“I went to school down here in Arkansas in Lincoln County. I got so I could read in McGuffy’s Fourth Reader. I member that story bout the white man chunkin’ the boy down out of the apple tree.
“That was a government school on the railroad—notch house. Just had one door and one window. They took the nigger cabins and made a schoolhouse.
“After freedom my mammy stayed on old master’s place—he didn’t drive em away. My mammy spinned the raw cotton and took it to Tuscumbia and got it wove. Some of it she dyed. I know when I was a gal I wore a checked dress with a white apron. And my first Sunday dress was striped cotton. After she worked enough she bought me a red worsted dress and trimmed it and a sailor hat. We went to church and they led me by the hand. After church I had to take off my dress and hang it up till next Sunday. Had a apron made of cross barred muslin. Don’t see any of that now. It was made with a bodice and had ruffles round the neck. Wore brass toed shoes and balmoral stockin’s in my gal time. When my husband was courtin’ me, my dress was down to my shoe top. He never saw my leg!
“My fust work was nussin’. I went to Hot Springs with the white folks. I nussed babies till I got against nussin’ babies. I stayed right in the house and slep on a sofa with a baby in my arms. In my time they lowed you off half a day on Sunday.
“Chile, I washed and ironed and washed and ironed and washed and ironed till I married. I married when I was seventeen. My mother was dead and I’d rather been married than runnin’ loose—I might a stepped on a snake.
“My daddy was a ex-soldier. I don’t know what side he fought on but my mammy got bounty when he died. That’s what she bought that land with down here in Lincoln County from her old master Goodloe.
“I tell you—I’m a old christian and I think this younger generation is growin’ up like Christ said—they is gettin’ weaker and wiser.
“My mother’s sister, Patience Goodloe, lived in Pulaski County, Alabama and I went back there after I was married and stayed two months. I went up and down the fields where my daddy and mommy worked. I went out to the graveyard where my little brother was buried but they had cotton and corn planted on the old slavetime graveyard.
“I like that country lots better than this here Arkansas. Don’t have no springs or nothin’ here.”