rip along one side he called the "old" fields. That's what they
called the land that was wore out and turned back. It was all growed
up in young trees, and that's where he kept his horses most of the
time.

The first I knowed about the War coming on was when Mr. Sack had a
whole bunch of whitefolks at the Big House at a function. They didn't
talk about anything else all evening and then the next time they come
nearly all their menfolks wasn't there--just the womenfolks. It wasn't
very long till Mr. Sack went off to Houma with some other men, and
pretty soon we knew he was in the War. I don't remember ever seeing
him come home. I don't think he did until it was nearly all over.

Next thing we knowed they was Confederate soldiers riding by pretty
nearly every day in big droves. Sometimes they would come and buy corn
and wheat and hogs, but they never did take any anyhow, like the
Yankees done later on. They would pay with billets, Young Missy called
them, and she didn't send them to git them cashed but saved them a
long time, and then she got them cashed, but you couldn't buy anything
with the money she got for them.

That Confederate money she got wasn't no good. I was in Arcadia with
her at a store, and she had to pay seventy-five cents for a can of
sardines for me to eat with some bread I had, and before the War you
could get a can like that for two cents. Things was even higher then
than later on, but that's the only time I saw her buy anything.

When the Yankees got down in that country the most of the big men paid
for all the corn and meat and things they got, but some of the little
bunches of them would ride up and take hogs and things like that and
just ride off. They wasn't anybody at our place but the womenfolks and
the negroes. Some of Mr. Sack's women kinfolks stayed there with Young
Mistress.

Along at the last the negroes on our place didn't put in much
stuff--jest what they would need, and could hide from the Yankees,
because they would get it all took away from them if the Yankees found
out they had plenty of corn and oats.

The Yankees was mighty nice about their manners, though. They camped
all around our place for a while. There was three camps of them close
by at one time, but they never did come and use any of our houses or
cabins. There was lots of poor whites and Cajuns that lived down below
us, between us and the Gulf, and the Yankees just moved into their
houses and cabins and used them to