youngest is in the hospital for
nervous and mental diseases. She has been there ever since 1927. The
oldest had an arm and four ribs broken in an auto accident last January
on the sixteenth of the month. She didn't get a penny to pay for her
trouble. I remember the man did give her fifteen cents once. The truck
struck her at the alley there and knocked her clean across the street.
She is fifty-seven years old and bones don't knit fast on people that
old. She ain't able to do no work yet. All of my daughters are out of
work. I don't know where the boy is. He is somewheres up North.

Slave Houses

"I have seen some old log houses that they said the slaves used to live
in. I was too young to notice before freedom. I have seen different
specimens of houses that they lived in. One log house had a plank house
builded on to the end of it. The log end was the one lived in during
slavery times and the plank end was built since. That gal there of mine
was born in the log end. There were round log houses and sawed log
houses. The sawed log houses was built out of logs that had been squared
after the tree had been cut down, and the round log houses was built out
of logs left just like they was when they was trees. There's been quite
an improvement in the houses since I was a kid.

Food

"I have heard my father and mother talking among themselves and their
friends, but they never did tell me nothing about slave times. They
never did sit down and talk to me about it. When they'd sit down and
start talkin', it would always be, 'Now you children run on out and play
while we old folks sit here and talk.' But from time to time, I would be
sitting on the floor playing by myself and they would be talking 'mongst
themselves and I would hear them say this or that. But I never heered
them say what they et in slave times.

Work

"My father worked in the juniper swamp in North Carolina, like I told
you. I think I heard my mother say she cooked. Most I ever heard them
say was when they would get with some one else and each would talk about
his master.

Cruelties

"I heard my mother say that her mistress used to take a fork and stick
it in her head--jog it up and down against her head. I don't know how
hard she punched her. My mother was very gray--all her hair was gray and
she wasn't old enough for that. I reckon that was why.

How Freedom Came

"I don't remember how freedom came. They were refugeed--I call it
that--my fa