How'd I come to Hot springs? I was sick. I had rheumatism. Was down with it so bad the doctor had done give me up. He'd stopped giving me medicine. But the lady I was working for, she run a hotel in Poplar Bluff. They put me on a stretcher and they put me in the baggage car and they brought me clean on in to Hot Springs. They bathed me at the free bath house. I started getting better right away. 'Twasn't long before I was well and able to work. I stayed right on here in Hot Springs.
Yes, ma'am I's all Arkansas. I was born near Little Rock. Ain't never been out of the state but twice. Then I didn't stay long.
I worked on a farm that belonged to Mr. J.B. Henderson. He was an uncle to Mr. Jerome Henderson what was in the bank and Mr. Jethro Henderson what was a Judge.
No, the war didn't bother us none. We wasn't afraid. We heard the shots, but it seemed just like a whole lot of fire crackers to us. Guess we just didn't have sense enough to be afraid. Fighting we did [HW: hear was] near Pine Bluff—the Baxter-Ware trouble. We seen the soldiers when they come through Mt. Pleasant, right smart bunch of them. They was Confederates. We didn't see none of the Yankees.
My father was killed during the war. Went off to help and never came back. My mother, she died when I was a baby. She was lying down in her cabin before the fire—lying on the hearth, letting me nurse. The door was open and a gust of wind blew her dress in the fire. She dropped me and she screamed and run out into the yard. Old Miss saw her from the house. She grabbed a quilt and started out. She got to my mother and she wrapped her in the quilt to smother out the fire. But my mother done swallowed fire. She died. That's the story they tell me. I was too little to know.
I guess I was about eleven when I went into the fields. What's that, pretty young? I didn't go because they made me. I went because I wanted to be with the men. Wasn't nobody around to play with. We was the only family on the farm. It was a pretty good sized farm and they had lots of children. There was Miss Sally and Miss Fanny and Miss Ella and Miss Myrtle and Miss Hattie. Then there was four boys.
Stayed on with the folks three years after the surrender. They treated me good and gave me what I wanted. Treated me nice—very nice—my white folks.
Then I went on down to Marshall—way down in Texas. There I worked for the high sheriff. Drove his carriage for him and cleaned up around the yard. I worked for him a whole year then I went back to Arkansas and then went up in Missouri. Wasn't there long before I got sick. I was working for a woman who had a hotel. She was good to me. Mighty good she was.
Yes ma'am. There has been lost chances I has had to do more than I has. But I's sort of satisfied. There's been lots of changes in Hot Springs since I come. I used to know all the white folks and all the colored folks too. Can't do that today. Place has got too big.
Joe Golden? Yes, I does—I knows Joe. He used to have a butcher shop over on Malvern. Quite a man, Joe was. I hasn't seen him in a long time. How is he? Pretty good? That's fine.