"THE DARING LITTLE ROBBER"

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MY FIRST POCKET KNIFE!
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My life has been of the stuff fit for a Hollywood tale! For you see, when I was two-and-a- half, I was a "robber," a "daring little robber!" I stole people's hearts! I was adept at it (evidently.) My grandad said I stole his heart...and he said it in song!

Read on and you will find out what I mean---and you will hear a story about old sandy Dawson County, Texas---and my beloved other grandfather---the singing one. We called him "Gran."

He was born in 1876 down around Jasper, Texas, in a rural area where in those days, abundant little streams and creeks were filled with fish. Like many Americans of rural America, he grew up to be a farmer and came out to Dawson County to grow cotton in 1905. Making a living on a farm was not for sissies; it was a daylight-to-dark proposition, and required all manner of work besides plowing the ground and picking cotton.

He was of Irish descent and his forbears had come to America sometime back in the 19th century and had landed in Virginia. For awhile an "O" was carried at the beginning of the surname, but was dropped eventually.

He and his wife, Emma, settled down about 20 miles north of Lamesa, a few miles from Pumpkin Center, and there began raising a family that grew to six kids. Feeding a big family in those days of the limited cash flow, could be a daunting task. You were your own welfare in case of a bad crop year. For supper (dinner was the Sunday noon thing), farm families would often make up a big batch of cornbread, and crumble it into sweet milk or buttermilk---in a big glass---and that was it! (Check it---the custom went back to Civil War days and beyond.) They called it: "Crumble-In."

If the family was a little tired of cornbread, Emma would make several pans of her "lard biscuits," which my dad said were the best in the world, and the family would eat farm sausages, biscuits, and Ribbon Cane syrup. Families bought syrup in those days by the gallon.

When the Spanish flu epidemic of 1919 hit the world, it also hit Pumpkin Center. At one point all eight in the family were down with the flu, there in their old drafty gray-wood farmhouse. Neighbors would come and knock on the door and leave a big pot of hot soup on the porch for the family.

My grandmother passed away when I was about four and so my memory of her is somewhat vague, but I believe she looked like Jane Darwell in "The Grapes of Wrath." She saved my life once when I had pneumonia and a terrible fever, and she came and looked me over and said: "Rub him from head to toe with rubbing alcohol, at once." They did it, and the fever broke. I remember it well, though I must have been about three. I think it was that smell that got me well--wow---it permeated.

Back out to Pumpkin Center---there was only the one little general store, and so you couldn't very well hook up the wagon and go three or four miles over and buy a sack full of hamburgers or get a couple of pizzas. In the first place, there was nothing like that available, and in the second place, all the cash flow there was---was likely in the "egg money" jar.

A trip to Lamesa, for major supply replenishment, happened only three or four times a year and took all day. The boys would shoot some rabbits, which were everywhere, clean them and sell them for a dime apiece in town. Thus everyone in the family could have a ten cent bowl of chili or a hamburger.

During his younger years Gran was noted throughout the area as a talented musician and singer. He taught "singing schools" and led the music for many church revivals. He had been raised in a Christian home. (His father was a tall handsome silver-haired man who could have been a movie star.)

Along about 1925, my grandad sold out his farm and moved to town and took up several business ventures. I made my grand entrance onto the planet in the thirties and he retired completely about that time and relaxed and took up tobacco chewing, being partial to Spark Plug tobacco.

Sleepy Lamesa, in those days, had a lot of uncurbed, unpaved streets throughout the neighborhoods They'd grade the sand out of the streets and the streets would be two feet below land level. When I was about two-and-a-half, Gran would walk the five blocks to my house, borrow me for the afternoon, and we'd walk the soft sandy streets back over to his house, searching for horned-toads the whole way.

There were a lot of them and we'd gently tie string around the neck of one and he'd join us for our walk. Later we'd give him a drink and turn him loose. Gran would sing little songs to me---sometimes maybe a hymn. We'd look for RED weeds all over his property. Those fascinated me. He'd sit with me and I'd play in the sand in the shade. We were big buddies!

About this time he wrote a song about me, which I didn't know about until forty years later when my aunt gave me a box of his musical compositions. It was called: "THE DARING LITTLE ROBBER." In it, he said I stole his heart. The song is stored somewhere in my attic.

One Christmas when he was about 75 and the whole family was together, someone asked him to sing for us, like old times. He sang:

"Leaning, leaning,
Safe and secure from all alarms;
Leaning, leaning,
Leaning on the Everlasting Arms."

All agreed---he hadn't lost it!

I never much liked his tobacco chewing/spitting when I was little, but I always liked to watch him take his pocket knife and cut a "chaw." He was deft at it! I must've eyed that knife with great coveting, because one day when I was about four, HE GAVE IT TO ME!!!! But oh....he had broken the blades off and filed the edges...it was too dull to cut butter---even. I was still proud of it, and a year later he gave me another one, also dulled but with a little bit of point.

I reckon the old-fashioned white-handled one could be nearing one hundred years old. (See photo)

He had found an old Barlow, also beat-up, but a definite improvement, and had taken it for his new chewin' tobacco knife!

He didn't know it but he had stolen MY heart with those two knives, which I still have, along with great memories of a fine, good-hearted and loving man!

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BY MIL
5/08/13



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