IN SEARCH OF THE BEANSTALK

By Jack Griggs

In Search of the Beanstalk is a memoir about the family history and life of Jack Griggs and was written to preserve some of his family's history by recounting some of the amusing events and episodes of their humble beginnings and their journey to self-sufficiency.

The family ancestry hails back to Scotland and the Cherokees of North Carolina. Although they were "poor," the family persevered through many hardships, but they seemed to always see the humor in what would have seemed to be unbearable circumstances. Levity made many of them tolerable, and the stories were retold many times at family gatherings.

Jack, despite the many obstacles he faced in his early life, grew up to be the first in his family to graduate from college and earn not one but two master's degrees along with becoming a successful public servant devoting forty years to law enforcement.

The book covers his family background and life from birth through adulthood. Jack recounts his tumultuous childhood in and out of orphanages, almost constantly changing where and who he lived with during his early years. He attended five different high schools. He served in the United States Air Force and had many jobs in his life until he ultimately began his career in law enforcement culminating in his last two jobs as a police chief in California before his retirement.

With a phenomenal memory for details, Jack shares many anecdotes about his life growing up and his law enforcement career.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798890610256

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Preface

Acknowledgments

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

About the Author

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IN SEARCH OF THE BEANSTALK

Jack Griggs

Copyright © 2023 Jack Griggs

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-89061-024-9 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89061-025-6 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to my sister, Elva, who was my surrogate mother from my birth to age four and again from age fourteen to eighteen.

Preface

My purpose in writing this book is to preserve some of my family's history and hopefully provide both serious and amusing events and episodes of our humble beginnings and our journey to self-sufficiency. Although we were poor and our family persevered through many hardships, levity made many of them tolerable, and the humorous stories were retold many times at family gatherings. My book will cover my family's background and my life from birth through adulthood.

All my life, my family often gathered together in one place or another, and shortly thereafter, stories of our life were told time and again. Now in my later years, I have noticed that some of the words of the stories had changed over the years from the original events, and some of the details were lost in the telling. Hearing my older siblings retell the stories, I noticed that time had intervened, and much of the event details that I remembered had been lost to them. Now as we have lost quite a few of the older family members and the ones that are left have fading memories, I decided to start writing the stories as they originally were told so that everyone in the family could have the benefit of the family history and humorous stories just as they had happened.

I also had noticed that my nieces and nephews had trouble recognizing who was in family pictures, even if they were in the picture. I believe it is important to remember our roots and appreciate the hardships experienced by our ancestors.

I had often thought of writing a book about my humble beginnings and trials I had faced. Although my family was poor, we had a lot of humorous moments in our everyday lives. Life doesn't always have to be serious, and it doesn't always have to be humorous. It can be both.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge my wife, Janet, for her assistance in writing this book. Without her help, I could never have completed it. I also acknowledge my sister-in-law, Angela, for her encouragement in getting started on the book and putting all my stories in written form.

1

My life was hard right from the start, and it didn't get any better soon. I was born in 1941, when my father was fifty-eight years old and my mother was thirty-six years old. They already had nine children before me, but my oldest brother, Johnny, had been killed when he was fifteen years old and before I was born.

Mama told me the story of how my brother Johnny was killed. They lived in Kansas City, Missouri, at the time. Johnny and his friend Emmett Scott went to a movie on May 7, 1938. While walking home, the two boys got cold and decided to get into an unlocked car parked along the street so they could warm up. Then they decided to let the car coast down a slight grade. While doing this, they saw a couple of policemen. Emmett later told my mother that they saw the policemen coming out of a bar.

Fearing they would be in trouble, the boys were scared and decided to run. The officers hollered at them to stop and shot at them, at which time Johnny turned and raised his hands in the air. The policeman shot Johnny in the chest. Johnny's death report confirms that he was shot in the chest. A newspaper article gave a police account in which the officers said that they had shot at the youths while they were running away, and one of them fell. So according to the newspaper article, the officers lied. There never were any consequences to the officers for the shooting.

The officers were reputed to be on the payroll of Thomas Pendergast, Jackson County political boss known for bribing police to benefit his gambling and alcohol business and political machine. Pendergast was also known for his benevolent charitable donations of large Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners for the poor. After Johnny's death, several of Pendergast's men came to my family's home and brought food and gifts for the kids in the family. They came back on major holidays for years after, and probably only stopped due to Pendergast's death in 1945.

I had been born in October. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. My two older brothers, Charlie and Carl, had been looking for jobs outside the farm for some time. Charlie was seventeen, and Carl was sixteen years old. They had applied to military organizations since they were about thirteen years old. They were always turned down. A few months after the Pearl Harbor attack, though, my brothers again tried to enlist in the Navy. Carl was first to enlist, and Charlie enlisted next. Mama had to sign a paper saying that they were older than they really were in order to be accepted (this came back to haunt Carl years later when he tried to collect on his Social Security because of the conflicting records).

Charlie was assigned to the battleship, USS Texas. Carl applied to join Charlie aboard the Texas and was transferred there. On November 13, 1942, the five Sullivan brothers lost their lives while serving on the USS Juneau at the Battle of Guadalcanal. The ship was ultimately sunk, and all the Sullivan brothers died. The Navy then made a policy that brothers could not serve on the same ship in order to prevent a family from being wiped out, leaving no one to carry on the family name.

Charlie and Carl

Charlie and Carl were approached by their commander and told that one or the other of them had to be transferred to another ship. They decided to flip a coin, with heads meaning Charlie would leave and tails meaning that Carl would leave. The result was heads, and Charlie was transferred to a cargo ship. It is ironic that Carl survived World War II without injury. Charlie, on the other hand, was injured when the cargo ship he was on was attacked. Charlie was hit in the back by shrapnel. That injury caused him pain for the rest of his life.

Before I was born, my family had moved to a house just south of 40 Highway, east of Kansas City, Missouri. That was my first home. The house sat on a small hill on the east side of a dirt road. The dirt road started at 40 Highway and continued south to the banks of the Blue River. Halfway down the road toward the house was another dirt road which went westbound and up a rather steep grade. There was one house at the bottom of the grade and more houses at the top on both sides of the road. The dirt road continued along the northern bank of the Blue River and went past a dump, which my daddy ran.

Running across the Blue River was a large cement culvert about six feet around. My brothers and sisters and I would often go down to the dump and dig around for what we considered treasures. I remember finding plastic toys, and Mama would boil them in water to sterilize them before she would let me play with them. My parents didn't have much money for frivolities like toys, so we would have to make do with what we found. Daddy charged a dump fee of fifty cents, and it didn't matter much what a customer brought to the dump.

Around the time I was three years old or so, someone brought a Model A Ford to the dump. It didn't have a motor in it. Daddy towed the car up to the house using a team of mules he owned. Us kids played in and around the car for a while. One of my older brothers had the idea that we could push it backward to the top of the hill at 40 Highway and ride it down to the bottom. So that's what we did. I didn't have to push the car up the hill because at my age, I wasn't much help.

Once the car was at the top, one of my brothers would hold the car with the brakes while everyone got in. He then let off the brakes, and we would all get a ride down the hill. That first ride wasn't very well thought out because we never anticipated that the car might roll on past the house if the brakes failed, and we would all end up in the Blue River. Down the hill we went, past the dip in the dirt road, and up the small hill toward the house. Amid our shouts of half glee and half fear of what might happen, we fortunately coasted to a stop right in front of our house. Everyone unloaded and started to push the car back up the hill for another ride with great anticipation of another thrill. We continued that until everyone was so tired they couldn't push the car anymore. We stopped for that first day, but we repeated the rides on many days after.

Looking west from our house and across the road was our cornfield. Behind the house were some small outbuildings and fenced areas where we raised chickens and hogs and kept a team of mules. Daddy had long been a farmer, a day laborer, a dogcatcher, and even worked for the WPA in the 1930s. His primary occupation was horse-trading, and he had traveled about the multistate area involved in that activity. His normal travels took him through Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

It's important to know a little background on my parents and how they met and married. My grandma Sarah Sallie Harris was about five years older than my Grandpa Joseph Norman Jones, and they were married when Sallie was twenty-one, and Joseph was sixteen. They had to lie on their marriage application, which stated that the bride-to-be was over eighteen years of age, and the groom-to-be was over twenty-one years of age. They were both part Cherokee.

Sallie Harris, as we always referred to her, convinced Grandpa Jones that electricity was the wave of the future and encouraged him to become an electrician. They had two children. My mama was born in Carthage, Missouri, in 1905, and her younger sister, Norma Faye, was born five years later. Cherokee was spoken in the home, and Mama only learned to speak English when she started school. Both of Mama's parents were involved with the Salvation Army Church. Joseph even preached a sermon every so often.

Sarah Sallie Jones and Johnathan Joseph Norman Jones

When Mama was six years old, her Uncle Charles W. Harris came to live with her and her family. Charles had been discharged from the army because he had contracted tuberculosis. When Charles next visited his doctor, Grandma Sallie was advised that she should not let Charles continue to live with them because the young girls could contract tuberculosis from him. Charles was then sent to a sanitarium in Arizona and lived another eleven years. He died in 1922.

The doctor had been somewhat correct in his warning about other members of the family contracting tuberculosis. The two young girls didn't contract TB. However, Grandma Sallie was the one who got the tuberculosis, and she died on Christmas Eve, 1912, when my mama was only seven years old, and her younger sister, Norma Faye, was two. Their father, Joe Jones, was an electrical lineman and traveled around, working. He knew he couldn't take care of the children, and in his mind, the girls were orphans, so he wanted to send them to an orphanage.

Grandma Sallie's family pleaded with Grandpa Jones to let the girls stay with family they knew. Grandma Sallie's sister, Kate, wanted the girls to come live with her as she had children their age. Nonetheless, he contacted the Salvation Army, and a representative from that organization arrived at their home in a motorcycle with a sidecar. The driver loaded the girls into the sidecar and drove away.

The Salvation Army took the girls to live in an orphanage in Carthage, Missouri. The family was outraged by this, and the girls' grandmother Patterson took the girls out of the orphanage, and they lived with her for two years until she was too old to provide care for them. Grandma Patterson had always made the children in the family speak Cherokee before they were allowed to eat their meals. Grandma Patterson became very ill and was not expected to live long, and Joseph Jones again took the girls to a Salvation Army orphanage, this time in Kansas City, Missouri.

Sarah Harris Jones, Johnathan Joseph Norman Jones, Elva Eleanor Jones and Norma Faye Jones

Norma Faye was only six years old when she was adopted out of the orphanage, while Mama had to wait a while longer. Mama was ultimately taken in by the B. F. Anderson family of Liberty, Missouri. The Andersons had four small children and needed help on their vegetable farm. They also ran a boarding house and served meals to the boarders.

Mama was somewhat of an indentured servant, working for the Anderson family to pay for her room, board, and upkeep. Regular travelers would stop by, stay the night, and get meals before traveling on. One such boarder was John H. Griggs. He had only attended school up to the third grade. He could only read and write his own name, but he was good with counting money.

She had been there about three years when one night, as Mama was washing dishes and cleaning up after the evening meal, John came into the kitchen and asked her name. She replied, Nora. She always liked that name, and it was part of her middle name. Her mother had named her Elva Eleanor.

John said that he had seen her a few times as he was traveling through on his routes while horse trading. He said, I think you're a handsome woman, and I'm leaving at first light, and I would like you to go with me.

She decided to do just that and left with John the next morning. They were married on their trip. Mama was sixteen years old but lied on their marriage certificate to state that she was over eighteen.

Mama and Daddy traveled around in a covered wagon during the early years of their marriage. Automobiles were scarce back then and not affordable for most people. The roads, too, were mostly dirt tracks and trails. At night, they would pull off and set up a camp wherever they happened to be and cook on an open fire. Mama told me she thought that was the best time of her life.

A few years later, Mama and Daddy had a couple of children, both boys, and they were living in Kansas City, Missouri. One day, a neighbor lady came over to her house with a copy of the Kansas City Star newspaper and said, I think this is you. The neighbor handed Nora (Mama) the paper which contained an ad looking for two young girls who had been placed in an orphanage by their father because the girls' mother had died. The ad had been placed in several newspapers by a lawyer hired by the family.

Mama, Johnny and Charlie

Mama's grandmother Harris had been looking for her to give her a part of her Uncle Charles' estate. Mama answered the ad and thereby was reunited with her family and discovered that her father was living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was working as an electrician for the Public Service Company of Oklahoma. It had taken Grandma Harris two years to find Mama. She was awarded a little more than $100. Charles' brothers and sisters had been given a little more than $200 also.

Although Mama's Uncle Charles had died in the month of February 1922, Mama wasn't located and able to collect her inheritance until October 1924. Mama and Daddy used that money to travel to Oklahoma and connect with her father. My brothers, Johnny and Charlie, had been born in Kansas City, Missouri. The family traveled through Kansas where my brother Carl was born in El Dorado. They moved on to the Tulsa area where Mama's daddy was living. They added my sister Mary to the family in Shamrock, Oklahoma. They went back to Kansas City where my brother Donald was born.

In those days, the 1920s and '30s, people often moved to find jobs or go to a place where they had heard there were jobs. Daddy heard there were jobs in the oil fields in Colorado, so off they went. My sister Elva was born in Yuma, Colorado.

Granddad Jones, as we came to call him, told Mama that he knew he hadn't done anything for her while she was growing up, so he gave her a farm he owned in Green Forest, Arkansas. The family moved there and added my brothers Jerry and Larry to the growing brood. That lasted for a little more than two years when they were informed that the farm had a lien on it, and it was taken either for back money owed on the mortgage or back taxes. No one is certain if the lien was on the farm when they took possession or was put on later when my family lived there.

My older brothers told me that they also had lived on a farm near Warsaw, Missouri, and Daddy had sold it several times. It never cleared escrow, so it reverted back to Daddy. Finally, it was sold for back taxes. Off the family went back to Kansas City. The family moved from Green Forest, Arkansas, back up to Kansas City, Missouri, about 1936. My sister, Dolly, was born there, and four years later, I came along.

Around 1958, my brother Charlie drove me past the Warsaw farm a couple of times, and he talked to the owner at that time. The man had only bought it for back taxes because it was adjacent to his property. The owner said he didn't need it and told Charlie that if Charlie paid the taxes on it, he could have it. Of course, none of us had the money to pay the taxes.

Since us kids had been born in different towns and different states, it was difficult to keep up with who was born where. When Dolly and I lived with Mama in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Dolly used to tell the kids in the neighborhood that she was Irish and had been born in Shamrock, Oklahoma (Mary's birth city). I knew better, but I never gave her away. I am not sure what she was thinking because if she was Irish, I should be Irish, too, but we were both told that we were Cherokee. So it seems that none of us had roots anywhere, and we all were a bit confused about where our hometown was.

Now, by this time, things weren't going too good as one can imagine with all of them mouths to feed. Carl decided that he was going to take out on his own and confided in Donald and Bob Stanton, who lived nearby. They wanted to go back to the farm they were familiar with in Green Forest, Arkansas. So the three of them set out. Carl was fourteen, Donald was thirteen, and Bob Stanton was about twelve. They hitched rides and got down to the farm to discover that another family was there on their farm.

Carl told the other two, You guys are on your own. I am going to find a job, and I can't support you. Carl lit out, leaving the younger two behind. A family found the boys wandering about and could tell by the looks of them that they were lost souls. The lady took them in and fed them and cleaned them up (a real-life Huck Finn story). She contacted the sheriff who contacted Mama. Mama had to come down from Kansas City, Missouri, on a train and pick them up and get them back with the family.

Mama wasn't very happy having the inconvenience of the trip and having to spend the money to go get them. Not too long after that, Carl came back and stayed home until he and Charlie joined the Navy when World War II broke out.

My mother worked at a hospital as a practical nurse, and I stayed home with Daddy most of the time when I was very young, and the older kids were away at school during the day. Daddy always fixed me something for breakfast and saw that I was dressed for the day. My older sister, Elva, became my surrogate mother when she came home from school, and she would carry me about on her hip facing outward. After several months of riding like that, I had grown enough to need some new clothes. Mama took me shopping along with some of my brothers and sisters and tried to carry me facing toward her. I began to cry and didn't stop until Elva told how she carried me.

Mama was miffed and embarrassed at carrying me that way, but it was the only way to stop me from crying. Daddy often left home when the kids returned from school and either went off to work at one of his several jobs or go to a bar. Like most kids, I would do things I shouldn't. Daddy would get out his razor strap and give me a swat. He was the kind of person who could get so mad at you I think he could kill you. After you were punished, however, all was forgotten and never mentioned again. If I managed to stay away from him until he cooled down, he would forget the punishment and never mention the wrongdoing again.

By the time I was two and a half, I learned that I could outrun him. I often ran into the cornfield and hid. He couldn't find me then and would return to the house and forget about punishing me. In the fall, we cut the cornstalks and stacked them in pyramids around the field. I liked this a lot because I could hide from Daddy by crawling inside the stack of cornstalks. When Daddy got mad, I could hide inside the stacks and peer out through spaces between the stalks and see Daddy looking for me. He would call for me to come back to the house. I would stay away just long enough for Daddy to forget he was looking for me.

The family cooked on a woodburning stove, and my older brothers had to do the woodcutting. They often felled dead trees, which were in the back of the house. One of my brothers got the bright idea that it would be fun if one or two of them would climb the tree as high as they could and wait for it to fall. We knew which way the tree would fall because it was notched on one side and a second cut was chopped on the other until the tree would start falling. We situated ourselves of the opposite side of where the tree would hit the ground. Sometimes it was necessary to switch sides of the tree when you were in it because it wasn't falling in the direction it was supposed to.

I became very good at that quick change movement and could jump from limb-to-limb, kind of like a flying squirrel. It was fun to ride the tree to the ground and hang on for dear life as the tree bounced two or three times after falling. Again, I was spared the work part of the tree cutting because of my size and age. I did get to take my turn riding trees to the ground as one of my brothers would say, Your turn, Jackie, climb up there. The tree was then chopped into firebox size to fit into the stove.

We had a chopping block, which was a large tree stump so you could set other lengths of tree stumps on it and split them into smaller sticks of wood. One day, my sister Elva picked up the ax and said, Donald, put your foot up here so I can chop it. Donald did. Elva thought Don would move his foot as she swung the ax, and Don didn't think she would really cut his foot. They were both wrong, and Don ended up with his foot cut. The two of them were more afraid of what Mama would do to them than the cut foot.

Mama had a different disposition than Daddy. She would get a switch from a tree and give you a good spanking if you did something wrong. When Mama came home, they had to tell her what happened because they had bandaged Don's foot with some rags. Mama told them how stupid a trick that was and had Don walk with her up to the highway to catch a bus and take him to the doctor.

Once the wood was burned, the ashes would be scooped out and poured into a barrel outside the house. We had a cistern system and we pumped water up as needed. When there were enough ashes in the barrel, Mama had one of the boys pour a bucket of water into the barrel. The water passed through the ashes and was caught in a bucket at the bottom. This was lye water. Mama used this for washing clothes and making hominy. To make hominy, Mama put corn into a washtub and poured the lye water over it. The kernels popped open, making hominy. She had to rinse it several times before we could heat and eat it.

When Daddy left in the afternoon, we were on our own, and there was no telling what might happen next. Sometimes, Daddy and Mama would both be gone at the same time at night. My older brothers and sisters took this opportunity to tease me. The house had a crawl space underneath it. There was a stray cat that used to come around and got under the house. Its meow sounded like it was saying McGuire.

The sound of that cat really frightened me. My siblings would have me yell out, McGuire doesn't live here anymore! I yelled that until the cat finally left or quit meowing. I still don't know who McGuire was.

The house wasn't very big. There was a front porch on the west side/front of the house, and the front door opened into the living room. To the left was the only bedroom. The living room opened into the kitchen and dining room. Pillow fighting was a particularly fun game. During one of those fights, my brother Jerry and I were having a pillow fight on my parent's double bed. Jerry was twelve years older than me and was winning the fight. We were both giggling and laughing, and I decided to make a run for the living room. I jumped off the bed and took off running.

I looked back over my shoulder and saw a pillow flying toward me. I ducked my head and kept running, right into the doorframe! That split my head open. The other kids came to check on me, and I wasn't even crying. I was still standing and didn't give it much thought until my sister Dolly said, Oh my gosh, you're bleeding.

With that, I began to cry, yelling, Put something on it! Put something on it!

Elva found a white rag and wrapped it around my head. A couple of minutes later, Daddy came in, and we told him what had happened. He looked at my wound and said, You'll be all right.

Sometime later, Mama came home and, of course, noticed my headband. She asked what happened, and we told her the story. She changed me out of my play clothes, into some nicer clothes. She took me by the hand, walked up to the highway, and we caught a bus to the hospital. The doctor stitched me up and told Mama not to let me be in the sun without a hat. That was a joy to my ears because I didn't have a hat. Mama bought me a cowboy hat at a nearby store, and I wore it home.

The next day, Daddy was off work, and he took me with him into Kansas City to one of his favorite bars. He told all his friends I had split my head open, and they all gave me some money. I don't know how much money I got, but I had enough to buy a bottle of pop with some left over. In those days, many bars had a lunch spread set out with bread and everything you needed to make a sandwich with sides of potato or macaroni salads, so if you bought a drink, you could help yourself to the lunch. I asked if I could have some of the lunch, and the barmaid told me, Go ahead, you're a paying customer.

The bar patrons all got a laugh at that. After my lunch, I asked Daddy if I could go out and play, and he told me it was okay, but I was not to go far. The bar was located on a boulevard with a wide median between the streets. I went out there and played around, wandering about a block from the bar. A couple of other kids came from nearby houses and played with me, and I told them the story of the pillow fight and how I split my head. I took off my hat and showed them the bandage, making sure they knew that I had to wear a hat to protect me from the sun.

Quite some time later, Daddy came out of the bar, called me, and I went and met him back there. We started for home, and he told me not to tell Mama where we had been. I never did. I still have the scar on my forehead to this day to remind me of this incident.

Daddy took Dolly and me back to that bar several times. He had a plan that I was going to learn to play the guitar, and Dolly would be a singer and make him a lot of money. When he took us there, he would tell the other bar patrons his plan, then say, Sing something, Dolly.

She was delighted. Dolly would sing, Tu-ra-lur-a-lura, tu-ra-lura-lei. She stopped there because that was all the words she knew of the Irish Lullaby. Maybe this is where she got the notion that she was Irish. Years later, she retold the story and would sing the whole song, saying that was the way she sung it back then, but I knew better.

Mama knew all the wild plants that were good to eat. She used to give each of us kids a small paring knife, and she would take us on trips around the back and front of the homestead. Mama pointed out each edible plant such as lamb's quarter and dandelion, and one of us would cut it off just below the top of the ground and throw it into a bag. We had to leave the root so that more plants could grow back. She walked us along the riverbank, where we cut off wild onion plants and picked poke salad. The wild onions would be used to flavor food or scrambled into eggs for a better flavor. The rest of the plants Mama washed and boiled them all together to make up a mess of greens. It was something to fill us up and stave off hunger but didn't have much of a taste. I found out that they went down a lot better if you splashed a little vinegar on them.

By the time I was two and a half to three years old, I knew the area well and wandered around by myself. I often walked down by the river or up the dirt road which ran west from our road. There was a house on the northside of that road that had two Doberman Pinschers. They were mean and would jump over the fence out of their yard and chase you. A rumor circulated in the neighborhood that the dogs' owner fed them gunpowder. I didn't know for sure if that was true, but I sure believed it.

I walked on the southside of that road and cut across an open field near the top until I came behind some houses there. The Frame family lived in one of the houses. The Frame kids were older than me, but they knew my brothers and sisters. There were other young kids, that I also used to go up and play with, living in the other houses. Mama told my older brothers not to go around with the Frame boys because they were always in trouble of some kind, and Mama didn't want any of us to get into trouble. She didn't want to lose another son.

The boys had a younger sister that I thought was very pretty, and she was friends and the same age as my sister, Elva. I was playing in the open field one day just before Easter time in some thatched grass. I ran a two-inch thorn into the middle of my left hand as I was crawling around on the ground. I screamed and showed it to the other kids. They were amazed but didn't know what to do. I took off on a dead run for home. Fortunately, Mama was home, and I showed her the thorn. She just took my hand and pulled the thorn out. I insisted she put something on it, so she got some mercurochrome and daubed it up. I didn't go back there for a while.

My brothers and I went down to the dump often, and it was not unusual to run across snakes there or when we were gathering greens. My older brothers were skilled at chasing snakes, catching up to them and grabbing them by their tails. They would swing them around over their heads and crack them like a whip. This usually killed the snake, but sometimes it took a couple whip cracks to kill them.

As we were walking toward the dump one day, we saw the Frame brothers walking across