Susie had gotten married about the time we moved to Lamesa. And with her away from home, Mama was always short handed in the kitchen, there being so many men and boys in the family and only one little girl still at home, and she was too little to be of much help. And since Mama's kitchen work extended to the milk shed, the henhouse, the vegetable garden, the wash house, the clothes line, the ironing board, the yard and a few other odd jobs about the place, she had to cut all the corners she could. She never put our eating dishes up in the cabinet. After she washed them, she stacked them back on the dining table and covered them with a cloth. So, she didn't have to place the dishes at mealtime. We simply sat down and got our own plates and tools. And we took only the tools we needed. There was no need to have to wash a knife, a fork and a spoon when a spoon was all we needed to use. We grew up not knowing there were different forks to use for different things. We used the rule of instinct in choosing the tool to use. That is, "If it's hard, use a knife, if it's soft, use a fork, and if it's wet, use a spoon--except in the case of molasses. You sop molasses up with a piece of biscuit." To save time and effort, Mama also left certain foods on the dining table--the salt, sugar, pepper, syrup, honey, vinegar, pepper sauce and other such things. These were all covered with the same cloth that covered our dishes. We had no refrigerator. Nothing would spoil at our house, we ate it before it had time to spoil. Mama needed help to wash the dishes after supper. But boys don't like to wash dishes. So Mama was in trouble--but not for long. She came up with an ultimatum: "You wash your own supper dishes or eat out of your same plates for breakfast." This was a boy's dream come true--no dish washing. This was the beginning of my sopping my plate clean. We all did. We could lick our spoons as clean as any woman could wash them in a dishpan. And I seldom used any tool except a spoon. Plates were no problem either. When it comes to shining plates, a good, tough biscuit rind in the hands of a growing boy could just about put a soap factory out of business. And no matter what he sopped out of his plate, it added flavor to his biscuit. When we were through licking and sopping, each of us would place our spoons on the table at our respective places, turn our plates upside down over them and take off for things more interesting. The last one to finish would help Mama spread a cloth over the entire table and the job was completed. Mama was out of the kitchen in no time at all. We had learned a long time ago not to take anything on our plates that we couldn't eat. Now that habit was paying off. CHAPTER 8 MOVED TO JONES COUNTY; PICKED COTTON IN OKLAHOMA