The Bounty of Texas Page: 49
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The Bounty of the Woods
"Yes, I do" he said.
That was Dad's last breath, and that was the end of a free life and
time for me. It takes a lot of money to keep up a family the size I
inherited. While the young ones were growing up, the old ones were
sending home the results of broken marriages. Well, there never
could be too many for Mom and me, but it was always close.
The '29 Crash came soon after Dad died, and the refinery we were
building closed down and never did open up. There was no work
anywhere. I didn't bootleg any more because I couldn't stand the
thought of hurting Mom if I got caught and sent to the pen. We were
rescued by the East Texas oil strike, and for a year or so I worked
twelve to sixteen hours a day in the oil fields. Then oil went to ten
cents a barrel, the companies quit, and I went home dead broke.
During those hard years of the Depression I did anything I could
to get by. One year Grandad and I cut wood on the halves because
nobody had any money then. Grandad was seventy-six but a hell of
a man, and he cut more than I did every day. In three weeks we cut
thirty cords of wood, walking two miles to work and back. We ended
that job when I split my foot with an axe. Crippled as I was, I went
to work threshing pecans for Louis Grenwelge. He was a slave driver,
but he brought my pay up because we were paid by the pound and I
threshed six hundred to a thousand pounds a day. When threshing
was over, Mancel, Frank, and I headed out to the headwaters of the
Llano and San Saba rivers to trap for the rest of the season.
The Thirties were hard times, but all of us in Llano worked
together at anything we could get and survived. Then came Pearl
Harbor and World War II and everybody went off to service or the
defense plants. They were spread all over the world. Some came
home after the war; some never did. Nothing was ever the same after
that. Old Llano and a way of life we enjoyed and expected changed
drastically. The days I write about are now gone forever, just
memories.<49>
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The Bounty of Texas (Book)
This volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society contains a miscellany of Texas, Mexican and Spanish folklore, including information about hunting, canning, cooking, and other folklore. The index begins on page 225.
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Abernethy, Francis Edward. The Bounty of Texas, book, 1990; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc38873/m1/61/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.