they come by to see me,
and brung me li'l del'cate things to eat.

"The Carters said a hunerd times they regretted they never larned me to
read or write, and they said my daddy done put up $500.00 for me to go
to the New Allison school for cullud folks. Miss Benson, a Yankee, was
the teacher. I was twenty-nine years old and jus' startin' in the
blueback speller. I went to school a while, but one mornin' at ten
o'clock my poor old mammy come by and called me out. She told me she got
put out, 'cause she too old to work in the fiel'. I told her not to
worry, that I'm the family man now, and she didn't never need to git any
more three-quarter hand wages no more.

"So I left school and turnt my hand to anything I could find for years.
I never had no trouble findin' work, 'cause all the white folks knowed
Cato was a good nigger. I lef' my mammy with some fine white folks and
she raised a whole family of chillen for them. Their name was Bryan and
they lived on a li'l bayou. Them young'uns was crazy 'bout mammy and
they'd send me word not to worry about her, 'cause she'd have the bes'
of care and when she died they'd tend to her buryin'.

"Finally I come to Texas, 'cause I thought there was money for the
takin' out here. I got a job splittin' rails for two years and from then
on I farmed, mostly. I married a woman and lived with her forty-seven
years, rain or shine. We had thirteen chillen and eight of them is
livin' today.

"Endurin' the big war I got worried 'bout my li'l black mammy and I
wanted to go back home and see her and the old places. I went, and she
was shriveled up to not much of anything. That's the last time I saw
her. But for forty-four years I didn't forget to send her things I
thought she'd want. I saw Massa Oll and he done married after I left and
raised a family of chillen. I saw Missie Adeline and she was a old
woman. We went out and looked at the tombstones and the rock
markers in the graveyard on the old place, and some of them done near
melted away. I looked good at lots of things, 'cause I knowed I wouldn't
be that way 'gain. So many had gone on since I'd been there befo'.

"After my first wife died I married 'gain and my wife is a good woman
but she's old and done lost her voice, and has to be in Terrell most the
time. But I git 'long all right, 'cept my hands cramps some.

"You goin' take my picture? I lived through plenty and I lived a long
time, but this is the first time I ever had my pictur