A 'Real Good' Story
The R.G. and Onnie Bouchum Scholarship
A truck driver who couldn't read
For many years R.G. supported his family as a truck driver -- a challenge for someone who couldn't read, but he developed strategies to compensate. When he needed help, he stopped and asked for directions. If someone was with him who could read, that person helped him decipher the paperwork that said what should be delivered where, and he had the warehouse workers load the truck in such a way that he could tell where things needed to be delivered.
But when his beloved Onnie died, he could no longer handle his personal affairs, so he took Dorothy's suggestion and decided to learn how to read. He had always been a hard worker, and he approached acquiring these new skills with the same determination. His stories so impressed Brenda Brown, a staff member and one of his tutors at the East Texas Literacy Council, that she helped him compile his memoirs into a book, One Man, One Book.
"With each lesson I found that I learned as much or more from him than he could ever learn from me," Brown writes in the book's introduction.
In the book's first story, "Life on the Newsome Farm," R.G. tells about growing up in East Texas.
When we were living on the Newsome Farm out in Ore City, Daddy was sharecropping -- working on the halves. If he made two bales of cotton, the boss man got one and Daddy got one. That was the usual arrangement for sharecroppers.
For extra money, the kids gathered the eggs and Mama would take them to town … and sell them. She would pack them in a bucket or box lined with cotton seed. She would put a layer of cotton seed in the bottom and then some eggs, layering them all the way to the top.
Most folks don’t know about cotton seed, but my mother sure did. Cotton seed is not so soft, but the seed always had cotton stuck to it and made a nice sized, soft ball about the size of your little fingernail. A lot of cotton seed was perfect for lining the bucket Mama used to take eggs to town.