s later I marries my housekeeper, named Luvena
Dixon, cause I allus lived a upright life and I knowed the Lawd wouldn't
like it if I went on livin' in the same house with Luvena without we was
married. She is 52 year old, and we is happy.

420216

[Illustration: Cato Carter]

CATO CARTER was born in 1836 or 1837, near Pineapple, Wilcox
County, Alabama, a slave of the Carter family. He and his wife live
at 3429 Booth St., Dallas, Texas.

"I'm home today 'cause my li'l, old dog is lost and I has to stay 'round
to hunt for him. I been goin' every day on the truck to the cotton
patches. I don't pick no more, 'count my hands git too tired and begin
to cramp on me. But I go and set in the field and watch the lunches for
the other hands.

"I am a hunerd one years old, 'cause I's twenty-eight, goin' on
twenty-nine, a man growned, when the breakin' up come. I'm purty old,
but my folks live that way. My old, black mammy, Zenie Carter, lived to
be a hunerd twenty-five, and Oll Carter, my white massa--which was the
brother of my daddy--lived to be a hunerd four. He ain't been so long
died. Al Carter, my own daddy, lived to be very ageable, but I don't
know when he died.

"Back in Alabama, Missie Adeline Carter took me when I was past my
creepin' days to live in the big house with the white folks. I had a
room built on the big house, where I stayed, and they was allus good to
me, 'cause I's one of their blood. They never hit me a lick or slapped
me once, and told me they'd never sell me away from them. They was the
bes' quality white folks and lived in a big, two-story house with a big
hall what run all the way through the house. They wasn't rough as some
white folks on their niggers.

"My mammy lived in a hewn-oak log cabin in the quarters. There was a
long row of cabins, some bigger than t'others, 'count of fam'ly size. My
massa had over eighty head of slaves. Them li'l, old cabins was cozy,
'cause we chinked 'em with mud and they had stick chimneys daubed with
mud, mixed with hawg-hair.

"The fixin's was jus' plain things. The beds was draw-beds--wooden
bedsteads helt together with ropes drawed tight, to hold them. We
scalded moss and buried it awhile and stuffed it into tickin' to make
mattresses. Them beds slep' good, better'n the ones nowadays.

"There was a good fireplace for cookin' and Sundays the Missie give us
niggers a pint of flour and a chicken, for to cook a mess of victuals.
The