| cloud coming up from the South. This
was in cotton picking time. This cloud started rising about three
o'clock that afternoon while we're picking cotton. We could hear the
low distant thunder all evening. My Pa had twenty bales of cotton in
the field not picked. This storm was a long time coming, but my, what
a storm it was. It was the worst hail storm we had ever had. It
knocked out all of our cotton and beat it into the ground. It took the
roofs, houses and barns. Old people said that they had never seen such
a hail storm . Every one lost their cotton crops.
THAT MOUSE In 1903, I was breaking ground for the late A.A. Ryan. There was a big stack of wheat straw where I was plowing. Finally I got up to this stack of straw. I was afraid I would get too close and drag out a big snake. Dr. Jeff Blackwood and two of his neighbors were plowing about one-fourth of a mile from me. I kept plowing around this stack of straw. As I went around for the last time, I felt something run around my waist, next to my flesh! I though it was a snake! I let out a yell. Those Blackwood boys heard me and came running, wanting to know what was wrong with me. I told them that there was a snake in my pants. I was holding my clothes at my waist. They grabbed me and took off my clothes and out dropped a dead mouse. I had squeezed him to death. Those men still haven't forgotten going to my rescue that day. BOYS ACTED UP One time in 1904, while I was working for my oldest sister, there was a big meeting going on at Light. A bunch of us boys around Walcott were attending a Revival. One night on our way home, we decided that Uncle But Knight would get miffed at us if we did not visit his watermelon patch. So we tied our horses up. We had to go through cotton as high as my head to get to the back of his field to find his melon patch. We got our fill of his melons. Before we got home, our spokesman said, "How about a chicken roast?" We always had a spokesman! So 26 |