I have a lot of memories of things that happened at Royston when our kids were growing up. I was working on the windmill down in the field one day, about a half-mile from our house. I needed a wrench from home and I needed Ima to help me a little. It was getting late and I wanted to keep working, so I sent Dennis and Anita in the car to get Ima and the wrench. I told Dennis not to try to turn the corner up by the barn, but to switch off the motor there and walk to the house and tell Ima what I needed. I put the two kids in the front seat of the car, then I put the car in low gear, got it started toward home, and then I got out. Dennis was upwards of five years old, at least past four. He could drive the car by getting up in the seat on his knees. All he had to do was guide it and switch off the motor when he got to where he was going. But Dennis thought he was smarter than I was. He still thinks that at times even now. I can't seem to convince him otherwise. Anyway, he thought he could turn the corner by the barn, and he almost did. But he sideswiped a fence, taking a post or two with him until the car got so involved in the barbed wire it couldn't go any further and the motor died. The little wreck scared both of the kids. They got out of the car and went to the house, Dennis crying and Anita trying to tell Ima what had happened. Ima was about as upset as a wet hen in a rainstorm as Anita told her, "Car run in pense." Ima was still upset when she drove the car back to the windmill. She seemed to think I had done something wrong. How was I to know that Dennis wasn't as smart as I had been at his age? My goodness, I was planting with a two-row planter before that age. Was Ima going to admit that her son wasn't as smart as his pa? I had always wanted to become a school teacher. I thought I had the ability to teach kids a lot of things. At times it seemed hopeless but I kept trying and some of my ideas worked. When Dennis was about four, Ima saw him reach up under a car fender, break off a chunk of dried mud and start eating it. She scolded him and told him to stop it. But after Ima went in the house I took Dennis around the other side of the car, where Ima couldn't see us from her kitchen window, and showed him a lot of good lumps of dried mud and I told him he could eat all he wanted. He ate a little and quit, and we never caught him eating any dirt after that. During the 1930s most of my brothers and sisters were married and had kids of their own and we often took our little children and all went to visit Papa and Mama on Sundays. During those visits, many times my brothers would go away to do their thing and I would be left in the house with Mama and Papa and a bunch of sisters and sisters-in-law. Then when Papa would leave to go play golf, which I didn't have enough money to do, I would find myself with a house full of women.