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.