go
to him for what you owed him for furnishing you. You never saw how much
cotton was ginned, nor how much he got for it, nor how much it was worth
nor nothing. They would just tell you you wasn't due nothing. They did
that to hold you for another year. You got nothing to move on so you
stay there and take what he gives you.

"Of all the crying you ever heard, one morning we'd got up and the pigs
and hogs in the lot that we had fattened to go on that winter, he was
catching them. After we'd done fattened them with the corn that was
our share, he took 'em and sold 'em. We didn't even know we owed him
anything. We thought the crops had done settled things. Nobody told us
nothin'. All we children cried. The old man and the old woman didn't say
nothing, because they was scared. My mother would get up and go down and
milk the cows and what she'd get for the milking would maybe be a bucket
of buttermilk.

"We'd have a spoonful of black molasses and corn bread and buttermilk
for breakfast. We got flour bread once a week. We would work hard all
the week talkin' 'bout what good biscuits we'd have Sunday morning. Sack
of flour would last two or three months because we wouldn't cook flour
bread only once a week--Saturday night or Sunday morning.

"We had no skillet at that time. We would rake the fireplace and push
the ashes back and then you would put the cake down on the hearth or on
a piece of paper or a leaf and then pull the ashes over the cake to cook
it. Just like you roast a sweet potato. Then when it got done, you would
rake the ashes back and wash the cake and you would eat it. Sometimes
you would strike a little grit or gravel in it and break your teeth. But
then I'm tellin' you the truth about it.

"When our hogs was taken that time, we didn't have nothing to go on that
winter. They would compel us to stay. They would allowance us some meat
and make us split rails and clear up land for it. It was a cinch if he
didn't give it to you you couldn't get nothin'. Wasn't no way to get
nothing. Then when crop time rolled 'round again they would take it all
out of your crops. Make you split rails and wood to earn your meat and
then charge it up to your crop anyhow. But you couldn't do nothin' 'bout
it.

"Sometimes a barrel of molasses would set up in the smokehouse and turn
to sugar. You goin' hungry and molasses wastin'. They was determined not
to give you too much of it.

"I made my way by farming. After I got to be so