Diaries: Aug/Nov 1911 - Pickin' Cotton

            This summer has been a very uneventful one in my life. There has but very few things happened of any importance or out of the ordinary. I get tired some times of the daily routine of keeping house and long for a whole summer of vacation and rest.

            I had planned all winter to go on a visit to my Uncle’s this summer but won’t get to go.

            One of the Granbury College boys -Claude W.- came to see me the first Sunday in August (Aug 6) He came on Sat eve and we all went to a neighbors house that night and made ice cream. We had a delightful time while he was here talking about old school days. And w-e-ll - that wasn’t all we talked about either, cause we decided we would marry some of these times and set that some time for next June.

            I’ve been engaged lots of times before, but it never did mean anything to me for I didn’t really aim to marry and would set the time so far off that I thought we would quit before the time came.

            I’ve never really loved but one boy before. But there is one other boy in this old wide world that I really did love, and do love yet, and always will love I guess. He was my first real Sweet Heart. He began going with me when I was fifteen and the last time I saw him I was eighteen. He thought equally as much of me as I did of him.

            I don’t guess there ever will be a boy care any more for me than he did for he has proved in numberless of different ways the true love he had in his heart for me. The last time I heard from him was the first of last May about 4 months ago now. We won’t marry because Papa is so bitterly opposed to it and I guess he isn’t just the boy that would suit me best, but he won my first love and I’ll always have a great regard for him.

            I never will forget the night he first ask me to marry him. We went to preaching about three miles from home us and some other couples. I wore a blue lilly in my hair that night and I still have it yet. I have him my hand on it that I would marry him. I was fifteen and he was eighteen then. Yes I know we were quite young. Well I’m getting of off the subject I started on but I couldn’t be so untrue to my old love as to say I never loved a boy before.

            But there has a new love come into my life and as the days go by I am tending to forget the old S.H.

            I think Claude is a grand old boy and I think as much or more, of him as I ever did of anyone. I am now wearing his ring as a token of our love and engagement and intend to marry him when the time comes.

            Claude did so cute when he went to tell me good bye it made me care more for him. He took my hand and holding it he looked me straight in the face and said; “I hate so bad to leave you. I want you to be good to your self and write to me often.” He looked so deeply in earnest it made me love him better.

            He wore a rainbow colored tie one day while he was here that I have him for a birthday present and when he came I had on a stick pin that he had given me as an xmas gift. (August 21, 1911)

            Mr Thompson came down on the evening train Sunday evening (Sept 10) and spent the evening and till late bed time with me and then went back home on the night train. I never had gone to the station to meet him when he came in, and at the picnic he said he guessed if I lived just across the street from the depot I wouldn’t step over then to meet him, and I told him the next time he came I would go to meet him.

            So when he wrote me he was coming he reminded me of my promise to meet him. There was no one at home but Papa and me and he was fevering some. I went to meet him and there sure was a crowd at the depot as there usually is on Sunday. We had a very enjoyable time. We walked down to the church which is just a few yards from our house, to the young peoples League at 4 oclock as I was on the program to read a paper on “How should we exercise our spiritual lives.” Sunday night we went to preaching at the Baptist church as there was not going to be any preaching at the Methodist church. By the way he is a strong Baptist. I always have more Baptist fellows than Methodist any way. Bro has been gone to Evandale to Uncle Ladells for a few weeks, he will spend the fall there picking cotton with them. Grandma has also been to <Erath Co> on a visit, so I’ve been by myself quite a good deal lately as Papa isn’t at home much in day time. (Sept 13, 1911)

            Salem              I came down here to Salem in Erath, Co Sept 16^th to pick cotton this fall. I had been here before visiting my aunt and cousins and had met several of the people. I first picked cotton for a family living near my aunt’s. A young man and his mother and sister make up the family (Ogan) and I was never around finer people. I had a dandy time the three weeks I picked there. They had a patch of fine watermelon and althoe Mr Jim didn’t like them him self, and we would cut one every day after dinner and then very often he would carry one to the waggon in the morning and put it in the <strade> and Miss Hannah and me would stop about the middle of the evening and eat it. My! But we sure did devour some fine watermelons, and enjoyed them too. Mr Jim (Ogan) sure was good to us. But he is always as good to his mother and sister, as most boys are to their Sweet Hearts. He very often calls Miss H “honey” and to cap it all one day we were picking along and he said, something to her and called her honey, and I answered him and didn’t know till after I had what he had called her. He looked real funny and it sure did get to me. Miss Hannah very often played on the guitar and sang at night. I enjoyed that too, but I can’t tell much more about my stay there.

            I felt real lonesome when I started to leave and they all seemed to hate to see me leave. I’ve heard lots of good things that they’ve said about me. I felt flattered a little when I first came down here, I heard of so many nice compliments passed on me. I am vain enough, like the most of humanity, to like to hear all the good things said about me.

            I’ve picked cotton about three weeks for a Mr Bud Burgess and enjoyed my stay there too. Mrs Burgess gave me a real pretty Geranium plant it is in bloom now. I don’t guess there is any one that likes flowers better than I do.

            I’m having a nice time on my cotton picking “spree” and it is the first I have picked in about four years and the last I guess I’ll pick in a good while. (Oct 18,1911)

            Salem              I am real proud of Bro, althoe, I do get worried to death at his recklessness. Seems to me sometime that he is the most noisy and thoughtly boy I ever knew. He declares our home would be as quiet as a grave yard if it wasn’t for his fun and racket. Well I don’t care to miss it any way for it is lonesome at home when he isn’t there. He is just begging to claim the girls, and I know he will be a case when he gets grown. None of the girls can get ahead of him now. He is just fifteen. He has been picking cotton for Mr Burgess, and there was a girl about 16 years old, picking for him too. She would rather pick with Bro than me and they pick together nearly all the time. They could both pick faster than anyone else in the field any way. One day Bro didn’t been picking and late in the evening he came over to the field and was picking along putting in our sacks. After while he picked an extra large handfull and held it up and said he would give it to the highest bidder. I said I’de give him a Yankie Dime (kiss) and he looked around at the other girl and said; “Will you give that for it?” She said “yes” and to my surprise he stepped over to her sack and put the cotton in, and said “now pay your debt.” and she kissed him, we sure did laugh. That’s the first girl he has kissed that wasn’t related to him. Velma Stone is her name. She knows how to flirt and is pretty talkative, but she couldn’t get a head of him. She would bring him some apples or peaches or something every day. (Oct 1911)

            Salem              Life is not all sunshine by a good deal. I was nearly blind with sore eyes a week or two ago and I saw very little sunshine then. It is sure bad to have something wrong with ones eyes. It nearly killed me to be so I couldn’t read or do any kind of fancy work. I was closed up in a dark room one Sunday (Nov 6) and kept <poltices> on my eyes most of the time. The week that my eyes were sore would have seemed like months but Genoa Moore (my cousin) read to me a great deal. She read or began reading a little book “Stepping Heavenward” which I sure did enjoy. It is some thing like a diary and it made me the one I was writing, only of course it was better than mine but I let one of my cousins (Maudie Moore) read it and she said it was better than “Stepping Heavenward.” She is the first person that has ever read any of mine. (Nov 14, 1911)