<TITLE>13. Par 45-49</TITLE>L-45  Look, that brother's in glory today. Oh, my, how I wished he was here. I--I tell you... Not long ago I was coming out of Texas, from a meeting. Oh, I was so tired. Why, I said, "Let's ride up the road." And we ride up the road and passed by the old school where we used to go to school at. I would look at the place and I thought, "Oh, my..." I stopped. I said, "I want to drink from that old well over there." And I went over to get a drink of water and I pumped it and drink. I leaned across the fence like this, was looking. The baby and wife were picking some violets there in the yard. I begin to think of different things and remember seeing all of us little old boys lined up there: time of the First World War. And they'd...
I was a little old boy and we'd have our hands leaning on their shoulders...?... them stockings down, what had stockings, and--and or shoes, and the toes all out of them, standing there. I remember a time; it's right after Christmas. Mama popped some corn. And we taken some in a sack to school. That was a rare. She popped it to string on the Christmas tree, what she had left over. A little old cedar tree, it was cut down out in the field, put the popcorn around it, get some papers, and make them loops, you know, put it around we got at school.

L-46  And I remember setting there, looking. I remember mother give us that sack of popcorn, and we put it in the cloak room where we used to have to keep our--our coats or our lunches. And I happened to think about that popcorn. I raised up my hand. Teacher said, "What do you want, William?"
I said, "May I be excused?"
Said, "Yes."
I went out to the cloak room, and reached down in there, and got me a great big hand of that popcorn, went out and stood out behind the schoolhouse, and eat that popcorn, and come back in. When dinner time come, we went in to get our lunch and went over the hill. And Edward said to me, he said, "Say, brother, something's happened to that popcorn."
"It sure has, hasn't it?" I knowed what had happened to it. I'd eat it.

L-47  Standing there leaning over the fence and thinking about that, I said, "God, I'd give all the world and my life now if I could take him that handful of popcorn to where he was at and give it back to him. He died before we ever come to a place where we'd have very much, just enough to barely live on. God called his precious life.
I was out west working on a cattle ranch, and he died in the hospital calling for me. You could hear his screams plumb down the street, a hollering, "Bill, come to me." One of these days when I cross the portal, I'll be there. That's right. He got saved just before going.

L-48  I remember looking at it there and thinking about that. I thought... I looked up on the hill where we used to sleigh ride. I remember it about 1930--1917. Mama worked for the government, sewed shirts for the soldiers. They had bundles of shirts, and that's how we lived. They have to go down of a weekend, take the shirts down. She got four dollars and forty-four cents to make a bundle of shirts. That's what we lived on.

L-49  All right. When she was going down, I remember us little boys... She couldn't buy us a sled. And all the boys had sleds out on the hill riding. Come a great snow and sleeted and froze over the top, and we would slide down the hills on our sled. Brother and I didn't have any sled, so we went out to the old country dump, got a big old dish pan. And we'd set in the dish pan and put our legs around one another and hugged each other. Down the hill we'd go. We might not have been as much class as the rest of them, but we were riding just the same, so we... That done all right until the bottom came out of the thing; then we couldn't ride no more in that. So we went down and got us an old log. We'd get up on the hill and get on this log, and here we would go down the hill on the log. Oh, my.


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