 Within a few years he owned his own mules, a truck, and a car (all of them paid for, he was very proud to note) and had electricity and plumbing in his house.All of those distinctions distanced him from most black men and many poor white farmers in his vicinity.Although uneducated and illiterate, he was innately intelligent, and avoided the sharecroppers' commonly hopeless cycle of debt and poverty by his abilities to innovate in agriculture and to avoid many of the mistakes of others.