rnin' and God
bless you, will be my prayer always. Has you got a dime to give dis old
nigger, boss?"

Project #1655
Mrs. Genevieve W. Chandler
Murrells Inlet, S. C.
Georgetown County

MOM HAGAR
(Verbatim Conversation)

Mom Hagar Brown lives in her little weathered cabin on forty odd acres
left by her husband, Caleb Brown. Caleb died in Georgia where he had
been sent to the penitentiary for stealing a hog that another man stole.
Aunt Hagar has grands settled all around her and she and the grands
divide up the acreage which is planted in corn, sweet potatoes, cotton,
and some highland rice. She ministers to them all when sick, acts as
mid-wife when necessary, and divides her all with her kin and
friends--white and black. She wages a war on ground-moles, at which she
laughs and says she resembles. Ground-mole beans almost a foot long
protect and decorate her yard. She has apple and fig trees, and
scuppernong grape vines grow rank and try to climb all her trees.

(Monday morning she hobbles up on a stick--limping and looking sick.)
Comes in kitchen door.

Lillie: "Aunt Hagar, how you?"

Hagar: "Painful. Doctor tell me I got the tonsil. Want to represent me
one time and take them out. I say, 'No Doctor! Get in hospital, can't
get out! Let me stay here till my change come.' Yeddy? I ain't wuth!
Ain't wuth! Ain't got a piece o' sense. Yeddy? Ellen say she want God to
take she tomorrow? When you ready it's 'God take me now! All right
son!" (Greeting Zackie who enters kitchen.)

Zackie: "Aunt Hagar, how you feel?"

Hagar: "I ain't wuth son. How's all?"

Zackie: "Need a little more grits!"

Lillie: "Hear Zackie! Mom Hagar, that ain't hinder him ordering
another!" (The fact that food is scarce doesn't limit Zackie's family.)

Hagar: "You hear bout this Jeremiah broke in somewhere--get all kinds
likker and canned things and different thing?"

Zackie: "Must a broke in that place call 'Stumble Inn!' (Very
seriously.) That Revenue man been there."

Hagar: "I yeddy last night! Say he there in news-paper. Mary say, 'see
'em in paper!' Mrs. White gone to child funeral. That been in paper too.
Mary see that in paper. Easter say old lady gone dere. Doctor say better
go. Child sick. Child seven years old. Fore they get there tell 'em say,
'Child dead!'

"People gone in patch to pick watermillon. Ain't want child to go. You
know chillun! Child gone in. Ain't want 'em for go. You know. Child pick
wate