My feet were flying and aimed in his direction. He circled around me, trying to get at my weaker end-my head. After two or three rounds, he got me, and I got what was coming to me.

I was so tickled, it didn't seem to hurt at first. But the more I laughed the harder he whipped me. If I remember right, I think I quit laughing before he quit whipping. Anyway, I had my fun and my punishment, Earl and Joel saw a good show and Frank did what he had to do. And I worked harder after that.

Do you think I told Mama and Papa what Frank did to me? Of course not. That would have brought a reprimand from them. I knew I had done wrong. I also knew I had better let well enough alone.

And did Frank tell them I had been a bad boy? Certainly not. He had handled the situation well and we all knew he could do it again next time. That's the way our family discipline worked.

There were a lot of disadvantages to being little when I was growing up. I don't mean like the whipping I got from Frank. That was okay. I needed that. I mean like things I wanted to do. There were so many things I wanted to do that Mama and Papa wouldn't let me do. They would say, "You're too little."

With Earl and Joel, it was different. They were not too little- never had been. At least, if they had been, I couldn't remember it.

One thing I wanted to do was go hunting with Uncle Robert and his greyhounds. I remember I went one time, but most of the times I was too little. I had to stay home and hear them tell about the rabbit hunt afterwards.

I guess the time they let me go was when they weren't going very far and they figured I could keep up with the others for awhile.

Anyway, Robert had some dogs that were mighty fast and well matched. It was hard for a jack rabbit to get away from them. Old Queen was his fastest one. She was his lead dog. Old Pluto was almost as fast. He would run in single file behind Old Queen, and when a rabbit began to circle, Old Pluto would begin to cut the corner to keep the rabbit going straight.

A rabbit likes to circle back to his home territory. He knows the lay of the land at home and figures he has a better chance to survive. But Robert's dogs wouldn't let him circle back. That seemed to frustrate him and make him easier to catch.

Robert also had about three other running dogs. They were not quite as fast as Queen and Pluto but they played important roles in the pack. They were good to spread out and help flush rabbits out of the weeds and brush. And they were also there at the end of the chase to catch the rabbit in case he dodged quickly and the two leading dogs failed to catch him.

When those dogs jumped a jack rabbit, you could just about write him off as another dead rabbit. About the only way a rabbit could escape was to run into a patch of tall, thick feed where the dogs couldn't see him.

Other men wanted to buy Robert's dogs at times but he took pride in owning the best greyhounds for miles around, and his best ones were not for sale.

Uncle Robert was a favorite of us boys. He was Papa's youngest brother and was only eight years older than Frank. We liked just about everything about him, especially the way he paid us when we worked for him. When we hoed or picked cotton for him, he paid us as soon as we were through, and he paid us in cash, never by check. We hated checks. Some men paid us boys by check, with all our wages figured in together, usually along with Papa's. Then we had to wait for Papa to go to town and get the money, which might be as much as a week later.

But not so with Uncle Robert. When time came for him to pay us boys-as soon as the job was finished-he made it a point to have a pocket full of coins so he could pay us then and there. There was no piece of paper, no writing and no waiting. And he paid each of us separately.

Another thing I was too little to do was go upstairs at Grandma's. Yet, I didn't mind that so much because I wasn't the only one. Even Earl and Joel couldn't go up there.

Robert and Ed were still living at home and not married. Their rooms were upstairs and they didn't want us little kids messing around up there. Besides, there was danger we might fall on the steps and get hurt.

I didn't know at the time why they didn't want us to go upstairs. They didn't tell us the truth about it. What they told us was, "If you go up there, the Old Bootjack will get you." Well, I was almost grown before I learned what a bootjack was. Then it was easy to see that a bootjack wouldn't hurt anyone, especially little kids. But the fear of it served its purpose. And I suppose we were not mentally warped because of having been fibbed to.

We learned other lessons also-some the expensive way. I remember, some of us Johnson kids were at Uncle John Hudson's house one day, playing with all his kids, when we discovered a pig out of his pen.

Now, Uncle John was away from home at that time and we thought we should do him a big favor and get his pig back in the pen with its mama. I don't know why, he couldn't hurt anything, he was too small. But he had a pen and we kids thought a pig ought to be in his pen. So we got after him.

It was a hot day. In fact, it was so hot that the sandy ground burned our bare feet. We were suffering from the heat but we thought we must not stop until we caught him. We felt duty bound to get that pig back in his pen.

We chased him all over the place and finally caught him out in the peach orchard. Well, we were hot, the ground was hot, the weather was hot, but most of all, that little pig was hot.

We carried our little prisoner and we all got under the shade of a peach tree. We kids cooled off right away, but the pig was so tired and was breathing so fast, we thought we ought to cool him off with some cool water.

We carried water from the windmill-good, cool water right out of the well. Then we poured it on the little pig-and he was dead in about one minute flat.

We were sorry, but how were we to know that cold water would kill a hot pig? No one had ever told us it would. We learned that lesson the hard way-that is, hard on Uncle John. And we learned some other things too, when he learned about his pig. Oh yes, he told us a few things he wanted us to know.

Regardless of all the little mistakes we kids made, we generally had the run of the farm at our Exum place, except for a few things which were not allowed. One of these was, "Don't climb on the feed stacks." That would destroy a lot of the feed and allow rainwater to run in and ruin even more of it. No problem there. Most any kid could follow that line of reasoning. But another "Don't" that was not so easily understood was, "Don't play in the cottonseed."

What could it hurt to play in it? It was in a nice bin, and we would leave it in the bin. Walking on it wouldn't hurt it. Digging holes and tunnels in it wouldn't damage the seed. This was forbidden fruit we just couldn't understand.

So, the rule about not playing in the cottonseed had its effect on cultivating our dishonesty. It was so much fun, we went ahead and played in the cottonseed bin anyway, when we thought the coast was clear. And I can't remember ever having gotten caught at it.

I can understand it all now. If we had been allowed to play in the cottonseed, we might have gotten careless about wasting seed out the door when we were having a cottonseed fight. And, more than likely, we would have left the door open at times for the rain and rats and cows to get in. And of course, a cave-in in one of our tunnels might have trapped one of the smaller kids when there were no large ones around for rescue work. We hadn't thought of that.

But we couldn't understand it at that time, and it seemed to us that this cottonseed "don't" was not an absolute "don't," but perhaps more of an "I don't think you ought to" kind of a "don't." So, when viewed from that angle, we didn't feel so guilty. We just played in the seed and enjoyed it.

But since there was at least a half-hearted rule against playing in the cottonseed, we didn't dare leave the door open when we were playing inside. Papa could have spotted that open door a quarter-mile away and, come supper time, we kids would have had to answer a question or two. Also, a few seeds outside on the ground could have been seen by conservative parents or maybe by a brother who was bent on "getting even" with another brother, and at the same time, putting a fresh shine on his little halo by tattling.

In spite of all the drawbacks, we played in the cottonseed, and naturally we stirred up dust. And when the sun shone through the cracks onto that dust, it was hard to see through it-it was sort of like a wall that you could walk right through.

One day we were playing in the seed when the sun was shining through a horizontal crack in the boards. The dust in the sunshine looked a lot like a large board, lying flat above the seed. I tried to crawl up on the dust as though it were a table top. But of course, it wouldn't hold me up.

I couldn't understand it. So I stirred up more dust until it became very dense. Then I tried jumping up on it. But it still wouldn't hold me up.

Years later, I learned why. The dust wasn't as dense as I was.

I have told you about a three or four-year-old boy planting with a two-row planter, a dog plowing for his master, and Texas kids trying to walk on dust clouds. Don't go away, I have other true stories to tell you.

As I mentioned before, I have heard Papa tell of trail driving near San Angelo, Texas. He was just a lad at that time-couldn't have been more than 17 or 18 years old. Here is what he told me about 35 years later:

One time when they were on the trail, they had bedded their cattle down one night near San Angelo and were sitting around the camp fire doing nothing when one cowboy said, "Let's go into town and get something to drink."

Another one said, "Good idea, but we're all broke and the boss is two days behind. How you gonna get whiskey without money?"

He said, "Saddle up and go with me and I'll show you."

Now this would be worth seeing, so quite a few of the boys rode with him into town-carrying jugs half full of water.

History tells us that along about that time, San Angelo was made up of at least 20 saloons and fewer than that number of all other stores combined.

Before the cowboys reached town, they all knew just what to do. After hiding their billfolds in their saddle bags, they each took a jug and split up, one going to this saloon and one to that saloon and so on.

Then each in turn told the bartender that they were out on the trail with only half a jug of whiskey, and would he finish filling it up? After the jug was filled, the cowboy would reach for his wallet only to "discover" that he had lost it. The bartender would just have to take back his half-gallon. The poor boy would have to "make out" with only his original half-gallon.

Now, with quite a few cowpokes pulling this little stunt in about half the saloons in San Angelo, you can bet your boots they rode back to camp with plenty of what they came for, a little weak, but free.

When Papa was a boy, the lives of his entire family had to do with saddle horses and cattle. Even the little girls liked to ride horses and play cowboy. The youngest girl, Annie, was one of those little girls. But when Annie became big enough to do ch.o.r.es, one of her ch.o.r.es was to churn the milk that made the b.u.t.ter for the family. And she hated to have to stay home and churn while her brothers rode out into the pasture after the cows.

Now, I'm not positive of this, but knowing Papa as I do, I wouldn't be surprised if he had something to do with helping his little sister solve her problem. Whoever it was, the idea worked well and made a little girl happy. She would tie a jar of milk to her saddle and ride on out with the boys, letting her horse do the churning.

At the Exum farm Mr. Whatley's pasture joined our field. And in his pasture he had an old cow which was well educated in the art of breaking through fences. And she seemed to enjoy slipping into our corn patch.

Now, the normal procedure for the average farmer was to put a yoke on the neck of such an animal. Of course, the purpose of the yoke was to bridge across the wires and stop the cow from going through the fence.

But this old cow soon learned to use the yoke to break the wires so she could get through the fence easier. And she had been spending entirely too much of her time in our field. Mr. Whatley either could not or would not keep her out. Papa thought he ought to keep her out.