While I was dealing with horses and tractors, our kids were making history on their own. They had this little white mama dog that had never had pups and they had an old mama cat that had come from no-telling-where, and she had stopped over at our place long enough to give birth to three kittens. But while her kittens were still suckling, the old cat up and died. And the next thing we knew that little dog had adopted those three kittens and was letting them nurse. We never did know whether they got any milk for their effort, but they really put forth the effort. I had never heard of a dog being that friendly with any member of the cat family. During the lean years, when I had time to work for the other fellow a little, I wasn't content to hoe or drive his tractor for a dollar a day. Instead, I was always looking for a way to make money easier and faster. Now, running a row binder didn't necessarily make money easier, but it made it quite a bit faster. One fall I took my row binder and car and tractor and Ima, and we all went out and made $300 in a single month, cutting feed for neighbors. That was clear money above all operating expenses, car expenses, binder repairs, and a babysitter at home for Dennis and Anita. Now you may think I'm a male chauvinist, listing Ima along with my other property that I took. But I didn't mean it that way. I simply meant to list her with the items I took. You see, I had to take her, she wouldn't go voluntarily. During that month, we slept in a bed on top of our car. We had all the tools we needed for repairing the binder right in the middle of any field. And we always had plenty of hot bath water right from the tractor radiator. It was clean water--we put in fresh clear water daily. We also found other ways to pick up a few extra dollars. When World War II was in full swing and scrap metal was bringing a good price, we took a few loads of scrap to Sweetwater and sold it. While unloading there one day, I noticed an old Buick car in the scrap pile. I looked it over, and the more I looked at it the better it looked to me. Finally I paid the man $30 for it, pumped up the tires, put in a one-dollar battery and drove it home. It proved to be one of the best running cars I had ever owned. We drove it two years and then swapped it off for a $45 milk cow.