d. That's too far back for me.

"My mother and father had nine children. I have only one sister living.
All the others done gone to heaven but me and her.

"My mother and father lived in a log cabin. They had one-legged beds
nailed to the wall. They had benches and boxes and blocks and all sich
as that for chairs. My daddy made the table we used. He made them
one-legged beds too. They kept the food in boxes and gourds. They had
these big gourds. They could cut holes in the top of them and put things
in them. My mammy had a lot of 'em and they were nice and clean too.
Wisht I had one of them now.

"Some folks didn't have that good. We had trundle beds for the children
that would run under the big bed when they wasn't sleeping in it. We
made a straw mattress. You know the white folks weren't goin' to let 'em
use cotton, and they didn't have no chickens to git feathers from; so
they had to use straw. Oh, they had a hard time I'm tellin' you. My
mother pulled greens out of the garden and field, and cured it up for
the mattress.

"For rations, we'd eat onions and vegetables. We et what was raised.
You know they didn't have nothin' then 'cept what they raised. All the
cookin' was done at one house, but there was two cooks, one for the
colored folks and one for the white folks. My grandma cooked for the
white people. They cooked in those big old washpots for the colored
people. We all thought we had a pretty good master.

"We didn't know nothin' about a master.

"I ain't positive what time the hands ate breakfast. I know they et it
and I know they et at the same time and place. I think they et after
sunrise. They didn't have to eat before sunrise.

"When they fed the children, they cook the food and put it in a great
big old tray concern and called up the children, 'Piggee-e-e-e-e,
piggee-e-e-e-e.' My cousin was the one had to go out and call the
children; and you could see them runnin' up from every which way, little
shirt tails flyin' and hair sticking out. Then they would pour the food
out in different vessels till the children could git around them with
those muscle-shell spoons. Many of them as could get 'round a vessel
would eat out of it and when they finished that one, they'd go to
another one, and then to another one till they all got fed.

"My master worked seventy hands they said. He had two colored overseers
and one white one. He didn't allow them overseers to whip and slash
them niggers. They had to whip