The third born, my older brother Curtis Allen Smith, age seventeen. The banner photo is of Walt tinkering, and the painting on the wall is one of my earliest works of our Randolph Missouri County Courthouse, I won 1st place in the 1970 high school contest, beating out my art teacher and my girlfriend.

My Brothers, Curt and Walt

My brothers taught me everything. Curt was the one who taught me to smoke. We would hide out behind the chicken coop and smoke our cigarettes, Curt like Camels unfiltered. I liked Salem menthols. He even taught me how to role my own cigarettes, and man, was I ever a big boy, plus I had slick Curt to protect me. After we were done smoking Curtis said, "Now suck on this lemon drop to hide the smell of smoke from Momma, and wash your hands first, and then rub them through your hair to get rid of the smoky smell when she comes work from work. If she thinks we've been smoking she'll cut a switch off the willow tree, and switch us within an inch of our lives." I was beginning to think that hanging around Curt wasn't such a good idea.

Momma always came home about five-thirty p.m., on this day she was tired and a little out of sorts. "Hi boys, what did you all do today?"

"Ah, nothing much mom."

"We just played around," Curt said.

"Boys, I smell cigarette smoke."

Momma's sense of smell was very acute, she could smell things the rest of us couldn't. I thought to myself. "Stick close to Curt, he'll surely save me."

"No mom, we just lit a fire in the trash barrel and burned some paper," Curt said.

I thought, "Good save!"

"Curt that's not paper smoke I smell. Come here, Curt. Let me smell your breath." She put her long slender hand on his face, with her thumb on his left jaw, and fingers on the right. Closely, she inspected his face and with a little squeeze, and his mouth dropped open and Momma sniffed his breath. She then sniffed his face and hair. "Well Curt, I don't smell any smoke on you. Olan, come here."

I said to myself, "Crap, I'm going to die. Momma's going to whoop me to death, as sure a shootin', and Curt will probably come out smelling like a rose." I guess I was not the favorite son either. I stepped a little closer to Curt.

"Come to think about it, Mom. Olan did sneak away for a while, so I'm guessin' he could have done something, then."

I looked at Curt in horror. My knees were weak and my words trembled as I got ready for the inspection.

"No momma. I didn't smoke a cigarette; no momma. No!"

Next, Mother grabbed my face, and I went under the same close visual inspection as Curt had received.

"Your eyelashes are singed! You've been smoking...haven't you?"

"No Momma. I swear! I swear on a stack of Bibles; stick a thousand needles in my eye! Honest momma!" Then her nose was buried in my hair, and all I could think about was how it was going to hurt, when she got back with that switch.

"Olan, I want you to take your pocket knife, go to the backyard and cut me off a willow switch, and then I want you to bring it to me, you understand me?"

"Yes ma'am."

That was the longest walk I ever made in my life. Time seemed to stop as the tears ran down my face. I had a long time to contemplate the evils of smoking. When I returned to the house with the switch, the tears had subsided, and I slowly and cautiously approached my mother. "Here it is," I said remorsefully. I looked up at her with my tear stained face and pretty blue eyes. About that time, Dad walked into the living room where we stood. Curt was nowhere to be found.

Dad asked, "What's going on here?" just as the switching began.

Quickly, seeing my opportunity, I ran around him, and hid behind his baggy pants. Mom said, "Walter, Olan's been smoking cigarettes."

Dad asked, "Is this true?"

I replied tearfully, "No, I swear!"

Mom chased me around and around Dad, switching at me at every opportunity. She was hitting dad's baggy overalls more than she was hitting me. I fell down, and she continued to switch my legs. My dad told her to stop it and she did. He told me to go to the bedroom while they talked. I don't know what they said but that was the last switch that I ever received for my mother. This lesson didn't stop me from smoking, and I wasn't caught again, or at least that was what I was led to believe, and so my days continued until my brothers began to see the profit in me, as a worker.

Walt working on his Pontiac and me watching carefully, in the background is the field to my friend Becky's house.

From early days, I was taught by my brothers how to work. In the summer I was taken with them as they hauled hay. They were members of a crew, and I was given the job of driver, which earned me one cent a bale, but this was about the age of eight or nine, and both of my brothers were driving cars. Brother Curt would put me up on his lap, and taught me to steer his Studebaker down the hill on Depot Street. Working hard he would push in on the clutch, and tell me to shift the H-shift manual transmission. Though much too small to actually drive the truck, I was placed standing behind the wheel, and I would steer between the rows of bales. The straw boss, Leonard, would place the truck in what he called the "granny gear" or dual-low, as my brother explained it, and we were off. He taught me to grab the bottom of the steering wheel, place my feet on the brake, and then the clutch, so I could stop the truck when he hollered. This was wonderful for me and an experience, and that continued for a couple of years, and I was actually a member of a crew of men.

I drove with the door propped open so any member of the crew could get to the controls to help me turn as we were near the end of a row or keep the truck on course if I wandered off course. Walt and Curt bucked the bales, and Leonard stacked the hay on to the bed of the truck. Sometimes we work sixteen hours straight from early morning until after dark with only the trucks' lights and flashlights to finish the job.

"Okay Olan!" Leonard would shout over the roar of the truck as he got it going, "Keep it between the rows!" And off I went down the rows with both doors open at a neck-break speed of a half of a mile per hour. I was never afraid, because I didn't know fear, at least not yet.

"Whoa Olan!" barked the straw boss. "We missed some bales!" I immediately grabbed the bottom of the wheel, and then I swung both feet onto the brake, which automatically engaged the clutch. Believe me, it was a stretch from my arm to the brake pedals for a tiny runt like me, so all the view out the windshield vanished. Leonard hopped in, and shifted the gears to neutral. "Take five, while we catch up." I got out of the cab, and stretched my legs for awhile, and Walt and Curt jogged back to get the missed bales. The guys would smoke cigarettes, all except Walt and me. Walt didn't smoke and Curt and I didn't want him to know that I was smoking.

We carried our own fuel in a ten-gallon gas can. One time Leonard was smoking around the can when I said to him you better not smoke around the fumes or you will blow us up. My brothers agreed. Leonard was angry. "You can't catch gas on fire unless you have a flame." He waved his cigarette over the gas can.

"Leonard! Curt shouted. "Are you nuts? You're going to blow us all up, and catch this whole field on fire!"

Leonard didn't say a word. He just poured some gas into a bucket. He put the bucket in the midst of us and said, "Watch boys." He took his cigarette out of his mouth and flicked it directly into the bucket.

We all desperately reached out to grab the lit cigarette as it flew through the air toward its gaseous target. Our flailing arms batted at the hot target, but it went undisturbed to its liquid splash down, a splash and sizzle was the sound that greeted our ears, and the hot embers went out like it would in water, in the volatile flammable fluid. An eerie quiet fell over us as we stared into the bucket. Leonard broke the silence with words of teenaged wisdom. "Damn boys! The science teacher was right, now back to work!" The crew took the bucket using a funnel, and poured the gasoline minus the cigarette back into the tank.

Walt turned his head as he went back to his position and said, "God damn it, Leonard, you're the craziest damn fool I've ever met. If you ever do some fool thing like that again, we're out of here."

"Take it easy Walt, it is just science."

Leonard never did anything like that again. I don't believe he was afraid of losing us as crewmembers, rather―I believe he thought he'd gotten away with something that day, and he had better not take his science lessons so literally.

We struggled on in the great heat of the summer of nineteen sixty-two. I ran over a few bales, and Leonard shouted, "God damn it, Olan. Watch where you're going! You just cost me five cents, your brother's two cents each, and yourself a penny. That's ten cents! Ten, God damned cents!"

Walt shouted back. "Leave the boy alone, Leonard. He is only nine years old. You can take the money out of my pay if you want, just leave him alone."

Leonard replied, "I might just do that. I just might..."

I worked hard not to run over anymore bales, from then on Leonard would jump down from the load of bales, and help me guide the truck if he saw I was headed toward a bale. I doubt if it was in direct response to Walt's complaint, but more out of greed over lost money.

"Stop the truck Olan! Leonard yelled one hot day. "Take a break. The load was off balance, we're going to have to restack it." The load was definitely leaning to the port side. I got out and watched as Leonard began to throw bales off the top. Suddenly, the load shifted and came down on top of me. I was buried under about twenty bales of hay. It didn't hurt and I could breathe okay. All I felt was pressure and the sharp ends of the square bales pressing against my face. I heard the boys calling my name frantically, but I could neither answer them nor see them.

"Olan, hang in there! We'll be right there." I heard Curt shout.

In less than a minute, they reached me. Curt asked, "Are you okay?"

I replied, "Yeah that was fun!"

The boss said, "Damn it Olan, you got to stay out of the way, you understand me!" I think Leonard genuinely was concerned for me that particularly hot summer day, or at least he was worried about a lawsuit. I was not sure which, but for me it was a reinforcement that I was invulnerable. On our way back home, I asked Walt why he wasn't the straw boss. Curt chimed in for Walt, "Walt's not the boss, because he doesn't own the truck. Leonard owns the truck, and gets the jobs from different farmers. The farmers pay Leonard for the job, and then he takes out gasoline and truck expenses and then he pays us.

"I see what you mean." I inquired, "Maybe next year we can buy a truck, huh?"

"Maybe," Walt replied. "We'll see."

We never bought a truck, but we did haul hay until nineteen sixty-three or so, when my brothers both joined the National Guard, and the boys did buy cars, however. Cars suddenly became their main interest. Walt bought a 1944 Willy's Jeep for his pride and joy. Curt, bought a Model-A Ford to compliment his Studebaker, with his own money, for something to trifle with. The car didn't run, but it was Curt's and he spent a lot of time tinkering with it, and I played in it. Walt went everywhere in his Jeep. It had no cab, but later he'd built a frame and covered it with canvas and added doors for wintertime driving.

Walt's 1944 Jeep, he worked hard on it, and turned from pail puke green to a maroon beast. He took me off road in it everywhere, and we got stuck many times, and literally up creeks. Below is the remodeled Willy's Jeep a year later.

Me in from of Walt's Willy's Jeep, 1964.

Brother, Walt, sitting on a rocking chair down in Louisiana, near Deridder. 

Walt is pictured on the right and left is the neighbor's girl, Mary.

Mom holding Curtis and Walt yawning.