I remember another time when we made a trip to Hamlin running on an old tire that was swelled up and about to blow out. Rather, it was trying to swell up but Papa wouldn't let it. We couldn't find a used tire in Lamesa but we figured we could get a good deal on one in Hamlin. So Papa bought a pair of leather bridle reins. Then he let the air out of the old tire, wrapped one rein through the spokes and around the bad place on the tire and buckled it down tightly. And then when he pumped air into the tire, the leather strap held the bad place in so it couldn't swell up and blow out. The strap lasted the 125 mile trip. We found the tire we needed in Hamlin. Among other things I remember were the impressive sights on the plains, like the great number of windmills and the great distance you could see. Almost every farm house had a windmill, and more than half the houses in town had mills. It seemed there were so many mills there wouldn't have been enough wind to drive them all. Since we had moved from a land of mesquite trees and since there were no trees on the plains--except those planted near homes for windbreakers--this country looked mighty bare. You could see as far as your eyes could stretch. A newcomer might wonder whether it might strain his eyes to look so far, until he became accustomed to it. The town of Lamesa was a small county seat. On the courthouse lawn were two windmills pumping water into a cypress tank high on a tower. The tallest mill was 80 feet and the tank was 60 feet. That was the city water supply. Some of the stores around the square used city water and some had their own mills out back. During the war the price of many things went higher and higher. Gasoline was one of them. It went from eight cents a gallon up to 29 cents a gallon. There were no drive-in service stations then, only gas pumps on the curbs out front. And of course they were all pumped by hand. One farmer started home one Saturday and drove up to a gas pump and asked, "Gasoline up again?" When they told him it was 29 cents a gallon, he said, "Put in one gallon. That will get me home and back." Then after thinking it over for about two seconds, he said, "No, put in a half-gallon. That will get me home and I ain't comin' back." And food went up too. Simpson and Jones ran a mercantile store in Lamesa. One day a customer said to Mr. Simpson, "You know that quarter's worth of beans you sold me last week? Well, the sack had a hole in it and I lost two of them on the way home--and the other one had a worm in it." We went to town about once a week, but most of our time was spent on the farm working, playing and going hunting. Joel was harrowing in the field one day, walking barefooted behind a harrow in freshly stirred soil. The harrow ran over a rattlesnake, just a small one, about 18 inches long or so.