As the family was going through Amarillo, Texas, Milt went through a red light and ran into a taxi. A policeman pulled him over and asked “Didn’t you see that red light?”, Milt said, “Yeah, purdy ain’t it!” It was the first traffic light he had ever seen and he thought that it was a Christmas decoration.

     At some point in 1936, Milt and Juanita moved to an old house west of Lockney. This house belonged to the Henson family. The wife was a school teacher and the husband was a preacher and they had one little boy who was very spoiled. After the family had lived in the house for a few months, the owners decided that they wanted possession of their house again. The Henson’s moved into two rooms on one side of the home and started remodeling. While they lived in that house, Milt went to Muleshoe and bought a load of watermelons. When he got home with them, he unloaded them next to the house. That night it rained all night and the watermelons floated all down the road. The next morning, the kids were going up and down the road gathering up the watermelons.

     After Milt sold the watermelons, he went to Ruidosa, New Mexico, and bought a load of apples. When he sold the apples, he had $300, a lot of money in those days. Milt and Juanita decided to go into business. They rented a place in Sterley, Texas, with two houses on the lot. The rent was $7.00 per month. They used one building for their business, the “Helpey Selfey Laundry”. The other building of two rooms was the family residence. One room consisted of the kitchen, living room and dining room, and the second room was wall-to-wall beds for this family of six people at the time. However, when Myrtle came to stay for awhile with her new partner, Carl Mullenburg, they somehow managed to squeeze another bed into the room, right in front of the door.

     When the family moved from Lockney to Sterley, around November of 1937, the weather was cold and rainy and all of the children had the chicken pox. The parents fixed a space for them under the table in the back of the truck, with quilts and blankets. They then put all of their belongings on the top and around the table and this is how they made the trip from Lockney to Sterley.

     In Sterley, Milt and Juanita set up a laundry which they operated from 1937 to 1944. They went to Plainview and bought two washing machines on monthly payments. They put in a gasoline burner to heat water for washing and they had three tubs around each machine. Everything drained into a large pipe that ran on top of the floor and out onto the garden. Milt painted a sign and they were in business. They charged 35 cents an hour for washing. The first day that they opened they had a free wash day. Everyone for miles around washed that day so there was very little business the first month of operation. Later, when Myrtle and Carl came to stay, Carl painted a better sign for the business, as he was a professional painter.

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