No, I didn't know too many people that worked in the cotton mill. We
wasn't interested in finding out anything about the people's parents so
Page 30 much. But there was a couple boys that worked
in the lumber company there at Newton that went to school when I did. I
know I got a thrashing because they worked where my daddy did, and I
stayed out of school one evening. Me and one or two of his boys and a
couple others got one of these old lever cars that they use on the
railroad. It was setting up there at the top of the hill in North
Newton, and we got that thing and put it on the side track, and a bunch
of us boys got on that thing, going down the hill. And there was some
boys that come down the other end of the track by the ice plant towards
the shop, and they seen us putting that thing on the track. And we got
that on the track, and there was a big dirt pile for the boxcars, when
they'd cut them loose, to run them down and stop them when they got to
that dirt pile at the end of the line. And them boys drew a cross-tie
that was lying there around on the front of that dirt pile to where our
lever car would hit it. And I was crazy-like and jumped off before it
got down there, and some of them stayed on it till it got down there,
and it didn't hurt them. I thought it'd hit that crosstie and knock us
off there on the railroad track. I jumped off of that thing, and I
mashed my mouth and my nose and had it all puffed up. I went home that
evening, and my daddy come in from work. "What happened to you?" "I was
running and fell down." I told him a lie, and that's the worst thing I
ever could have done, because I got a whipping every time I told him a
lie and he found it out. If it was a week later before he found it out,
I'd get a whipping. And so them boys went home, and they told their
daddy about what we done and about me falling and getting hurt, and he
went back to the shop the next day and told my daddy the truth about it,
how we was out there playing and got hurt. And so I went home that
evening from school, and he come home from work around about four-thirty
or five o'clock. And he said, "Now I want you to tell me again
Page 31 how you got hurt. I done know the truth about it."
And I told him. He said, "Getting hurt was enough, but you told me a lie
on top of it." And he had brought some little strips about that long and
about that wide and about as thick as your finger of rich pine home, and
he'd laid them under the edge of the table. We cooked on an old wood
stove and used pine to make the fires every morning. And I told him how
it happened after I'd told him a lie about it and he had done found out
the truth about it. And so he said, "I'm going to give you a whipping
for telling me a lie. Getting hurt was bad enough, but if you wouldn't
have told me a lie, getting hurt would have been enough, maybe, to learn
you to come home where your place was." And he give me a whipping with
that piece of pine. (He'd generally bring two or three home every day if
he'd run across any in his work.) Then after that he said, "You better
come home of an evening and not be playing along the road. If you do,
you'll get into some other meanness, and you'll get another hurting and
get a whipping, too, if you don't come home from school." And me and a
couple of boys was coming home one evening from school, and there was
mailboxes all along the road. And we was throwing rocks at that mailbox
post. Old man Mark Hewitt was a brickmason, and he didn't live too far
from the house, just maybe ten minutes' walk up there, and he come up
there and told my daddy about it. He said, "Your boy and such a boys was
throwing rocks at my mailbox. They didn't hit the mailbox, but they was
throwing rocks at it." You know, crazy young'uns, just seeing which
could hit it the quickest and stuff like that. My daddy said, "The next
time I hear tell of you throwing rocks at anybody's mailbox, I'm going
to whip you for it." So we didn't throw any more rocks at that man's
mailbox. I don't know whether we ever throwed any rocks at anybody's or
not after that. But that old man was funny anyhow, or we thought he was,
Page 32 but of course it was his mailbox and it was
government property, and if we'd have bent his mailbox up or something,
he could have had us put in jail for destroying property or something
like that. It was a foolish thing to be doing, but we didn't think
nothing about that. But at that time, if we'd have bent the box up, it
was government property, and any time that you destroy any government
property they can give you a year and a day. I learnt that after I got
big enough to have a little sense by going to court and being on the
grand jury and stuff like that.