GOODDD“Bennie Knight was born in 1893, at Aspermont in Stonewall County. He was born in a half-dug-out. One room, dug back into the side of a little rise of dirt. There were no trees. The biggest salt-cedar bushes were used to build a kind of porch roof. The Salt Fork of the Brazos is ten miles north. In certain places when water evaporated, clean sparkling salt just lay there. People came in wagons and got loads of it. He remembered going with his family and getting salt for their use. During the Civil War, that salt was fought over, men and animals had to have it. Most of the country was good flat cotton land, no trees, no logs, no rocks, just cotton. Coton was planted,over and over, year after year, then sand storms.
His son Stanley, driving over it years later, “It's the poorest, wore out land that I ever saw. It don't look like anything would ever grow on it.”
Hettie was born 16 months earlier. Ben never liked it that she told everyone, “Oh, I just raised Ben and the other kids”. Two years later Fannie was born, 300 miles east, in Rains County. Bill and Jim were born back in Aspermont in 1897 and 1898. They moved nearly every year, to another small farm. James Sterling Pierce was Alice Pierce Knights father. He was wounded in the Civil war. Hettie remembered that he lived with them. He was shot in the left leg and always slung that foot. It slapped the floor. Hettie said, “I can remember the way he walked till yet, “slap, slap, slap.”
In the winter they liked to quilt. They all embroidered a block on a friendship quilt. Gatling –1905, Aspermont—1905-6, Malakoff –1907, Maybank in 1908 and 1910. It is our most prized pocession. I never knew about it until Minnie Alice brought it to give to me at the cemetery. She gave it to me at Mamas funeral. I keep it rotating among the family.
At one time, the Knights owned a section of land near Odessa. He traded it for a span of mules, and moved near Spur. Now it is covered with oil wells. There they got acquainted with the Mings family, who owned two big cotton farms. His first wife had died. He had married a girl not much older than his daughter, Annie. He had a son, Kelse, too. He gave them all three a whipping, when they needed it. They later had several more children.
The Knights were visiting the Mings. Kelse and Hettie 'had got to sparking'. The women were cooking dinner in the fireplace. Mr. Mings was reading the paper, in his usual place. He was sitting in his chair, rared back, with both feet spread apart, up on the mantel. No one dared ask him to move Ben’ Mother, Alice, gathered up some light kindling and threw it in the fire. It blazed up. Mr. Mings jumped up, started slapping his britches legs and dancing around. He didn’t say anything. He knew who did it.
The Knights moved on to East Texas. In 1910, Kelse come to Maybank in Henderson County and married Hettie. That fall the Knights moved to Mineral Wells onto the Edmonson place. It was an old rent house with a fireplace. Everything else they needed, they moved on their wagon, they led a cow. And they were our closest neighbors, there on the river.
My Mama always visited new neighbors. Etta was still weak from the polio. Mama walked and pulled her in a little wagon. Fannie and Etta just fell for each other. Fannie had a beautiful doll. It had a porcelain head. She gave it to Etta and they loved each other.
Mama always said, "Alice Knight was prettier than her girls." She taught them to sew, embroider, crochet, and do beautiful handwork. Later Hettie and Fannie would support their families by sewing. So, I met Ben, and married him six years later. We went to school together for one school year. The country school 'year', was three months long. I remember Ben was the first one out the door, after school, while the rest of us dragged along. He had work to do at home, he picked cotton, cut firewood, there was always something. Then there was more work at home, so he missed school. He always declared that he never went to school there, two full weeks.
He had good parents, in a way. Every Sunday morning they could, they all got in their wagon and went to the nearest Church of Christ. Ben led singing. He knew a lot about the bible. His Dad just seem to think, that you didn’t need “book learning.”
So I didn’t see much of him that year. I wasn’t caring about boys at 13 or 14. Fannie was the one I was crazy about. She was a year older than me.
I thought she was the smartest thing out. There was to be a box supper in our Pleasant Valley community.
Ben told me, “If you will come, I will buy your box and we will eat together” --- And I didn’t even go. He told that on me for years.
The family was swimming in the Brazos. Ben was noodling. He slipped into an easy slim place, between two big rocks, to reach a big catfish. He slipped in easy, he didn’t come out easy, he was stuck. Someone went down to find him. They got enough hold and pulled him out.
His son Stanley was in the same water, years later, with his uncles, the Gill boys. Those same 'fish holes' were still there. They spread a seine around the rocks and reached in to feel if there was a big fish in the holes. Stanley was diveing down to a big hole. He said that it was 20 feet and over and he didn't want to go that far.
They moved back to Henderson in east Texas. They had an old sow with long tushes. She was in a pen with her little pigs and she was mean. It was Ben’s job to slop her, he was the oldest.
Slop was any liquid food, hogs are like chickens,they will eat anything. It seems like; that they root with their noses, searching for the things they like best and waste more than they eat.
The five gallon metal slop bucket that was left in the house, always had the used dishwater poured in it. The slop bucket never smelled real bad. Potato pealings, soured milk, any leftover food went into the slop buchet. Every night, as we went to milk, the slop bucket was carried to the hog pen and the hogs were 'slopped.' If there wasn't much slop, a few ears of corn would be tossed into the the trough. Then the bucket was rinsed out, if it needed it. There was a lot of squealing as the hogs rooted to get the best out of their trough. A chicken would try to get some. The chickens learn to be quick, in the hog pen, It is seldom thet a hog catches one. Pigs like watermelons or the rines either, corn shucks, anything.
Before hog killing time in the fall,everyone fed them corn for a while. It made the meat taste better.
The old sow had rooted her trough over, it had come loose from the post at each end, that held it flat. His Dad was agravated at Ben. He said, “I’ll show you how to get that trough.” He started climbed over the rail fence and the old sow bit the toe of his boot and nearly tore it off. The kids didn’t dare laugh. The whole family took the typhoid fever. Ben and Hettie lost all their hair, and it come back curly.
Somewhere along the way, Jim, the youngest, he stayed with Julia and Thurman Hargett and went to school, one year. They always talked about how he was so cute and good. Julia was Mamas cousin.
Julia, my cousin, and Thurman was in a dry goods store in Mineral Wells. A Doctor from Abilene was carrying a baby to adopt, to give away, in a basket. Julia and Thurman had never wanted a baby; they saw him and fell in love with him. They took that baby. Everybody that come along, bought him a gift. He had a shower, right there in the store.
There were big write ups about what Joe Thurman did as a pilot in WW11. He got married while he was in the service and had two sons. He got out of the service and took all his family on a trip to Florida. On the way back he said, "Oh I was going to do something when we come through Arkansas, but I forgot it." It wasn't far home and they all piled into one car, and Joe Turman went on alone. He hit a slick place in the road and was killed. His two sons got a new car when they were about sixteen. They both died when that car was in a bad wreck.
Julia and Thurmans daughter, Theresa was born eight years after he was.
The next year the Knights moved back, across the Brazos River from us, to the Willow Pond community. Ben's Dad was an orphan and had no relatives. His Mothers folks raised him. Ben’s Mother, Alice had two brothers who lived in Mineral Wells, Dolf and Chock Pierce; Adolf and Chocktaw. Alice died there in 1912. She was buried at the Willow Pond cemetery. Ben’s Dad gathered up Alice’s things that he couldn’t use, and sold them. Jim come in and found his Mothers little glider rocking chair gone. He went and bought it back. He paid one dollar. Trudy has it now.
Fannie married George Glover in 1914. Ben stayed and cooked for his Dad. They “batched”until he was drafted for WW1. He sent a monthly alotment home to his Dad. Jim and Bill had good jobs during the war.
He trained at Camp Bowie in West Fort Worth. Lots of soldiers died from the Spanish Flu. It was all tents and temporary buildings and you can scarcely find any remainders of it, in Fort Worth; except street names.
I had four girl cousins, Dora, Donnie, Tid,(Matilda) and Fred,(Fredda) Aunt Annes husband, Uncle Jim Coleman took us on the train to Fort Worth to watch a big parade of the soldier boys at Camp Bowie. Aunt Anne was to 'lady-like' to go in crowds, on a trip like that. Our first trip on the train and to Fort Worth, too. I saw Ben march by, they went so quick, and I wasn't caring anything about him then.
Us cousins started to Mr Adams business college. Soldier boys were being drafted and there were jobs that needed to be filled. It was the 'patriotic' thing to do. It was a short war and my heart wasn't in it. Fred was the only one of us that finished. The next year she taught school at Blue Pond. That was across the river from us, over in Glidwell Heights. The next year she got a good job in Waco and she soon married the owners son.
An Old Maid school teacher wrote to Ben.
We heard that Ben had been gassed and could not talk.
On the battlefield, a friend was shot and crazed, he was fighting and kicking from pain. Ben carried him off the battlefield. His pack straps were shot off and he was 'shell shocked'. He kicked Ben's gas mask off and he got 'gassed', mustard gas. Ben lost his voice and damaged his lungs. The nurses called him "The Whispering Hope", he called them "Angel Nurses". The friend died and his brother wrote Ben a letter, which he answered.
The army was discharging the ones in the hospital first. Daddy wanted to come home, real bad, he signed that he was well and healthy.
(I wrote for a copy of Daddys military records. They were burned in a big fire that burned all the military records, in 1921. They told me that I might get his hospital records, I haven't tried.
I believe that letter from the brother might be sufficient to get him at least a Purple Heart medal. Stanley says that our Daddy was never interested in a medal, and he isn't either.)
I, Anne had started to school, there at Willow Pond. And I stayed a lot with Dad's and Mamas parents, who lived there too. We all had our party line telephones, so I knew what was going on, on both sides of the river.
One day Dad come in, “I saw Ben Knight in town today.” I asked if he could talk. “Yes, I heard him talk.” That was a relief.
Dad knew all the Knights because they had lived by us in the old Edmonson place. He could not tell Ben from Jim, unless they were together. Before long I heard that Ben had been discharged and had gone to west Texas to work.
Dad would not allow me to have a boy friend. Several friends were at our house. Me and Wayne, the oldest Boone boy were setting on a rock together. Dad saw us and picked up a rope and started toward us. He told Wayne to go home. Ludie grabbed J M and they hid behind the cellar door.
Mama told Dad, “Don't you hit her.” It's the first time that he had ever stopped. I saw that he was not going to let us be friends. I told Wayne to go back to his first love, and he did. I was a little over twenty years old.
Eighty years later, Simon Boone(the youngest Boone boy) was living at the Crazy Hotel Retirement where Aunt Etta was. He told me, “Wayne and Anne passed notes to each other. They stuck them in a crack at the old school house, by the Hittson Graveyard. She could always walk up the hill to the cemetery in the evening. All us Boones expected them to get married.
(Seventy two years earlier, Fritz Moore, our neighbor to the south, he had trouble with his water well, it had to be 'pulled'. That was a major problem and all the neighbors come to help. Mr Boone come with his young son, Asher. He was standing around and got in Fritz way. Fritz said,
“You are always getting in the way, Just like old man Simon Gill.” (My Dads Dad.) From then on, until he died, that boy was called 'Simon'.)
That summer I went to Amarillo with Granma Hess.
Uncle Henry was her son and he went up there years ago, 'to work in the harvest.' He liked it and stayed. He married a French orphan who had been brought over to the United States by another family. Uncle Henry and Aunt Mary had a big family and we loved them all. We always had a big time when we got together. They grew cotton at first and then owned big grain fields.
I wrote postcards, they were penny each then, to friends, just telling them where I was. One was to Ben, his sister Fannie forwarded it on to him. 'Lo and Behold', he was working near where I was. He wrote that when he got a day off, he planned to come and see me.
But Gran Ma Hess wanted to come home. Cam was working in the harvest up there and he paid my train fare to come back with her. We rode to Fort Worth.
(55 years earlier,She had rode the train from Illinois to Texas. She had her four year old daughter and three year old son with her. She carried my Mother, Julia, on a pillow because she was premature. Six weeks after she got to Texas, Uncle George was born.)
Uncle Charlie, Gran Ma's youngest son lived in Fort Worth. They owned a good farm in Mineral Wells.
He and his wife Aunt Rosie lived with her Mother and sister Mary, in Fort Worth. Their only son Wallace was deaf from a fever that he had when he was a baby. He never had heard speech and he could not talk. He made sounds that his parents and cousins kinda knew. There never was a question but that he was smart. He was everybodies pet.
Granpa Hess would buy a big soup bone joint, with lots of meat on it, for ten cents. GranMa Hess could make the best soup. She grew the spices in their big vegetable garden. They were French and had lots of French visiters. When they come they were always bringing her, new seeds or 'starts' of herbs to grow. She had a big herb garden.You could smell the spices in her soup, when you come in at the gate, 25 yards off.
We had all been there for dinner and GranMama Gill was there. A couple of hours later, she walked through the kitchen. The big pot of soup had been pushed to the back of the stove and the wood fire had gone out.
Wallace had pushed a chair to the stove. He was standing on it. It was still to hot-- so he stood on first one foot and then the other. He dipped his little hand into the big pot and got some and drank it out of his hand. He looked at Granmama Gill and dipped out a little handful and offered it to her. She drank it. She didn't tell on him, but she told that story many times.
In Fort Worth, Mrs J C Hooper had a son who was deaf. She took him to enroll in school and they told her to send him off to live in a state institution. They told her that if she could find twelve students, the school system would provide a teacher for deaf students in Fort Worth. It opened September, 24, 1924.
Mary and her Mother heard about the school and welcomed Uncle Charlie and Aunt Rosie into their home. The only job that Uncle Charlie found, for the longest, was digging graves at the big rocky Mount Olivet Cemetery, fifty cents a day, pick and shovel. They all wanted Wallace to have an education. He was always very quiet and mannerly.
Mary had a husband that no one liked, he disappeared, they said they didn't know where he went. There was an old well on the place. They really got to warning us, to not go around it. Us kids got to thinking that they had throwed Marys husband into that well. He never did show up. The old well is now paved over by the parking lot of the Riverside Bank.
The years they were there, they bought a house, nearby. It had termites and they were a long time selling it.
Wallace was about 10, the oldest one in his class. He did learn sign language and could speak almost understandably. He learned to read and write and was good with figures. He never would say or write the word 'bull', it was 'boy cow.' The gentele way to say it.
They moved back to Mineral Wells and called it their 'vacation', when they drove to Palo Pinto, the county seat, to pay their taxes every year. Wallace got a drivers license, they bought a new car. He drove their car to the big Methodist church in town, every Sunday, They put them a reserved space, 'Mr Hess' by the front door. They drove that new car 650 miles a year.
Wallace was about 50 when he got a hearing aid that was strong enough that he could hear music from a radio, turned up to it's loudest.
They raised lots of chickens and sold eggs. Record keeping was metaculous, every sack of feed and every egg sold. One time Mary was visiting them and she couldn't be left at home. She went with them to town. She set in the back seat, with the eggs cartons.
Aunt Rosie had a dog Goldie, they had several dogs over the years. They were all named Goldie. It had hair over its eyes and we all thought it was ugly. Goldie always rode on the back of the front seat. The dog fell off on Mary. She never could stand that dog!
She pushed him and he went over on the eggs and then back onto Mary, he was scrambling on those egg cartons to get his footing. They come by Aunt Ettas house to get it cleaned up, several dozen were broken, mostly on Mary.
His Mother died and Uncle Charlie said that she had thirteen miscarages after Wallace's birth. Aunt Etta asked Mama if she would wear Aunt Rosies good coat 'with the good fur collar'. But, Wallace wouldn't let anyone touch her clothes. Mama never did get that coat,
Wallace kept saying, “No, that's Mamas.”They all just hung there in her closet and ruined, until he died. Her shoes set there too.
They wore out their cup towels and Aunt Etta showed him some feed sacks that Aunt Rosie had saved. He wouldn't let her use them, “No, they are Mamas.” Uncle Charlie died and Wallace lived alone.
There was an outcropping of flat rocks on his land. Our Son, Benny Thel needed a load of them to hold the dirt back from his swimming pool. Wallace remembered Benny Thel, from him playing at Mama Gills house, when we would come to visit. Benny started to pay him for the rocks.
Wallace laughed, “No I want to give them to 'that little boy.'"
Oil was found on their land. He carefully put every check in the bank. He especially liked Dock, he visited and helped Wallace a lot. Aunt Etta took him to a lawyer. There was eighteen cousins, Dock, he had recently died. His kids were mentioned. Wallace started, “No, no Docks dead, he's gone, can't give him anything.” The lawyer said that he could not put Betty Sue and Linda Lou anything in the will, with Wallace saying that. Aunt Etta tried and couldn't get the lawyer to include them.
Wallace lived alone, the family visited a lot, brought food.
Every school day evening, he set in the shade at the front of his house in a cane bottom chair and leaned back against his house and waved when the school bus come by. One day his head leaned over and he didn't wave.
One little girl got home and run excitedly to her father. “Daddy, the little man didn't wave today! We have to go and see about him!” They drove to Wallaces home and he was still leaned over. He had a fatal heart attack. And a tremendous funeral. What a time we all had, going through all the old things in that house that hadn't been touched for years. I got a 'different' rag rug that Aunt Rosie had started, probably fifty years before. I show it some.
It is amazingly pretty and simple to make. And amazing to see the work that pioneer women have done to beautify their homes.
"Ben wanted to come and see me at my home, I told him not to. He said that he wanted to do the right thing. He come to see me and Dad told him, “To come no more.” MacIntires had a party, they were our close neighbors. Ben come there, to see me, he told about the big tractor that he had been driving. It pulled fourteen plows in the big fields in west Texas. The Rumley was a monster, it had a steam engine.
My brothers didn't believe him. They had never driven a car, hadn't ridden in very many. They knew how many horses it took to pull a plow.
They let the air out of all his tires. He had to pump them up by hand.
They told on their selves years later. We had thought it was them.
On one long trip from west Texas to see me, Ben got sleepy. He slowly run off the side of the road and hit tall drying sunflowers.
Another time it had rained a lot. There was a strip of road just east of Caddo that was level and real muddy. Farmers had their teams to pull cars through, $5. They had shotguns and wouldn't let drivers pull over onto their property to get through. Ben proudly drove his Model T through that mud hole.
We were planning to get married. Both my Grandmothers and Mama liked Ben, they all helped us to see one another. Ben wanted to ask Dad.
GranMama Gill said that he was to 'bull headed' and wouldn't change, for us to go ahead and not tell him. We made plans. I was staying at Gran Mamas with Alex. She had rode the train to Waco to be with Fred when she had her first baby. She had come back from Waco and rode her buggy home, from the jockey yard. Dad come by on his way back from town. She told us the sad news that Fred had a healthy baby boy, Marshall, but Fred, Fredda, couldn't live. Granmama had come back home to get a little more money and to take Alex to see his sister.
I had done a little washing and had things spread out on the bed. I was afraid that Dad would get suspicious. He just thought I was helping Granmama. She called Mama and told her the sad news. She and Alex got in her buggy and rode to town. She left her horse and buggy at the Jockey yard, and they went on the train to Waco. Dad went on home and GranMa Hess went home, she had been staying with me and Alex. She had stayed, thinking that she was helping us, and we let her.
Ben come by, right on time, to pick me up, two thirty. Ben come in from west Texas and stopped in Palo Pinto and bought our Marriage License We drove to town, the preacher that we had picked out, he wasn't home. We found a preacher, he was Presbeterian. As soon as we married, I called Mama and told her and she told Dad. He had a fit.
We drove to Ben's sister Fannies, not far west of the Willow Pond cemetery. She cooked us a good supper. I couldn't enjoy it until Ben told me that he had bought the food and brought it to her. We spent the night. The next morning Mama called and said that Dad had gone to town hunting us. She said for us to ford the Brazos River at Oaks Crossing and come by the house and get my trunk. We did fine until we got to the steep place at the graveyard gate. A part on the car broke and I was scared to death. What if Dad caught us! Ben had the part and it was soon fixed.
We drove on over the hill, the quarter mile down to my home. Ben had took the trunk lid off the back of his little car. My trunk fit right in there. Mama put some quilts on top and gave us some food. We drove off.
“We had got away, as slick as a button!”
It was 60 miles to Breckenridge, the longest trip I had made in a car. We stopped at the courthouse in Palo Pinto and filed our marriage certificate
The trip was fine until we got in sight of the lights of Breckenridge. The wooden hub of a car wheel dried and broke out, because of so much diving.
We made a bed on the ground. I wouldn't let Ben touch me all night. I had seen dogs mate and stick together. We would run and chase them with sticks, they wouldn't come apart. I was afraid that we would stick together and a car would come along and we couldn't get un-stuck.
Ben teased me about that for years.What a wedding night!
I lay awake all night, just three cars come by.
The next morning Ben caught a ride into town.
His brother Jim brought him and another wheel, right back.
Mama and my grandmothers were scared for me to go to that 'wild nasty boom town.' In 1920 it exploded from 600 residents to more than 10,000. 200 oil wells were drilled within the city limits, tents all over town.
I never saw any thing bad.
Jim had been married three months. I had never met Zenna Mae but we loved each other. We lived in a cute little four room house together.
Ben had forty dollars and GranMama, Dad's Mother, gave us ten. We bought a mattress, and double blankets. They were made together at the bottom, so that your feet couldn't stick out. It was November and cold. We bought a few cups and pans, Ben had his 'batching outfit.'
When Mama got married, she had made 21 quilts. She got a young heffers and piles of gifts. I did not get that, on account of Dad.
At home I took care of my seven brothers and sisters. My Mama did all the cooking and work. She would go 'split-tail here and split-tail there' and do everything better and faster than anyone else, cooking too. When one of our babies was born, the next morning I carried her big 'bread pan' to the side of her bed and she mixed the biscuits. When I visited my grandmothers, they were so particular about their work, that they wanted to do it all theirself. I did not know how to cook or do anything.
'Ma', Zenna Mae's mother, she lived close. She was so kind and helped me, just like she helped Zenna Mae. I needed it too.
Ben and Jim worked for Zenna Mae's father, Jess Harding. He owned big wagons, they were used to haul big oil field timbers. All tall oil rigs were built with big wooden timbers. They were bolted to cement in the ground to make them more stable.There were no metal for the tall rigs. The wood was pulled and moved by big horses. Big trucks were replacing them, the first ones did not have windshields. The drivers had to change from driving big horses hitched to wagons; to driving big trucks. It was hard for them to do. Ben and Jim knew about horses and trucks too.
It was hot and dusty back in the summer. Oil was put on the streets to 'lay the dust', It rained a lot, that made the mud in the winter, slicker. Everything would sink down in the mud and get stuck, even on main street.
A neighbor had a Ford car that would not run. Ben repaired it, in our yard, he took it all apart and laid it on the ground. We didn't have a shade tree. I had never seen a car worked on, I was scared that we would have to pay that man for his car. It run fine, when Ben finished.
July 15, 1922, Ben woke up and heard a baby crying. Jim and Zenna Mae had a baby girl! They said they hadn't wanted to wake us. They named her after her Grandmothers, Minnie Alice. She was so pretty, Zenna Mae had two little brothers and someone was always holding her.
Ben couldn't breathe good in Breckenridge, there was oil everywhere. We went to the 'cotton patch' and picked cotton in west Texas, wherever Kelse and Hettie were. Kelse's Dad had two big cotton farms at Spur.
The next spring Ben sold our car and bought a team and wagon. He planted a cotton crop, on rented land. The cotton come up pretty. Then a strong sand storm, it just 'cut it off at the ground'. He bought more seed and planted it again. It come up pretty and grew like it was supposed to.
Ben's Dad come to Spur to live with us. He had cancer in one eye. Under one eye, it hung down red and he looked real scarey. The blowing sand hurt his eyes. And that's the way we got rid of him. He come back to Breckenridge and died June 26, 1923. When he died Jim called his old Doctor and told him. He rushed out to the house and gathered all the bottles of medicine and took them off with him.
I stayed at the house while they all picked cotton. I did the cooking. Lots of pinto beans were raised around there. At the packing sheds, they could only sell the whole beans. They gave away the split, the half beans. We ate them most every day. It was very hard to hunt the little rocks out of them. Ben always scraped the spoon across the bottom of the bowl. If there was a rock, he got it. There was a big crop of black eyed peas that year too.
July 15, 1923, our baby was born.
Ben had said, “If its a girl it will be named after you.”
I had said, “If it's a boy, it will be named after you.”
Annie, Kelse's sister was there too. Some way they got the notion that you were to be named after Annie. She was so tickled, no one had ever been named after her before. We didn't have the heart to tell her different. Granma Hess had a sister Louisia, I decided on that name.
(Granma Hess told that Louisia could put both legs behind her head. Granma had a boy friend come in, when Louisia was in that shape. Louisia did not have time 'to get unhooked' and she rolled under a table, with a long tablecloth. She said that she nearly died before he left.)
When the Doctor showed you to me, I said, “That's the ugliest baby that I ever saw.”(Mama told me that, shame- facedly—after I was 70.)
He said, “Don't you say that, that little baby had a hard time, being born.” My cousin Fred died when her first child was born. My sister Ludie, her only child was born dead. My sister Etta, never had any. My second baby died in New Mexico. God was watching out for you and us.
The Doctor broke your arm, tugging on you, he set it and put a splint on it. When we took you back to the Doctor in six weeks, it wasn't straight and he had to break it and reset it. It was hot in July, you had to be carried on a pillow. Hettie really worked with you, we never gave her enough credit. You and her always seemed to have a special love for each other.
You grew and we had another cotton crop the next year. There were adds in the newspaper about how you could get homestead land in New Mexico. It sounded so good to us. We had saved our cotton money. Ben went during the winter and located us a place. He actually walked, bummed rides, about 200 miles to look at some of the land. He picked out a good location and walked and bummed rides back. We never wasted money.
He sold the team and farming things. He bought a car and trailer. We had our mattress and cooking things.