could make twenty cents each tie we could hew out.

     We bought us a seven pound axe. This was our first timber job. We took our tools and went into the timber. We cut down our first tree. We understood they had to be hewed out 6 X 8 or 8 X 6. We talked for awhile about just how to do this. Finally I told my brother to walk over to the railroad and take a look to see if they were made 8 X 6 or 6 X 8. I would go ahead and trim the limbs from one we had cut down and score two sides.

     When he got back I asked him what did he find out and he explained they were made    8 X 6. I grabbed my big axe and tried my luck on my first cross tie. I made about three big strokes in striking dead knots. I broke my broad axe in half. Well this brought to an end this job!

     We heard of another job cutting wagon hubs. We did a little better this time, although we knew nothing about cutting timber. We would just back up to a tree and start sawing on it and just let the tree fall any way. It so happened our uncle was the timber boss. He came along one day and stopped to talk to us for a while before he moved on. He said, "Boys, there will be a lot of deaths this year." We wanted to know why. He said, "We have so many tombstones." He began to point back over where we had cut down the timber. WE would cut on a tree till it began to fall, then we would throw down our saw and run. The tree would split up and leave a slab standing up.

STORE BUSINESS

     After my wife and I had made two or three crops my older brother came to see us and stayed all night. He began to talk me into quiting farming and going into the store business. He said that I could make a good living and not have to dig it out of the ground! He finally talked me into buying a store in a little mill town close to our place. He came in and helped me invoice the stock and turned the keys over to me. He never told me anything as to how to run a business!

     I did not know the first thing as to running a

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