The Life of Me | Page 6

through the crowd. After that he carried a long blacksnake whip to use on them if they ever got close to his wagon again.
Part of the tradition that was handed down to us from the Gaddies and the Johnsons was that there were only three things to drink-- water, sweet milk, and buttermilk. You might include clabber if you like. But then, clabber was more of an "eat" than a drink. Soda pop was for the wealthy and foolhardy, and coffee was not permitted for three reasons: it cost money, it was unnecessary and it was not good for you. Money was for necessities. Any drinks stronger than these mentioned were strictly forbidden.
Even the sound of the word "whiskey" carried with it an inkling of sin and dishonor. Whiskey without drunkenness was improbable, and drunkenness was about as low as a person could go.
Mama grew up to hate whiskey because of its effect on men and because it tasted bad. However, there was always a jug of it under her father's bed--for medical use only. Any symptom of disease was treated immediately with whiskey. Mama hated the taste of it.
Mama told us about a man--perhaps an uncle--who was sick in bed and who was fond of whiskey. As he lay in bed, a few friends and kinfolks stopped by to see him. And one by one he asked them to mix him a little toddy. They did.
And wouldn't you know it, five or six toddies all in one man at one time made the man forget he was sick on disease and it made him fairly sick on whiskey which was what he had planned to be.
After I came into the Johnson family, Mama's people lived so far away I didn't get to know much about them.
We didn't get around to visiting them much. But I remember we did go to Duncan one time to visit some of them. It seems that the trip was made in about the year of 1916. We went in our 1914 model Reo car.
I guess I was about ten years old. I don't remember much about the people we went to see, but I remember the white rabbits and prairie dogs they had for pets. They were running all over the place. I suppose it was Uncle Henry's place and I believe the pets were Leo's, Uncle Henry's son. Leo was perhaps four years older than I was--maybe even more.
I think I met Mama's sister and her older brother, Will, a time or two; I'm not sure. But Henry was the only one of them I ever really knew.
Henry and his wife, I think her name was Emma also, came to Hamlin to visit Mama and Papa a couple of times after I was married. Then, when I was attending college in Arkansas, my wife, Ima, and our youngest son, Larry, and I stopped by to visit Uncle Henry two or three times.
During one of those visits, Uncle Henry went out into his garage and took a book from the bottom of an old trunk. The book was similar to a ledger, about seven inches wide and ten inches long, with a flexible cover. In the book were 54 songs, handwritten with pen and ink, most of them in my father's hand, a few written by my mother.
It was my father's book which he had carried to parties and singings while he lived in Oklahoma. When he heard a song he liked, he would write the words in his book of songs. Other boys and girls had their books of songs also, including Uncle Henry.
Uncle Henry also had a mother-in-law--or rather, I think it was his mother-in-law-to-be--who gave him trouble at times. One time she got mad at him for some reason and burned his book of songs. So Papa loaned Henry his song book.
Then the Johnsons moved away to Texas before Henry returned the book. When he was through with the book, Henry hesitated to make a 400 mile round trip in a covered wagon just to return a borrowed book. So he didn't return it right away. He put it away for safekeeping. It was forgotten until Henry mentioned it during a visit to Texas to see Mama and Papa 50 years later
Mama was about 80 years old when Uncle Henry took the book from the old trunk and asked me to take it to her. Papa had died many years before.
I have one copy of those songs and there is a copy of them filed away at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
Neither the Johnsons nor the Gaddies had any part in the Oklahoma land rush. That took place in 1889, a few years before either family arrived in Oklahoma.
I never once saw my Grandma Gaddie. She passed away in Oklahoma