Growing Up On The Farm: In Rosebud, Texas - In the 1940's and 50's - History in My Lifetime
by Henry Skupin
Born at home on a farm in a house with no running water, no electricity and a wood-burning cook stove, changes were headed for my family fast and furiously. Dad farmed 40 acres with mules as a sharecropper. In 1941 he bought his first tractor. The next year, he bought a 320-acre farm and we moved into a house with indoor plumbing and electricity.
Enjoy stories about me accidentally starting a tractor I was playing on when I was 4 and living to tell about it, driving a mule in the fields when I was 6, turning over a load of corn when I was 13, and backing a truck into a tractor (twice) when I was 16.
I have given many talks about "Growing Up On the Farm", speaking about things I did at the age of 6. After one talk a man stopped me and said he didn't see any way that his six-year-old son could do what I said I did. A month later I gave the same talk to a group of Czech senior citizens and in the middle of my talk a salty older gentlemen exclaimed loudly, "You didn't do that stuff until you were six! You were a piker!" Buy "Growing Up On the Farm" and see if you think I exaggerated or if I was a piker. farming