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gainsay him.
    Fortunately, after a few weeks of meat and gravy and the like, and when scurvy seemed actually imminent, he was persuaded to adopt a more sensible course. The result was a new entrance to the cellar through the kitchen floor, a new door and new stairs—and complete physical exhaustion for my cousins and me. For Newt, naturally, did not lift a finger on the job. He was one of the three foremen—Pa and Bob being the other two. And so well did they handle their duties, we were hardly able to stir from our beds for a week.
    The one last piece of orneriness which my cousins and I collaborated in almost got us all killed. It came about after much reading and discussion of the literature of parachuting, an art then in its infancy.
    Mom and we kids were preparing to join Pop in Oklahoma, and the various connections of the family had gathered at Newt’s house for a farewell Sunday dinner. When the meal was over, my cousins and I slipped out to the barn loft where, earlier, we had concealed three bed sheets and a length of clothesline rope. In no time at all we had parachutes—I don’t know what else to call them—tied to our shoulders, and were ascending the sixty-foot tower of the cow lot windmill.
    It was a cold, windy fall day. Shivering, I looked at the stock tank adjacent to the mill, studied the four-foot depth of water which was supposed to “break” our fall. Shivering, a little sick at my stomach, I wanted to withdraw. But my colleagues jeered me hideously. At one and the same time, they swore that I was a damned cowardly calf and a mighty brave kiddo. So up the tower I went.
    My cousins followed me, goosing and punching one another. Arrived at the top, they ordered me to move around the platform to make room for them. I tried to, but the platform was small. The only way I could hang on was by reaching up and grasping the direction-arm of the windmill fan.
    The action coincided with a sudden, sharp gust of wind, and this, with my weight, resulted in disengaging the locking device. Before I knew what was happening, the mill had begun to spin and I was swung out into space, jerked and flung first one way then another.
    My cousins ducked and cursed frantically as my flailing feet almost knocked them from their perch. Shouting at me to “drop in the tank, dammit,” they both tried to scramble down the ladder at the same time. Neither would give way to the other, and they jammed there, tangled in a mass of sheets and clothesline. I continued to swing this way and that, screaming, my eyes clenched tightly.
    The back door of the house opened and people streamed out.
    Pa, Newt and Bob were in the vanguard—the first two waving their canes, Bob brandishing a long hickory ferrule which he was seldom without and usually found use for. Behind this trio came one of my aunts, carrying a buggy whip, another equipped with a piece of harness strap, and Mom and Ma armed with switches, a plentiful supply of which was always kept around the house.
    They might not know how to get us down from the tower, as soon became apparent. But they had plans for us, obviously, when we did get down. All my mother’s family were like that, and yet they were warmhearted, children-loving people, too. It was simply second nature with them to attack every situation with acid words on their lips and a weapon in their hands.
    Gathered around the base of the tower, around the tank, they shouted up incoherent directions and threats. Mom tried to climb up after me and was dragged back. Pa and Newt gave the wooden uprights a severe caning.
    Above the turmoil there suddenly came the sound of splintering wood, and the step to which my cousins were clinging gave way. They went plummeting down into the tank, landing squarely on their backs. The water rose out of the vessel and descended upon the waiting posse. The latter, cursing and screaming according to sex, latched on to the two youths and proceeded, as the saying was, to tan their hides.
    This