Interviewer: Mary D. Hudgins
Person Interviewed: Judy Parker
Home: 618 Wade Street, Hot Springs, Ark.
Aged: 77
For location of Wade Street, see interview with Emma Sanderson.
As the interviewer walked down Silver Street a saddle colored girl came out on a porch for a load of wood.
"I beg your pardon," she began, pausing, "can you tell me where I will find Emma Sanderson?"
"I sure can." The girl left the porch and came out to the street. "I'll walk down with you and show you. That way it'll be easier. Kind of cold, ain't it?"
"It surely is," this from the interviewer. "Isn't it too cold for you, can't you just tell me? I think I can find it." The girl had expected to be only on the porch and didn't have a coat.
"No, ma'am. It's all right. Now we're far enough for you to see. You see those two houses jam up against one and 'tother? Well Miz Parker lives in the one this way. I goes down to look after her most every day. That's where you'll find her.—No ma'am—'twaren't no bother."
The gate sagged slightly at the house "this way" of the "two jam up against one and 'tother." A large slab from an oak log in the front yard near a woodpile bore mute evidence of many an ax blow. (Stove wood is generally split in the rural South—one end of the "stick" resting against the ground, the other atop a small log.)
Up a couple of rickety steps the interviewer climbed. She knocked three times. When she was bade to enter she opened the door to find an old woman sitting near a wood stove combing her long, white hair.