Dear Garrett..

I loved our new farm in Texas. The 122 acres came equipped so all we had to do was start farming. We had a Ford tractor with all the implements. We had a tractor barn, a hay barn, a chicken house, a smoke house, and a grain storage building. And we had a house to live in.

Our house had two bedrooms and one bath. There was no air conditioning and only a wood stove for heating. We had our own water well with a concrete water tank next to the windmill for watering the cattle – – and where my brothers and I would be baptized by Mom in a few months. Mom baptized Laura in the house bathtub because she was a girl.

Willie and I farmed the acreage until Willie became scared enough to leave our farm, our family and Texas. While he was with us, Willie taught me enough about farming to handle the farming myself when he left.

Our family situation became even more complicated and dangerous when Mom became pregnant by Willie. Once the community figured out what was going on, Mom told us she was given a warning by the Guadalupe County Sheriff. The sheriff told Mom, “Don’t have that baby in Guadalupe County.”

I cried when we drove Willie to the bus station in Seguin. I had worked with him on two farms. He never said much when we were working together. Always keeping his thoughts to himself, I never knew what he thought about anything. I later realized Willie had a lot more on his mind than I was ever aware of. I enjoyed being with him while we did our work regardless of his habit of remaining silent.

We never saw or heard from Willie after we dropped him off at the Seguin bus depot. Mom told us Willie was taking the bus to Los Angeles. Returning to Louisiana was not an option. My brother, Harvey, told me later he learned that Willie was released from prison on a work parole program when he acquired his job at the dairy in Ringgold. When he left there with us, he had a parole violation to worry about plus the problem of having taken up living with my Mom and us kids. And Mom’s pregnancy with Willie made things all the more dangerous.

I ran the farm myself after Willie left. Whenever it came to handling something new to me, our neighbor, Johnny Hurley would come over and help get me pointed in the right direction – – like how to plant or cultivate the corn, etc. After a couple of rows of training, I was off and running on my own.

We grew corn and water melons. We leased out some acreage to some negro folks to raise peanuts. I enjoyed seeing them in our fields chopping around the peanut plants by hand.

I mowed some of the pastures to keep them healthy. Some of our acreage was covered with mesquite. I hunted in the wooded areas of our farm a lot. I chopped a lot of mesquite wood for our wood stove to heat our home in the winter.

We killed snakes on and around our farm – – rattlesnakes, water moccasins and chicken snakes or what some people referred to as bull snakes. When I wanted to relax, I would drive the Ford tractor down to a stock tank and turn the engine off. I would place my single shot 22 rifle on the tractor steering wheel and wait for a moccasin to raise its head to the surface of the water. I rarely missed a shot. I’d watch a snake twist and splash on the water after I shot it. After relaxing for a bit with my snake hunting, I would head back up to the house to see what chores needed doing next.

I was 14 when it came time for Mom to have the baby. I drove Mom to the Seguin hospital even though she had been warned not to have the baby in Guadalupe County. When we dropped Mom off at the hospital, my siblings and I were placed in a home. My brother, Harvey, reminded me that it was the doctor’s home who was delivering the baby. About ten hours after leaving Mom at the hospital, we were informed that the baby had been born. Then a few hours later we were informed that the baby had died. I asked how the baby died. Someone told us that it’s lungs filled up with fluid. Mom had named the baby girl Zion Wilson. The baby’s body was placed in an unmarked grave for the indigent in Seguin which I was able to verify with records at the Seguin courthouse several years ago.

Years later, I was discussing the event with a woman named Rosie Turner in Seguin who knew my Mom very well. When I shared my recollection of the events regarding the baby’s birth and death, Rosie said, “That’s not how the baby died. The sheriff had that baby killed.” I still wonder what really happened to the baby.

Shortly following the birth and passing of the baby, we met another black man. Life had become unstable following my Dad’s passing. With the arrival of this new black man in our family, life was to become even more unstable. His name was Jimmie. He looked like a big man to me. His 6′ 2″ stature seemed to tower over my much smaller fourteen year old frame.

It was night-time when I first laid eyes on this new stranger. He was standing on a vacant lot in what felt like a creepy and dangerous neighborhood in Seguin, Texas. As I came closer to him, I could see he appeared to look both mean and drunk. Then shockingly, my Mom introduced me to him like she already knew him. He seemed to barely notice me if he noticed me at all. I wondered, why is my Mom introducing me to this man? She said he was Rosie’s brother. I wondered how she had come to know him. In the weeks to come, this man would be seen more and more around our family. Within a month or two he was living with us on our farm. Within a year he would become my step-dad.