Becoming a BIG Farmer

About 1920 Oscar bought a 40 acre farm of his own one-quarter mile north of the Arkansas Missouri state line. It was only about five miles away "as the crow flies" from the area in Arkansas where his family and his wife's family had both settled just a few years earlier.

There farming with mules and horses walking mile upon dusty mile along row after row in the soft fertile soil with the reins tied together and hung around his neck while guiding the plow or cultivator around the tender young plants he began raising his favorite crop ... watermelons.

His farm lay on the edge of a sandy ridge that crossed the community known as Buncombe located in Ripley County about 5 miles south of Naylor, Missouri. Starting with a two room house already too small for his growing family, Oscar soon built a new house with four rooms downstairs and additional bedroom space upstairs.

It wasn't long before he added more land ... and they had more children. And he set about to be able to give each of his children a forty acre farm (actually giving them 80 acres each several years later). Eventually he had fields containing hundreds of acres with individual rows that stretched out one mile long. His dream of becoming a big farmer had come true.

By 1934 he had bought his first automobile, a Model T Ford. But he never learned to drive a car, nor even any of the farm tractors or trucks that he owned, because his eyesight was never fully recovered despite extensive treatments.

2011-03-11 21:48:05 Baxter

See additional information on the Individual Data Info Page for William Oscar Attebery.