The route covered many of the more elite people of Tucson as well as some residents at the TB Sanitariums. The people that was critically ill in these facilities bothered daddy a lot in years to come. He took the bottles directly into their rooms and saw the ill in all stages of bad health.. Seven months after mama and daddy married, mama became pregnant and kept it a secret from her parents back home at Nash, Oklahoma. She did not want to cause them any concern and wanted to surprise them with their first grandchild too. They went as far as to take pictures of her early in her pregnancy to send to her parents later to cover their surprise. She always enjoyed the fact that Grandpa and Grandma Clover thought her sister, Myrtle, would have their first grand child, when in fact, she was six months ahead of her. Willis was born on August 10th, 1926 at the Storks Nest Hospital in Tucson, AZ. Uncle Jesse was courting Aunt Louella Daum and spent as much time as he could with her when he really should have been on the water route. This placed a burden on the delivery of the water and hurt business. Daddy and mama stayed another few months after Willis was born and decided to move back to Oklahoma. They sold their share of the water company to daddy's brother, Walter. 
The old Oldsmobile car had some breakdowns that daddy repaired. They broke down near a little gas station in the little town of Gage close to Las Cruses, NM (Gage, NM is nonexistent now) This time, daddy could not make the repair. He needed a major car part. The station manager called Silver City to order the part and was assured it would arrive in two days. The manager gave them permission to camp out behind the station. Mama cooked bacon and eggs in an old cast iron skillet over a fire contained by the two bricks she brought along. Daddy had to admit she had a great idea when she brought the bricks and food. In the evening's daddy played his violin to while away the time and to help calm Willis down. Two days later, the car part arrived as promised, but the cost was more than daddy had. The station owner had listened to daddy play the violin and enjoyed it so much he offered to buy dad's beloved instrument for payment for the car parts, with the promise he would sell it back when daddy got home and back on his feet. Daddy had no other choice, so the offer was accepted. Daddy repaired the car and the three of them made the rest of the journey to his parents, John R and Emma Caywood's home. He never retrieved the violin. Daddy and mama lived with both sets of parents John R. and Emma Caywood of Sand Creek and Philip and Ellen Clover who lived near Hawley until daddy found work for a farmer NE of Nash, OK. The farm was called the Gibson place. They later moved to the Otto Weischold place just north of there I was born there on Jan 23,1931. Willis was four and one half years old at that time. In 1932 they rented a farm near Sand creek called the Thornhill place. The Clover's and the Caywood's gave them a cow, some chickens and pair of horses. Lila was born Dec 22,1932 on the Thornhill place just less than two years after I was born. We lived there until 1934 when we moved to the farm east of Grandpa Caywood. Willis was 8 and I was 3 years old. Lila was just less than 2 years. Daddy's brother, Charley, was farming the east half of my grandfather Caywood's farm and was $300.00 in debt. He wanted to move on so daddy and mama decided to take over the farm and pay off the debt. Times were very hard and $300 was a lot of money back then, especially with such meager profit returns of the sandy farm. We three children stayed at our grandparents while mama and daddy prepared to move to a spot on the Caywood place in 1934. I was too young to remember a lot at this time, but I do remember feeling homesick and bewildered at what was taking place. The first memory I had of the move was when mama was at the reins of the two horses, Kate and Tom. We had just turned into the long sandy drive way and the wheels caught in a soft spot. The horses balked and tugged to pull the old lumber wagon through. Mama snapped the reins and told the horses to gitty up. After a struggle they made it through the sandy spot. We three kids were sitting on a loose board across the back end of the wagon. It slipped and really scared me. Willis held Lila in his lap as she was only eighteen months old. When we entered the house I can still hear the echoes of two teakettles whistling on the little two foot tall flat bed stove. One tea kettle was an enameled tan one with green trim and the other was a gray mottled one. I was very sad and wanted to go back to our other home near Sand creek. Our home was made up of two new prefab turkey brooders that were purchased from a mail order catalog by grandpa Caywood. . They were set a few feet apart so the center could be roofed and the front and back sided and made into a third room. The walls were white washed to make it more like a real home. The house was set about a fourth mile off of the main road. Highway 11 was about a half mile to our south with a pasture in between. There were just two or three trees in a field to our northwest. Daddy with the help of Harry Terrill built our new two room house while we lived in the brooders. Then the "house" we lived in was turned back to what it was supposed to be. Chicken houses. One room of the new house served as a kitchen, dining and living room and the other a bedroom for the 5 of us. Another big room as added soon after... then two more later on. Life on the farm before electricity... We got our water from a pitcher pump outside of our house. There was a water pail with a "community" dipper and a wash pan nearby for drinking water and "washing up". I always drank from the dipper near the handle hoping no one else did. I did the same thing at our little one room country school. We first cooked our meals on a little wood stove until we got a big wood cook stove, then in the early 1940's we got a new fangled kerosene stove with four burners. It was much easier to gauge the heat for cooking and baking, but mama swore the food did not taste near as good as that cooked on the old wood stove. Mama washed clothes on the "board" I still can hear her saying "if you youngins' knew how hard it is to get your clothes clean, you would not get them so dirty " We used "sad" irons that heated on the cook stove. Mama would lick her finger and lightly tap the bottom of the iron to see if it was ready to iron clothes. If it did not sizzle, it was not ready yet. If it was too hot one would scorch the whites. We used three kerosene lamps to light the rooms of our house. My job was to fill the lamps from the spigot of the kerosene barrel outside. I despised the job and the smell of kerosene. UGH ! We also had wood burning heating stoves , those that you burned the side of you nearest the stove and froze the opposite side. Our floors that were not wood, had linoleum coverings. Hopping out of bed on a cold winter morning was not a fun thing to do. No one liked getting out of bed from your nice warm feather tick mattress, with quilts so high on top of us we could barely breathe from their weight. Sometimes we added newspapers between the layers to hold more body heat. We had no indoor bathrooms, so baths were taken in a galvanized wash tub. Water was from the pump outside and warmed by hot water from our two teakettles. During the winter months, we bathed near a stove. We had a toilet with a path out back of the house. Mama and daddy used coffee cans at night that was stored under the bed and dumped each morning. They were tossed away as soon as a new can of coffee was used. We didn't have the luxury of an enameled pot as some of our neighbors had. My parents got electricity in 1951, after I left home. For me, those olden days are just great memories, not the way I want to live today Good old days ?? Nah, I'll just take the Central heat and air, and all of the new appliances over those olden days any day. Lois Caywood Guffy 
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Created December 21, 2020
Updated: 13 June, 2021
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