Then he got me out behind the cars, out near their back wheels, and he was just about to really let me have it. People on the sidewalk couldn't see us. It was just him and me. I had to do something--so I hit him and ran. That proved to be the best thing I could have done. He came right after me. I knew he might hit me but he couldn't hit me in the face and bloody my nose--I had my back to him. I jumped up on the curb with the bully right on my heels. The first man I passed asked, "Is that boy bothering you?" Before I could answer him, the boy had turned and was going away. He didn't bother me any more. He probably thought the stranger was a friend of mine and that he had better leave me alone or else the man would get him. On another trip to Lamesa I went with Papa one day into the back of a hardware store--back among the shelves of bolts and nuts and things. Way back there were stacks of silver dollars and half dollars and other coins, lying there on a shelf where the store was only half lighted. Papa and the clerk were around behind some other shelves. They couldn't even see me. It would have been easy to slip some money into my pocket and walk away. But I didn't, and I have wondered a lot of times just why I didn't. There was no question but that I knew it would be the wrong thing to do. Yet I don't believe the moral aspect kept me from taking at least some of the money. That is to say, I could have lived with my conscience but I could not have lived with the condemnation I would have gotten from my family, once they learned about it. And I knew that somehow they would learn about it. Then there would have been the "dishonoring" of thy father and thy mother. This would not have been a small thing, like talking back to Frank in the cotton patch years ago. That was an isolated case of one boy doing wrong and receiving his punishment. It was my punishment alone, it hurt no one else in the family and it was soon forgotten. But taking any part of the money from the store would have been altogether different. There would have been no way for me to take some of it, then take my punishment and not hurt my folks. Until the depression years of the 1930s, merchants never fooled around with pennies. If the wholesale cost of an item was four cents, he would usually sell it for ten cents. Then he could sell the items at two for 15 cents and still make a good profit. Well, Papa wanted to buy us kids some firecrackers but the war was on and they had gone from five cents a package up to ten cents a package. With six kids at home, that would put quite a strain on Papa's pocketbook. So while he was figuring how many to buy, my brother Joel began dickering with the clerk. "Two for 15 cents?" he asked. "Yes," came the reply. "Four for a quarter?" "Yes, I guess so." "Nine for a half dollar?" "Well, yes, okay." Papa bought the nine packages and we all laughed at how far that was from ten cents each.