Yes, it's been a while since I've posted on the oral history project. I took a little break at Christmas while I was in America, and just didn't get around to starting back. If you think that's bad, we only took the Christmas tree down a week and a half ago. (Really)
All of his experiences during World War Two have been posted - but here's the start of his tales of growing up in Wilson County. This story was always told to us as a bit of a morality lesson - be careful what you wish for, and if you get it, be careful how you use it.
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When you went to the fair, ‘course everybody had horses then, rode buggies, you needed a whip for your horse and for your buggy and for everything else. And I don’t know the cost, probably fifteen, twenty cents, maybe a quarter, I don’t know what they cost, But anyway, they were beyond my reach and I couldn’t get one. And I surely did want one.
Some of my daddy’s cousins were plowin’ corn on the side of the road as I was going to school, and for some reason I stopped and started talkin’ to them and one of them had a whip. And we got to talkin’ about the whip, and I was talkin’ about how bad I wished I had one, and this old boy that was there, one of my daddy’s cousins said, “Well, if you won’t whip that pony, I’ll give you this whip.” No, no I wouldn’t whip this pony at all if he’d give me the whip.
Well he gave me the whip and I rode the pony all the way to school and put him in the stable and didn’t whip him at all, comin’ back that afternoon, coming back to where they were plowin’ the corn on the side of the road, for some reason I decided I would whip the pony. And I don’t guess he’d ever had a whip laid on him before, and he jumped pretty hard and far and wide and I landed on the side of the road and the horse went on down the road. They just laughed and laughed and laughed.
A neighbor down the road saw my horse in the creek getting’ a drink of water and he caught him and brought him on back to me and told me to get on him and ride him home. And I told him I was not going ride that horse any more any where. He said, “Well, lead him home then. Here he is.”
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, pony
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