"I stayed round with marster's boys a lot, and them white boys was as good to me as if I had been their brother. And I stayed up to the big house lots of nights so as to be handy for runnin' for old master and mistress. The big house was fine but the log cabin where my mammy lived had so many cracks in it that when I would sleep down there I could lie in bed and count the stars through the cracks. Mammy's beds was ticks stuffed with dried grass and put on bunks built on the wall, but they did sleep so good. I can most smell that clean dry grass now. Mammy made her brooms from broom sage, and she cooked on a fireplace. They used a oven and a fireplace up at the big house too. I never saw no cookstove till I was grown.
"I members one time when I was a little shaver I et too many green apples. And did I have the bellie ache, whoo-ee! And mammy poured cold water over hot ashes and let it cool and made me drink it and it sure cured me too. I members seein' her make holly bush tea, and parched corn tea too for sickness. Nother time I had the toothache and mammy put some axle grease in the hollow of the tooth and let it stay there. The pain stopped and the tooth rotted out and we didn't have to pull it.
"Whee! Did you see how that car whizzed round the corner? There warn't no cars in my young days. They had mostly two-wheeled carts with shafts for the horse to be hitched in, and lots of us drove oxen to them carts. I plowed oxen many-a-day and rode em to and from the field. Let me tell you, Missy, if you don't know nothin' bout oxen—they surely does sull on you—you beat them and the more you beat the more they sulls. Yes'm, they sure sulls in hot weather, but it never gets too cold for em.
"Howdy, Parson. That sho was good preachin' Sunday. Yes suh, it was fine.
"That's the pastor of our church, an he sho preached two good sermons last Sunday. Sunday mornin' he preached 'Every kind of fish is caught in a net' and that night he preached 'Marvel not you must be born again.' But that mornin' sermon, it capped the climax. Parson sho told em bout it. He say, 'First, they catch the crawfish, and that fish ain't worth much; anybody that gets back from duty or one which says I will and then won't is a crawfish Christian.' Then he say, 'The next is a mudcat; this kind of a fish likes dark trashy places. When you catch em you won't do it in front water; it likes back water and wants to stay in mud. That's the way with some people in church. You can't never get them to the front for nothin'. You has to fish deep for them. The next one is the jellyfish. It ain't got no backbone to face the right thing. That the trouble with our churches today. Too many jellyfishes in em.' Next, he say is the gold fish—good for nothin' but to look at. They is pretty. That the way folks is. Some of them go to church just to sit up and look pretty to everybody. Too pretty to sing; too pretty to say Amen! That what the parson preached Sunday. Well, I'm a full-grown man and a full-grown Christian, praise the Lord. Yes,'m, parson is a real preacher."
VOODOO MAN
UNCLE MARION JOHNSON, EX-SLAVE.
[Date Stamp: OCT 26 1936]
"Yes young missey ah'll sho tell yo-all whut yo wants ter know. Yes'm ole Uncle Marion sho kin. Mah price is fo' bits fer one question. No'm, not fo' bits fo th' two uv yo but fo' bits each. Yo say yo all ain't got much money and yo all both wants ter know th' same thing. Well ah reckon since yo all is been comin' roun' and tawkin' to ole Uncle Marion ah cud make hit answer th' one question fuh both uv yo fuh fo' bits 'tween yo. No'm ah caint bring hit out heah. Yo all will haft tuh come inside th' house."
"[TR: " should be (]We went inside the house and Uncle Marion unwrapped his voodoo instrument which proved to be a small glass bottle about 2-1/2 inches tall wrapped to the neck in pink washable adhesive tape and suspended from a dirty twine about six inches long. At the top of the twine was a slip knot and in a sly way Uncle Marion would twist the cord before asking the question. If the cord was twisted in one direction the bottle would swing in a certain direction and if the cord was twisted in the other direction the bottle would swing in the opposite direction. Uncle Marion thought that we did not observe this and of course we played dumb. By twisting the cord and slyly working the muscles of his arm Uncle Marion made his instrument answer his questions in the way that he wished them answered.)