"I'm not able to do any work now. I put in for the Old Age Pension two years ago. They told me I would have to prove my age but I couldn't do it any way except to produce my marriage license. I produced them. I got the license right out of this county courthouse here. I was married the last time in 1907 and was forty-five years old then. That will make me seventy-six years old this year—the twenty-eighth day of this coming September. My wife died nine years ago.
"I have heard my father talking a little but old folks then didn't allow the young ones to hear much. My daddy sent me to bed at night. When night came you went to bed; you didn't hang around waiting to hear what the old folks would say.
"My daddy got his leg shot in the Civil War. He said he was in that battle there in Richmond. I don't know which side he was on, but I know he got his leg shot off. He was one-legged. He never did get any pension. I don't know even whether he was really enlisted or not. All I know is that he got his leg shot off in the war.
"When the war ended in 1865, the slaves around Richmond were freed. I never heard my father give the details of how he got his freedom. I was too young to remember them myself.
"I don't know how many slaves Dr. Johnson had but I know it was a good many, for he was a tobacco raiser. I don't remember what kind of houses his slaves lived in. [And I never heard the kind of food we et.] [HW: ?]
"I never heered tell of patrols till I came to Arkansas. I never heered much of the Ku Klux either. I guess that was all the same, wasn't it? Peace wasn't declared here till 1866. I never heered of any of my acquaintances being bothered but I heered the colored people was scared. All I know was that you had to come in early. Didn't, they get you.
"What little schooling I got, I got it by going to night school here. That is been a good many years back—forty years back. I forgot now who was teaching night school. It was some kin of Ishes out here I know.
Opinions
"I think times is tight now. Tighter than I ever knowed 'em to be before. Quite a change in this world now. There is not enough work now for the people and from what I can see, electricity has knocked the laboring man out. It has cut the mules and the men out.
"My opinion of these young people is that they got all the education in the world and no business qualifications. They are too fast for any use."