We had a miserable house out here to live in and the yard was a weed patch but Mother painted and papered and hoed weeds and made the house liveable and the yard beautiful with native grass and flowers. There were lots of locust trees here and the folks set out an orchard of peach trees.

Father had an irrigation well drilled and the expensive machinery installed to run the big pump. This project was very expensive but once installed the water was unlimited and those big pumps over the country ran day and night on the more prosperous farms irrigating the maize, alfalfa, cane and feterita crops. I remember on warm summer nights hearing the steady chug, chug of the engines on the different farms as we lay in our beds and the bellow of the bulls as they roamed over the big pastures, or a mother cow and her calf calling to one another. The stream that came out of the well was enormous and it gushed out into the spillway and on into the irrigation ditch so clear and icy cold was foamy with its force like a waterfall, it was too cold to wade in. When the irrigating was at its height Father had to stay with it day and night to tend the machinery to tend the big machinery and he would pitch a tent and Mother would stay there with him a lot of the time. the well was covered over with a building and was about 3/4 mile from the house. the wells were always put at the highest point on the farm so the water would run in all directions tho our panhandle of Texas was all level land, no hills or trees were in sight, just rolling prairie from horizon to horizon covered with the prairie grass, green in the spring but curled and dried to a soft tan carpet as the summer heat and drought came on. We had tarantulas, rattle snakes and horned toads but we ran barefoot, we merrilly jumped over the tarantulas when we saw one, and played with the horned toads by proding them with a stick to make them run, also lizards and we seldom saw the rattlers. Harley did most of the irrigating and heavy farm work now because my fathers health was beginning to fail. Velma was going to Canyon to the teachers training school there. She taught school for two years, one year at the school north of us called Fairview School and she and the other teacher there, Miss Mary Bourne, boarded at the Combs home. Velma would bring Miss Bourne home with her over the week end sometimes and she also took me to the school sometimes and I became acquainted with the kids she taught. One of the Price boys and I would send letters back and forth to each other.

The next year she taught at a school closer and stayed at home. Bob was one of her pupils - he always said she was crosser to him than the others. She was going steady with Leroy Conklin, who was a neighbor, at this time and they were married the following year.

Dad was pretty well established now in good blooded Herefords along with the farm and we had the two saddle horses. Old Duke was a fine riding horse, a sorrel, full of pep and I enjoyed him so much- and of course Maizie. Bob was given a colt which he was raising and spending lots of time with. He learned him to shake hands and play dead etc. It was about this time that he had a cache of tobacco (Prince Albert) hidden under the floor of the tool shed and he let me in on it, and sometimes we went out there and rolled our own and played at smoking. I don't remember of ever getting sick from it. Texas was a wonderful state for growing lads and lassies - we never had to see any one in an intoxicated state or swilling down liquor which dulls the senses and makes such fools of human beings. The only liquor there was boot leg liquor because Texas was a dry state. The cowboys were clean hard riding boys, tough as they come, as was proved at the "Stampedes" which were put on at the neighboring towns and how exciting it was to go and see the boys we knew ride and rope and take the prizes and ribbons. So there wasn't this particular temptation before the young folks in that state. My father never smoked or did much drinking. He would drink beer with his friends and at haying time when he was working hard when we lived in Wisconsin but he just wasn't a drinking man.

The two years Velma was teaching, Hazel and I had rooms in town and went to school there. We stayed at Pierces one year and a neighbor girl went in and stayed there also and we really had quite the times. Then we stayed at Jowells one year, they were an old couple and were very good to us. They called me 'Scrap'. They had a daughter who had died when she was a young woman and they had locked up the room where the big Baby Grand piano was which she had played and never used it again. Mrs. Jowell took us in to see it one time, the piano was beautiful and the furnishings were interesting and quaint. Out back they had built a large tank or reservoir and there were fish in it and I would spend a lot of time out there watching them. Mildred Cross lived accross the street and she and I had lots of fun together, she was an orphan and lived there with an aunt, Mrs. Heifner who ran a Millenery Shop down town.

There was an uncle too and Mildred had most any thing she wanted from one or the other of them. I was having lots of fun in school now with friends galore. We had a club called 'The Happy Twelve' and I was real happy to be one of them. We had parties and did a lot of funny little things together. Hazel and I stayed another year at Wades and that was the year she graduated. Margaret Moore was a special friend and every evening after school we would go down town and her Dad was a Barber, so she would ask her dad for money and then we would get 'pineapple sodas' which was our favorite (I still like them). Her mother was a nurse.

Fathers health was getting much worse now and Dr. Price sent him to Temple Texas to a clinic there and he came home very discouraged. Then he was sent to Mayo Bros. in Minnesota and no help there either. He visited the folks in Wisc. this trip and they wanted him to come home and bring the family because the verdict was cancer and he did not have too long to live. So Velma and Lee moved on to the farm and we did go to Wisc. Harley tried to join the service but for some reason didn't get in maybe because of Dad being sick and Harley was young. It was while we were in Wisc. that he met the girl he later married. We stayed at Uncle Lint's for awhile. Harley went to work at our cousin Burl's, who was a son of Uncle Lint and Aunt Rene and lived a half mile or so from them. Bob and I loved Aunt Rene and enjoyed being there. She was a very good cook and made such delicious homemade bread and butter. There was a shed opened from the kitchen door, it was enclosed and they piled wood there to be handy to the stoves and various other things were stored there. It was cold in the shed and the honey was stored there in 5 gallon tins and that cold thick basswood honey on hot bread was sure delicious for a between meal snack. Aunt Rene went out in the fall with Bob and I to gather nuts.

Bob went to stay with Uncle Bill's when school started and I stayed at Uncle Georges. There was not much need of me going to school as I had already finished grammar school but I went and took the last grade over again just to have something to do I suppose, and it was fun. Uncle George and Aunt Pearl had only one child living, her name was Ruth and she was not as old as I, but we enjoyed each other. Aunt Pearl had several babies who had died at birth except for Ruth and later they had another little girl named Norma. Aunt Pearl was not a good housekeeper, the house was cold and drafty and in disorder but she and Uncle George made up in love for any neglect they might have given us in other things Ruth was their pride and joy especially to Uncle George who was an older man when he married and she was like a miracle to him, that he should have this child of his own and there was nothing too great to do for her in his big awkward way and they were as gentle and kind to me. Both Ruth and I loved bologna and also canned raspberries and most of the time those two items were in our lunch pails when we went to school. I don't know if Bob enjoyed his winter at Uncle Bills or not but he and Neil must have had good times together. Neil was older than Bob. We sometimes met them down the road and walked to school together but there was a shorter way for Bob and Neil to go and they generally went that way.

By spring I suppose we were tired of living seperately and still not ready to go home to Texas so we moved into a vacant house about 1/4 mile from Uncle Bills which belonged to him. The relatives donated pieces of furniture for us to use and we stayed there that summer. It was early in the spring when we moved there and Hazel and I made maple syrup. Uncle George and his hired man came up and tapped the maple trees and set us up for making the syrup. It was down over the hill where the maples grew and we would get up early in the morning eat our breakfast and taking a lunch would walk through the orchard and through a field, climb through a fence and we were in the woods. The big sugar maple trees had been tapped as it was called by drilling a hole into them about 18 in. from the ground using a brace and bit, then a spile or spigot was made from a sumac branch from which the pith had been taken making it a tube or pipe, and we would put a bucket at the end of the tube to catch the sap as it came from the tree. When the tree was fresh tapped the sap would run out in a small steady stream but it gradually slowed to a drip. Nonetheless twice a day we would gather the sap and the buckets would be running over at some of the trees. I liked to drink the cold sweet sap. We would gather the buckets full and pour them into the big black kettle, then build a fire under and boil and boil the sap until it turned an amber color and it was done. The big kettle full of sap did not make a big amount of syrup. We would put it into 5 gallon tins and we made about 30 gal. to take back to Texas in the fall. It wasn't hard work and after the sap was gathered and the fire burning we would read or play. I remember we made a playhouse and carpeted the floor with thick green moss. We sometimes took fresh meat for our lunch and roasted it on a spit over the fire and it was delicious. We were anxious to be through and at the first hint from Dad that we might have enough syrup, we pulled the spiles one evening and gathered up the buckets and even packed part of the equipment up the hill to let folks know we were through.

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