Attached is a picture made about 1948 and shows me inside a pen that dad and mom made to containe me while they worked in the fields. Each month they would add another round of planks to the top as I growed. They would put me inside this wooden pen and leave me until noon, while they worked in the fields. When they turned me out, about age three, I found a 'BIG' world that I wasn't familiar with and learned it wasn't all that friendly, either.
The first thing happened, upon escaping my 'three cornered' prison, was that mother's rooster 'spurred' me over the eye and they had to take me to Brownsville to get it sewed up. I can still recall them holding me down while Dr. Wilkes did the sewing....no medicine to numb anything back then.
Preston couldn't beieve that all I had to play with inside the pen was some sticks. I recall the first toy truck that I ever saw. Willie Coats got one for Christmas and he would leave it on the bank in front of their house for us to see and envy him when we passed down the road. I would start watching 1/2 mile before we got to his house, just to get a glimpse of that truck when we passed by.
Alton Mitchell said that everyone was so poor down the Mt Zion Road that they built their houses out of 'hoop poles' and covered them with cow hides and left the tails sticking up for lightning rods !
Those were the good old days
