| store. In a month or so my brother
came in to see how I was getting along and who not to sell to on
credit. He named a few I should not charge anything to for they would
not pay their bill. "Well, you should have told me first for
I have charged a lot to them", I said. He said, "Well,
you won't collect from them. Those men have owed me for the last
twenty years. I can't get a dime out of them!"
One evening I got a man to keep store for me and I caught my horse and got on him bareback and rode over to see those men. My brother said I never would collect from these men. I called on them. I never gave them a dun. I just told them I had come to tell them how I stood with my creditors. "You men know how I have furnished you with everything you ask for. Now my creditors are going to close my doors unless I get some help from my customers!" These men told me they did not know what the other people would do. They knew what they were going to do! They were going to pay everything they owed. Well, I went home happier and I would have news for my brother. I could tell him that I had collected from those men that had owed him for so long! TOO MUCH OF A HILL BILLY In 1909 my oldest brother, J.L., insisted my wife and I visit him and stay a week after my crop was all laid by. So, when I got my work all wound up, we went out to visit my brother. By this time my wife was pretty home sick. She was what you would call a "Hill Billy." She had not lived in a swamp like this. At this time of the century we had a lot of moss backs. We would see men pass our place that hadn't had a hair cut in a year and four or five old hound dogs following them. They looked like trouble to my wife. They were people that live in some shanty and did not want to live like the majority of people. These kind of people, frogs, and mosquitos made my wife real blue! She was anxious to leave home for a week's visit with my brother. He lived out in the hills, out of the swamp I had bought us. I had bought us a two year old colt and a 37 |