“When I was young I seen a ‘style block’ at Holly Springs, Mississippi. I was going to Tucker Lou School, ten miles from Jackson. That was way back in the seventies. A platform was up in the air under a tree and two stumps stood on ends for the steps. It was higher than three steps but that is the way they got up on the platform they tole me.
“I think times are a little better. I gits a little ironing and six dollars and commodities. The young generation is taking on funny ways. I think they do very well morally ’cepting their liquor drinking habits. That is worse, I think. They are advancing in learning. I think times a little better.
“My husband had been out here. We married and I come here. I didn’t like here a bit but now my kin is all dead and I know folks here better. I like it now very well. He was a farmer and mill man.”
Interviewer: Mary D. Hudgins
Person Interviewed: Joe Golden
Age: 86
Home: 722 Gulpha Street, Hot Springs, Ark.
“Yes, ma’am to be sure I remembers you. I knew your father and all his brothers. I knew your mother’s father and your grandmother, and all the Denglers. Your grandpappy was mighty good to me. Your grandmother was too. Many’s the day your uncle Fred followed me about while I was hunting. I was the only one what your grandpappy would let hunt in his garden. Yes, ma’am! If your grandmother would hear a shot across the hill in the garden, she’d say, ‘Go over and see who it is.’ And your grandfather would come. He’d chase them away. But if it was me, he’d go back home and he’d tell her, ‘It’s just Joe. He’s not going to carry away more than he can eat. Joe’ll be all right.’
“Yes, ma’am. I was born down at Magnet Cove. I belonged to Mr. Andy Mitchell. He was a great old man, he was. Did he have a big farm and lots of black folks? Law, miss, he didn’t have nothing but children, just lots of little children. He rented me and my pappy and my mother to the Sumpters right here in Hot Springs.
“I can remember Hot Springs when there wasn’t more than three houses here. Folks used to come thru and lots of folks used to stay. But there wasn’t more than three families lived here part of the time.
“Yes, ma’am we worked. But we had lots of fun too. Them was exciting times. I can remember when folks got to shooting at each, other right in the street. I run off and taken to the woods when that happened.
“No, miss, we didn’t live in Hot Springs all thru the war. When the Federals taken Little Rock they taken us to Texas. We stayed there until ’68. Then we come back to Hot Springs.