would be blown away.
After breakfast next morning, my oldest girl, Mildred, looked out toward the sweet potato patch, and she hollered, "Papa, the sweet potato patch is gone!" She said, "Let's go down to the cotton field and see what's down there." So the two girls and myself pulled out for the field. We were anxious to see what had happened down there. There wasn't a stock of cotton or corn, nor any kind of hay left anywhere in the field! It was all cut down and blown away! The girls were yelling, "Papa, we don't have anything left! Our crops are all blown away!" That is when the thought came to me, "You boasted that you were going to make a crop whether or not." I saw very quickly that my sins had found me out. I was going to do things, not even considering the Lord. This taught me a lesson. The next time I planned to do something, I would always say, "If it's the Lord's will." For a man is such a weak creature compared to Almighty God that he should never boast! I HAD MY TROUBLES I realize that every family that grew up on a farm had their troubles and ups and downs. It seemed like sometimes I had double portions. In 1920 I pitched a big crop. For a long time my crop grew and looked prosperous. We would have enough to support the family after all the expenses came out. By July we had a drought set in. The corn and hay all burned up and the cotton shed all the fruit off. It looked like it was going to be a complete failure. By the first of October of that year, I walked over my crop and I saw that I could not pay my crop expenses let alone have enough left for my family. I moped around for several days with the blues. I could not think of a thing to do to better myself. I tried to hide my bad feelings and blues from my family, but finally it got to where I couldn't hide it. I came into the house one morning. My wife saw that I was very blue. She said, "Why are you so upset this morn- 43 |