The 1899 tax ledger reads that James W. Roper was living at number 825 Johnson TWP. I believe that due to the growth of the county that boundaries were moved and re-named. I would later discover that the Ropers lived on a plantation of about 60 acres and could have possibly been leasing the land. "But Shucks," that would take the romance out of Betty Mae's stories if I only believed sixty acres instead of six thousand. Who knows, maybe the county assessor miscounted a few acres. Back To Ralph A couple of things that bother me today is; how magnificent is a sixty acre plantation and where would you house hundreds of field hands that took care of that plantation and where would you fit them between all those mules, cows and hogs; and still have enough room to grow cotton? The evening that Ralph gave me the pictures I asked him where Mae's plantation was. He told me it was some where in the Ozarks and doubted very much that it was a plantation of any size. He also assured me that it did not belong to her father's side of her family, but could have belonged to her grandfather. "Well," said I, Where did they grow all that cotton that made them so wealthy?" "Any fool knows you have to grow it out in the field." "How do you know she was telling the truth gramps?" "Well. . ." Mae said there were at least three hundred and possibly more field hands that her daddy had to watch like a hawk to keep them all working so that the cotton was ready at picking time. "You know gramps, something's wrong here with her story." "Why, I can't think of what it might be, unless you consider her daddy was a railroad man all his life." "First off this is starting to sound like a scene out of the movie, 'Gone with the Wind." "Listen Jim, are you saying your grandmother would lie?" "Well no, I'm not, but where was the plantation if it was so small like you said?" "I'll tell you when you find it, but just remember you can stretch a rubber band all the way to the end before it breaks." "What the heck does that mean?" "It means that if two people are pulling on a rubber band and they pull too hard, one of them is going to get smacked on the finger, usually the innocent one." "Why don't you just tell me not to believe her stories instead of talking in circles?" "Because it wouldn't be as much fun if I couldn't watch you go through life holding your finger." "Gramps, I give up." "Guess you better or you'll be as crazy as she was." "Well I'm still the gr-gr-grandson of an Army General." "Mabel, Mabel, come quick and bring some ice, your grandson has a touch of sun stroke, he believes Mae Brown was raised on a cotton plantation and the off spring of a Confederate General." And that's the way it always went when Ralph and I started talking man to man on his front porch when I went to visit Mabel in later life, I still wasn't visiting Ralph, that would come later. On Another Visit Talking to Ralph was like having a mosquito bite on your arm that you had to keep scratching until it bled, you didn't want to scratch, but you just couldn't stop until it started bleeding. On another visit we were sitting on Ralph's front porch when I asked innocently: "Gramps, if Betty Mae was so crazy like you say, why did you marry her?" "Because I was young and full of manly vigor and a fine figure of a man and she was the prettiest young lady in the county, maybe in the whole state." "Young? You've always been an old goat, why would the prettiest girl in the county want you?" "Now do you see what I've been telling you all your life? You never see what's in front of your own nose." "What the heck are you talking about now?" "When Mae and I got married, your old granddad had many young female hearts fluttering to the point that their knees wobbled and the sweat broke out in buckets." "You mean you met her in a cotton field during picking time?"