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Wayne and Gary growing up together
I grew up in the 20s and 30s as an only child, but I had cousins all around me so I was never lonely. Also, I got my first dog when I was 7. He was my daily playmate. I worked in town for three or four years, but I married Henry, a boy from the country, and we decided that was where we wanted to live and farm. We raised chickens and sold eggs to the hatchery for a while. In 1945 we bought registered hogs. We also grew tobacco and soybeans. A few years we grew cotton also. Our son Wayne came along in 1943. He always loved animals. So of course he had a dog for a playmate also. My cousin had a son four days younger and they lived next door, so Wayne and his cousin Gary were together every day at one house or the other. My son got a goat with two babies, and by then he had another dog. He made a harness to his large toy wagon. He put sides on it and put the goats in the wagon and taught the dogs to pull the wagon with the goats in it. Our sons had toy machinery and tractors and played in the dirt making roads and planting fields. What one didn’t think of the other would. Wayne soon learned to work in the field and drive the farm tractor at an early age. He and my husband started showing hogs in the local live stock show in the county. They won many ribbons and trophies. They also showed at the State Fair every year for 35 years. Plowing the fields and going to the fair to show his hogs were Henry’s greatest pleasures until he got cancer. I think Wayne enjoyed growing up on the farm. He learned to swim, was in 4-H Club, went to 4-H camp every year. He was a State Cotton Winner and went to Chicago twice with the 4-H. I enjoyed a garden and working in the field with my family. Now I am old and live in the same house I was born in. I still drive some and enjoy my church. Hazel H. Cross |
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