"We had plenty to eat in slave times. Didn't have to go to the store and buy it by the dribble like they does now. Just go to the smokehouse and get it.
"I got such a big mind and will I wants to get about and raise something to eat now so we wouldn't have to buy everything, but I ain't able now. I've had twenty-one children but if I had em now they'd starve to death.
"I been married four times but they all dead—every one of em.
"When freedom come my old master give my mother $500 cause she saved his money for him when the Yankees come. She put it in the bed and slept on it. He had four farms and he told her she could have ary one of em and any of the stock, but my father had done spoke for a place in Cleveland County—he had done bought him a place.
"And old master on his dying bed, he asked my mother to take his two youngest children and raise em cause their mother was sickly, but she didn't do it.
"I don't know hardly what to think of this younger generation. Used to be they'd go to Sunday school barefooted but now'days, time they is born they got shoes and stockin's on em.
"I used to spin, knit and weave. I even spun thread to make these ropes they use to plow. I could spin a thread you could sew with, and weave cloth with stripes and flowers. Have to know how to dye the thread. That's all done in the warp. Call the other the filler.
"Now let me tell you, when that was goin' on and you raised your meat and corn and potatoes, that was livin'!"