Hardy was the tax assessor for four years. He’d come home from work and he’d say, "let’s go roost some turkeys’ So we’d go out to where Uncle Teat’s (Holmes) ranch was and I’d put on my boots and my overalls and we’d roost turkeys at Shin Hammock. One afternoon, we were out camping and he went off to roost turkeys. But, they came in all around us. We used to camp a lot. I sure did love it, too," she said.

For a time, they owned a place at Dark Hammock. They farmed the property with his brother-in-law, Dozier Smith. The Indians used to come to this farm and they would pick citrus for her husband. She recalled that one of the Indians was named Sam Tommie.

Sam Tommie’s brother, Jack, married Sally Tucker, old Jepco’s daughter. Thelma said. Sally was a childhood friend of Thelmas and the two played together as little girl when the Seminoles came to her father’s store in Fort Drum. They renewed their friendship as adults when Sally came to her house in Okeechobee after she was married and she said she was looking for Thelma Holmes.

Thelma offered many glimpses into daily life from the turn of the century to the 1980s. She recalled her husband and his friends going out on hunting parties.

"A crowd of men used to get together and go out in the woods and cam and deer hunt. There was don and Carl Walker, and Hardy Walker, and Jinx Linden. I can’t remember all of them. They went out and they would get a cook to go with them and do the cooking so they could hunt. They liked a lot of deer up on the prairie. It was closer to Basinger than to Fort Drum. Close to the Peavine, that’s where it was," she recalled.

They used beef tallow and lye (to make soap). And I hate to wash with it worse than anything. Papa took a big old barrel and he cut it in two and we had two big wash tubs. We’d boil clothes in a big old pot. We made that soap." She said, wrinkling her nose .