fraid of the
bones in the little ones.

That skinned corn aint like the boiled hominy we have today. To make
it you boil some wood ashes, or have some drip lye from the hopper to
put in the hot water. Let the corn boil in the lye water until the
skin drops off and the eyes drop out and then wash that corn in fresh
water about a dozen times, or just keep carrying water from the spring
until you are wore out, like I did. Then you put the corn in a crock
and set it in the spring, and you got good skinned corn as long as it
last, all ready to warm up a little batch at a time.

Master had a big, long log kitchen setting away from the house, and we
set a big table for the family first, and when they was gone we
negroes at the house eat at that table too, but we don't use the china
dishes.

The negro cook was Tilda Chisholm. She and my mammy didn't do no
out-work. Aunt Tilda sure could make them corn-dodgers. Us children
would catch her eating her dinner first out of the kettles and when we
say something she say: "Go on child, I jest tasting that dinner."

In the summer we had cotton homespun clothes, and in winter it had
wool mixed in. They was dyed with copperas and wild indigo.

My brother, Johnson Thompson, would get up behind old Master Harnage
on his horse and go with him to hunt squirrels so they would go 'round
on Master's side so's he could shoot them. Master's old mare was named
"Old Willow", and she knowed when to stop and stand real still so he
could shoot.

His children was just all over the place! He had two houses full of
them! I only remember Bell, Ida, Maley, Mary and Will, but they was
plenty more I don't remember.

That old horn blowed 'way before daylight, and all the field negroes
had to be out in the row by the time of sun up. House negroes got up
too, because old Master always up to see everybody get out to work.

Old Master Harnage bought and sold slaves most all the time, and some
of the new negroes always acted up and needed a licking. The worst
ones got beat up good, too! They didn't have no jail to put slaves in
because when the Masters got done licking them they didn't need no
jail.

My husband was George Petite. He tell me his mammy was sold away from
him when he was a little boy. He looked down a long lane after her
just as long as he could see her, and cried after her. He went down to
the big road and set down by his mammy's barefooted tracks in the sand
and set there until it got da