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Words from a 'Run-away Boy' Page 5

Sharing a bed for the night with a person who threatened to kill me with a shotgun earlier that same day.

I was about fourteen years old when I left the family at Woodstock, GA and went back to Chatsworth, GA. An area farmer who was getting on in years, asked me to stay at his home and make a crop using the one horse he had. The deal was that I would prepare the ground, plant and harvest the various crops such as corn, sugar cane, and other vegetables. For that I got room and board, and was allowed to raise a cotton crop, sell it, and keep the money.

The farmer was in a second marriage to a younger woman. They had two boys, one of whom was a bit hyper, and could be testing at times. That's the boy I shared the bed with every night. One morning, after a light shower, I was riding the horse to the fields to work with him seated behind me. Being the pest that he was, he shook the wet limbs an sprayed water on me. After we reached the field where I was going to work, he pestered me one more time (one time too many); I slapped him off the horse, and he hit the ground hard - which is what he needed. He started crying and yelling and said he was going to tell his parents what had happened. With that I hooked up the plow and started plowing. After a while he came back, with shotgun in hand, and was raving and threatening. An inner voice told me to just keep plowing and let him rant. As I plowed on away from him, he went back home. I wasn't going to lose all my work, and the cotton crop, so at the end of the day, I put the horse up, and joined the family for our usual supper. After that I went on to bed with the boy. Nothing was ever said by the boy or his parents about the incident.

I was glad when the time came to pick the cotton and haul it by wagon to Chatsworth to the cotton gin. The farmer asked if I would let him have the cotton seed for his horse and cow; I told him he could have the seed. I got paid, and the farmer went back home. I never saw him again. The money I got for the small cotton crop was a bit over three hundred dollars. That doesn't sound like much, but when one uses the cost of a five-cent coke that could be purchased at the time out of a vending machine to calculate for inflation, in today's money that would be $6,000.

( each dollar has 20 nickels each of which had the same buying power as a dollar in today's money - so, the dollar bill then would buy as much as $20.00 today - $300. X $20.00 = $6,000.) Not too bad for a young boy. I know, I'm getting a little carried away with the five-cent coke analogy thing, but you get my point.

The boy that threatened to shoot me was shot and killed by his step-daughter years later.