asked my father all about him and my mother marrying. He said he knowed
her 'bout two year 'fore they married. They sorter courted by signs--my
mother learned me her language and it was natural fur me to speak my
father's tongue. I talked for them. She was bout fifteen when she run
away. I don't know if a preacher ever did marry em or not. My father
said she was just so pretty he couldn't help lovin' her. He kept makin'
signs and she made signs. I liked my Gramma Gamage. She couldn't
understand much. We all went to the Indian Territory from Florida and
Georgia. That's how I come out here.

I don't remember the Ku Klux. I remember hearing ma and gramma talk
'bout the way they tried to get way from 'em. My father was a farmer
till freedom. He farmed around here and at Pine Bluff. He died at West
Point. My mother and step-mother both died at Pine Bluff. They took my
mother to her nation in Oklahoma. She was sick a good while and they
took her to wait on her. Then come and took her after she died. There
show is a fambly. My father had twenty-two in his fambly. My mother
had five boys and three girls and me. My stepmother had fourteen more
children. That's some fambly aint it? All my brothers and sisters died
when I was little and they was little. My father's other children jess
somewhar down round Pine Bluff. I guess I'd know em but I aint seed none
of them in I don't know how long.

The first work I ever done was sawmilling at Pine Bluff. Then I went
down in Louziana, still sawmilling--I followed dat trade five or six
years. Den I got to railroading. I was puttin down cross ties and layin'
steel. I got to be straw boss at dat. I worked at dat fifteen years. I
worked doing that in six different states. That was show fine livin'--we
carried our train right along to live in. I married and went to farming.
Then I come to work at this oil mill here (in Des Arc). The reason I
quit. I didn't quit till it went down and moved off. I aint had nothin'
much to do since. I been carryin' water and wood fur Mrs. Norfleet
twenty years and they cooks fur me now. My wife died 'bout a year ago.
She been dead a year last January. She was sick a long time 'fore she
died. Well the relief gives me a little to eat, some clothes and I gets
$5.00 a month and I takes it and buys my groceries and I takes it up to
Mrs. Norfleet's. They says come there and eat. They show is good to me
'cept I aint able to carry the wood up the steps much no more. It h