My father, David, and mother, Maude, must have met when mother was in high school. My father was from a very poor family. Grandfather Moore was a doctor, and looked down on David as a suitor. When David would not stay away from Maude, Grandfather caught him and beat him up. All did not run smoothly in their department of romance. What could mother do? She decided to pretend that she was in love with another man, Lee Walton. Lee really loved mother. He had to go to California for a time. While there he sent Maude $100.00 and baskets of fruit. Now $100.00 in the early 1900's was a lot of money. When he came back to Oklahoma, mother returned $95.00 of his money. She made her father think that she was engaged to Lee.

While Lee was in California, Daddy went to war. (WW1) Mother was working and going to Business College in Oklahoma City. There she met Grover Greene, a teacher and calligrapher. She thought a lot of Grover and he worshipped her. He wrote many beautiful love letters to her. He, too, thought that he and Maude would be married.

Mother finished business college. She then attended Nursing school and waited tables to pay her expenses. As soon as David returned from overseas, they were married in the Methodist Church at Waurika, OK. They went by train that night to begin life in Pratt, Kansas. Dave was working on the Rock Island Railroad. When he had a day off, he bought fruit wholesale, and sold it out of the back of a truck. This experience was valuable to him. When they had been married about 8 years, their only child, a girl, was born. They lived in Kansas until the baby was 2 years old. Occasionally Maude would visit her mother in Dallas, TX. She would travel with a railroad pass.

In Kansas, they had bought from Aldens...or Sears, Roebuck and Co., a pre-fab house.

It had a washing machine in the basement. On the lot, they also kept a cow, a goat, and some chickens.

Eventually, the Railroad had to furlough many people because of the economy. David decided that he would move to Texas to sell real estate with his older brother, John. They moved to a part of Texas where there were no roads...or little more than trails. They drove out across the prairie using section lines as their maps. Finally, they arrived at a jumping off place. There was no electricity, no running water, no telephones...only one small store and Post Office next to a service station. This was to be our home for the next 6 years. We lived in the back of the store. We had an outhouse. For water, daddy dug a well. We bought a windmill. It gave us enough water to eat, bathe, and have a garden. When we got ready to bathe, mother would bring the round galvanized tub that was hanging on the wall outside of the house, to the kitchen. She heated the water on an old kerosene stove. Since she had to carry all of the water into the house, she always bathed me first. Then she took a bath in the same water. The tub was small, and I'm sure she felt a little cramped. When we were through bathing, she poured the bath water on the garden. Nothing was wasted. At night, she sat on her bed watching rats play with the curtain pulls on the window shades. Mice were always a problem. Maude was fast. When a mouse ran across the floor in front of her, she quickly stomped it. Other times, she would fill a tub with water. When she caught a mouse in a box, she would dump it into the tub of water. Quickly it would swim to the side. Maude grabbed it by the tail, and pulled it back to the middle .....repeatedly! You can tell there weren't many fun things to do there. She was like a cat playing with a mouse. Sometimes a snake would get into the store and crawl behind the shelves. By 1928 or 1929, Maude was appointed Post Master, as had been her grandfather in Alabama before her. To supplement their income, daddy would drive long distances, buy fresh fruit in New Mexico, returning to sell it out of the back of the truck.

There were no movie theaters for miles around. In the store we had the only radio in the little village. People would come at night in their wagons to listen to Amos and Andy. Saturday was the day when everyone came to town. The families came in "spring-loaded" wagons. It had one seat in it where the man and his wife sat. Children were in the bed of the wagon. They brought eggs to the store to trade for items they needed. Mother bought cream from them, too. She had a huge scalding vat in which she sterilized the cream cans. Few people had houses. Most lived in dugouts. Those were rectangular holes dug into the earth about 9' x 12'. They were covered with wood and brush. Some families had dugouts.......half above ground, and half below. One got into the dugouts by walking down steep stairs. If the family did not have a windmill, they usually loaded a barrel into the wagon and went to the nearest neighbor with a windmill.

The nearest store where material could be purchased was 10 miles away. The county seat was 30 miles away. Because of this, when the ladies came in with their husbands, they usually bought chicken feed. Carefully they selected a sack of feed, which had a pretty pattern on it, so that they could make a dress with that material. Many times they traded the material so that they could have more material of the same pattern.

Gospel music was one of the main forms of entertainment. On Sundays the people would meet at the church to sing all day and have dinner on the ground. Everyone shared food. There were many good cooks. Sometimes at church, they would have box suppers as fund raisers. The women would make a delectable picnic lunch and place it in a box which they had decorated. The men bid on the boxes without knowing who brought which box. After the men purchased a box, the lady making the meal in that box came forward and had dinner with the lucky man.

Once per year at the 4^th of July celebration, the men brought out their "roman candles." Two men, each armed with one roman candle, would face one another standing almost one block apart. They would light the roman candles and "fire" them at one another. I never knew anyone to get hurt from this.

On weekends, the men would come to town in their wagons, to play baseball.

I don't remember any out-of-towners. They divided into two teams and played hard on an empty lot across from the Post Office. Coke was five cents per bottle. Ice to cool them came from the town of Littlefield which was thirty miles distant. Daddy had to drive to Littlefield to buy groceries and ice. How he ever made a penny profit is beyond me. Most of the people had no money. The depression was on. They charged their groceries at the store. Most were honest, and paid when they could.

Daddy thought I should have a pony. He bought one that was about seven years old. It was part shetland. I named him PEANUTS. He had other names, too, but I shall not mention them here. Peanuts liked to kick and bite, particularly when I loaded his back with about five children. There were so many that they were sliding off his rump. One day I fell off. I had ridden him to my secret hideaway. Terrified, I knew he was going to bite me.

Peanuts turned, lowered his head, and...all I could see were those BIG teeth. I was frozen in fear! I squeezed my eyes shut knowing that in moments I would be in agony. Surprisingly, I felt his soft muzzle. Peanuts was nudging me. He was helping me up. I'd like to say that I was good to Peanuts for the rest of his life, but I fear that was not my nature.

Suddenly our little town was growing. We had a new Baptist Church and a new Methodist Church. They were made of adobe bricks. The church members did all of the work. I think I remember that they put frames up, and then started making the adobe bricks out of mud and straw. To make the bricks uniform in size, they made frames with lumber to the size they wanted the brick. Young folks helped, too. We carried the water to mix the mud and straw. We helped to press the straw into the mud by stomping it. Even the younger children could do this. Eventually the building was ready for occupancy. We still had no electricity, no running water for the church, but we did have an outhouse made of wood. In this part of the country, it was unusual to see a tree. It took 20 or 30 years for one to grow. All lumber had to be brought in to Muleshoe, put on a wagon, and hauled to its destination. We were proud of our outhouse.

Of course there were those in the community, who would take advantage of a young widow. The richest man in town came to her and said, "Maude, you are going to have to get out of MY store. This is MY building and land!" Mother panicked. What could she do? She knew that they had bought the land and building several years previous to that time, but she could not find the deeds. Poor man! He never should have under estimated my fast thinking mother. Give him her grocery store and Post Office indeed! Not Maude! She went to Littlefield, a town 30 miles to the south. There she engaged several "house movers" to come and move the building to the next lot. She KNEW she had a deed to that one. Out they came with their team of horses. The rich man was notified that Maude was having the building moved. Losing no time, he arrived, threatening her with a law suit. The movers had spent all day coming out with their horses. Mother went over to them and said, "If you don't move the building, you don't get paid!" Promptly, the man moved the building, leaving the trickster sputtering and threatening. Mother had her store and Post Office intact. Of course she had to notify the Postal Inspector of the move.