"'Co'se when I was young they was a few that was wild, but seem like now they is all wild. But I feels sorry for 'em."
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Lewis Johnson
713 Missouri Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 87
"I'll be eighty-seven the eighteenth of this month if I live.
"They's a heap of things the human family calls luck. I count myself lucky to be livin' as old as I is.
"Some says it is a good deed I've done but I says it's the power of God.
"I never had but two spells of sickness when I was spectin' to die. Once was in Mississippi. I had a congestis chill. I lay speechless twenty-four hours and when I come to myself they had five doctors in the house with me.
"But my time hadn't come and I'm yet livin' by the help of the good Master.
"I stole off when I was eighteen and got my first marriage license. They was a white fellow was a justice of the peace and he took advantage of my father and he stood for me 'cause he wanted me to work on his place. In them days they'd do most anything to gain labor.