During my formative years we were poor, as were most rural families back then; so dad made almost everything he needed with which to make a living. He made his own river boats from pine boards, twenty feet long, that he hand-picked from the lumber yard in Bonham, Texas. The boat’s flooring was pine, tongue and groove, flooring like you would put in a house. Dad tarred the seams “To keep Red Riverfrom seeping into my boat,” he said. With his boats we would ply up and down the "Ole Red" in search of deep water holes where he could place his nets and trotlines. During the long winter months, he trapped for fur-bearing animals and hunted geese and ducks. He always gathered dogwood, which he deemed suitable for the hoops of his nets, any time he found suitable dogwood poles. When the weather was unsuitable for outdoor activity dad worked in our living room, by the "New fangled coal oil heater" as he called it, tying long hoop nets from cotton twine.
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Dad's favorite chore — if you could call it that — was fishing and making nets to catch big catfish from Red River. My duty was tying the webbing for the nets, while Dad constructed matching sets of beautiful dogwood hoops from our hand picked dogwood. Dogwood, as
a building material, somehow captured my admiration and awe. I guess because we used it for so many things around our farm and fish camp. The dogwood hoops, among other things, became toys that we threw and "wheelie jigs" that we rolled down sandy lanes. The longest of the branches dad used to construct garden trellises for the climbing butterbeans and tomatoes. As a young child, I was right beside dad in all of his doings. I was the older of two boys, so it "fell my lot" to accompany dad. My younger brother's lot was: "Stay home and take care of your mother." I helped him build boats and net-hoops, carve net needles and blocks for gauging the size of the mesh in our nets. I was right beside him in everything he did. I remember going on excursions up and down Red River in search of dogwood suitable for net hoops. How we passed so many sandbars with acres of willow, that I thought would be perfect for net hoops. Dad would say, "That durn willer won't last but one season submerged in Ole Red." Dad always held out for
