Dad started renting farm land for us kids to work. He said to keep us out of trouble, for we had no time to hang around town thinking up mischief. The summer after we moved Elmer went to summer school to catch up with me for I had made the 7th and 8th grades in the same year after Mr Daily convinced me to go ahead for I didn't want to leave Elmer behind. The rest of us did most of the work so he could go to school half day and study for it was hard to make 9 months work in 6 or 8 weeks. We had two teams of mules,, Jack and Kate and Red and Jude. Jack was about the laziest stubborness mule you ever saw. When it came to getting him to go, Red was skittish arid ran away several times, when the line got under his tail. Dad would get up before daylight to go feed our males and harness them so they'd be ready to go when we were through with breakfast. Elmer and I were in the field on harrows, go devils or cultivators from dawn to dark, for Elmer would never quit before dark, then have to drive the teams home. Sometimes Dad came to look for us. Dad hired Negro Joe to plant the crops in the spring but Elmer and I usually worked on the weekends. The other kids did the hoeing and chopping. Sometimes that old crab-grass was solid between the rows of cotton and they couldn’t get many rows chopped a day. Of course a lot of teasing and fussing went on. One time Marion teased Iva and she threatened to ram the hoe handle down his throat. He didn’t believe her and dared her, she hit at him and cut him by the eye. In the fall Elmer and I would take the old sulky plows and break wheat ground on the weekends. We were always too tired or too busy to get into any real meanness.

My sister Elizabeth Lenora (Betty) was born May 5, 1926. We had a big grape vineyard across the canyon from the house. We sold some, made a lot of jelly, jam and butter. Dad also made wine. One time he traded’ 30 gallons of homemade wine and a mule colt for Mother a new Singer sewing machine. Later we put in the dewberries, people came from Cement and other towns as far as Lawton to pick the berries, They picked them on the halves, some bought our half. We sold the others in town or canned them for cobblers end made jars and jars of jelly. Did you ever pick berries until every time you shut your eyes at night you saw all those big berries but when you reached for them they were gone. We even had an everbearing strawberry patch across one end of the garden. They were a real pain to pick for they were right down on the ground. Got a good price for them though and never enough to supply the demand. We also raised peanuts to have to pull and pick off.

We had cows to milk, at one time 13 every morning and every evening. In summer we had them on pasture on an Indian lease l 1/2- miles south. We drove an old Model-T truck down to milk them. We separated the milk and sold cream to a cafe by the drug store f or a dollar a quart. We delivered it as we came to school. Sold it several other places too if we had any extra. We had chickens for eggs and to eat. We had hogs and it never seemed to make any difference how much Dad worked on the pens the hogs got out. Mother couldn’t get out with the little ones to get them in so after school we had to hunt them up and get them back in the pen. We always had a nice big garden with plenty vegetables to can. Dad’s Aunt Alice lived with us for a time, she would sit for hours shelling blackeyed peas and snapping green beans. As far as food went we did pretty good during the depression, Mr. Northcutt had a dry goods store on the west side of main street. He was a wonderful, kind man and let Dad buy shoes and winter coats on the credit. By this time I was helping with the sewing. Mother cut her patterns out of newspapers, then cut out the garments and pinned the pieces together. Sewing on the machine made Mother nervous so I did the machine work on the dresses, shirts and even our black sateen