the radiator And ether theyone side of the engine hood, I could lean across the fender and reach both faucets easily, even in the dark, as I often did

On one particular winter night, it was about ht when a norther hit and woke me up I knew I should have drained the car before I went to bed But being a ga lazy all over, I took a chance-and lost And with a fresh norther roaring outside, there was just one thing to do, go drain the car So, clothed in my shorts and my house shoes, and hidden behind a cloak of darkness, I hurried out to drain the car I quickly raised one side of the hood, leaned across the cold fender, and in a jiffy I had both faucets open

Then as I raised ht off the fender, a sharp pain in the skin of e of broken fenders When I leaned across the fender, ht had caused the crack in the fender to open, and as I lifted ht in the stoht back down on the fender and hold its mouth open with my hands while I carefully removed my stomach

Despite thethe 1920s, by the early 1930s the autoinning to crowd in and push the horse off the farm So I decided to cash in onof 1934, when a lot of far season, I sold all my work horses Now, I didn't have a tractor and I couldn't afford to buy one, but I figured I could build one I had never seen a home-made tractor-never even heard of one But now that I had sold all my horses, I was left with no choice except to build one

Again it was a ain there was no turning back; I had to go forward I used a truck differential and a car ether and put plows on it, my cost was 250 I have seen tractors that others have built since then, and I helped neighbors build a few, but that first one I built beat them all I farmed with it two years, then sold it for as ht a used Far with horses and tractors, our kids werehistory on their own They had this little whitethat had never had pups and they had an old -where, and she had stopped over at our place long enough to give birth to three kittens But while her kittens were still suckling, the old cat up and died And the next thing we knew that little dog had adopted those three kittens and was letting theot any milk for their effort, but they really put forth the effort I had never heard of a dog being that friendly with anythe lean years, when I had time to work for the other fellow a little, I wasn't content to hoe or drive his tractor for a dollar a day Instead, I was always looking for a way toa row binder didn't necessarily make money easier, but it made it quite a bit faster

One fall I took my row binder and car and tractor and Ile hbors That was clearexpenses, car expenses, binder repairs, and a babysitter at home for Dennis and Anita

Now youwith my other property that I took But I didn't mean it that way I simply meant to list her with the iteo voluntarily

During that month, we slept in a bed on top of our car We had all the tools we needed for repairing the binder right in the middle of any field And ays had plenty of hot bath water right from the tractor radiator It was clean water-we put in fresh clear water daily

We also found other ways to pick up a few extra dollars When World War II was in full swing and scrap ood price, we took a few loads of scrap to Sater and sold it While unloading there one day, I noticed an old Buick car in the scrap pile I looked it over, and the more I looked at it the better it looked to me Finally I paid the man 30 for it, pumped up the tires, put in a one-dollar battery and drove it ho cars I had ever owned We drove it two years and then swapped it off for a 45 milk cow

It seems that about half the years we lived at Royston were dry years and that about half of every wet year was dry So there were a lot of dry ti to be done On one of those occasions I rented an old blacks in it, just four walls and a roof I think I paid two dollars a month for the use of it, which was all it orth, considering the sandy dirt floor that ca doors at one end for cars to coh, some of which I repaired and some I wrecked out and sold for parts In addition, I stocked and sold a fe parts too

Wes Kennedy caht bulbs he had bought at Sater at 20 cents each And he added, ”Soet 35 cents for them”