amazing how much they resembled people.
We were very careful when we went around the stills. We did not want to get caught there.
Sometimes the law would find the still and hide in the woods until the owner came to it. They would run out on them, try to prove it was theirs, and take them to jail. To throw them off us and to keep them from trying to make us tell whose it was, when we walked up to a still we acted like the law was watching us.
Once we got in sight we began talking real loud like we were excited, to make sure they could hear us.
One of us would ask the others what in the world is this? The answer was I don't know, looks like someone lives here. Another one would say, no, it's not a house, but there's a stove where they have been cooking.
We would really look the place over. Once we decided there was no one out there we would carry on with what we came for. We never once got the owner into trouble or caused him any damage.
During the summer, when school was out, the three of us boys pretty well lived at the river.
We only put our clothes on when we had to go to the house for something. Mother would check on us every few days to see if we were okay.
At times, we would pile some camping gear into a boat, get in with it, and just let the boat drift down the river for weeks at a time. We stopped to cook a fish from time to time.
We caught all our own food. There were lots of bullfrogs. We would stop and put our dog out for a rabbit to eat. We were in no hurry, for we had no place to go. If we met someone coming up the river, we would ask them to stop by our house and tell Mother where we were and we were okay
I don't know anyone person that has enjoyed life in Sulphur River Bottoms more than I. I know the Bottoms like most people do their backyard. There has been times that I knew where every fish for miles along the river lived and what time of day he was at home. I had some of them named. We had no use for them, only to eat, but we would play with them.
There was no money in the country If a man wanted a fish, he caught it. You could not sell fish very well.
Smokey is pictured here standing beside his younger sister, Melba. Brothers Buddy and Harold kneel by Smokey's faithful dog "Old Sputter."
Chapter Six
Time rolled on. Three of my four sisters got married and moved out on their own. I got big enough to work for money
I hired out to the cotton farmers. I helped chop the grass out of the cotton, when it was starting its growth. After the cotton reached maturity I helped pick it.
With this money I bought school clothing first. Then I bought a .22 rifle, steel traps, and things I had never been able to have before, with what was left.
The first real job I ever had was for a sawmill man. His name was Charlie Williamson. He was a big jolly man. He loved children and had a lot of respect for us three boys. He talked to me and treated me like he did the grown men who worked for him.
At the mill, there was a long chain with little cups on it. It ran in a conveyor like form, carrying the sawdust away from the mill. The sawdust would pile up at the end of the chains where the drags were emptying the dust.
My job was to keep the sawdust spread and keep sticks from getting in the chains and shutting the sawmill down.
He called it doodling dust. I was paid a dollar a day I really got into the big money. I was very proud of my job and worked very hard for him. When school started I went back to school.
During that year the war with Japan broke out. I was fourteen years old at the time.
When school let out for the summer, I talked Mother into letting me spend a few weeks in Texas with my eldest sister and her husband.
While I was with them the government offered my brother-in-law a real good job in California, working in a shipyard.
They talked Mother into letting me go out there with them and they would pay my way back on the bus.
We packed his old Ford car full of household goods and left out for California, stopping at times to fix us a bite to eat.
We stopped at night, pulled off the road, and put some bedding down on the ground to sleep. Once we reached California, work was plentiful. All three of us got a job at the shipyard. I got on as a messenger boy.
They furnished me with a bicycle to ride and I delivered blueprints and messages all over the shipyard. The shipyard was about four miles from one end to the other, so I got my exercise.
My Mother and sister at home got a good job at the ammunition depot in Texarkana, Texas. We were really in the money then. In a short time we were able to give the forty acre home place back to the man who owned it. We found twenty acres up the road, about four miles toward Fouke. Mother hired some help and they soon had a house built on it.
I liked California and I knew I could be more help to them there, so I kept working. I was going to school at night and working in the daytime.
My being extra small turned out to my advantage, for once in my life. They needed welders badly In the bow of the submarine the welder had to be extra small to get in the tight places. The welding had to be done by experts. I was selected for the job because I was very small. At that time, my weight was 94 or 95 pounds. I received special training eight hours a day for months. I was still being paid like I was working. Before I was sixteen years old I was among the best in the welding field. Despite this, my mind never left Sulphur River and the bottom land for very long at a time.
I got loose from my work when I could and carne back to enjoy the outdoors.
During my welding job at the shipyard and my time in the Merchant Marines, I was also engaged in boxing.
For four years or so, I fought amateur fights only I fought in most all the tournaments on the West Coast.
Smokey Crabtree during his boxing career, 18 years old.
I loved to fight, even as a small boy In California I had a chance to take training from the best. I took the training serious and did real well. I won most all my fights.
After about four years of amateur fights, I was told by the Athletic Commission that I couldn't fight amateur anymore. They said I would be taking advantage of the inexperienced fighters in the amateur tournaments.
I was forced to turn professional or get out of the business. Here came all the cheap and phony managers. They were waiting for this, they came by the dozens.
They didn't want to spend four years of hard work training a fighter It was easier to steal one that someone else had trained.
They would ask me out to dinner, as a rule. Then their line was, "I have been watching you for the last four years. You have got what it takes. I can get you in the big money faster than anyone in the business." They would offer me a deal. I would ask for a few days to think
