"I went to work when I was seven pullin' worms off tobacco, and I been workin' ever since. But when I was comin' up I had good times. I had better times than I ever had in my life. I used to be one of the best banjo pickers. I was good. Played for white folks and called figgers for em. In them days they said 'promenade', 'sashay', 'swing corners', 'change partners'. They don't know how to dance now. We had parties and corn shuckin's, oh lord, yes.
"I'll sing you a song
'Oh lousy nigger
Oh grandmammy
Knock me down with the old fence rider,
Ask that pretty gal let me court her
Young gal, come blow the coal.'
"When I was twenty-one I was sold to the speculator and sent to Texas. They started me at a thousand and run me up to a thousand nine hunnerd and fifty and knocked me off. He paid for me in old Jeff Davis' shin plasters.
"I runned away and I was in Mississippi makin' my way back home to North Carolina. I was hidin' in a hollow log when twenty-five of Sherman's Rough Riders come along. When they got close to me the horses jumped sudden and they said, 'Come out of there, we know you're in there!' And when I come out, all twenty-five of them guns was pointin' at that hole. They said they thought I was a Revel and 'serted the army. That was on New Years day of the year the war ended. The Yankees said, 'We's freed you all this mornin', do you want to go with us?' I said, 'If you goin' North, I'll go.' So I stayed with em till I got back to North Carolina.
"After surrender, people went here and yonder and that's how come I'm here. I emigrated here. I left Raleigh, North Carolina Christmas Eve 1883. I've seen ninety-six Christmases.
"I member the folks said the war was to keep us under bondage. The South wants us under bondage right now or they wouldn't do us like they do.
"When I come to this country of Arkansas I brought twelve chillun and left four in North Carolina. I've had six wives and had twenty-nine chillun by the six wives.
"I've seen them Ku Klux in slavery times and I've cut a many a grapevine. We'd be in the place dancin' and playin' the banjo and the grape vine strung across the road and the Ku Klux come ridin' along and run right into it and throw the horses down.
"Cose I believe in hants. They're in the air. Can't everybody see em. Some come in the shape of a cat or a dog—you know, old folks spirits. I ain't afeared of em—ain't afeared of anything cept a panter. Cose I got a gun—got three or four of em. You can't kill a spirit cept with silver.