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
On one side of our house snow drifted into a huge pile halfway up
our windows. After it melted, the sand which blew in with the
snow was at least two feet deep. That was the first time I can
remember when snow was so dirty we couldn't make snow ice cream.
However, there were many other times later on.
Here is another little rabbit story. On one occasion when Frank
was home, he went rabbit hunting with the other four of us boys.
We hadn't had much luck until almost sundown. By that time we
were still about four or five miles from home and we came to
another windmill and waterhole. There was a lot of sagebrush
around the waterhole and jackrabbits began to hop up here and
there. This place was so far from civilization the rabbits were
not much afraid of us. They would hop off a way and stop and sit
up and look back at us.
We all spread out and took a swath about the width of a city
block and circled the waterhole one time--and killed more
jackrabbits than we could carry home. We swung some of them over
our shoulders, tied some to our overall suspenders and carried
some in our hands. It was a long way home and we were plenty
tired before we got there.
During our stay on the plains, tractors had not yet established
themselves on American farms, at least not in our part of the
country. Men were still raising fine work horses and looking
forward to raising even bigger and better ones. A neighbor named
Debnam bought the biggest horse I ever hope to see. A big man
had to reach high to touch his nose, and few men could reach the
top of his shoulders. He was one of the six largest stallions in
the United States and he cost the man $3,600. By the time he was
three years old he weighed 2600 pounds, and his feet were about
as large as a cedar water bucket.
Now Papa needed at least four of those fine work horses but he
didn't have the money to buy them, and he couldn't get the money.
And farm tractors were almost unheard of before the late 1920s.
However, there was a company that made an attachment to go on a
Model T Ford car which was supposed to make a tractor out of the
car. The manufacturers name for the "thing" was "Pull-Ford."
Papa heard of a man who had such a contraption, so he went to
look at it.
Now, the fact that the man was not using the gadget should have
told Papa something. Moreover, the fact that he was willing to
sell it at a bargain should have told Papa something more. And
finally, when he went and looked at it and saw that it was
practically unused, that should have been the final message to
Papa.
But Papa wasn't listening good. He was a man in trouble. Dry
weather and sand colic had claimed some of his best work horses.
And he could buy this thing for a lot less than four horses would
cost. Anyway he bought the attachment and made it fit on the
Reo. I suppose he reasoned that a Reo owner had more sense than
a Ford owner, and even if it was not a success on the man's Ford,
he could make it do the job on a Reo.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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