brutes. The
world is wickeder than it ever has been before.

"The young people today! I'd hate to tell you what I do think of them.
The business is going to fall."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Casper Rumple, De Valls Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 78

"I will be, providin' the good Lord spare me, 79 years old the first day
of January. I was born in Lawrence County, South Carolina. The Big road
was the dividing line between that and Edgefield County. My mother
belonged to John Griffin. His wife named Rebecca. My father was a
Irishman. Course he was a white man--Irishman. Show I did know him. He
didn't own no slaves. I don't guess he have any land. He was a overseer
in Edgefield County. His name was Ephraim Rumple. What become of him?
He went off to fight the Yankees and took Malaria fever and died on Red
River. I could show you bout where he died.

"My mother had a big family. I can't tell you much bout them. I was the
youngest. She cooked up at John Griffins. He was a old man and the land
was all his wife's. She was old too. She had some grown girls. He had
no children. They called him Pa and I did too. I stayed round with him
nearly all the time helping him.

"He had a room and she had a room. I slept on a bed--little
bed--home-made bed--in the room wid him and she slept in the room with
her two girls and my mother slept in the kitchen a whole heap so she
be there to get breakfast early. They riz early every mornin'. John
Griffins wife owned four plantations more than 160 acres in each one,
but I couldn't say how much.

"My mother was a field hand in busy times too. Miss Rebecca had all the
slaves clothes made. She seed to that. She go to the city, Augusta, and
bring back bolts cloth. One slave sewed for Miss Rebecca and her family.
She didn't do all the sewing but she sewed all the time. One woman done
all the weavin'. At night after they work in the field Miss Rebecca give
em tasks--so many bats to card or so much spinnin' to do.

"Master John didn't want em to work at night but she made em work all
the same. They b'long to her. Another thing the women had to do was work
in the garden. It was a three acre garden. They always had plenty in
thar. Had it palinged so the young chickens couldn't squeeze through the
cracks.

"They had plenty stock and made all the fertilizer needed in the garden
and patches. They had goober patch, popcorn patch, sorghum patches,
several of em, pea patche