Cracklin Bread

¾ cup yellow corn meal

1 teaspoon salt

1T bacon grease (pig butter)

Boil about a cup and a half of water, furiously

Stir and pour enough to wet the above.(That is what makes it 'hot water cornbread')

Cut or break one cup of the hard tough bought cracklins

Cover them with boiling water.

Mix it together and fry one tablespoon of the mix in a hot iron skillet, six or eight

patties in 1 tablespoon of fresh bacon grease or coconut oil

Flatten it a bit and turn and brown the other side. Have hungry people setting and waiting-- to quickly eat it with sweet milk.

I cook it for Stanley. Tommy and Kathy have learned to cook and eat it it now.' They can buy fresh cracklins in Belize. He found some Blue Bell ice cream there and he wanted it so bad that he paid the $10.

We were visiting from Fort Worth and Alicea and Stanley “got mad' at Eldridge.

I suggested that they 'tickle him to death.' They held him down and tickled him in all the tickelish places. He let them do it, and never cracked a grin,”Well why don't you tickle me?”They were rolling and laughing, he was calm.

Alicea was shy, that story about her falling in the slop bucket; she didn't like it. No one talked about it. Her little brother finally heard it and “the fat was in the fire'. He had found a way to torment her. It happened three years before he was born. The rest of us kept our mouth shut but he could say a word or two and she would have a fit. Mostly at the table when Daddy didn't hear Stanley Don's quiet words to set her off. “Sister fell”-- “You want a biscuit?” I was shocked at both of them; to hear that one night at the supper table; she threw a fork at him and it stuck in his upper lip! He was thirteen.

I never heard it mentioned after that.

On one of the many trips to Mineral Wells, our car had a problem at Palo Pinto.

Mama had stayed with Aunt Jennie and Uncle Aaron and went to school there for two years. She told Daddy to stop at a certain filling station. She knew the people, they fixed the car and were glad to see Mama and her family.

When we left, Alicea asked, “Mama, why did you let that man hug you?”

I do not ever remember a car of ours that had a heater in it. But we had rocks that we would set on our wood stove or the fireplace and heat, and wrap in an old quilt, for our feet. We always tied a head scarf on our heads, to keep our ears warm, and our hair from blowing. We wore our coat in the car. The cars were cold and windy.

Hanner had his family in their car and were on their way from Carlsbad, New Mexico to Mineral Wells. Breckenridge was on the way and they stopped and visited.

As they left, it was cold, Mama heated a rock for their feet. Muriel had a new quilt that she wrapped it in. It felt good until it started smoking. Hanner stopped the car and threw it out and it started burning. He stomped it and drove on. Doyle remembers that his Mama got mad at Hanner, that was her new quilt.

W Lee O'Daniels was head of the Lightcrust Doughboys on the radio. We all liked their music. He was running for Governor. They had a big rally on the east steps of the courthouse. They played music and he spoke. It was so hot and dry. It started pouring down rain. We all stood there and listened and laughed, not an umbrella or plastic bag for our heads. Several women had on dresses that had to be dry cleaned. They stood there and their dresses got about two inches shorter as they got wet. We were serious about our politics. He won handily, and was a good governor.

Alicea Knight, she grew to be a smart, shy pretty girl. She was 'Who's Who' in Economics in 1951. She had her high school diploma, social security number and a car and drivers license. She got a good job at 'Ma Bell' and had to send off to get her birth certificate.

It come back 'Julia Alice'. She was hot- she had a fit!! That was not her name! She wanted to change that certificate. We all knew it but her. “Well, why didn't somebody tell me? Name me Julia Alice and call me Alicea!”

She had to join the union and there was a strike almost immediately. She had to walk the picket line on the main sidewalk, across from Woolsworth. She almost quit,

she was so embarrassed.

Deodorants became available. There was an older supervisor that didn't use any. The younger ones finally slipped her a note

'If you don't care for your own smeller-- please have pity on the other feller,

use deodorant.' Alicea said that whatever she used, smelled like vanilla.

'Post Oak' was the community. There was early, some wooden oil wells still pumping. There had been one on our 90 acres.Some one donated a dry ten acre hill for a church, school and cemetery. Uncle Kelse is buried there. Aunt Hettie made him a marker out of cement. She put her name on it too, you can find it and both of them up there, on that old hill. (See, I told you that she could do anything!) The hill had an old oil well on it, the tall wooden rig was gone but it still pumped. That may have paid for the new two room school that was built two years before I started to school

Mount Pisgah was a Methodist church, 40 x70 with a stage that was about a fifth of it and a piano on it. There was a curtain that could be drawed shut. It was built 500 feet from the school. Most everyone in the community attended church. Every one was very friendly. There never was any food there, no pie suppers or covered dishes. A preacher come once or twice a month. Mrs Lawrence set on the stage by the piano and stood up to lead singing, I thought she was so pretty. She always wore a wide brim hat and taught the youngest class. She had two daughters, Lucille was a year older and Christene was two years older than I was. The school teacher that was hired, was always expected to go to church and teach the all the bigger kids, Sunday School class. All the same ones that she taught in school all week.

There was no other kind of church around, we were not taught tolerance or about any other kind of religion. I always knew that Catholics were rich, how else could they afford those long black or white clothes. Uncle Jim went to a big Baptist church in town. Mama was baptized in the Brazos River, when she was a teenager, into the Baptist church. She attended services at the Church of Christ for several years, and at the age of 80, she was baptized at the Azle Church. At Breckenridge,we went to the big Church of Christ in town some. I was baptized there. It was so far that we couldn't go very much. A farmer has to work till sundown and Daddy said, "God knows when my ox is in the ditch." I couldn't see much difference between any of them.

I might have really liked Jimmy Griffith, he was the only one, every year in my grade, we went to the seventh. But we were teased so much. He had a sister, Hazel who was just older than him, she was mongoloid and always kept at home. And he had a brother John, who was just older, about 17, he had TB and died at home. Daddy and Mama heard about it and drove the two miles over to their house. I had never been there before. He liked to drink buttermilk. Mama said there was still empty buttermilk glasses. Mama gave me the strictest orders to not get out of our car.

Hazel come and got in our car and wanted to play. I couldn't understand her and didn't know how to play with her. She got to grabbing and slapping at me. She was laughing, when Mama and Daddy come out. My face got scratches, not bad. Mama was so sorry. She was sorrier, because the next weekend we went to Mineral Wells and I had those scratches. Aunt Etta and Ludie really got onto her for that.

At school, every year, we all got tested for TB. No body else in the community ever had it or got it. Stanley said that one time his 'scratch test' 'swelled up. He had to lay down and rest a lot. The next test was negative and they forgot about it.

Water for the church was from a cistern. It was dug when the church was built, years ago. It was a thriving active community. Water from the roof of the church building, it was piped under ground into the cistern. The school used that water too. At the end of school recess, and lunch, the teacher rang the little copper hand bell. We would all run to get in line at the cistern. We were hot after playing 'Red Rover' or Red Line, running till our tongues hung out.

The teacher or the biggest boy would draw a bucket of water. We would wait our turn and drink our dipper full of water and the teacher would hand it to the next one in line. We might wash our hands with a dipper of water that the teacher poured over them.

Our school yard was a dry hill, no grass or weeds,no swings, no ball. When Mama or her Mother was going to school, their Mothers would make balls for them, unravel socks and wind the string up or sew strips of cloth onto a ball.

A new school was built a couple of years before I started. It had a giant long room, with a stage at one end. Folding doors could make it into two rooms. It had two big cloak rooms for our coats and lunches. A man teacher was over the 'big room' and a woman teacher for the 'little room.' The state furnished our school books, they started that in 1921. There was no library. There was not one book for a little girl like me to take home and read.

I remember a little girl, she raised 'one finger'. The teacher thought that she could wait the two minutes until the bell rang. She stayed in her seat. Her pee run down on the floor, under the doors into the 'big room'! None of us ever had to wait again.

I never had a man teacher, in a couple of years,there wasn't over ten students.

When the new building was built, a new girls toilet was built. It was the only 'three holer' that I ever saw and the only painted toilet, creamy white, like the school building. The only paper that I ever saw in it, was a catalog or magazine with it's pages torn in half. I set and crunched and wadded the paper up, to softed it. I never saw rolls of paper until bathrooms were in our homes. The first paper rolls had some flattened slivers of wood, pressed in. I never got stuck, but soon a brand come out that advertised, 'Hasn't scratched yet'. It was before the scouring powder.

The boys used the old toilet that was built for the church.

All the school programs were held in the church, it had a piano on the stage.

I don't remember anything ever said, about programs having to be religious. We would all have 'parts' in a 'play.' There was a curtain that could 'draw' across the front. I was always in at least three things. I would memorize a poem.

Sometimes I can remember “I wish there was some wonderful place called ; The land of beginning again” Once I wore Eldridge's old overalls and said a poem about what all that I carried in my pocket—and pulled out some string and a worm. The only time I ever wore britches to school at Post Oak.

On every program was someone painted black, with a poem or song, in dialect. None of us ever knew a black person or another nationalilty.

We students were always together in a song. None of us could sing, but we tried, every program. One time Minnie Alice come and played on the piano, I wanted her to sing, but she wouldn't. Sometimes our teacher couldn't play the piano. All the comunity come and clapped. No teacher was ever fired, they stayed two years, sometimes just one.

Before I started to school the teacher whipped ten students at one time. I don't remember what they did. They said it made her sick, maybe when she realized what it did to her reputation. I never knew of any other whipping at school, or even any fusses.

The women teachers were single, they always boarded with the Ernest Currys, they were childless. They come to all the programs and clapped for us, we all loved the Curry's. The teachers always walked the 1/2 mile to school. I never saw a teacher that had a car or a raincoat, nor get to school wet. It was always drouth. I don't remember that we ever had a bad storm cloud that we all watched. Stanley thinks I just forgot.

There were ten or eleven in the seven grades, when I was in school. There was a written test and I made the highest grade among all the seventh graders in the county. Miss Sandage was my last school teacher. She helped, she said that even she didn't know some of the answers. She mailed me a pretty white lacy dress to wear at the big county wide graduation exercises. I thought that I was the prettiest one there.

I never was told that 'I could be anything I wanted to be.'

I had no ambition, no dreams, except to 'pass my classes' and then graduate. My Daddy was a trustee from the time that I was in the first grade. The last few years, he was the only one. Once, he told us later that a man wanted the teaching job so bad that he tried to bribe Daddy. He wanted to give him the total amount that the teachers pay was. Daddy didn't even turn his name in or consider him. He said that he never could figure out what the man was planning.

There were no school buses, when I started to 'town school'. I stayed with Aunt Hettie for a week. She showed Daddy our grocery bill, he paid it, and I never stayed with her any more. I rode my bicycle maybe 25 times. I left it on the front porch of an old lady across the street from High School. The roads were narrow and rocky and there were two pretty good hills. Mostly I drove our car to our edge of town and parked in front of a little grocery store. There were seven more blocks for me to walk.

It wasn't considered safe for me to drive across a main street.

Daddy took me into the courthouse when I was fourteen and told the Sheriff that he wanted a drivers license for 'my girl'. When I needed it renewed, the number had worn off. They gave me a 'made up' number. I have never had a drivers test, even an eye test, or been stopped or got a ticket at 92 years old.(Tommy says that isn't posssible)

A year in Junior High, I liked it all. I remember one time, I got to buy my lunch. At a tiny store I got a good hamburger and a bottle coke. They cost 5 cents each.

In PE we were usually outside. On Friday we were all together and had class.

I was to make a speech. I started out, "Did you ever eat a bug?" Just then the bell rang, they all roared. I finished it the next Friday. Coca Cola was being sued by some one who had found a bug in their bottle. They hired a man to stand there and eat a bug, and they didn't have to pay.

I loved their library and it's well worn books. I think I read them all. At night, I balanced our coal oil lamp in a cane bottom chair by my bed. Daddy would call for me to “Blow that light out and go to sleep.”

“I'll just finish this page", then I would read until he called again. Sometimes all the oil would burn out of the lamp. I might turn the wick up, to get a bit more reading.

He would have to refill it and maybe trim the burnt, off the wick, before he could build a fire for Mama to cook breakfast. I don't remember ever getting a whipping for it, but he sure got aggrivated at me.

Most men shaved with a 'straight razor', the blade was four inches long. They sharpened it by 'stropping' in on the smooth heavy leather of a 'razor strop'. That razor strap was two inches wide, had a leather handle and made the perfect thing for whipping a kid. Daddy used it on us, but never where it left a mark, or really hurt us.

Stanley nor I ever remember a Mexican or 'different' student in our country schools, or even at town.

I was in the home economics club. One Saturday we had a picnic at a girls house. They lived on Gonzalos creek, it cut through town, and we went swimming. The teacher couldn't swim and it was deeper than it should have been. One girl got scared and I pulled her out, we never could tell it.

The Pep Squad had about thirty girls. We wore kelly green satin skirts over our knees and shiny white satin long sleeve blouses. There was a pattern, our mothers sewed them. There were four leaders. They stood on their two feet and led us in cheers. We never went on to the field. Several times we went out of town, on 'Saturday games' on a school bus, to cheer our team. We were a loud little bunch in yells and our green and white, school colors.

Yea Green Yea White Yea Buckaroos Fight Fight Fight

Block that kick Block that kick Block that kick

Our football team was good! It won state many times. Big Oil was still in Breckenridge. There were tales that when the team needed a certain player, an oil company would hire his Dad, if he lived in another part of the state. And the family moved to Breckenridge. Of course I never believed that.

The 1938 football schedule, that I still have, we won nine games. We lost to the bigger Wichita Falls 0-20 and Lubbock in the final district game, 0-21.

Daddy and Mama would bring me to the games and then wait for me at Aunt Hetties. I would walk there, about a mile. I never had a scare of any kind.

I had a red headed boy friend. He gave me a rose gold colored watch. I never learned to wear a watch, it 'bothered' me. We thought that it was the 'real thing'.

We talked to Aunt Hettie, “If you really love each other, go ahead and get married.” She should have said, “No one seventeen, is old enough to be sure.” He went into the army and I went to visit Mineral Wells. He met someone else. I gave Aunt Hettie the watch, she liked him; more than I did.

Now I'm 92--There's the cutest boy at church, about 10. If I had married that first boy friend; would I have a good looking granson that is red headed?

Daddy always told me that when I graduated, he would get me a job in town. But there were no jobs anywhere. For a while one fall, Daddy and Burl 'picked up pecans'. They camped on the creek around Chrystal Falls. They climbed the big trees and used long cane fishing poles to 'frail', off the trees, the native pecans that they could reach.

Me and Stanley think we remember $5 for a tow sack full, and they had to split that with the land owner. There was just no jobs to be had.

Some older couples would buy a sack of pecans and shell them 'by hand'. They would sell the shelled ones back. They got more pay for the unbroken halves.

HENRY KING Mamas younger sister, Ludie, had a good looking boy friend, he had a big wide grin- all the time. Papa Gill didn't like him, because he liked Ludie. He worked on motorcycles and he rode them in local races, in Fort Worth. I met him and his family, he had two beautiful sisters. I wondered why he would want to be with Ludie when I thought his sisters were more beautiful. What a lot I had to learn.

They were at Ludies home making ice cream. They hid all the guns in the house.

She was afraid that her Dad would come around the house and run him off.

There was no way to be cool except to set in the shade of the house. As the sun went over or the wind changed; you moved your cane bottom chair to the shade on another side of the house. Henry brazonly carried a big goblet of ice cream around the house and gave it to her Dad. He took it and didn't say anything.

I got to stay with them a few days. They lived up over a garage, in Fort Worth. Their stairs were open and on the outside. Ludie was pregnant and would stand on the landing at the top of their stairs and puke. Henry would stand beside her and he would puke too. He made $20 a week. That was the most money that I had ever heard of.

I went with Henry to an 'Outlaw Race'. It wasn't sanctioned from higher up. There wasn't over 30 there. Me riding behind him, going there. Ludie had to tell me to grab around him tight and hang on. Her being pregnant, she didn't go to the race.

It was up near Meunster, a country dirt track, in and around trees. Lots of dust and fun. Henry beat all of them. He let some one else ride his motor for one race. That person was behind and Henry run out and throwed rocks at him to speed him up. Everybody was yelling and laughing. I was so proud of him.

On the way back Ludie come in a car with others and met us at a big country cross road. We each got a half cantelope and it was filled with ice cream!

It was the most wonderful life that I could imagine.

Ludie went to a Doctor who had his own clinic. When their baby boy was born dead, they blamed the Doctor for getting there to his clinic to late. Ludie was fine.

The next summer, Henry kept having sore throat, The Doctor recomended taking his tonsils out. He did not do good and got very dehydrated and went to the hospital.

He got worse and they said that it developed into minegitus.

Papa Gill come to Ludie, “If money can save him, he's saved.” That made her feel better. Henry died July 31, 1940. He was buried by the side of their son, who was born dead, Dec 24, 1939. (She never had another child) They are both buried in Salesville, north of Mineral Wells.

They had lived in Fort Worth. At his funeral all his friends rode their motorcycles. The biggest bunch that any of us ever saw.

His folks bought a new car with his insurance money. The car burned. Ludie laughed.

Ludie stayed with Aunt Etta and Vernon, They had just adopted Glenna June. She was a sweet doll and Aunt Etta sewed and dressed her like one. 1940 Germany was taking everything. Our boys were being drafted, there was not enough places to put them

Camp Wolters was built 48 miles west of Fort Worth, on hwy 80. 16,000 acres in Parker and Palo Pinto Counties. Mineral Wells was a health resort, just three miles east. It turned into a boom town. Aunt Etta rented out two of their bedrooms to two carpenters and their wives, they were nice.

Ludie got a job at a bakery, I come to visit and got a job at the 'water fountain' on the mezanine of the big Baker Hotel. We carried the table and chairs out of Aunt Etta and Vernons small breakfast nook and stored it up in their garage. At night Ludie and I got a feather bed off Aunt Etta's bed and slept on the floor of the breakfast nook. In the morning we put up the matress. We kept our clothes in brown paper bags. We had fun and I don't remember any problem with all of us in the bathroom. We were all glad to be there and have a place to stay. Aunt Etta and Vernon was glad to help everybody, and we all played with Glenna June. She was so happy and playfull.

Ludie met Ray Bennett, one of the very first soldiers at Camp Wolters. They liked to go places. She mentioned that she had a niece, and he mentioned that he had a friend. We had a double date. 'Moore' was the army way of talk. Ray and Moore several times took Glenna June to Camp Wolters and 'showed her off ' in the kitchen. She loved it, and still remembers.

Ludie and Ray were going to be married when he come back from overseas. He had gone to Fort Benning and was a second Lt. He left her with a set of nice rings. He was killed in the battle of the bulge, when the Germans almost broke through. More Americans were killed in that battle than any other WW two battle.

Years later Ludie married Jerry Morris, a widower. They adopted Cordell, ten years old. They come to see us. He was about Bennys age. He was likeable but he did not know what a hammer was. He was raised in Buckners Orphan Home. He married and had two sons.

Moore soon took me to Breckenridge to see my folks. He had older married brothers and sisters, lots of nieces and nephews. My brothers and sister were shy and scared of that tall soldier. It was the first time they had been around any one in uniform. Moore started grabbing at them to play. He caught Stanley and he bit him! Oh I was mortified. I lived over it.

Daddy was elected as a school trustee, the year that I started to school.

Then it was just understood that he was trustee. At the last he was the only one who would serve. He said that it was the most 'thankless job' in the world. He searched out pipelines to get more tax money. He did not want his kids to go to 'town school'. There was a county superintendent who kept her job by keeping the county schools open. They worked together.

The community grew 'older' and there were less and less of school age.

There was such a little handful that Stanley said he never had a Christmas tree or any kind of program at school. Daddy kept the Post Oak School open until Stanley was in the fourth grade. The last year he hired a teacher who had a husband and five school age kids. He let them all live in the school building.

The next year he had a bus from town come around and pick up the handfull of students. Stanley remembers that Mama was still making his overalls. And making his shirts and underwear out of 'feed sacks.' In 'town school', there was just a couple of other country boys who dressed like that.

Alicea remembered the hardest whipping that she ever got from Daddy. He heard her and Stanley laughing about a song they sang about the only little fat girl in the community. She rode the school bus.”Mary, Mary two by four, can't get through the school bus door.” Stanley says that was the kind of things that he tried to forget.

Stanley, said, “All my teachers kept a paddle on their desk, and sometimes used it.”

Stanley remembered an ice storm at school at town. A rounding hill was covered with ice. Several 'town girls' stepped out on it. One of then slipped and slid and fell. He run right up over her and was laughing at the 'town girls'. One of them slapped him.

Daddy saw a need in the community, he bought a used bailor. At first he fed it. It was a hot hard dusty job. Adelle married Alvin Smith from west Texas.He was big and stout and grinned a lot, we all liked him. He was a fine person, from a 'good family', of twelve children. Mama said, they were 'good to have the preacher' and 'when the hat was passed'. He was a good bailor 'feeder' and he and Daddy worked good together.

Their first child had the most beautiful hair. Bright 'copper red' from the day that she was born. The family started teasing Adelle 'about the 'milk man'. Alvin's Mother laughed, everyone forgot that was the color that her hair had been, before it turned gray. They named her after Uncle Jim and Aunt Zenna Mae'e two daughters, Minnie Jeanne.

Their next daughter, had beautiful brown hair. They figured a beautiful name for her, using both of theirs, Alvadell. Jerry Alvadell. They thought that no one would ever copy her own beautiful name. In a few months, a neighbor family did, Alvadell.

Alvadelle was about four, she and Adelle were walking down the street. Alvadelle had beautiful long curls, bouncing on her shoulders. Two soldiers were meeting them and one of them whistled. The other one said, “You don't whistle at her, she's a married woman.” “You do if she's got a daughter that is as pretty as that one.”

They always liked to come to our house. They were the only ones that ever spent the night. They loved Eldridge and Alicea and thought Stanley Don was a real daredevil. They could climb a tree, grab onto a handle and go sliding down a wire cable, a long ways. “Aunt Anne was always right out in it, playing with us.” Minnie Jeanne remembers that Stanley Don always got car sick if he rode in the back seat.

Mama especially liked one thing that they did. They bought groceries on Saturday.

They bought hamburger buns, a big red onion and hamburger meat; and went home and had a party.

As my children got three or four years old, or ten; I would get Alvin aside, he was not a 'show off'. I would ask him if he would please,'wiggle his ears' for my boys. They would get quiet and he would have a slow grin; and his ears would start wiggling. They would have gales of laughter.

Alvin was a good 'feeder', always on time and Daddy would do the 'tying,' a good team. Daddy would hollar, "block it". And Alvin would set a heavy wooden block of wood down into the bailer. That separated the bails of hay.

Daddy 'paid good', seventy five cents a day and their dinner. Daddy could always get hands to work for him. As Mama cooked our breakfast, she cooked 'the bailer dinner'. Usually red beans, that she had soaked overnight, sometimes black eyed peas, always fried potatoes, cornbread and a big fruit cobbler. Mamas cobblers were the best, especially the crust. (We never could get a recipe from her that tasted as good as hers) Sometimes she fried a chicken. Daddy carried it with him when he left early in the morning. There was always plenty of food.

Sometimes the farmers wife cooked their dinner. But that took longer to get to the food and back. One time the farmers wife forgot to set the pie on the table. One of the 'hands' saw it on the buffet. but was to timid to mention it. He liked to have never lived that down.

Mama heard that salt tablets were good for workers in hot weather. She didn't have any salt tablets, so she put some salt in their can of drinking water. They stopped to get a drink, the middle of the morning and couldn't drink the water. Someone had to go to a house and get good water. Mama never did live that down.

I could drive the sulkey rake and set up high and drive the mules and the springy tines would gather the hay. I would reach back and pull the handle and dump the hay in rows. Then a man on the buck rake would drive down the row and push a load to the bailer. There was no need for Daddy to pay a man to do, what I could easily do. I enjoyed it more than working in the house. Mama didn't like for me to do it, no other women or girl worked in the field. I was helping my Daddy and she couldn't stop me.

I always wore a dress and bonnet. My bloomers had elastic just above my knees.

One day a blinder on the bridle of one of the mules fell down. He could see my bonnet flopping and he got scared and started running. The other mule wasn't scared and wasn't going so fast. They were going in a circle. Daddy hollared at me,”Fall off backwards.” I had learned to 'set tight' up on that high seat and I wouldn't fall. Daddy run and cut them off and caught their bridle. He wired the blinder back on and I finished raking. I never was afraid of anything.

I never could harness the teams, the horses would 'throw their head up'. I only worked on Saturdays and sometimes in the summer. I always liked to help Daddy. Hay bailing was in the heat of the summer, when there was no school. We never missed school to work. If we were sick, we went to school--unless we throwed up. The boys knew better than to 'play off', they got castor oil.

Alicea never worked in the field, she didn't want to and she wasn't needed.

Stanley was not big enough to help or do any work at all. He wanted to work and help. Our cistern had to be replastered. The water was seeping out of it. Daddy was always careful of us kids. He was down in the well, plastering up the cracks. Stanley leaned and looked, he leaned some more. Stanley fell into our cistern, right on top of Daddy.

He was the only one of us four kids that ever got down into that cistern.

move this back a few pages

Daddy bought a used bailor and rake in 1948. Stanley was determined to help.

He follered Old Dynamite, walking, around and around, to “pull' the bailor. He learned never make him jump, to keep the bailer going smoothly.

Stanley was nine when Daddy bought a used tractor, in 1949. He was setting on it when Daddy pulled on the flywheel to start it the first time. Stanley shoved it into gear and Daddy had to scramble to get out of the way. Stanley said, “It's mine!”

He was on it, every chance he got. Eldridge didn't care, he liked to drive horses better, but he didn't like to ride them.

Mama and Daddy said that Eldridge, "Just never did learn to 'take a holt."

One time Eldridge was about 10, he hid in the ditch at the road in front of the house, and smoked. Daddy saw the smoke and gave him a hard whipping. It didn't work, he smoked any time that he was away from home. After he got out of the army, he smoked around home, just not in the house. Did that 'second hand' smoke, make Daddy's lungs worse?

Some boys were at our house to see Eldridge and Stanley was just a little kid. He heard them say that they were going to find some cigaretts. They started out the back door and he follered them and asked them where they were going to find them.

"They are under rocks." They started turning rocks over and looking. Then they found some. You just had to know which rocks to turn over.

Stanley was so young and bashful. I told him that when he went with the men, to eat dinner at a neighbors house; he should pick out some food that he liked and go and tell the woman that he liked it. I don't know if he did it or not, but he became very well liked. Soon Stanley could handle that tractor better than Daddy and Daddy was proud.

Daddy earned a good reputation as a hay bailer. Hay had to be cut at the peak of it's growing season, when its food value to animals were the highest. It needed to be cut and lay a day or so and dry out; but not to 'bake in the sun'. Then it needed to be raked and bailed quickly and not get rained on. It looses neutrition, gets darker and the stock won't eat it as good, if it is rained on. The bales should be in the barn and not rained on.

Pearl Harbor was bombed! We were so mad at them. Thel had to go overseas. Daddy come to get me and Benny Thel at Mineral Wells. All our belongings fit in his car. Benny was happy on the farm.

I drove Daddy's car and he never charged us anything. I saved my allotment from Thel. I got a job at Alexanders Creamery in Breckenridge. I put all the things in and made ice cream, 10 gallons at a time, all flavors. The reason that I got the job was a man who had worked, bailing hay for Daddy, lived there in the comunity. He was the manager of the creamery.

His wife and I were friends. One time we 'conditioned' our hair. We broke a fresh egg on top of our head and worked it into our hair. You try it. We couldn't tell any difference in our hair.

One day on the job-he come up from behind and grabbed me. I whirled around,"Don't you know that my Daddy is Ben Knight! If you ever touch me again,

I'll quit right then." He didn't touch me again.

I have always regretted it-- that I never told Daddy that.

Even though that wasn't something that I could talk to Daddy about.

To show him what I thought of him and that I had no doubt of his reputation.

I was proud of my Daddy, his honesty and his work ethic. It shaped my life, and Stanleys and Alices's too. (It's running on in the family)

While Thel was overseas, I paid Daddy to built me a chicken house below the barn, but I never made any money off of it. One chicken put her head through a knot hole in the wall by the roost. She hung there untill she died. It seems like a chicken will do anything stupid to kill theirself.

Stanley remembers that I would pay him a nickle a can for the fat tomato horn worms that he picked to feed my chickens. Mama kept Benny Thel while I worked, he had a good life.

That Christmas was the only one that we ever didn't get to go to Mineral Wells. There was no gasoline for trips in wartime. We cut us a three foot oak Christmas tree, it decorated fine. 'We dassen't touch the tree.' Us kids always liked to 'string the popcorn' to go round and round it. We always salted it, because--

Aunt Etta had showed us how to get on our knees, hands behind our backs and lean over and eat the popcorn off the string on the Christmas tree. 'But we dassen't touch it'.

Scrap metal was needed during the war. Alvin got a job at a metal cutting company. There was lots of old oilfield cable that got brought in. Alvin was working on a cable cutting machine. He got his hand tangled and lost two fingers. Adelle said that she didn't want him to be drafted, but she sure didn't want him to get his hand hurt. He smoked and he couldn't 'roll his own' after that. During the war, there was a shortage of 'ready mades'. His friends saw that he never run out. He got a good job at a hardware store and put their implements together for years. Stanley said that he never saw any thing that Alvin couldn't do. Alvin died of appendecitus. Maybe it was because the Doctor, who was a friend, didn't believe that he was hurting as bad as he said that he was

Thel come home and we lived in Fort Worth and visited a lot.

Benny Thel was about four and me and him were visiting Breckenridge. He had made hisself a 'bow and arrow'. It was about two foot long and it wouldn't shoot. He started in at the back screen door and stuck hisself in the eye. He cried and I held him a while, we couldn't see anything wrong with his eye. He went back to playing.

After we finished washing the clothes, Mama was holding him. She put her hand over one eye and then the other."He can't see out of his right eye! Take him to the Doctor quick!" It was after noon and there was no eye specialist in Breckenridge.

So I took him to the emergency room at the Breckenridge Hospital. (It was the first time that any of us had been to the emergency room there, or even the hospital) The Doctor was nice, "His sight will be all right in a few days, Don't worry." So we had a good visit and went back to Fort Worth.

Benny was in the second grade, a note from school come. It said that we should take him to an eye specialist. The specialist in Fort Worth said that there had been bleeding at the back of his eye. He could not see out of it. He thought there would come a time when Doctors would gain the knowledge to repair it. He told us, that if it did us any good; there wasn't any thing that could have been done about it; at the time.

Benny had physicals over the years and one eye Doctor wanted to operate. Benny didn't trust him. Benny was 40 and had the eye operated on. His Granmama was so tickled, She had always grieved over his eye.

He can see out of it, some. But he has never really used that eye, and he still doesen't.

Daddy told me that he was going to start paying the bailor hands, a dollar a day. I had a fit, “You won't have anything left for all the work that you do. You will work the hardest and give it all to them.” He didn't pay no 'tention to me.

One Saturday, we were visiting in Breckenridge. Alicea come back from the mail box, she was wide eyed. ”It's out there, it's in the mail box!” They had been expecting Eldridges draft notice. I got it out of the mail box. Mama was very upset. If there had been some way that she could have sent him to Canada, or hid him out, as they said that some did, she would have.

He was drafted for the Korean War. We have always been so thankful that after his basic training, he was sent to Germany, Dec 6, 1950, as a truck driver.

He was discharged July 15, 1951 He said that he felt sorry for the new soldiers that were sent over and had to learn to drive on those slick cobblestones, on the roads in Germany.

Daddy and Burl had 'Arkansas fever'. Mama remembers, “Me, Ben, Stanley, Hugh Garland and Dora and Burl made a rounding trip through the state. Ben was just sold on Arkansas, it was so green. We looked at lots of places for sale. But you couldn't do anything, until you sold your own place and had the money.

Dora had a penicillian shot for some cause and she was alergic to it. She swelled up as big as a barrel and was as sick as a dog. We would stop and ask a Dr about it. They said it wouldn't hurt her, but it did. We were trying to get to Burl's sister in Harrison Ark. We were in Burls pickup and we were to take turns about riding up front.

Dora was flat of her back, in the back. Stanley was car sick and couldn't ride in the back. So Ben and I had to ride in the back all the time. When we got to Burl's sisters, Dora was doctored up. She said she rode all over Arkansas and never got to see any of it.

We had just got our house in Breckenridge, rocked outside and remodeled inside. A three bedroom house that we had built, almost alone. We sold out in Breckenridge where we had lived 25 years. Eldridge had just come in from the army during the Korean War, only he was sent to Germany in Dec 6, 1950, and he didn't have to fight. He was discharged July 15, 1951. We didn't want to 'loose' Eldridge too. We knew that he couldn't stay on that poor farm in Breckenridge, with us.

So he went with Ben and I to look in Arkansas again.

We located 9 miles from Prarie Grove and 9 miles from West Fork at Hog Eye.

Stanley had just got a job with Burkett. Alicea was with the telephone company.

She stayed in Breckenridge and had an apartment with Minnie Jeanne for a year.

Her husband, Darrel was in the army overseas.

Then Alicia got transferred to Rogers, Arkansas and then after another year, Fayetteville. While she was in Breckenridge she managed to drive to Arkansas about every two months and bring some one with her. When she was around, it was lots of fun.

About that time 'gay' come to have its double meaning. She said that wasn't right, she had always been a 'happy and gay' person and there wasn't any thing wrong with it.

The place had a new three bedroom house but wasn't finished inside. So again we had a house to build. There was a creek that run sometimes. An old house that was used as a barn. They told us that Confederate headquarters had been in it, during the Civil War, battle of Prarie Grove. Once in a great, while someone would find a rusty old round musket bullet. Eldridge had one.

Lots of little running springs. They dried up in the summer time and the ticks come out. There were so many kinds. They all dug in and itched and we scratched. A bunch of folks from Mineral Wells, had just drove off. Eldridge said. "I am going to the Doctor, I'v got a tick bite." He hadn't said any thing about it and wouldn't let us see it. It's the only time we went to the Doctor for one. Sometimes they would get bad though.

We were on a milk route so we bought a milker. Sometimes it would freeze and we would have to do it by hand. Finally we decided to let the calves have the milk.

We had a three acre strawberry patch, The first time we went to sell them, we picked a bushel basket full. Eldridge brought them back home and had lots of tiny pint baskets. We repacked them and ate all the soft ones. Sometimes neighbors helped pick them.

One time we were selling berries that were to be 'capped', the leaves pulled off of them. Daddy found two little girls who were using teaspoons to cap them. Their baskets were dripping juice. About the time the berries were gone, we would plant two or three acres of tomatoes and sell them at the canning factory.They wanted them real ripe.

As we made more money, we dropped the berries and then the tomatoes.

Ben and Eldridge also bailed hay. They had so many irons in the fire that they couldn't half get around. We had cucumbers for three years, that was the worst of all. I couldn't find them under their leaves. Ben seemed to find them so easy.

Alicea and I tried rabbits. Ben built rows of cages. It come a real hot spell and some died. We went broke the first year, $40 in the hole.

Eldridge would go to wherever Stanley was working in Texas, and work to pay the lease on our grazing land, until the hay was ready to bale. I know it must have put Stanley in a bind sometimes, but he always took him in. And he brought home money.

One trip he had to buy a different car. He was back in Arkansas, and was working on our fence. He come back to his car, which he had parked in the road, to get tools.

He found an Arkansas game warden waiting by Eldridges car, with the Texas license.

He thought he was going to catch a Texan, deer hunting out of season.

Daddy was driving his pickup up the steep rockey hill by the barn. A doe and a spindley fawn went scrambling across the rocky road. right in front of us. Tommy and Richard were in the back of the pickup. Richard jumped out, in fun, to catch that spindley little deer. Daddy started laughing "He better hope he don't catch it. It will break his arm or kick his teeth out."

Eldridge bought land of his own. Alicea helped him get started, he paid it all back. He had his own cattle and a home of his own, up on Malicote Mountain. It touched our land on the east.

He had one young heifer that was real wild, she wouldn't hardly stay with the others. He watched her and when he found a new calf, hidden, he figured that it was hers. He tied the calf, with hay nearby. The next day he could tell that she had been there to let the calf suck. He tied the calf a little closer to the barn. Gradually that wild heifer and her calf weren't wild any more, and stayed with the others.

He always lived with us. A neighbor would give magazines, some would be 'True Story'. I would read them first, and if there was something that I didn't think Eldridge should read-- I would tear it out—he just grinned.

Some friends would stop in front of the house and stand and talk and talk to him. I would call him, “Telephone!” If he was tired of talking, he would come into the house. Or he might stand and talk more.

Without Eldridge and Alicea we couldn't have done a thing. And they also needed us.

He soon got work on a water drilling rig. Sometimes they would 'accidently' hit natural gas. Now he don't want to go back to Texas to live.

He had a girl friend, she came to see his place, we thought that it was a nice one.

I wanted him to have a mate and not live alone. He said that she went on to her sisters in California. He told Alicea all about it. She said that if he had wanted us to know, he would have told us.

One time he and Alicea 'double dated', Alicea said that he was not a 'stick in the mud'. We were all working on his yard one day. Alicea bought a quart can of bright red paint. She painted both sides of his kitchen door. He grinned about it, it's still red. 2014

We stayed in Arkansas nearly 20 years and all four of us loved it, in spite of the hard work. When you love the work, you don't mind.

We had a good dog. Toby was a tall beautiful golden Collie. He nosed around, whatever we were doing. Me and Daddy worked on fence a lot. He would find a snake in the weeds and shake it to kill it. Sometimes Toby would be swelled up for a while, we knew that he had been snake bit. We knew that he saved us from getting snake bit.

When someone would skin a squirrel or a rabbit and pitch the skin away, Toby would jump and catch the skin in the air. He would swoller it, in a gulp. It was a sight to see. We all liked to watch, the knot that moved down his neck. A deer got hung up in the fence down by the barn. Toby stayed by it for a couple of weeks,until he got it all ate up.

Dr Pepper was a little dog that we brought from Breckenridge. Ida backed over him in our driveway. I had a “double hair' Simese cat. He just come to our door.

'Little Beaver' was so fluffy and pretty, he mewed like a baby crying.

All our dogs and cats just 'come to our house'. They were all good.

Ben had a shop that just had an old tin top and back. He could repair any rusted plow or tool and use it again. He had a big old metal anvil. Tommy was prowling around and banging on the anvil. Suddenly a BIG bang. Louise called “Tommy!” he answered, nothing else was said. She knew that he had hit a 22 shell and if he answered, he was ok. And she was sure that he wouldn't ever do that again.You just ask him,he remembers.

There were ground hogs out below the barn, they were running around their holes. The boys were shooting at them for fun. Eldridge shot one, a full half a mile, and we cooked it. We would see them up on the shingle roof of our barn, chewing on them.

I guess we all tasted it, the younger the boys, the more they ate, the meat was real dark.

Alicea transferred to Little Rock the last five years, and she dearly loved down there. She could still get home to us quite often, anytime there was folks from Texas.

She worked in an office and they kept telling them that they were going to have to hire a colored girl. The office had to be integrated. The black girl surprised them all. Alicea told Mama, "We like her."

They made up money in their office for a gift for one of them, that was getting married. Alicea and the black girl were chosen to go and buy the gift. Alicea told Mama that they were walking down the street together, carrying the ironing board and an iron. Mama told me, "I didn't think that Alicea would do that."

The black girl told Alicea about "soul food', blackeyed peas, cornbread and okra. Alicea told her that she had ate that all her life and she didn't know that it was 'soul food' she liked it. Alicea told Mama that girl would probably get her job some day.

Alicea took classes and studied shorthand in 1967 and 1968. She said that times were always changing and everybody needed to keep up with the new things.

She met Eli Lewet, and he went with her to the Church of Christ. I have a big stack of her checks where she always gave 10% of her income, every week.

She knew that Eli had a son and she assumed that his wife was diseased. She was set back when she found there was a divorce. Alicea wrote his psychologist and asked him about it. She received a letter from him that the divorce was completely by his wife. There was no scriptural reason that they could not marry.

They set the date, April 5, 1970

She had her white silk wedding suit picked out and it was on lay away.

This was to be Aliceas first marriage, and she knew that she and Eli wanted children of their own. She went for a physical and found that she had a tumor that needed to be taken care of before she married. She was very slim.

It was a grapefruit size, silent tumor and the Doctor suspected cancer, it was not.

"I rode the bus to her in Little Rock on Thursday. Her friends took care of me. Friday she had her operation. I could show her the pretty flowers that had been sent to her.But she was not alert enough to look at her cards.She died on Monday, March 2,1970

Her friends told Ben where he could locate the wedding suit. She was buried in that beautiful white silk suit. We buried her in Little Rock. Six cars of relatives come from Texas. Her friends at Church took good care of us all.

That was the biggest shock and the saddest that we ever had. She was the best of Christians. She went so quick, an autopsy said that it was a thyroid storm. Stanley said the doctors didn't do any thing wrong, They didn't do every thing right. They should have tested her thyroid before they operated.

I gave Eli the money to buy her a tombstone and told him what I wanted on it. He wrote that he had bought the space next to hers. He wanted to buy a double stone for them both. Ben didn't much like the idea, but I said, 'If Eli wanted to pay for it', I agreed. If any of you go to Little Rock, please go to Forest Hills Memorial Park, 1440 Stagecoach Road, Section 1, Lot 21, #2 space.

Please see if Eli Lewet is buried there, beside Alicea. There is a big double stone there with Eli's name on it. It just lacked his death date. Louise

Eli sent Mama birthday and Mothers day cards. They just 'tore Mama up.' I finally wrote him, thanking him, telling him that we loved him, but asking him not to send any more. I tried to contact him later and couldn't.

Eldridge 'burned the motor of his car up,' on the rush trip to get to Little Rock before she was gone. We gave him Aliceas good car. Daddy went to the Doctor for his heart. I wasn't worried about his heart. I knew that he was grieving for Alicea. He went to the VA hospital and stayed a month. Eldridge couldn't take me there every day. We needed to be back in Texas.

Daddy decided on the price that he wanted for our place; there in Arkansas and called a real estate man. He set the price to low, it sold the first day. Three parties were in our house, at the same time, trying to buy it.

After we sold, we went to see my old friend Margie who lived up on Malicote Mountain. I asked her if she could play Auld Lang Zion, on her organ. She did and I sang it as loud as I could, crying. I felt better. She told Louise about it. We hated to leave

He sent the money to Stanley and he bought a lot, a block east of his home and a block north of Louises home. It wasn't long before we had a nice two bedroom house built for us, completely finished.

Stanley drove Louise up to Arkansas in his van. We could leave a lot of furniture for Eldridges house. We had bought a used 4x6 chest freezer in Breckenridge in 1952, it has been in continual use. It run and froze good, untill 2010, up there in Arkansas, 58 yrs He loaded a U Haul truck with our things and drove it. Louise drove us back to our new home in Azle. It was fine, I changed the carport into a green house and soon had lots of pretty flowers in the yard, too. All my friends and neighbors gave me 'starts.'

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Mama and Daddy got a man with a big cattle truck to move them. It was all piled in, plow tools, furniture and bedding with tarps tied over it. It did not rain. They rode in the cab with him. It was not legal for them to ride and move like that.

Me, Benny Thel and Alicea were dying to see the place. Thel and Alicea had several days off. Thel drove Aliceas car to Trumans in Porum. We put Thel out and Alicea drove on to Mama and Daddys new place in “Hog Eye', Arkansas. I don't know how we ever found it. (You turn where the old grey mare is standing by the old well.)

We got there after midnight. Mama and Daddy had dragged a mattress off the truck and they were asleep on it. We made us beds and ate bulogna the next day. We were as happy with Arkansas as they were.

Aunt Hettie 'took over' to see that Alicea wasn't forgotten, she planned lots of places for Alicea to take her, around Breckenridge. Alicea was going to visit Mama and Daddy, in Arkansas, Aunt Hettie went along. She warned Alicea when she got over 35 miles an hour. They finally got there. Alicea found a black crayola and smudged over the speedometer dial. Going back, Aunt Hettie kept dabbing at the dial with her handkerchief. She never got it clean enough to suit her.

Daddy had a 'good weather eye', he could 'read the clouds'. We were in a drouth period, but it did rain some, Stanley nor I remember seeing any hay 'in the field' get rained on. Daddy bought three bailers, The last one cost, $2,000 and was pulled around the field. They got in a big field at Chrystal Falls and bailed 1004 bails in one day, the most they ever got. They nearly paid for it in one season

A new man in the community wanted Daddy to cut and bail his hay, 'before it rained'. Daddy advised him to wait and 'let it dry', the man wanted it to get it in the barn before it got rained on. Daddy bailed it 'wet' and advised him to 'let those bails lay out and dry out. The man stacked them in his barn and the heat and moisture caused spontaneous combustion and they all burned.

About the same thing happened, years later in Arkansas. Daddy did what the new farmer insisted and he got his bailed hay 'safe' in the barn. Daddy saw him in town a couple of weeks later, “How are you doin'?”

“Haven't you heard? My barn burned and I had my new pickup parked in it?”

HODGES, a new family moved into the community at Breckenridge, Frank worked for Harry Newton bridge construction. They moved around to be nearer their 'big jobs'. Junior, Joe and Talmage was Stanleys age, there were two girls. They met in school and liked to run around together. Mama thought they kinda let them run wild but they didn't drink or cuss.

Alicea was telling a tale on Stanley. Talmage and Stanley had been at a party, each drove off in his car. Talmage had one girl with him. Stanley had three girls with him. Talmage drove up beside him,”Do you need a little help?” Stanley's three girls sang out “No help wanted”Stanley sort of denied it, “I didn't have a car or a girl until I left home"

It was drouth and no more hay to bale that year. Stanley was just walking around our big tank, we thought there was only perch and polly wogs in it. There was a neck that was getting real shallow. Big bass were chasing smaller fish into that neck and eating them. Stanley run to the house and told Daddy. Stanley run and got the seine and run across the little neck. Him and Daddy pulled out nearly a tub full of good sized bass.

Stanley did a lot of milking, he was as good as Daddy. Eldridge didn't milk, until they got a milking machine in Arkansas.

It had been dry, a bad drouth, Not a bail was bailed that year. It was two weeks till Stanley was to start to school, his senior year, to get his diploma. Mama was proud of her family. Annie Louise, Eldridge and Alicea had graduated.

Daddy never had a chance to go to school past third grade. He studied out of other kids books and took corespondence courses in automobile electronics, penmanship and veternary medicine. He was especially smart in figures. When he was in the army in France, he was in the Intelligence Department.

Mama went to the country school in Pleasant Valley as far as they went, thru the eighth grade. She stayed with her Dad's Sister, Aunt Jennie, and Uncle Aaron in Palo Pinto. She finished the ninth and tenth grade, as far as you could go in Palo Pinto.

She planned to stay with her grandparents and finish the last two years of high school in Mineral Wells. Her cousin Fred, “Fredda' had lived with her grandparents since she was eight months old. They bought that house in town for her to be closer to school. The cousins enrolled and happily started to school.

Anne set on the front seat and the teacher had her move to the back. One day she asked her a question and Anne never answered. The teacher said, “You'll answer me!”

A friend told the teacher that "Anne don't even know that you are talking to her."

Anne said she planned to meet that teacher in the hall and tell her how cruel and mean that she had acted. She met her and was 'struck dumb' and couldn't say a word.

Mote Gill got a letter from the Mineral Wells schools that his daughter, Anne was deaf, 'deef' and couldn't go to school there.

Granmama had four sons. She sent her last living son, Mote, my Dad, on the train to Alabama to live with his Aunt Tildy. She was Grandad Gills sister. They didn't have 'oil money', they had 'coal money'. He went to high school there, with her four sons, until he graduated. They were all wealthy. Schools in Mineral Wells only taught to eight grade then. When he come home he was better educated than most of the school teachers around where we lived.

Hodges were on a big job at Post, in west Texas. Talmage had been talking to Stanley about it. Talmage pulled up in our driveway, on his motorcycle and Stanley got on behind him with a little bundle of clothes & about $15 in his pocket.August 13, 1952

Mama told him to 'be back in two weeks to start his senior year in high school'.

Talmage had a room rented, the woman moved another bed in it for Stanley.

At a nearby cafe Stanley ate chicken fried steak for supper. He had ham and eggs for breakfast and had them make him two ham sandwiches for dinner- for a week. That took all his wages. That cafe is still open.At the job they asked him what he could do. He said he was a truck driver, He had watched Frank Hodges shift gears. He started on a cement truck. He kept shifting the gears until the truck did what he wanted it to do.

Stanley called Mama and told her that he wasn't coming home, he was 17.

“I never was in a place where I thought that senior year or diploma would have helped me. About thirty years later I could have used an engineer license, but I wouldn't have gone to to school for the years that it would have taken to get it.

Before long the little crane operator left. He showed Stanley for two days. Stanley knocked the foreman off into the cement that they were pouring. He got mad at him, but he couldn't fire him because he didn't have anyone to replace him. Then the big crane operator left and he had showed Stanley how to operate that.

The foremen had all been union men, they didn't want anyone to do anyone elses job. Zack Burkett was Harry Newtons brother in law, he had just got out of college. Stanley and Zack Burkett both kinda learned along together. Stanley knew that bailing hay, when there was a problem, everybody jumped in to help.

Another rule; any fighting; they were sent to the house quick.

In ten years Stanley was made an associate in the company. About half of that, he became a foreman. He was foreman 'from the seat of a big crane'. He never took the job as foreman unless he knew how to run every machine that was on that job.

Stanley was going to Arkansas to visit Mama and Daddy. I was tickled when he asked me to go along. I had been prowling around and come inside Mama grabbed me and said that Stanley brought a paper that he wanted Mama and Daddy to sign. He wanted to get married and wasn't old enough and had to have his parents sign.

They signed it. He never said anything to me about it.

Harry Newton paired Sarge Strickler and Stanley to start another company. Stanley and Sarge, were at a big bulldozier conventon at Chicago. The big Sears building. There was a football meeting going on at the same time, lots of big name people. Sarge was in a line of people that were waiting to get an autograph from Don Meridith. It was Stanleys turn, "I just want to shake your hand." Don Meridith jumped up and grabbed his hand, "I sure appreciate that. I been setting here a long time."

When Stanley and Sarge parted company, there was a rule in their office that anyone that said the name 'Sarge', had to put a dollar bill in the jar.

Stanley and Talmage worked apart and kind of lost touch. At Mrs Frank Hodges funeral in 2010, they didn't recognize one another. Talmage's wife showed Stanley to him. Jackie said they stayed glued together after that.

I prayed

Thel had a car battery that he planned to take back to Wallmart, for them to check.

He had not took it, it was setting in our garage.

He said he was going to Wallmart to ask them about it.

I told him that the battery was setting right there in the garage.

He loudly said, “I know what I am doing!! and got in the car.

I jumped in beside him, and didn't say a word all the way to Wallmart.

I was praying that he wouldn't get real angry and upset.

He went in calm and asked about his battery. They looked for it.

I was praying that he wouldn't get real angry and upset.

The manager finally asked him what kind of a car that it went in, a 93Cavalier.

He carried out a $100 new battery, and gave it to him, 'because we lost your battery.'

There was never a receipt or paper on either battery.

On the way home I was thanking God that Thel did not get angry or upset.

Thel has never used that battery. Nor the new ones for the motor home or boat.

They have all three set there for a year or two or three or four..

BLUEGRASS at Oakdale I was standing a few steps behind Thel. A young man asked me if I was 85. I told him that Thel was, I was 77. He asked me how long we had been married. I told him 57 years, 'and it gets better all the time!'

He stepped back, amazed. “And you two still 'do it' ?”

For some fool reason, I got tickled, and started laughing.

His Granpa and Thel turned around and wanted to know what I was laughing about. I told them. The Granpa led his grandson away, he wasn't the sharpest tack in the box. (Or maybe he was) Thel wanted to whip him.

I got away and asked a Bluegrass friend 'if that's what it ment to her.' She said

“No.” Now when I say, “It gets better all the time”

I watch people to see if they think that too.” No one has.

I told Tommy that when he married people that he should tell them that the more sex that they have, with their own mate, the longer they would live. He said that he couldn't say that. “You are the writer, you figure out how to say it.” I'm working on it.

Tommy and Richard were loving brothers. Richard loved the candy, white mint covered with chocolate. Tommy didn't, he hated the smell. He shouldn't have let Richard know that. Richard would chase him and wave the candy at him. Tommy would run. He would kinda forget it, then Richard would sidel up to Tommy and blow his minty breath on him

My Mama, when she was Anne Gill. Her and her friends Mamas would not let the young girls use their combs. “I'v got the dandruff and I don't want you to get it, using my comb." So the girls would slip and try to use their Mamas combs; they thought that when they had dandruff- they would be grown-up.

Richard worked in the tall Mercy Hospital. There was a shorter five story building beside it. Five roofers were working on the roof. One of them walked to the edge and pee'd over the side. There were many windows of the hospital, that looked out over it. Many people called to report it. Security got on it, all the men denied it. They were looking for a reliable witness. One older nurse said that she could identify him.

”No, don't tell us. Wait until we get you before the right people.”

----“Now you tell them what he looked like.”

She spread her fingers, “About six inches long and this big around.”