tossing a ball. I don't
rightly remember much about games, for there wasn't too much fun in
them days even if we did get raised with the Master's family. We
wasn't allowed to learn any reading or writing. They say if they
catched a slave learning them things they'd pull his finger nails off!
I never saw that done, though.

Each slave cabin had a stone fireplace in the end, just like ours, and
over the flames at daybreak was prepared the morning meal. That was
the only meal the field negroes had to cook.

All the other meals was fixed up by an old man and woman who was too
old for field trucking. The peas, the beans, the turnips, the
potatoes, all seasoned up with fat meats and sometimes a ham bone, was
cooked in a big iron kettle and when meal time come they all gathered
around the pot for a-plenty of helpings! Corn bread and buttermilk
made up the rest of the meal.

Ten or fifteen hogs was butchered every fall and the slaves would get
the skins and maybe a ham bone. That was all, except what was mixed in
with the stews. Flour was given out every Sunday morning and if a
family run out of that before the next week, well, they was just out
that's all!

The slaves got small amounts of vegetables from the plantation garden,
but they didn't have any gardens of their own. Everybody took what old
Master rationed out.

Once in a while we had rabbits and fish, but the best dish of all was
the 'possum and sweet potatoes--baked together over red-hot coals in
the fireplace. Now, that was something to eat!

The Lewis plantation was about three hundred acres, with usually fifty
slaves working on the place. Master Lewis was a trader. He couldn't
sell of our family, for we belonged to Mistress Jennie. Negro girls,
the fat ones who was kinder pretty, was the most sold. Folks wanted
them pretty bad but the Mistress said there wasn't going to be any
selling of the girls who was mammy's children.

There was no overseer on our place, just the old Master who did all
the bossing. He wasn't too mean, but I've seen him whip Old John. I'd
run in the house to get away from the sight, but I could still hear
Old John yelling, 'Pray, Master! Oh! Pray, Master!', but I guess that
there was more howling than there was hurting at that.

My uncle Ed Miles run away to the North and joined with Yankees during
the War. He was lucky to get away, for lots of them who tried it was
ketched up by the patrollers. I seen some of them once. They had
chai