Playing on the roof

This is a story that I do not have any recollection of except that I heard my dad tell it on more than one occasion. It was the only time that I received a whipping from my father. On the farm that we lived at the time there was a smoke house which was a small building in which to smoke and store pork. My sister and brother who were older than me would help me to get on top of the roof so we could play. My dad told us a time or too that we were not to do that but they keep on doing it so he told them the next time I catch you on the roof I will give you a whipping. True to child like action they keep doing it but would watch for him and get down before he could see them. One day they got busy playing and by the time they saw him he had already saw us. They were just getting me down when he came upon them. He said he gave us all a whipping, but realized after that he should not have given me a whipping because I could not have gotten on the roof without their putting me there. While I don’t remember the incident it might have made such an impression on my young mind that I never did disobey my father and never remember receiving a whipping from him. I do have memory of many a whipping from my mother. My mother never gave spankings. That is far too tame a word for what she gave to us children. They were whippings and when she was through you knew you had been whipped.

If a handful of grapes is good a bucket full may not be better

When I was around six years old my family made our first trip to California to work in the harvesting of fruit. My mother had a sister who lived in California at that the time and we went there to earn money because times were hard. Our country was just coming out of the great depression. We worked at various jobs such as picking hops, chopping cotton, picking peaches and cutting grapes. This was a young boys dream to see acres of grapes that were ripe for the picking and eating. Being six years old I could not work but there was nothing keeping me from eating all the grapes I could hold. My folks were busy working and I was left to tend to myself so I began to eat grapes. They were wine grapes. They were white grapes and sweet to the taste. I ate and I ate on that first day. After a while I got very sick. So much so that I began to vomit until I thought my insides were going to come out also. I learned that if a little is good than a lot is not better.

Don’t scare someone with a chopping ax in his hand

One day my father had my brother Leroy working on a fence that was make of rails. The rails were getting old and the neighbor’s cows were getting into our land where we had crops planted. He had my brother cutting down saplings; these are small trees, to fix the gaps so the cows could not get into our crops. The fence went through a wooded area. When it was lunch time my mother sent my older sister, Wanda to go call him to come to lunch. As she approached him he was working with a chopping ax and had his back to her. She thought it would be fun to scare him. So she sneaked up behind him and yelled real loud. For some reason she squatted down as soon as she yelled and that was what saved her. Because when she scared him he turned swing the ax as hard as he could. The ax just grazed the top of her head, if she had remained standing he would have laid her open with blade of a sharp ax. If the blow did not kill her she would have most likely bleed to death before she could have been taken to a doctor. We had no automobile at the time and dad was not at home at that time. By the time help could have arrived and then be driven 30 miles over dirt roads to a doctor she most likely would not have survived.