Clarence Edgar Johnson

“ You see, Mama remembered some of my earlier gadgets, one of which had blown up all over her kitchen stove, cabinet, walls and floor. Some of it even hit the ceiling. Nevertheless, by the time Mama became brave enough to come near her dining table on this particular day—the day of the fly-chaser—I had the motor in the middle of the dining table, sending the fringed cloth round and round, shooing all the flies away. It proved to be a lifesaver. No fly ever lighted within its magic circle. Mama could place all the food on the table and feel sure that no fly would ever light on any of it. ”

“ We have yet to haul the maize to the railroad car, fork it into the car, then get 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 becomes a parking lot for dust and maize stingers that show no mercy. ”

“ CHAPTER 11 ROAD WORK AT GORMAN, TEXAS While we had been working on the farm six days a week and resting on Sunday, there were millions in this country living in cities and working on Sunday. Then we moved to town and Sunday became a way of life for us also—but not all at once. At first our working on Sunday came gradually and very reluctantly. But many town-people had no stumps to dig up, no cotton to pick, no fields to plow, no weeds to hoe, nothing to make them tired enough during the week that they needed to rest on Sunday. ”

“ Horse-drawn rigs were apt to pull up at our farm almost anytime. They had for sale most anything you might want, from kitchen utensils to medicine; hardware to veterinarian supplies; needles and thread and blue denim. You name it—they had it—even horseshoes and nails.
With the new prosperity came growth, and as a country grows so do her cities and towns. And as towns prosper, they breed violence.
I was only a kid but I heard some grownups telling about a man who got shot in Hamlin. One man was after another man with a shotgun. ”

“ He bounced right up beside us, full of life and gusto as if to ask, "Oh boy! What kind of excitement do you have planned for me this time?"
It's a common thing to see a two-car family in the 1970's, but we were a two-car family as early as 1916. We still had the Reo and Papa bought a Big Six seven-passenger Buick touring car. Old Scotch knew that Buick by sound. Uncle Robert had a Little Six Buick that sounded almost like the Big Six. Our dog could recognize the sound of those Buicks a half-mile away.
When other cars drove by along the road, Old Scotch would pay no attention to them. ”

“ Years ago, when I was just a little kid nine years old, Papa had gone to a garage to get the carburetor adjusted on his car. Joel and I went with him. And since it took the mechanic more than 15 minutes to do the work it was a good thing there was a place for little boys to hide.
The nice man working on our car must have been a little boy himself at one time or another, or maybe he had little boys of his own. At any rate, when he saw us whispering something in Papa's ear, the man pointed to the stairway leading up to a storeroom, in one corner of which was a little boy's room. ”

“ When I dreamed a dream, and I seemed to realize that I was dreaming, I would do things to entertain other kids—things no one else could do, like sliding down the roof of a big barn, dropping off the edge, and just before I hit the ground, I would close my eyes so the fall wouldn't hurt me. ”

“ Our parents wanted to be good to us kids, but being good to us didn't include spending a lot of money on us. By their ingenuity and hard work, they had a way of stretching a few dollars beyond contentment and happiness, almost to abundance. We each had a saddle and a horse to ride, including Ollie Mae, but not William Robert. Papa braided quirts for all of us. He would take the leather uppers of worn-out shoes, cut them into long strips, and make quirts as good as the best. He cut up Ollie Mae's old high top red shoes and made the prettiest little red quirt you ever saw. ”

“ Old Scotch couldn't bear the sound of thunder. During a thunderstorm he wanted to go in the house and get under a bed. That's the only time we ever let him in the house. The noise must have hurt his ears. Firecrackers affected him the same way. He would tolerate the noise of a rifle when he was out hunting with us, but he wouldn't allow even his best friends to aim anything at him.
Needless to say, we would never aim a gun at him any more than we would aim one at each other. But a broomstick or a hoe handle was like a gun to Old Scotch. ”

“ Along with all our work, we had our share of fun. Clarence Clark was a farmer who lived about a mile from the Royston store, and he loved a good joke as much as or more than the next fellow. And he also liked to play practical jokes on other people. Nor did he seem to mind if one of his jokes backfired right in his face.
One day a bunch of us were sitting around outside the store waiting for the mail to run—gabbing and "spittin and whittlin," when a man drove up with a fairly good-looking used, wooden icebox in his pick-up. ”

“ Many years later as we would drive by the farm in our hack, on our way to church at Neinda, our parents would point out the old dugout and explain, "There is where we used to live." Year after year as the old dugout deteriorated and began caving in, we still went by it on our way to church and there was always something fascinating about it to us kids as one or more of us would point to the old dwelling and say, "There's where Mama and Papa used to live." ”

“ We didn't dare use that word in the presence of Papa or Mama. And if any of the other kids heard us use it, they would tattle on us. So, we just didn't use it. We were taught to use the word "surley" instead.
As late as 1940 I knew middle-aged men who would not use the word "bull" before a woman. One old farmer said, "I don't know what the world is coming to. I believe the time will come when men and women will use the word 'bull' in mixed company and think nothing of it."
But that was in farming country. In cattle country it was different. ”

“ And each and every bridge is going to be a traffic hazard. Now, this bridge in this little town was not much longer than our truck but it served its purpose; it was a hazard.
When a car with electric lights turned a corner and faced us, we were blinded and our presto lights seemed to go out altogether. They didn't even shine down as far as the road at our front wheels. Nor did they show us the bridge with its little wooden banisters. Well, I did see one banister a little—not much—but Papa didn't see it at all. He didn't even know there was a creek nor a bridge ahead of us. ”

“ One day four of us were delivering posters to Rotan—two boys and two girls. The other boy was driving and I was in the back seat with one of the girls. She was not "my" girl—just a nice respectable school girl. I don't think I even had a girl to call my own, or maybe I did. If I had one, it was one of the teachers, which was strictly against board rules, so we had to keep it secret. No student was allowed to date a teacher. Well anyway, there we were in the back seat of the car, me socially handicapped, and they having all kinds of fun teasing me about being so timid and bashful. ”

“ But now, 60 years later, we find that auto-makers have wiped out all differences and are making all cars alike. No matter which company made the car you are driving today, you have nothing to brag about. Today's cars all have at least four things in common- -they are too big, too powerful, too costly and burn too much gasoline.
But it hasn't always been that way. About the same year we bought our Reo, a neighbor family of ours had a flat tire. They set the emergency brake while they jacked up the car to put the spare on. ”

“ When Papa was a boy, the lives of his entire family had to do with saddle horses and cattle. Even the little girls liked to ride horses and play cowboy. The youngest girl, Annie, was one of those little girls. But when Annie became big enough to do chores, one of her chores was to churn the milk that made the butter for the family. And she hated to have to stay home and churn while her brothers rode out into the pasture after the cows. ”

“ Susie had gotten married about the time we moved to Lamesa. And with her away from home, Mama was always short handed in the kitchen, there being so many men and boys in the family and only one little girl still at home, and she was too little to be of much help. And since Mama's kitchen work extended to the milk shed, the henhouse, the vegetable garden, 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. ”

“ I never heard Papa tell of trying to go around another farmer on his way to the gin. But I have heard him tell of speeding up to beat another man to a crossroads in order to be ahead of him when they both turned the last corner toward town. And I have heard him tell of others trying to pass him on the road. But I never heard of one who succeeded. Papa drove big horses with a lot of endurance, and on a three-mile stretch of level road, they usually held their own.
Despite all the work we had to do, we kids played a lot and had a lot of fun. ”

“ In November we stored our furniture, left our farm machinery for Earl to sell, and headed for California. We knew some folks who had gone to California from Royston and they told us to come on out, the wages were fine. We called it war work, but its purpose was twofold, to help produce the weapons of war and to help the Clarence Johnsons make more money faster. But getting into war work wasn't all that easy.
Before I could work at any job I had to get a release from farming, because farming was an essential industry in the total effort toward winning the war. ”

“ After all, he had been in the cattle business with his father until the time they all moved back to Texas from Oklahoma. At that time he went to farming because it required far less capital to be a farmer than to be a rancher. And he was a young man just starting out on his own.
But now he had accumulated a little of this world's goods and he thought it was time to step up to a larger place that would grow enough cows and calves to afford a better future for him and his family. ”

“ When there was a Negro or a Mexican passenger, he or she had to ride on a seat on the running board and hold onto the windshield 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 that mail car once to bring a part for our car. We had planned a trip to Hamlin and on the day before we were to go, the car broke a tooth off the ring gear in the differential. ”

“ Let me tell you about one night when some of us green-horn country boys went to downtown Wichita Falls with Papa. While he was attending to some business, we boys got out of the car and were looking at newspapers out in front of a drug store. It must have been a Saturday night because the newsracks were full of Sunday funny papers.
We were keeping hands off and just seeing what we 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." ”

“ Whoever it was, the idea worked well and made a little girl happy. She would tie a jar of milk to her saddle and ride on out with the boys, letting her horse do the churning.
At the Exum farm Mr. Whatley's pasture joined our field. And in his pasture he had an old cow which was well educated in the art of breaking through fences. And she seemed to enjoy slipping into our corn patch.
Now, the normal procedure for the average farmer was to put a yoke on the neck of such an animal. Of course, the purpose of the yoke was to bridge across the wires and stop the cow from going through the fence. ”

“ So one day Mama asked me why I didn't go on out with the other boys. She said, "There must be something wrong with you. You just can't get along with your brothers." Well, I got out all right as she suggested, and I found them out in the freight warehouse, drinking beer and shooting dice. If I'd had a dollar, I guess I might have been out shooting golf with Papa. But all I had was 18 cents, so I asked if I could get in their game. ”

“ One day Monroe became so unhappy with them that he unhitched them in the field where they had staged their sit-down strike, drove them to the barn, hitched them to his wagon and trotted them eight miles to Lamesa to get the mail. Then he trotted them eight miles back home. They had never experienced becoming exhausted while pulling a wagon out on the road. They were not smart enough to pull a sit-down strike anywhere except plowing in the field.
During World War I, Frank wanted to join the Army. But Mama and Papa did their part in talking him out of it. He was too young to be drafted. ”