white folks would come down to the branch and watch me run the little
toy mill. I used to make toy rifles and pistols and all sorts of nice
playthings out of that soapstone. I wish I had a piece of that good old
soapstone from around Franklin, so I could carve some toys like I used
to play with for my boy."

"We caught real salmon in the mountain streams," John remarked. "They
weighed from 3 to 25 pounds, and kind of favored a jack fish, only jack
fishes have duck bills, and these salmon had saw teeth. They were
powerful jumpers and when you hooked one you had a fight on your hands
to get it to the bank no matter whether it weighed 3 or 25 pounds. The
gamest of all the fish in those mountain streams were red horses. When I
was about 9 or 10 years old I took my brother's fish gig and went off
down to the river. I saw what looked like the shadow of a stick in the
clear water and when I thrust the gig at it I found mighty quick I had
gigged a red horse. I did my best to land it but it was too strong for
me and pulled loose from my gig and darted out into deep water. I ran
fast as I could up the river bank to the horseshoe bend where a flat
bottom boat belonging to our family was tied. I got in that boat and
chased that fish 'til I got him. It weighed 6 pounds and was 2 feet and
6 inches long. There was plenty of excitement created around that
plantation when the news got around that a boy, as little as I was then,
had landed such a big old fighting fish."

"Suckers were plentiful and easy to catch but they did not give you the
battle that a salmon or a red horse could put up and that was what it
took to make fishing fun. We had canoes, but we used a plain old flat
boat, a good deal like a small ferry boat, most of the time. There was
about the same difference in a canoe and a flat boat that there is in a
nice passenger automobile and a truck."

When asked if he remembered any of the tunes and words of the songs he
sang as a child, John was silent for a few moments and then began to
sing:

"A frog went courtin'
And he did ride
Uh hunh
With a sword and pistol
By his side
Uh hunh.

"Old uncle Rat laughed,
Shook his old fat side;
He thought his niece
Was going to be the bride.
Uh hunh, uh hunh

"Where shall the wedding be?
Uh hunh
Where shall the wedding be?
Uh hunh

"Way down yonder
In a hollow gum tree.
Uh hunh, un hunh, uh hunh.

"Who shall