I said, "I don't want to use it, just want to borrow it." We left it up in his garage. But now that I had one, I went to the ration board and applied for gasoline coupons for it. The lady at the board told me she thought 50 gallons would last six months and she issued me coupons for that amount. And so, in just a few minutes I walked out of there a lot happier than I was when I walked in. Now we had plenty of coupons to take us to Texas. But we still had a little problem. The coupons each called for two gallons and each one had "stove" printed across the front. Some service station workers might frown on the idea of pumping stove gas into Buick automobiles. So we bought our stove gas in five gallon cans and then poured it into the Buick's tank after we got away from the station. The Buick liked it. It didn't know the difference. Now, you can be sure I didn't enjoy doing these little things which were maybe just a little bit outside the rigid rules laid down by Washington. Of course I didn't. And I'm sure Moses didn't enjoy seeing the waters of the Red Sea close in and engulf thousands of Pharaoh's soldiers. But we both did what we had to do. I was crossing a Red Sea 1200 miles across--and I made it, just as he made it. I'll admit there's one little difference here, God told Moses to do what he did. I'm not quite sure God was the one who told me to do what I did. Maybe the devil made me do it. Anyway, we got back to the Royston farm that last time and stayed until we moved to Arkansas five years later. It was the first of the year of 1945 and Uncle Jim had not yet started to have the papers fixed up for me to buy the farm. I asked him to go ahead and get the abstract in shape for me as agreed. But three months later he still had not begun. It looked as though he had decided not to let me have it. I couldn't buy it without his cooperation. So I finally made a deal with him to operate the farm on a percentage basis. CHAPTER 18 BACK AT ROYSTON, WORKED AT GIN AND FOR NEIGHBORS Throughout all these years, as our children were growing up, we tried to train them to work out their own problems, answer their own questions, and make their own decisions. One Sunday afternoon when the Willinghams were visiting us, Mary and Anita came skipping around the house to ask me if they could go to Hamlin in our car and get some ice to make ice cream. Anita was probably fifteen years old and Mary fourteen. I asked Anita if she had a driver's license. Of course she didn't have, but she could drive on back streets and be okay. Then I asked her, "And where is the ice plant?" "It's on Main street, but we could walk and carry the ice to a back street." "It's 14 miles there and 14 back. You still think it's all right?" "Sure, that's not far." "What if you have a flat? Can you put the spare on?" "Oooh, I hadn't thought of that. We better not try it."