Transcribed For Online by Geraldine [email protected]
Records Contributed by Vicki Bell-Reynolds [email protected]

and she had to go to see a neighbor and while she was gone he had to use the bed pan and when she returned home she him dead sitting on the bed pan vessel.  He died alone after so much that he had done for others.

When I was a small lad of about 8 or 9 years old I was awful forgetable.  I can remember one day my mother was doing a weekly washing and it was 11:30 in the morning, she had her washing  to the blueing and discovered that she didn't have any blueing to finish her job.  she told me, Jim you run quickly to the store and get me some blueing that I want to get my washing out before dinner.  I took off running down the street to the store and by the time that I had got to the store I had forgot what I was sent to get so I was gone, gone and gone.  finally she heard me hollowing up the street for her to come and help me.  she came to where I was  I had gotten about half way home and give out carrying my load I had dropped the sack and bursted it. When she arrived to where I was she said to me why honey what on earth are you doing with those irish potatoes where is my blueing, she had sent me for blueing and I came back with irish potatoes.  She had fooled with me until she had me to go to a certain clerk there in the store. he would ask me what my mother was doing and he got to be pretty good at guessing what she wanted.  as I grew older I created more recollection as to what I was being sent to get.

There at Woodville ever so often the people would have a box supper. these box suppers would be put on by the womon and girls preparing food and put it in a box, mostly they were shoe boxes after they placed the food in the box they decorate the box with all kinds of fancy paper and ribbons and they place their name in the box or on the outside so the boy or man that purchased the box could tell whose box that he had bought.  there would be one man get up and auction the box to the highest bidder of the box There was one mentally ill man who lived there that bought a girls box and when he went to her after the sales was over, she delibertly refused to sat with him on account of his condition so he took the box and went off to an outside place and eat it by himself,  the people sure did joke this girl because she wouldn't sat with the man that purchased her box.

Back in the Territory days that country was lawless.  there was no law enforcement officers but, there was a US Marshal that would make about two trips though there a year and about all that he would look for would be murders.  He wouldn't pay any attention to thieves or bootleggers and the such.  And when he arrested a person for a crime he would take his prisoner to Fort Smith, Ark. for to stand trial for the crime that he was accused of doing and if convicted of the crime he would be sent to prison.  I can recall of one man that lived there that served 5 years for stealing a riding bridle.

There wouldn't be a house in 50 miles of each other and out on the open prarie, there would be wild horses and mules and wild cattle that had never seen a human,  the horses had never seen human let alone a bridle or saddle and there were wild turkey and wild hogs and believe me you those wild turkeys and hogs would make the most delicious meals that you ever eat in your life, especially the hogs.  there meat would be so sweet and pure.  they would fatten on acorns and herbs from the ground and the turkeys would fatten from the insects that they could find.

While we were still on the farm that had been left by our father, and after his death my mother decided that she wanted a barbe wire fence around the place instead of the rail fence that my father and his two boys had put up, she bought enough wire to fence the place and we had enough fence post on the place to do the job, after we removed the rails she had a man to come out from town that had a gasoline saw and cut all the rails into stove wood length and you never in all life seen so large a wood pile as all those rails made.  the wood lasted several years because we mixed them up with wood of trees that was on the place.

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