Road Trip, vol. 3

January 11, 1933 The next morning the man who owned the place came over to do his chores at his barn, and seemed rather surprised to find us there; but he made us feel very welcome anyway. We had a flat tire that morning, and he even offered us the use of his car to take it to a filling station a mile away to have it fixed. He had a small herd of cows there, and while he thought they were quite good-sized, we thought they were very tiny indeed. I doubt if any of them weighed much over 600 pounds if they weighed that much. Apparently, he had to buy all their feed, and also he never kept them in at night.

Later we went into Hot Springs to look around a little and buy a tire. While we were walking around, we were seperated, and had quite a time finding each other again. We didn't get started from Hot Springs until almost ten o'clock. We saw a few high hills later that morning, but we soon descended into the cotton country. Later we entered more or less of a swampy country. In one place they must have had a very heavy rain, because the water level in the swamp had evidently risen a few feet. At Fulton we had to cross the Red River by a toll bridge. The river seemed to be aptly named because it had a very red color.

We entered Texas at about 3 o'clock that afternoon. By that evening we had reached Greenville. The country that we had been passing through was mainly a plains country. We saw a good many negroes throughout the day. Most of them lived in rather squalid shacks, and apparently were in rather poor financial conditions.

It had been rather cold weather that day so we decided to drive all night as long as we were passing through plains country, anyway.