The following true story was related to me by my great-uncle, Roy Rains. I have been trying to put his memoirs into a book, but for now, they will be blog posts! I have started a blog just for his stories, and it needs some followers! www.sharecropperslife.blogspot.com
"In 1939, when I was 9 years old, we moved to the "Pugh Place," less than a mile north from where I live today. We called it the Pugh Place because a man named Mr. Pugh owned it. He lived in Muskogee and worked at the Federal Court House.
My dad didn't own any land of his own at the time, but he loved to farm, and the Pugh Place had 130 acres. This was 50 acres more than what we farmed before, back at the Rains' place where I was born. I guess Dad figured that his kids were getting bigger, and could handle 50 more acres.
Mr. Pugh came down twice per year - when the strawberries were ripe, because we had a beautiful strawberry patch, and when we started picking cotton, because ¼ of the cotton would be his, and 1/3 of the grain would be his. As a sharecropper, my dad would sell the cotton, and give the landlord ¼ of what the cotton brought. When we gathered the grain, we would take 10 rows and leave 5 for the landlord, all the way across the field. This was how we paid the rent for the house and land.
My dad would always call his landlord, and tell him to come and look at the field to make sure Dad had left him his third. I remember once when the landlord came down, I walked out to the field with him and Dad to count the rows. After Mr. Pugh finished counting, he said, “That’s exactly the way it's supposed to be.”
And if you knew my dad, you would know that’s the only way it was going to be. I don’t remember the landlord ever coming back to count the corn again. He knew my dad was an honest man and would give him what he had coming."
Life Lesson: Treat others the way you would want to be treated.
Honesty - Earning future trust by accurately reporting past facts.
