Stress Combat Com

Donald Ray Stephens

Don Stephens, or Papa to us grandkids, has been one of the most influential people in my life. He was my grandfather and I loved him dearly. I have always looked up to him with respect and admiration. While growing up, I witnessed him treat everyone that came into his welding shop with genuine kindness and friendship. He never let anyone leave without hearing one of his numerous jokes. One always left with a smile on their face. He always tried to give a helping hand to anyone in need. Even when he knew there would be no thanks or repayment of his kindness. It had always been his way to give of himself, to help out a friend in need. To Papa, everyone was a friend. He never preached to me how I should live my life, instead he showed me how to be a good man. He truly was a man of his word. I respect and admire this man more than he ever knew. I wanted to get some small portion of who he was down on paper. I asked him to record his story for me on tape. My mother, Judy Riley, transcribed his words into this document. She wrote it like he said it. He Passed away recently and I am placing his story on this site for any family members or anyone who would like to read his story. I hope whoever reads this will gain some insight into the life of a damn good man, my Papa, Don Stephens.

Donald Ray Stephens’ Story

I was the first of 12 kids, 9 of us lived. My Dad was Virgil Utah Stephens, married to Gladys Lou Jenkins. My Dad’s parents were Henry Andrew Stephens, married to Lydia Newman. My Mom’s parents were William A. Jenkins, married to Lina Pate. I was born at Hollis, Oklahoma, March 1st, 1925. We moved to Lockney, Texas when I was about a year old. My Granddad and my Dad had a big place rented out there. Made 2 good crops and the last one was during the crash of ‘29 and the crops got where they wouldn’t even pay for gathering. They plowed under a good cotton crop that wouldn’t even pay for the ginning. And when I was about 2 years old, we moved to Majic City, a little old oil field town in Wheeler County, Texas. We lived in a tent when we first went there. My Dad worked in the oil field until everything closed down, then he was like everybody else, scrounging around for a living, working at anything he could get. He got on a WPA Program which Roosevelt installed t keep people from starving. Really it was more or less welfare. I started to school there and walked about a mile to a big ole’ country school until several years later, we got a new brick school downtown. My first grade teacher was my firs love affair. I thought she was the next thing to an angel. She petted my to death and passed me to the 3rd grade, but I was fairly smart, made straight A’s until the 6th grade. Then the cotton pickin’ started. I missed so much it was hard to catch up. When I got to high school, it was impossible to catch up after missin’ 3 or 4 months. I had a good life when I was small and didn’t realize how tough times really were. My Dad had pretty good jobs in the oil field until I was 8 or 10 years old. We lived right in the middle of this little ole’ town, actually it was just a crossroads. And everybody in town picked on me, picked at me. They called me "Punk". Some of them still do.

I was always fighting, don’t know why unless I just liked it. I had two uncles that were teenagers and they would match a fight for me nearly everyday. We walked a mile or so to school and they would tell the big boys, "My nephew can whip your little brother", and back and forth and sure enough I’d have to fight some kid on the way home. I had dozens with this kid that was kind of silly, slow. He could fight but I could whip him. He was bigger than me, but I would fight him and then his little brother would start beatin’ up on me with a half gallon syrup bucket that he used for a lunch bucket. And I wouldn’t hit him because he was smaller than me and younger, so I’d just take his lunch bucket and throw it out in the field. Then they’d get in a fight to see who went after it. This one kid my age was a full blood Indian. They called him "Tuffy Harmon". We would choose sides and play "Surrender". He was kind of the leader in the class and so was I. He could whip me one year and I could whip him the next. When we got to be teenagers, he really grew up. He played football for Kansas University, matter of fact, he made All American.

We had our 40 year reunion here while back and there he was, 6’4" and 260 pounds. I told one of the guys there, "Can you imagine, I used to fight that big SOB everyday".

When I was about 8 or 10 years old, there was 4 or 5 young men that moved in there that was railroad surveyors. They were nice, clean cut young men, college graduates. I got to really likin’ one of them. His name was Larry Mays. He was my hero. I guess every little boy has one. I thought he could do no wrong. He was always givin’ me a nickel for something. And then one summer this new kid and his mom came to stay for the summer with uncle, who was a big boss for one of the oil companies. He wore knee pants, my first to ever see. He was alot bigger than me, but a sissy city boy. All the grownups and bigger boys were under this ole’ store awning, bullshitting. Oh Larry said to me, "Punk, I’ll give you a dime if you’ll whip that kid, but I have got to see blood first". I hit the kid a couple of times and he took off running down this old dirt street about a half a block away. I chased him through the picket fence, right up to his door. He ran in and out came his mom with a broom. And she beat the hell out of me, all the way to the gate. I couldn’t get the gate opened because I forgot it opened in and I was trying to push out. But anyway, what made it so bad was all those men and boys up there laughing at me.

Seems like I was always in trouble. When I was real small, we lived in an old store building right next to a big grocery store. I went in one day and Shorty Bently, who owned the store, was at the back with his butcher, old Butch Perkins. His candy case was broken, had a big hole in the front of it, so I just filled my pockets full of these big ole’ chocolate candies. I went between our house and the store and I ate all I could hold. But I had one left and instead of throwin’ it away, I put it in my pocket. For some reason when I went home, Mom hugged me up to her and felt it. When she asked me what it was, I gave myself away. She whipped my ass until I admitted that I had stolen it and made me take it back and tell him I was sorry that I had stolen it. That sure hurt and broke me from stealing. Oh I stole watermelons and fruit after that but no thieving.

Things kept gettin’ worse for my family so my Dad traded our little ole’ house and lots for lease on an ole’ farm at Raydon, Ok., site unseen. We moved over there and it wouldn’t grow anything, it was sorry. Didn’t even have a blind jackass to farm with anyway. Dad asked a neighbor, "How do you people make a livin’?" He said, "Well we make whisky. There's a whisky still in the attic of that old house you live in". So they set it up in our barn and went to makin’ whisky. Later he moved it to the cellar, and still later, him and this same neighbor had a big still up in the pasture.

My Dad would take this booze he made to Texas and sell it. I’d go and my job was to get up in the back of an old Chevrolet, ‘28 model, that he had cut down and made into kind of a halfass pickup. I was supposed to take a hammer and break all the whisky jars in case the law stopped us. Destroy the evidence. I guess you could call me a "Boot-legger’s Son", like Barry Switzer, huh?

I had scarlet fever and diphtheria while we was there. I almost died. I was in bed about 60 days, unconscience about 20 some odd. Doctors wouldn’t let them move me to town, said it would kill me. But anyway, I got over that.

We moved back to Magic City for a few years. Lots of people were really having a hard time. We were so poor the damn poor people laughed at us. My Dad and another guy would go to all the junk piles and gather brass and aluminum scrap to sell. Then they got to buying steers and butchering them to sell. Selling the meat. We had an ole’ Model T two seated car, no top, and took the back seat out, laid a sheet out and put the beef on it. Then would pedal the meat all over the country. Anyway they could sell it. Had a little set of scales, and just cut off what ever the people wanted. We liked it because we got to eat what ever they couldn’t sell.

We were on the WPA program that Roosevelt started. We had a lot of canned mutton and a pretty steady diet of rabbits that we could kill and ducks in the fall, and every once in a while some quail.

Things didn’t get any better, so in 1935 we started to California. We were gonna go get rich! Dad had an ole’ ‘28 Chevrolet car that he’d put a truck transmission in. That’s the only way we could get over the mountains out west. The roads were really bad. We had friends out on the south plains at Morton, Texas, old man Short and his two sons, Leroy and Marvin, and their families. We went out and pulled cotton that fall. We pulled all fall then we headed out west. But first when we got out there, we lived in a garage on the side of an old man’s house with two big doors that opened and they liked about 6" reaching the ground, a dirt floor. Mom cooked on an ole’ tub turned upside down in an ole’ wheelbarrow. Anyway, we pulled cotton all fall and then we all started west again.

The Shorts had a new ‘35 pickup and a four wheel trailer and we had the old Chevy and trailer, a car full of hungry kids, broke, didn’t have any idea what we were gettin’ into. Had hell all the way out there; breakdowns, bad weather and bad roads, and all. We went to Chandler, Arizona and hired out to pick cotton. We lived in everything, tents, sheep barns, you name it. The first was a two room dirt floor, a sheep shed. The doors and windows were holes just cut out. We had to shovel out about 6 or 8" of sheep shit before we could even move in. We started moving wherever we could find work. We lived in Mesa, Buckeye, Littsville Park, Avondale and Coldwater. Allot of times when we were really hungry. Had alot of sickness. Folks lost two kids. My little 3 year old sister and a preemie baby boy. Poor old Dad had $4.35 to his name when my little sister died. He was working for a dollar a day. We lived in an old labor camp. The Okie’s and Texans really stucked together, we had to. The native Arizona people treated us like dirt. (That’s why I still like them). A carpenter in that camp built her a coffin. One of the women tore up her drapes and they finished her coffin. It was beautiful, I thought. The guy who made the coffin was a preacher and he preached the funeral out in our front yard of this old shack we lived in. They took her to the cemetery on the back seat of an old Studebaker car. Buried her in a pauper’s grave that was given to us.

Things kept gettin’ worse. Of course we were in better shape than some, anyway. We all was sick alot of the time. My Day almost died. He lost down to 110 pounds, so weak he could barely walk. So we wrote back and borrowed $40.00 to come back to Texas. My Dad and me overhauled our old car out under a shade tree, then we started home. It took nearly a week. I rode the running boards in the mountains. The old car would get hot and die try to roll back and the brakes wouldn’t hold it, so I’d have to get the two big rocks, I carried with me on the running boards, and chuck the wheels until it cooled off and started running again.

Dad was sick for nearly a year. We picked cotton awhile then moved to Pampa in 1939. Still no jobs. My Dad finally got on a WPA program job building a damn on McCellan Creek at Lake McCellan. He was bringing home $22.00 a week. We had an ole’ Dodge car that had been sittin’ in the yard a year. Couldn’t buy a $5.00 license plate or gas either to run it on.

One time I had to have some shoes. Dad went to a second hand store. They had an old pair of men’s Kangaroo Slippers. They wanted $.35 for them. Pop said, "I’ll give you a quarter if you’ll throw in a pair of shoe laces". One of my sisters had to take my old worn out cowboy boots and wear them to school, run over like hell.

Anyway we finally left Pampa and went to pick cotton and ended up in Memphis. Worked nearly all fall there, then moved to Quail and pulled Osh Rango’s cotton. The old man that practically raised me from then on. Then my Dad made a deal to farm for him for a crop. I went to school there, but not very much.

He found a little farm back at Memphis for rent. We bought out a fellow with a little one row tractor and 160 acres of land. I went to school some more but not much. I finally quit in the 8th grade.

I met Dorothy there. We dated alot and I got to really caring for her. And later we married when I was 16, I went on a wheat harvest trip with Mr. Rango. We cut wheat clear up into Montana. Sure learned a lot. I was the only kid and these guys were over 50 and they taught me quite a bit that summer.

Our folks told Dorothy and me that we couldn’t marry but we were determined to do it anyway. So we did in 1942 and moved to Pampa again. Jobs were real scarce. I went to work for the Highway Department building an underpass. I made $90.00 a month and got paid once a month. Me and ole’ Dorothy lived like kings for two weeks and then starved for two weeks. Ignorant kids. I quite that job and couldn’t find one for a good while. One day I went to fourteen places looking for work. I finally went to Cabot Shops, a big plant here, and told that ole’ superintendent, "I don’t need a job, I’ve gotta have one". And he said, "Will you work boy?" And I said, "Just try me, give me a chance". Anyway, I went to work. I had to forge a birth certificate to get my age up and I almost had to go to the Army a year sooner for it. I got on with the electrician gang. I noticed my ole’ superintendent kept hiding around and watching me. But first he put me with a bunch of college boys that wouldn’t do nothing. Damn I wore blisters and blisters. I thought you son-of-a-gun if fire me, it won’t be because I’m not working. But he came over their one day when I was wheeling a big wheel barrow full of fresh cement across a big timber in a scale pit. The carpenter foreman had on his pretty white overalls and that damn thing got over balanced and spilled concrete from his neck down. Ole’ Shotgun Lang was the foreman so here he comes and said, "Come go with me Shorty, that’s a little heavy for you." I said, "Ah, it just over balanced, I can handle it Mr. Lang." He said, "Come on and go with me". I thought you SOB if you fire me, I’m goin’ to really give you a cussin’! But anyway, he took me over to the Electrician Gang. A good job. I got a lot of overtime and I was making $.55 an hour.

Roy Don was born while I worked there. I still don’t know how the little fellow made it because Dorothy and me were such ignorant kids. We liked to starve him to death before we knew you were supposed to feed them. Her milk was too weak for him, to begin with.

I went to work one morning and they were freezing people on their jobs for the duration of the war so I quit and went back to Memphis. I made a deal with a guy to farm all year for the crop. Dot and me bought a housekeeping outfit, such as it was, for 30 bucks. Got a stove and a bed and a few things. I worked until fall and got my draft notice. I hadn’t gathered my crops yet, so I put in for a 3-month deferment to have time to gather my crops. The day it was up, they sent me a notice that it had been granted, but by that time, I was on my way to the Army.

I was sent to Ft. Sill, Ok. to an induction center. Took some tests for the Air Force and made a real high score. The ole’ Captain accused me of cheatin’ or seeing the test before. I told him, "Hell no I didn’t cheat, and I wouldn’t for damn sure I even wanted to be in the Air Force!" Anyway, my buddies told me that was a real good deal, so I volunteered and they sent me to Sheppard Field for basic training. I thought I’d be flying a plane in a few months. Hell, I didn’t see one for 10 months! I was sent to Kingman, Az. to gunner school. While I was at Sheppard Field, I went through classification and they washed me out of the convenience of the government. They had more pilots than planes. They said I could have made it if I’d had two years of college which I didn’t have, even high school. After I finished Kingman, they sent me to Tampa, Fla. and gave me a 19 day delay in route which was the only pass I had other than 48 hour passes. Only furlough I had. I got to spend 8 or 9 days at home with my family. Then we went from Tampa down to Avon Park to take a combat training. We met our pilots and all and tried to get acquainted with each other. But the longer we were with each other, the more we thought of each other. They were more like family than friends. After I got through with my combat training, I wired Dorothy to come down. Judy was 30 days old at that time. We got to spend a few days together before I went overseas. We’d had a bad hurricane down there.

Anyway, they sent us to Savannah, Ga. and we got a new airplane and new flying gear, then to Tobango, Maine. Stayed a few days, then on to New Panent. We had to stay a few days and wait for these Japanese tradewinds so we’d have a tail wind in order to make it to England. Even with bombay tanks, we were in the air 21 hours, scary take off and flight. Our damn ole’ new airplane was fixed for hi-octane gasoline, lower hi-octane than we had, so the dang engines caught fire when we took off. Then we got up and iced down, bad weather all the way. But anyway, we made it. Landed at Valleywells. They got us on truck convoys and sent us to Rattlesenfield, England. We flew a few days as a crew, practicing around, then 3 of us was goin’ on a buddy ride with combat crews, to break us in, I guess. I flew 30 missions. Then after I quit flying, and Germany gave up, they shipped our old base to the South Pacific. After a few months, the Atom Bomb ended the war there. I got 9-day rations while I was in combat overseas. Thought I was a hero. No not really. But anyway, I was glad when it was over. We waited and waited. You could get out with 75 points. You got out on the point system, discharged. You could get out with 75 and I had 115 but they wouldn’t send me home. Me and a buddy of mine volunteered for Supply Sergeants so we wouldn’t have to work to ship this old base out, which was pretty smart. But anyway, we got the old base all crated and shipped out, and then they finally let us go home. We came back on the old Queen Mary. We kinda enjoyed that. Got back to New York and got on a damn fairy and then a train and went to Camp Killman, New Jersey. We were on this damn troop train and there were 9 white men, the rest were Navajo Indians and Mexicans. Damnedest ride I ever took. SOB’s were drunk from before we left until we got there, El Paso, Texas. Boy them Indians were something! When the train would stop, it would look like a row of piss ants, some coming, some going, to those liquor stores. They tore that train up. Throwed the cushions off, knocked the windows out, did everything. We got down somewhere in Missouri and they’d had a landslide and the track was knocked out, and this truck driver ran down the track about a mile and stopped us. We had the to back up about 13 or 14 miles to this little ole’ town until they repaired the track. But when we stopped on that mountain, damn drunk Indians bailed off there into the mountains. I’ll bet they haven’t found them all yet!

Anyway, we got down to Ft. Worth and they got to bickerin’ back and forth with another train across the way with Sailors, and they piled out of there and had the damnedest fight. There was 2 blocks with nothing but soldiers and sailors fightin’! I think it took every lawman in Ft. Worth to separate them. But we got on to El Paso, finally, to Ft. Bliss. They called us in and this old boy said I was the only Air Force guy on that whole train. I had my own shipping orders. Matter of fact, I overhauled my service record, got it fixed like I wanted it. He said, "Sergeant, we can send you home for a 21 day leave and you and your wife can go to Florida for R & R (at one of them big hotels) or you’ve got another option. You can stay here a few days and get a discharge and go home to stay." I said, "What do you mean a few days?" He said, "Not more than 10, probably about 6 or 7." I said, "Give me the discharge." So I stayed, and got my discharge.

So we got to the bus station that night and these Air Force pilots came in there, seen I had my Air Force discharged button and all and one of them said, "Sarge, we can give you a hop to Amarillo tonight and it won’t cost you nothing, but a dollar for your chute." I said, "Thank you but no thank you sir, I’ve had all that damn flying I want for a while." But anyway, I rode the bus all night and till noon the next day and got to Memphis. I was home! Thank goodness!

I made a deal with this same ole’ boy I’d worked for before to make a crop again, farming. I thought that was really what I wanted. Biggest mistake I’d ever made. Dorothy begged me to go back to school with tears in her eyes, and like a damn fool, I didn’t. Thought I was too old, had two kids, and just didn’t think there was any way. Anyway, we made this crop and lived in a little old shack down on the canyon. I got that made, didn’t make nothin’ that year. So I rented this same old 160 acre farm that my Dad and us had started out on. My brother-in-law had worked it while I was overseas. And Dorothy and me lived there about 4 or 5 years. Done pretty good at times, and times I didn’t do worth a damn. I got a chance to buy out an old boy with a place down on the river. I moved down there and bought him out. Did pretty good that year. Then I missed 3 straight crops in a row. That put my ole’ butt under. It really got tough! It was so dry. In the mean time I’d learned a little bit about welding, so I went to town and leased me a little old blacksmith shop. I’d run that damn thing in the daytime and try to do what little farming I could do at night. We had Dorothy’s little brother living with us. We sent him to high school and he helped me out quite a bit when he wasn’t in school.

The summer of 1953 we wouldn’t doing any good and I took off in my old wore out pickup and drove all over the south plains looking for irrigated land to rent. Never did find any. Finally just went completely broke, so I stopped in Earth, Texas and hired out in an old black smith shop, working on commission. I worked there for a good long while and eventually we moved up there. Anyway, didn’t want to spend any money, didn’t have any, so I slept in my pickup for a while and took a bath in a Texaco Service Station restroom. Finally, got to sleepin’ on an old army cot in an old shop and later on, my boss rented me a room. It cost $7.00 a week, it was a cloths closet in an old hotel there. But anyway, finally the old landlady from Memphis rent me off. And I lost my rear there. I quit owing the bank money and the government money. I rented a house from a real good friend of mine out north of Earth and Dorothy and the kids and me moved in there. Started the kids to school and Dorothy went to work in a grocery store. And we lived there about a year and then my boss made me mad. He hired extra help and I wasn’t gettin’ enough money, so I went over to Plainview and hired out with this old German man that owned a big machine shop. He’d been after me for 2 years to go to work for him, but I didn’t care too much about how he run it. He had a son that tried to boss too. But I went over there and hired out to him and we moved to Plainview.

I worked there a long time, about a year. He made me mad, promised me a raise and didn’t give it to me, so I quit. I then went across town to another big welding shop and I worked there a long time. I wasn’t makin’ very much money. I think I was taking home $64.00 a week. No it was more than that. I was making a $1.60 an hour. So anyway, I came over to Pampa and hired out at Jones Everett Machine Shop and started out at $2.50 an hour, gettin’ that much raise to start out with. And boy they worked my butt off! Day and night! I was with them 9 1/2 years but I made good money, but it took it all, supporting the kids and raising them and sending them to school. Then they eventually went to college. But anyway, we got through that and Dorothy was working her butt off doing everything she could get. She finally went to a dental assistant school. Drove back and forth to Amarillo and got her a pretty good job working for a dentist. Actually, 3 different ones here. We finally scuffled around and got all 3 kids through high school and started them to college. That’s the only thing I ever did that I was half proud of, was raising those kids and Dorothy gets most of the credit for that. But we did have some good ones, I’m proud of them. Always have been.

Roy Don started to school and almost finished, Judy went for one year, and Larry went and he finished.

Lloyd, my oldest brother, lived with us for a year or two. I helped him start college and go a couple of years. Judy had this little friend, Linda Rhyne, they were real close. Anyway, her folks moved to AZ., and we kept her and sent her to school her senior year at high school. Sweet little old girl, we sure did think alot of her. I had a new ‘60 model Ford and one time she borrowed it to go to town. She pulled in a parking space and caved the side in on a new Buick, tore the chrome off. Some ole’ salesman from Amarillo had parked it. She got out and couldn’t find anybody, so she panicked, scared too death, and went back to school. Her and Judy decided they’d save their lunch money and fix the car. Both doors caved in and all the chrome gone. Anyway, this ole’ cop came down to the shop and told me my wife had hit a car and run off. I said, "She damn sure didn’t". The cop, Bailey, said, "Yeah, she did, I’ve got the chrome from your car in my patrol car out there." He asked where she worked and I told him. He said, "I’ll go talk to her." I said, "Just wait, I’ll go with you." I got to the door and I thought, well hell, Dorothy’s loaned that car to one of them nurses. I’ll just let her get out of it, she’d done it! But anyway, found out later Linda had caved the car in and this Officer Bailey had went in the high school with his gun on to get her! Damn that made Dorothy mad! She went down and jumped on Bailey, the Chief, and everybody else! She said, "Don’t you ever go get one of my kids out of school with that damn gun on!" Her folks wouldn’t pay for the car nothin’, so my insurance paid for the other old boy’s car and I just patched mine up myself, which was all right, it still run good!

I left out a lot of little funny things that have happened during my life time. I’ll try to put them in now. Can’t get them in any order. Here they are:

One year I was probably in the 3rd or 4th grade, my Dad bought me a big new red wagon for Christmas. Man, I was proud of that wagon. He let me play with it for about 2 or 3 weeks, and then wired a big old ten-gallon can up in it where I couldn’t get it out. He had 3 hogs and my job every evening after school was to take that damn wagon around to everybody’s back door and gather up their garbage to feed them hogs. They called me the "little slop boy" and the "hog boy", and everything else. I hated that damn wagon, but I did raise 3 good hogs.

Another time, there at Magic City we use to skip off to the river, a mile north of town, and play hooky on that river. We’d pull off our damn clothes and play Tarzan. We’d do without water all day, eat those damn green grapes and stuff and blister like you couldn’t believe. One time we were playing Tarzan and this old kid had eaten enough green grapes that he had diarrhea, bad! He got up in this big tree and spread eagled and he crapped all over us! We had to find a little old stinking water hole to take a bath in.

We got hungry at noon and we looked over there about a mile away and this bridge crew was working on this bridge, so we went over there. They were underneath this bridge, eatin’ their lunch and we went over there thinkin’ we might beg some scraps from them, part of their lunches. This one kid was a kid I use to fight all the time, "old goofy Oscar". This old boy told him, "Oscar, show me your little peter and if I like it, I’ll give you a nickel". So Oscar just pulled it out and showed it to him. He said, "There is and if you don’t like it your a dirty son-of-a bitch". So these other guys laughed and teased him until he gave old Oscar a quarter.

Another time when I was a little bit older than that, me and my uncle Obe was walking home from school and this old boy had a real nice water melon patch. So Obe put me up to goin’ down an gettin’ one because it was close to this old boys house, this farmer. He(Obe) hid way up in a turn row in a cane patch, so I went down and boy I picked a big ole’ nice melon and I was lugging it up that turn row and old Obe hollered, "Here he comes". And I just ignored him cause he was always bull shitin’ me. So pretty soon he hollered again, "Punk, you better run!" And I thought. "All bullshit". So I just kept luggin’ this melon, a great big one, about all I could carry. I got up there another few feet and he hollered, "Drop that melon and run for your life!" I just glanced over my shoulder and sure enough all I seen was a pair of khaki pants and a shotgun over his arm! I dropped that SOB and I’ll bet I was 40 feet away before it hit the ground! He (Obe) was always gettin’ my butt in a slang. I’d do anything he told me to and that was one of them.

This little old oil field town was where all the big, grownup boys dad’s had good jobs and they didn’t have to work or anything. All they had to do was to get into meanness and they was good at that. I was always followin’ them around! They called me the "Shadow". One time me and "Little Pissy Holland", that was the kids nickname, was following them. They had an old well down there and it had an old ladder down it. They’d go down in it and smoke and tell jokes. The SOB’s got us down in there and pulled the ladder up and left us in there nearly a half a day!

Another time, we dug a bunch of caves and they had several rooms and a bunch of tunnels that went from room to room. We went down in those damn caves and they got to smokin’ and telling jokes. There was an old goofy boy there that farmed pretty close, he was 21 years old. He drove a herd of cattle over these caves and the cattle’s feet fail through but their bodies didn’t, and boy they were just flaggin’ the hell out of all of us with their feet, trying to get out of there. Of course I was the least SOB in there, so guess who got out last? Always somethin.

One time we had this May Day program at this good size country school and each room elected a queen and king for the May Day program. I was elected king of my room and supposed to escort the queen. But to start the program off with, we had this boxing match. Nearly each room had a pair of kids that boxed and my room was the first one. So I didn’t have any clothes and Mama cut down an old pair of wool pants that belonged to my Dad, or tried to cut them down. The damn crotch was 10 inches too long. Anyway, I got my boxing match over with, but during that I ripped the crotch out of my pants where she’d sewed it up. And then when it came time for the May Day program, we had to march into the auditorium, down the isle, and around upon the stage. I had a hell of a time trying to "crow hop" down that thing with my legs close together, taking short steps. Didn’t want them to see that I had torn my pants up, but naturally, they did. That was kinda embarrassing!

Then another time, there I was probably in the 5th grade, we were all going to county meet and I came out for declamation. I was pretty good, thought I was. This damned old school teacher that was in charge of it, was boarding with this family and he was a big boss for a gasoline plant there. They had a little old goofy, spoiled brat that was their son and stuttered and couldn’t pronounce anything plain. But she put him ahead of me and let him go instead of me. That kind of broke me. I got my first lesson in politics. Never have cared for it since. He was one of them damn kids that took light bread for their lunch and we took them cold biscuits. We thought if they took light bread, they thought they were big shot, which they did.

Another time we were walking home from school and this old farmer, Joe White George, we called him, gave us a ride in an old wagon and team. But before that, that morning my little sister, Blacky, was in the 2nd grade, and she had diarrhea and had to go the bathroom. They had on them old long bloomers with elastic at the knees, something the government gave us. Anyway, she crapped in her pants! And when White George gave us this ride and we got home, he told me to get down on the ground and help them little ones down of the wagon. I said, "Un huh". (Course I knew Blacky had crapped in her pants.) He said, "You get down there right now and hold them when I hand them down". So I did and when he handed Blacky down, she slid down and that crap went from the top of my head all the way down the front of me! Man did I stink!

Later on after Dorothy and I were married, her Mom moved from Memphis to Dallas when David, her baby brother, was about 12 or 13 years old, never was happy in Dallas so he came to live with us. We kept him until he got through high school. Then he joined the Paratroopers. He was just like one of the kids, we loved that boy with a passion. He dropped dead at 37 with a heart attack. That just about killed us. Anyway, we enjoyed him all his life. Me and him was always competin’ and at each other all the time. I really was crazy about him. Matter of fact, we bought him his first car, a little ole’ 30 model Chevy Coop. We went to buy it and they wanted $90.00. I told David I was going to buy that car for $75.00, and I said when we get there I’ll just pick it apart to this dealer and he’ll come down on it. Dave was still in high school, but anyway we went down to the car lot in Childress. I said, "That spare tire is flat", and David said, "We can take one off of one of your cotton trailers". Then I said, "This is wrong", and Dave would say, "Oh we can do this". He really screwed up the deal, but anyway I think I ended up giving him $75.00 for that old car. It was a slick old thing. Boy David was proud of that old car. He was always.........he was just a wonderful person. A thousand things happened.

One time he wanted to go huntin’ and I said, "Dave, I don’t have but 2 shells". And he said, "I’ll go get us some quail". So I said okay. He had to drive down at the other place on the river. He came back in a little while and he had 2 quail. He said, "I want to show you something. I got these with one shot in the air". I said, "Bullshit". He said, "That’s the reason I brought this extra shell back to prove it to you". He wouldn’t even shoot the other shell, the peckerwood!

I was always trying to scare him and we’d have rock fights. One time he had appendicitis and we took him up to town and they operated on him. He wouldn’t get out of the house. Every once in a while he’s get out to go the toilet. He’d hobble all bent over, holding his belly, and I’d get after him with my tractor, shooting at him with my 22. I’d shoot all around his feet and it would scare the hell out of him. I’d just bought me a brand new tractor and he came out one day, going to the toilet, and I took out after him. He had that pistol in his hand and I didn’t know it. The little fart was shooting bullets right in between the wheels and I was hollerin’ and beggin’, "Don’t hit my new tractor"! He really got even with me that time.

When he wan in the Paratroopers and came home on leave, he always came to our house. He figured it was home to him. He’d come home on holidays, like Christmas time and all.

He bought him an old Harley, ‘73 or ‘74 big motor cycle. He rode the damn thing from Kentucky back to Plainview. We eventually went on the Memphis. And one day I was bullshitin’ him about ridin’ that thing, knowing I’d never been on one, but I got on that son-of-a-gun! He said, "Now when it goes down, turn off the key". I said, "What the hell makes you think it’s goin’ down"? He said, "I know it is". So I got on that son-of-a-bean and he put it in 2nd gear instead of like it should of been. I goosed it and it just took off and the momentum just through me backwards and I just geared the throttle wide opened. I bounced off a concrete foundation! My brother-in-law was over hauling a ‘52 Plymouth and he had the hood laying there on the ground. I seen I was goin’ to hit my Dad’s pickup head on or a big ole’ overhead tank with cross ties stickin’ up, and I knew I wasn’t goin’ to do that, so I leaned and cut around and hit that damn car hood and I went air bound for about 14 long steps and then that damn bike went down. I’d seen I’d done screwed up. We had a big crowd of family and kinfolk watching, so I just reached up and turned the key off and flopped back down like I was dead. Scared the hell out of them. I had that red dirt boilin’ where I was diggin’ out of there. They never let me forget it. Broke some bones and messed myself up pretty good, anyway, I took two rides, first and last, on a big bike.

After Dave got grown and married a little girl from Germany, they came through here from overseas. But first he went down to Austin to college for 2 or 3 years. Then he moved to Dallas and we used to visit him and his family. He always would not tell the other relatives we were in town. He always wanted us to stay with them all the time. But we really enjoyed goin’ down to see him.

Back to when I was a kid. We used to have these church cook out things. Everybody would bring food and we’d have the dinner spread out across these tables. Damn, there was alot of good food. At Christmas time, about the only time we got any fruit, nuts, and candy, we’d go to these church deals and they’d give everybody out stuff. I never was too high on Christmas. When I was a little bitty fart, was when my Dad was in jail. We moved back to Magic City from Rayden, Ok., Christmas time, and of course we didn’t have any damn money and he was in jail. So rather than let me do without my Grandmother and all them rigged me up a present. It was a damn one armed doll that my cousin had had the year before. I think I was in the 4th grade or 3rd. That bout broke my heart. I never did care much for Christmas from then on.