me size, I started at it.
I farmed all my life. While I could work, things was pretty good. Wisht
I was on a farm now. Even when I'm 'round here sick, I can git these
potatoes raised with a little help from the neighbors.

"I don't belong to church. I oughter, but I don't. Then again, I figure
that a man can be just as good out of it as he can in it. I've got good
desires, but I never confessed to the public.

"I have had three hundred dollars worth of stuff stolen from me.
Everything I produced is stolen from me because I have no way to protect
myself. What I raise if I don't get shet of it right away, the people
get shet of it for me. I had eighty head of chickens in the barn out
there runnin' 'round. When I got sick and was in the bed and couldn't
help myself, the chickens went. In the daytime, they would fix traps and
jerk a string and pull a board down on them and then go out in the weeds
and get them. I never reported nothin' to the police. I wasn't able to
report nothing. I was just batching, and now and then people would come
in and report them to me. They would wait till they saw somebody come
in and when they saw that I was talking and wouldn't notice them, they
would steal anything they wanted. The police came by here and ran them
once. But that didn't do no good.

"Once somebody stole an automatic shotgun. They stole a colt one time.
They stole all my clothes and pawned them to a whiskey dealer. He got
sent to the pen for selling whiskey, but I didn't get my clothes.
They come in the yard and steal my potatoes, collards, turnips, ochre
(okra?), and so on. I lay there in the bed and see them, but I can't
stop them. All I can do is to holler, 'You better go on and let them
things alone.' Ever since the last war, I haven't been able to work. I
am bare-feeted and naked now on account of not bein' able to support
myself.

"I just come out of the hospital. I been too sick even to work in my
garden. After I come home I taken a backset[TR: ?] but I am still
staying here. I am just here on the mercies of the people. I don't
get nothing but what the people give me. I don't get no moddities nor
nothin' from the Government.

"I ain't never been able to get no help from the Government. Long time
ago, I went down to the place and asked for help and they told me that
since I was alone, I oughta be able to help myself. They gimme a ticket
for twenty meals and told me by the time I ate them up, they might have
somethin