as good and mad. Master was good
and mad, too, and he warned 'em home.

"Whip your own slaves." He told them. "Mine have to work and if
they're beat up they can't do a days work. Get on home--I'll take care
of this." And they left.

My folks didn't have no food troubles at Mark Lowery's like they did
somewheres else. I remember mammy told me about one master who almost
starved his slaves. Mighty stingy I reckon he was.

Some of them slaves was so poorly thin they ribs would kinder rustle
against each other like corn stalks a-drying in the hot winds. But
they gets even one hog-killing time, and it was funny too, mammy said.

They was seven hogs, fat and ready for fall hog-killing time. Just the
day before old master told off they was to be killed something
happened to all them porkers. One of the field boys found them and
come a-telling the master: "The hogs is all died, now they won't be
any meats for the winter."

When the master gets to where at the hogs is laying, they's a lot of
Negroes standing round looking sorrow-eyed at the wasted meat. The
master asks: "What's the illness with 'em?"

"Malitis." They tell him, and they acts like they don't want to touch
the hogs. Master says to dress them anyway for they ain't no more meat
on the place.

He says to keep all the meat for the slave families, but that's
because he's afraid to eat it hisself account of the hogs' got
malitis.

"Don't you-all know what is malitis?" Mammy would ask the children
when she was telling of the seven fat hogs and seventy lean slaves.
And she would laugh, remembering how they fooled the old master so's
to get all them good meats.

"One of the strongest Negroes got up early in the morning," Mammy
would explain, "long 'fore the rising horn called the slaves from
their cabins. He skitted to the hog pen with a heavy mallet in his
hand. When he tapped Mister Hog 'tween the eyes with that mallet
'malitis' set in mighty quick, but it was a uncommon 'disease', even
with hungry Negroes around all the time."

Mammy had me three sisters and a brother while on the Lowery
plantation. They was Lisa, Addie, Alice and Lincoln. It was a long
time after the War and we was all freed before we left old Master
Lowery.

Stayed right there where we was at home, working in the fields, living
in the same old cabins, just like before the War. Never did have no
big troubles after the War, except one time the Ku Klux Klan broke up
a church meeting and wh