That's about all of my childhood memories concerning the Gaddies. In later years I had a desire to learn more about my mother's people. But as I began digging into census records, I soon found that Grandma Gaddie had a first cousin by the name of Jesse James- -yes, that's right--"The" Jesse James. So my desire suddenly changed to fear and I gave up digging into records. CHAPTER 2 EARLY CHILDHOOD AT THE FLINT FARM The first farm we owned, the one where I was born, is still spoken of as the Flint place, because we sold it to a family named Flint. So at times I may refer back to it as the Flint place. Since I was only five when we moved away from the Flint place, I remember only a few things which took place while we lived there. I remember we had old hens that laid eggs for us to go gather up and take to the house in a bucket. Sometimes the bucket would get so heavy I couldn't carry it. And sometimes we had to get eggs out from under old setting hens that wouldn't get off their nests. They would peck me to keep me away. I was too little to get those eggs. Mama or some of the bigger kids would have to get them. But if the old setting hen was off the nest, I knew which eggs to get and which ones to leave in the nest. The ones she was setting on to hatch out little chickens were marked all over with a lead pencil. The ones that didn't have marks on them were fresh eggs that had been laid that day. Some city folks are confused at times about some of the words we farmers use. For instance, take the words sitting and setting. The truth is, if an old hen is on an egg that she has just laid, and if she is planning to go away in a minute or two, she is just sitting on the egg. But if she is on the egg or eggs with the intention of hatching out little chickens, then she is not sitting, she is setting. Even some people who are supposed to be smart don't know farm words. In college English, the teacher had us making sentences using certain double words like, "_Look up_ a word in the dictionary." And "_Hand over_ your gun." I made a sentence like, "The cow wouldn't _give down_ her milk." The teacher gave me a zero on the sentence. And when I asked her why, she said, "A cow can not _hold up_ her milk nor _give down_ her milk." I told her, "Lady, you may know your English, but you sure don't know milk cows." Now back to the Flint farm. I was so little that, when I would throw out corn and maize seed to feed the chickens, I couldn't throw it far enough away from me. Some of it would fall at my feet. So the big chickens would crowd around my feet to pick up the grains and I was afraid of so many big hens so close to me. And I really got scared when they started pecking the feed out of my feed bucket. Sometimes I would drop the bucket and run away.