My parents, Thomas Harris and Pallie Youngblood Harris raised all 13 children on a rough and hilly farm in Murray, Arkansas in Newton County. Our main crops were corn, potatoes, beans and some tobacco. Of course we had a big vegetable garden like most people in the area. We grew sorghum cane and prepared molasses by stripping the stalks of the leaves, called blades and cutting off the seed pods before running them through a mill press. The mill press cylinders powered by a horse or mule, squeezed the sweet juice out of the stalks. It was important to keep the animal moving and as children we would take turns feeding the sorghum into the mill and keeping the animal moving. One of my best memories is when my father showed us how to make a brush from a stalk joint just before the molasses finished cooking and use it to dip into the molasses so we could taste it. It was really good while it was still hot! Dad was somewhat of an expert at making molasses and quite often our neighbors would hire him to prepare their sorghum.

We also had maple trees on our farm and in the spring my Dad would chop notches in the trees. We called it "tapping" the trees. He would catch the sap that drained from them in a bucket that he had attatched to the tree under the notch. We gathered the sap almost daily and carried it home to be boiled until it reached the syrup or brown sugar cake stage similar to the syrup and brown sugar you find at the market today. Sometimes we made hard candy from the sap too.

My Dad was very enterprising and had to be in order to buy shoes and cloth to make clothing for thirteen children. We bought overalls ready made, coal oil for heat, 22 cartridges for hunting small game, smoking tobacco and snuff. There's nothing more relaxing than sitting on the porch after feasting on a platter of fried squirrel and having a smoke or a "snoot" full of snuff while fighting off mosquitos. Various herbs grew wild on our farm such as ginseng, yellow root, red percoon, may apple and black haw bushes. We dug the roots, scraped the bark from these plants and dried them in order to sell them at a local country store and the proprietors in turn sold the herbs to pharmacuetical companies to be made into medicines.

My Dad and brothers worked in the timber industry cutting logs and making cross ties for the railroads. I can remember helping my brothers saw logs with a crosscut saw as my Dad hewed them out with a broad axe. I remember having two designs of broad axe. One for right handed people and one for lefties. The railroad paid more for the hewn ties than the sawmill ties for some reason.

The family dug an open well deep enough to reach water and lined it with native rocks to prevent it from caving in. They placed a box shaped cover over the hole and installed a pulley and chain with a bucket attached. We got our drinking and cooking water from the well. We stayed busy most of the time. There were so many things that had to be done to take care of our large family.

My mother worked unbelievably hard trying to care for thirteen kids. She cooked three meals a day for us. Cleaned house and washed our clothes on a wash board. In late fall we dug shallow pits where the garden had been and lined them with straw. We then placed potatoes, turnips and cabbage in the holes and covered them with straw and soil to preserve them. We could go there all winter long and get fresh cabbage or turnips for dinner. There was very little refrigeration then so this method worked well for us. We strung green beans on a string and hung them to dry. They were called "fodder beans". We also did lots of "cold pack" canning. We placed jars full of vegetables and fruit into a tub of water set over a fire outside to avoid heating up the house. We raised hogs and butchered them in winter. We would cut the meat into chunks, salt them and hang it in the smoke house to be cured with hickory chips and bark. Once cured it would keep for several months. Once in a while we would butcher a goat but none of us liked goat meat very much so we only ate it when there was no other choice. Each one had jobs to do and did their job. Dad didn't tolerate foot dragging on our farm. Harvesting crops and cutting wood to cook and heat our home kept us busy.

All thirteen kids were very close to one another. We had love and respect for each other that has lasted throughout the years. I thank God for that. We had some rough times economically, but we had lots of good times together. When I was about twelve misfortune hit our family. Our house burned and we lost everything to the fire. Dad got a tent and put it up for us to live in until he could build another house. He made a heater from a large wash tub by cutting a door in the side where we added wood to the fire under the tub and a hole in the side for a vent. It sat bottom side up on the dirt floor and heated the tent pretty well.

We had good neighbors and everyone was eager to do what they could to help each other. Close friends and neighbors, Ira and Georgia Garrison were the parents of Shelley, Don, Imogene, Virgie and a new baby that died. They made a coffin out of lumber and an uncle of mine donated a really pretty shirt of his to be used as material for the baby's burial dress. They brought the body over to our tent and we sat up with it over night. The next day the funeral was held at Little Buffalo Cemetery near Parthenon, Arkansas. Before it was buried the coffin was opened and somehow the baby's body was turned over. It sure was strange to me and I felt a little spooked for years whenever I thought of it.

From the time I was about ten or eleven years old I carried one of my younger brothers or sisters around on my hip most of the time. People used to tell me that I would grow crooked from it but there were so many children that Mom couldn't keep up with all of them and I tried to be a second Mom for them and her. Our barn doubled as an outhouse. We fed our livestock and milked the cows in one big room and the outhouse was in another room. One day while I was feeding and milking the cows I heard a blood curdling scream. I ran around the corner of the barn, found one of the little boys had gone back there to urinate and one of our old ducks grabbed his penis and wouldn't let go. It was really stretched out and the duck still chewing on it. I thought the duck might pull it off before I could beat the duck loose from him. I grabbed him up and ran to the house thinking he would surely die from loss of blood where the duck chewed on him with it's rough bill. I was always so scared when one of the kids got hurt. The first thing that entered my mind was that they would die.

My Dad always had a team of mules for working the fields. One of his mules would chase and bite us. I went to feed them once and I looked around to see my brother Gene who was really little, had followed me into the pen through the gate. I grabbed him up and started running toward the fence with the old mule right behind us. I knew I couldn't climb the rail fence while carrying Gene so I just ran into it knocking off the top rails. The mule grabbed for the little guy's head. Gene had long hair for a boy and the mule got a mouthful of it. As the hair slipped through the mule's teeth I heard a squeaking sound and cried "Lord have mercy!". I fell through the fence and skinned myself really bad but after I saw Gene wasn't hurt, I started to cry and laugh at the same time. You should have seen him! His frightened eyes were big and glowing and his hair sticking straight up where the old mule's teeth had slipped off of it. We had lots of adventure growing up as we did and learned to depend on each other.

Some of us were at the creek fishing one summer and built a little rock wall in the edge of the water to hold our fish until we were ready to go home. We put several nice perch fish into the pool when two men claiming to be game wardens came by and said it was illegal to catch fish and fasten them up in the way we had. They said they would have to confiscate our fish. My brothers had a twenty-two rifle to hunt for squirrels on the way home. Rufus picked it up and we all gathered behind him. Some of us were crying and some just watching as he told the two self-made game wardens that "no s.o.b.'s going to take our fish". They could tell by the look on Rufus's face that he was serious. The "wardens" decided that we could keep the fish and the last we saw of them, they were walking away in a hurry.

One time Dad sent me to Ira Garrison's,a neighbor, to pick up a tool Ira had borrowed. His was a weird looking place. Heavy woods everywhere and just a narrow wagon road running through it. My little sister Elvie was with me and on the way home I carried her on my back. A rattlesnake started running after us with it's head held up about a foot off the ground. It chased us for what seemed a long way before it stopped. I sat Elvie down in the middle of the road and told her not to move. Then I went back and killed the snake. When we got home I told my Dad that he wouldn't believe what happened but it was true and after I told him about the snake's behavior he said he did believe me because it was "dog days", meaning July and August and most snakes were blind during that period so they traveled mostly by scent and sound. Another time, Rufus and I were walking to the grocery store and just goofing off when we looked back and saw a coachwhip snake come out of a bush. It chased after us for a little way, then as we got farther away it stopped.

For a little more comedy, I went out to pick up wood for the house when our billy goat got me from behind and knocked me clear over the wood pile. I dropped all of the wood but as I got to my feet, I picked up a board and hit the goat as hard as I could across the head. It knocked him down and when he got up he wobbled and staggered everywhere, shaking his head. One thing for sure, he never bothered me again!

Rufus and I spent lots of time together and once, while leaving the field and going toward the house, a rabbit jumped up and I told Rufus to watch as I killed it with my rock. He laughed and mocked me. I threw the rock and killed the rabbit! I don't know who was more surprised, Rufus or me. Another time Rufus was cutting fire wood when Jessie jumped onto the log as Rufus's ax came down chopping off Jessie's toes. I remember the toes laying there wiggling on the ground. My brothers buried the toes in a matchbox. After a long time, Jessie's foot kept hurting really bad. Someone told my Dad that he should dig up the toes and lay them in the order that they had been on Jessie's foot before reburying the box. He did and Jessie's pain stopped. I don't know if rearranging the toes had anything to do with it or not but as long as the pain was gone who am I to argue?

We had a milk cow that grazed on open range and quite often she came home without any milk for us. Dad asked his half brother who lived close to us about it and in turn he mentioned the milkless cow to his children who admitted sucking the milk from the cow. Can you imagine? Of course we didn't believe their story. We don't know whether they were taking the milk home or just milking it onto the ground.

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