The Turnbo Manuscripts

by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925


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ASHAMED OF HIS PANTS
By S. C. Turnbo

The following brief but amusing story was told me by Dick Drake an old timer of St. Clair County, Mo. but who has lived many years near Pro-tem in Taney County. "When I was 7 years old or in 1844 and while my parents, Jefferson and Millie Drake lived on the south side of the Osage River 7 miles below Oceola in St. Clair County my mother made the first pair of pants for me. I had been going in my shirt tail winter and summer ever since I could walk and when my mother made me the pants and put them on me I did not feel right and begged her to let me pull them off and she gave her consent. One day soon after she had made the pants mother was attacked with a severe pain in her jaw bone and teeth similar to neuralgia and my father went after Doctor Shinner who was our family physician. Before the arrival of the doctor my mother called me into the house and put my pants on me, saying "You must look nice when the doctor comes". I thought I would try to but I had went in my shirt tail so long that I felt ashamed of them and when I saw my father and the doctor coming I run into a tobacco patch that was in front of the door and hid myself from view. But when the men had went into the house I crept out of the tobacco and went around and got into the kitchen and changed my pants off for my long tailed shirt that was made of flax tow, and I felt at home now and went into the house where my father and mother and the doctor were without feeling the least embarrassed."

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