Forty-Two

            One weekend a couple of months later we found an old lumber camp that was closed. About fifteen or twenty camps. We divided to look through them. There wasn't much in any of them. One had a lock on it and that made us want to see what was inside. We had a small pinch bar but couldn't get the lock open so we pried the boards and all loose.

            I sprung it out enough so that Frank could get inside and he told me to stay outside and watch for anyone that might come around. He kept telling me what he was finding. It used to be the office. There was nothing around, only old papers, figures, and records of the work they did.

            All of a sudden he was quiet. "What you doing?" I asked. He said he'd found something we might use. I waited a few more minutes and wondered what I could pull on him. Finally I just yelled "Cops!" and I took off around the next camp and watched what would happen.

            I heard him trying to get out. He sounded like someone trying to wreck a room. He called for me to hold the door far enough open so he could get out but I just stayed put. He pushed the door and boards far enough out so he could squeeze out. He ripped his pants on the nails as he came through and I heard him say "Oh!" as he took off down through the camp. I seen envelopes flying out of his pockets as he ran. He was maybe two or three hundred yards before he realized there was no one around. He stopped and looked back and seen me just standing and watching him break another world's record and laughing my head off.

            Boy, I'm telling you, from the time I said "Cops!" till the time he stopped running I bet no more than ten seconds had gone by. He had found a drawer full of envelopes he was filling all his pockets. That's what was flying out as he ran. I never did know what in the world he wanted with all those envelopes. He didn't know himself when I ask him, but he did say the next time I could go in and he's watch outside. Said he's like a chance to nail me in. One thing, he never could tell when to trust me. I never did know why.

            Anyways, we always did have a lot of fun while we were together. One thing for sure, anyone never wanted to be in his road when he get scart because he'd run them right over to get away.

            It wasn't too long after that Frank headed back for Pennsylvania to our Uncle's place and I got a job on a farm in southern New York state. It was a big farm. They had four hired men all the time. We got so much pay and our board. They served real good meals. They had a good cook. We had our own table to eat at. In the summer there were six men working there. I used to look forward to breakfast. They used to bring plates piled up with hot cakes, others with bacon and ham and eggs. I sure used to put away plenty of those kind of things. After all when we ate breakfast we had already done two and a half hours work. They had 85 milking cows and back at that time there was no milking machines. We done it all by hand. We each had 23 cows to milk. They all gave any where from 14 to 22 quarts each at a milking. I was a pretty good milker and could milk 15 an hour so by the time we had them done and fed we were ready for a good breakfast.

            The only trouble, there wasn't no time for anything else. Our day was from 4:30 in the morning till 7 in he evening so nobody felt like doing anything but rest and sleep at night.

            I did have an old bicycle I used to ride Saturday night to see the movies in town close by. There was no coaster brake on it. It was like a tricycle. The pedals kept going around on it. If I was going too fast I couldn't get the brake on, I had to slow it down by pushing backwards on the pedals but I got along with it for a while. It was better than walking.

Forty-One

            We used to get a lot of vegetables from gardens to have cookouts. Mostly sweet corn and potatoes, cucumbers, and tomatoes. We never did take much from one place. There was around eight to ten different places we used to go visit. Chickens was another thing that wasn't too safe around us. Sometimes we got a few eggs from the chicken houses. Milk, that was easy to get. Frank used to take some kind of vegetable along and we stopped in somebody's pasture at night. The milking cows were tame anyways. We could walk right up to them. Frank used to let them eat while I milked a couple of quarts or a gallon then we hung it in an old well or brook to get it cold. We had to get that quite often as we couldn't keep it too long.

            One Saturday night real late we decided to get some honey. We knowed where there was fifteen or twenty beehives in a field quite a ways from the people's house. Frank parked the car off the road about two miles from them and we walked the rest of the way. We picked on big hive with four sections on it. We plugged the opening with a rag. Frank took one side and I the other side and headed for the road. Frank had his loose rubber boots on. They come about two inched below the knee. They were always making noise so we had to take it slow and easy.

            Everything was going along fine but it was a cloudy night and real dark. We got over the stonewall and gone down the road when Frank made a little noise with his boots and the people's dog started barking and we hard him coming our way.

            Frank, as always, got scared and dropped his side of the beehive. The four sections slide all apart. Frank was going to try and put them back enough so we could keep going but all at once he just took off down the road.

            I couldn't see him but I could hear him going with his boots. By then I started brushing bees off my hands and arms. I just headed for the stonewall and lay down behind it. I had stripped my shirt off which took most of the bees off me as the hive had fallen toward Frank and dumped hundreds of bees on him and into the tops of his boots. I heard him stop then run then stop each time he had gotten rid of a boot. He stripped his shirt and pants off somehow while he's running. I could hear him hollering and swearing till he was out of hearing distance. There must of been a hundred thousand bees in the big hive.

            I lay quiet behind the stonewall and heard the dog out at the hive only for a short time then heard him let out some yips and take off. I guess he got covered with bees and got stung. I stayed where I was for about ten minutes, till things seemed quiet then followed Frank's trail down the road. I stumbled over his first boot, never did see the second one or his shirt. His pants was the last to come off. I didn't touch them. I knew they'd be covered with bees. When I got to the car Frank wasn't in sight. He heard me coming and thought it might be the farmer so he took off again into the woods. I called two or three times till he heard me and came back to the car.

            At that point I couldn't help but to start laughing. I just sat down and laughed till the tears was running down my face. Frank was a mess. His legs was banged up and scratched. His feet was bruised and cut, and no clothes. He sure wasn't laughing. All he said was, "Damn you and your bees". I came out of it not too badly off, only five or six stings but we had enough for one night so we headed back.

            Every time I thought of that night I was laughing at him for a month after that that. One thing, we didn't try for any honey again. 

Forty

            I soon ended in New Hampshire with my brother Frank. We stayed on a large farm for work. It was called the Country Farm. We worked for our board a a little pay but we done a lot of running around nights and weekends. We had an old care to get around with.

            They raised a lot of steer for their own meat and I sure had a lot of fun riding steers. There the foreman that was over all the work liked to do it too so I had a friend there. We had the big hay field after the hay was cut. We had the bunch of around thirty turned loose and the field to ourselves. I got so I was pretty good. Never had so much fun at anything. We just run among the bunch and jumped on anyone we caught and went riding own through the field. We done that on weekends as we had Saturday and Sunday off so we had to do something. But Frank just wouldn't have anything to do with that kind of fun. He just didn't have quite enough never for it. I think the horns on them kind of scared him. The horns were good to catch hold of while running along side of them and bulldog them. It doesn't take much of a twist to turn their head and cause a steer to lay down while running. I liked to dig my heels into the ground for quite a ways to get him stopped, like the cowboys do at a rodeo show. I sure loved that kind of stuff.

            They had three riding horses there and the foreman and me would put the saddles on two and take them out back of the barn in the field and play cowboys. He was pretty good at most of everything and used to be able to stand up on the saddle while the horse was galloping. I couldn't quite do that for very long but I did get so I could leave the saddle and hit the ground with my feet and swing back up into the saddle on the other side while the horse was galloping. We used to try to use a rope to lasso them but we couldn't do that very well. We didn't have the right kind of rope.

            My brother Frank used to stand and watch us. He just kept telling us we were going to get killed but at that time I never thought of anything like that. I just knew I loved having that kind of fun.

            That's where one of the fellows got hit on the head by ice that slid off the roof while he was going in the house. He died the next day. That was in the spring while the ice and snow was melting.

            One weekend Frank and I were out driving around. It was late, around 1 am. We were on our way back to the farm. He was real low on gas and nothing was open. Frank always had a hose and 2 three gallon cans in the trunk. We passed a house all the lights on and people were dancing and having a good time inside. Their cars was parked right in front of the house, parked in the driveway.

            Frank stopped a little ways down the road and got the cans out and and the hose and said, "Let's get some gas". We walked back and kept their cars between us and the house. We got one can full and was waiting for the second one to fill up when the house door opened and a fellow came out on to the porch. We thought he was coming out to the car so we took the one can we had and stayed on the dark side of the car and moved towards the road and kept going. If that fellow didn't see that can and hose I know his gas tank was completely empty because it would keep running out the hose till someone stopped it or the tank was empty.

            Anyways, we got one can but lost our hose and one can which was not much of a problem. The next day Frank had a piece of somebody's garden hose and he bought the oil for the car in those cans anyways. 

Thirty-Nine

            I started taking rides with my Uncle Melvin again. He was back at it again after staying at the reform school. He got a year but was so good while was there they let him out at the end of ten months. They really didn't know what they turned loose.

            The money was so good in the bootlegging he just couldn't stay away from it, but they never did catch him again. I don't think he bought a gallon of gas the whole three or four years he was doing it, he was always draining it out of the other crooks' cars.

            My Uncle Paul never did go in for cars. He always had his horse and buggy. He used to tell me how him and some of the other fellows used to race with their horses and buggies on the way home from town. The big buggy horse he had at that time was all white and was pretty fast but Paul would never let anyone else go near her as she was what they called a kicker and we could hear her kicking at the side of the stall anytime during the night. Paul was the only one that could go into the stall to take care of her, like feeding her or cleaning the stall or to put the harness on her. Sometimes she would kick at him and he had a lot of near hits as he called her Babe.

            Then he had one heavy workhorse he called Dan. He weighed 2,200lbs. I used to lead him out to the field, sometimes to ride him. I don't know why Paul had him. He had no work for him to do. I guess he just liked him and kept him for a pet. I know he was quiet and easy going and didn't care what we did around him.

            I used to watch the blacksmith put the shoes on them. The big horse would just stand there while the blacksmith picked each foot up and done the job. But Babe the buggy horse, he tie her hind up real high then had Paul put a rope around one back leg near the foot, then he'd pull it way back and up and tie it to a tree so she wouldn't kick. I asked him why he did that. He just said he didn't want to get killed.

            One night Uncle Melvin asked me if I wanted to take a ride with him, wouldn't say where, just said, "You'll see". We went over the state line into Maryland where he always got whiskey but he stopped off the road in the woods and said we walk from here. It turned out one of the fellows he was mad at just bought four live turkeys two days before and Melvin found out.

            So this was the night Melvin cleaned him out. He carried two and I half carried and half dragged my two. I asked him what he was going to do with so much turkey. He said they were sold the day before so all he had to do was deliver them. He kept one to take home for us.

            We got to bed around four in the morning and Melvin just said, "There, I can sleep now that I got even with that guy. At least he owned them two days."

            I never seen such fellows. They'd go sell anything somebody had then go steal it and deliver the goods. I think I was glad when I did get away from him. I got so everywhere I went with him I found myself looking over my shoulder to see if the Police was following me. It was an awful feeling sometimes, just wondering if I was going back home or be in jail that night and I got so I didn't like being afraid all the time.

            I stopped going with him so much but he soon met a girl and began seeing her pretty steady and he soon stopped doing so many of those crazy things and soon decided to get married and really straightened out and settles down.