The Life of Me: An AutobiographyJohnson, Clarence Edgar
History
The Life of Me: An Autobiography
Johnson, Clarence Edgar
Fisher County (Tex.) -- Biography; Fisher County (Tex.) -- History; Johnson family; Johnson, Clarence Edgar, 1906-1994
Another burglar visited me while I was working at another filling
station. I was sleeping in the station, way up on top of a tire
rack. The kid woke me up prying up the back window. I watched
him come in and go to the cash register. He had his back to me
and didn't even know I was there. I had no gun or anything, not
even a ball bat. We were not expecting burglars. Rather, we
offered all night emergency service and I slept there to serve
anyone who was caught in an emergency.
Well, since I had no gun, I reached up on a shelf and got a
bottle of shellac in each hand and told the boy to stay where he
was and raise his hands. He obeyed, which was both a surprise
and a relief to me. Then I climbed down, turned on all the
lights inside and outside and waited for the nightwatchman to
come by. The boy was about 16, and well behaved. I didn't have
to capture him--didn't even touch him. We talked and he waited
patiently. We learned later that he had broken into three
stations that night in Hamlin and had gotten less than fifty
cents, poor kid.
We were living in town but we still liked to go hunting out in
the country once in awhile. One day Earl, Joel and I had been
out shooting rabbits and prairie dogs with our 22 rifles. When
we came back, Earl got out of the car downtown and asked Joel to
take his gun in the house when we got home. His gun was the
hammerless type; you couldn't easily tell when it was loaded or
unloaded. When Joel carried his own gun and Earl's gun into the
house, Mama said, "Oh, I'm so afraid of guns! Are you sure they
are unloaded?"
Joel told her that he was sure about his own, but he didn't know
about Earl's. Then he aimed Earl's at the ceiling and pulled the
trigger. It shot a hole through the ceiling, and Joel turned to
Mama and calmly said, "Now it's unloaded."
Do I always have to tell you what Mama said? Can't you just
imagine?
Now, Joel didn't only shoot small holes through ceilings; one day
he was sitting in his room with his pump shotgun lying across his
lap. He had finished cleaning it and was throwing shells in and
out of the barrel, distributing oil to all working parts. He
must have gotten some of the oil on his thumb, because it slipped
off the hammer accidentally and fired one of the shells, and it
made the prettiest little round hole--about an inch across--
through the inside window facing, the shiplap wallboard, the
outside weatherboarding and the outside window facing.
Fortunately, there was no one out in the yard at that place at
that time. Joel argued that the added ventilation would
contribute to his better health.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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