Lena Lucille Flanery - James Gregory

"I was born in Tuttle, Oklahoma. I do not remember Tuttle. My first memory is of the place we lived in called Kiowa. Dad was a sharecropper. We had a lot of land on which the folks planted cotton, corn, cane and of course we always had a big garden with okra, watermelons, cantaloupes and the usual vegetables.
The first house I remember was very small. I remember that Mom and Dad had a bed in the front room and Grace (sister) and I slept in a little offshoot with a low ceiling and a tin roof. I always liked it when it rained, and in Oklahoma when it rained it really did rain. I can remember feeling so safe.
Later when I was about five or six a house was moved on the property that we farmed. Later Dad and some other men moved it close to our house and we moved into it. It was larger than the one we had been living in. It had two bedrooms for Mom and Dad and Grace and I. Roy and Coy had a room made on the porch. We always had an outhouse. I can remember when I had to go at night I would always wake Grace and she would always have to go outside with me.

We kids always had things to do. There were always chores and everyone had things to do. We also had a lot of fun. We had horses, dogs at different times and other pets, including a pet squirrel. Dad had been cutting down a tree in the woods and unknowingly killed the mother so Dad brought the baby squirrel home. I was real sick and in bed and I thought it was the best pet. We named him Buster. We had him for a long time. He slept in the attic. One day Mom was making lard (she cooked the fat out of the fat meat) and she had a big tub of it cooling and Buster jumped down from the attic and jumped right into the tub of lard. Don't know who was the most upset - Buster, Mom or us kids because Mom threw him outside and we all thought he would run away and we would never see him again. Buster rolled in the dirt and Mom said that "dirty thing was not coming back in her house"! After about a week and Buster did not run away and after he got himself clean, Mom let him back in the house. From then on he could go outside when he wanted to. Coy had all kinds of pets, too. One night all us kids went out hunting and we saw a possum. Coy and Roy got it out of the tree and of course it acted dead. When we took it home Mom and Dad were in bed. We took it in to show the big prize and Mom got very upset. Coy put it in a cage and was going to make a pet out of it but it got out and somehow we always thought Mom or Dad had something to do with it. We always had a lot of animals - cows, horses, chickens, turkeys, pigs, cats and always a dog.

I guess we were poor but so was everyone else so we didn't mind so much. We always had plenty to eat as we had the farm. Mom made most of Grace's and my clothes out of feed sacks in those days feed was put in sacks of different print. so a lot of girls had hand made dresses and underpants out of the same print. Very seldom did we get new clothes except shoes once a year. we did not wear shoes in the summer time except to school or dress up."
from Lucille Flanery Gregory's autobiography