PrattleOn...

They lived in a government project which meant we couldn't stay long because Daddy didn't work for the government. (or anyone else at that time)
I think we stayed two nights, sleeping on a mattress on the cement floor with three of us girls in the same bed and it was wonderful! We didn't dare complain. We were just too happy to be free!

L.B. Johnson was Uncle Bert's oldest boy and at the time, the only one married with kids, so he and Leona seemed old to us. After some years passed, he didn't seem so old.
He is gone now, along with more of the Johnson boys, but his memory is still with me at times like this.

The third Day he piled us all into his car and took us to Grandma's house where Mother was. Boy were we glad to see her!
We all danced around and cried and laughed we were so happy!

"Well, Jim," mother said, "I wish you would have given me a little more time but, since you are here and all the kids, too, we will have to do something."

It just happened that Grandpa knew of a little one room shack (really, it was a house to us) with a bedstead and table and cook stove, and a kerosene stove in it so we all gathered up some quilts and towels from Grandmas and someone took us to that little house. We all fit in just fine.

It was on the edge of a huge cotton patch that had already been picked, but the boles weren't pulled yet.
It was beginning to turn cold so we weren't outside much.

The second day we were there, mother took us down the road around the cotton patch to a big one room building and told us to wait right there by the door,- so we did .
She went inside and soon was back to tell us we were going to come here every day because this was the school. She told us the teacher's name but I can't remember it. The one teacher taught all the grades.

Well, the next morning we all got up and put on our same clothes and off we went, around the road to school. I never did remember all the kids there but the room was full.
When we got out that day, we went home, and there, across the road, was Mom and Daddy with a bunch of other people with long cotton sacks, pulling cotton boles. James was riding on the back of mom's sack and having a ball. She brought him to the house and told us to watch him till she came home, so we did.
Mickey and I washed the few dirty dishes there were.

The dew was heavy in the mornings at this time so we felt cold going to school early. The bole pulling didn't start 'till the sun came out and dried the cotton boles a little.
This morning we got started to school late and Buddy said, " Come on let's cut through the field !!" So here we went with our skirt tails flying and the boles sticking us every time we took a step, but we finally made it through the patch, though we were soaked.

When we went in the teacher sat us down around the big pot bellied stove and we took our shoes off and stretched our legs out to let the heat dry our stockings. She had a big pot of cocoa on the stove and gave us each a cup of it.
Well, we had to stay after school to make up for the time we sat around the stove but we didn't mind; that is, 'till we got home and mother got done bawling us all out for not being there to watch the baby. We didn't cut through the cotton patch any more.