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Zuleam
had a lot of cousins in and around Beattie. She still has dozens of them of varying
degrees, that is first, second, third and fourth and ever more than that if you
count that far. Two cousins that grew up with her were Boyce and Neilly Bingham.
Boyce was actually a second cousin, being Zuleam's great Uncle Plez's son. He
was quite a character and we will be writing more about him later. Neilly was
double kin in that he was a first cousin and a third cousin. His mother was Aunt
"Tom", (Thelma), Zuleam's daddy's sister. His father was Uncle Emmit Bingham,
a first cousin to Zuleam's mother, Leona (Bingham) Wright. These two boys spent
a lot of time hanging around the Beattie Stores and visiting Zuleam's place where
a lot of other kids hung out.
Boyce and Neilly pulled some pretty good
ones. In some ways Neilly was a little timid and Boyce delighted in embarrassing
him. On one occasion there was a girl by the name of Ann Wall visiting with the
John Andress family in Beattie. I think that she was from Brownwood.
Boyce and Neilly were teen age boys and the girl, Ann, was about their age and
they thought she was very pretty. The two boys were at the Beattie Store when
they decided that they would walk up to the Andress home and "call on" Ann and
visit with her. The boys walked up to the Andress place and went through the yard
gate. Instead of going to the door and knocking on it, they stood in the front
yard and yelled, "Hello !" as people some times did in those days. It was after
dark and what happened next surprised several people. The boys didn't know that
Ann's father was there. He came to the door but when Boyce saw him he ducked under
the front porch and left Neilly standing all alone in the front yard. Neilly quickly
sized up the situation, whirled about and ran out the front gate and all the way
to the store. Boyce remained quietly under the porch until things cooled down,
then he sneaked out and made his way quietly to the store.
During the
late thirties and early forties times were kind of "tuff" around Beattie. We would
work hard all day from sunup until sundown for one dollar in American money. Our
work clothes were worn and raggedy and patched and worn out and re-patched again.
Most all boys had started smoking by the time they reached their upper teens.
Bull Durham smoking tobacco cost a nickel a sack or six sacks for a quarter. The
boys all carried a pocket full of kitchen matches from the family kitchen. Bull
Durham tobacco took a lot of matches because as soon as you quit puffing the hand
rolled cigarette would go out and had to be lit again. One of the worst hazards
of carrying matches in your pocket was that occasionally they would rub together
and ignite in your pocket. You would have to run your hand into the pocket and
pull out the flaming, smoking matches. Besides your burned hand and burned out
pocket you smelled strongly of burning sulfur for the rest of the day.
On one occasion, I was eating lunch (we called it dinner) with the Jimmy Wright
family. I was a regular diner there and I sat at the table in a rope bottom chair.
( Years earlier it was a cane bottom chair but when the cane wore out it would
be replaced with a crisscross of small rope.) As I sat in this chair with my raggedy
pants some times the rope and the raveling didn't match up properly. Boyce Bingham
came in the house before I finished eating. He squatted down behind me and leaned
back against the wall and rolled himself a Bull Durham cigarette. When he lit
the cigarette with a kitchen match he noticed a raveling hanging down from the
seat of my breeches through the bottom of that rope bottom chair. Before he extinguished
the match, he touched it to the raveling. The flame went right strait up and so
did I. I yelled and stood up so fast, I tipped the table over on those across
from me. They kept the table from going completely over but it cleared every thing
off the table. I am glad that we were about through eating any way. This was really
embarrassing to me but every body else in the house just roared with laughter.
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