At age nine, I got a job…consideration was room, board and transportation.
Back in those Hamlin Texas years, Dad gave Lena two horses. Red took the horses when a drilling contractor couldn’t pay for the hauling and drilling mud A.R. Elam Trucking Co. furnished.
Parents made me the horse lot manager. My job description entailed curry-combing and brushing, cleaning under the horses’ shed, cutting Johnson grass for feed, polishing my Mother’s saddle. There were occupational hazards. Horses bite, kick. Runaway with you when you mount for a bareback ride. Transportation to the outskirts of Hamlin was by bicycle that came from delivering circulars, and some parental giving.
When Dad moved family and his trucks to Abilene, mares Minx and Sea-Breeze went with us to outside the city limits. When the City moved their taxable limits north, Dad moved his trucks and the horse lot beyond city limits. The horse lot was then located next to a fruit orchard. Bad location. Narrow-minded Farmer objected to us teenagers eating peaches during evening hours.
“Tired of you boys stealing my peaches.” Fired his shotgun…into the air I later figured….and sent me running into the barbed-wire fence. I’ve still got the scar on my right knee to remind me of my delinquency. Somebody inherited my horse-lot job because at age 14, I got a paying wartime job–$35-a-week–at the daily newspaper.
After Red traded the horse lot for a distant 80 acres, the City built an elementary school atop the horse lot acreage. Houses and a grocery store followed. Our four children all attended Jane Long Elementary. Long after their Grandmother Lena quit riding horses.
