Transportation for my family in the '30s was, for the most part; walking! Not many families in Old Salem owned a car but some were fortunate enough to have a wagon and a team of mules. Daddy had one old mule and an old sled. I found it much easier walking than sitting on that sled, trying to hang on.
Well, one summer day around 1938, Daddy announced he was hitchhiking to Kirbyville and try to buy a car from "Crook" Singletary, a used car dealer. I don' know to this day what Mr. Singletary's real name was. Neither do I know to this day how Daddy came to have $ 20.00. My brothers and I were simply ecstatic at the thought of our family having a car. Imagine, the five mile round trip each Sunday to church and back could be in a car instead of walking. Our joy was boundless. Sam and Roy had heard the name, "Ford V-8" and explained to me this was a big shiny black car and that just might be the kind Daddy would drive home.
The morning dragged slowly. The road was not paved; just deep sand and one could see a cloud of dust before a car appeared. Few cars came by so if one child spotted a cloud of dust, it was quickly announced, "Somebody's coming. Wonder who it is?"
I was playing with my little brother in the sand bed with our bottle cars mid-morning They were really Garrett Snuff bottles. I happened to glance up and saw a cloud of dust coming down our road. I quickly got Jack and our fleet of bottle cars off the road and started hollering, "Daddy's coming! Daddy's coming with the Ford V-8." We ran over and joined our older brothers and watched this huge shiny black Ford V-8 slowly make its way toward us and come to a stop on our stomp. It hardly stopped rolling when we kids descended on that car like a bunch of crows in a cornfield. We jumped up on the running boards on each side, yelling,
"Daddy, you sure did; you got us a Ford V-8." In my mind, for one brief moment, I was sailing down the road beside my daddy in that shiny black Ford V-8.
And then, in a split second things became quiet, much too quiet! The awful moment of truth! We had a good look at the driver and realized we'd never seen this man before in our lives. One by one, we ducked our heads, turned and ran; filled with embarrassment and shame. Sam and Roy ran around the house, while Jack and I crawled under the house. We peeked and saw Mama go out. The man introduced himself as the new county agent, Mr. J.B. Dorman. Mama called to us to come meet him.
Things were pretty quiet the rest of the day but just at sundown, Roy climbed up the ladder to the top of the house. He had done this several times that day, scanning the countryside. This time he announced, "This really is Daddy and it's just about what I expected." We soon realized just what he meant. This thing had four wheels, no fenders, no top, a little flat bed on the back, and naked springs for Daddy and Mama to sit on. It huffed and puffed, snorted, moaned and groaned, and when it hit the last big sand bed, it coughed once more and died.
Daddy had done his best with his $20.00 and we tried to not show disappointment but it was difficult. I feel sure the several months we had this stripped-down jalopy, we kids pushed it many more miles than we rode on it.
As for the county agent; he turned out to be a wonderful friend; always so helpful and later helped us with many 4-H Projects. But thinking back, sometimes , I remember catching a twinkle in his brown eyes from time to time. Could it be he was remembering a swarm of children descending on his Ford V-8 on that hot summer day in '38?