Freedom and Soldiers
"I can't remember just how my father got freed. Old folks then didn't let you stan' and listen when they talked. If you did it once, you didn't do it again. They would talk while they were together, but the children would have business outdoors. Yes siree, I never heard them say much about how they got freedom.
"I was there when the Yankees come through. That was in slave time. They marched right through old man Madden's grove. They were playing the fifes and beating the drums. And they were playing the fiddle. Yes sir, they were playing the fiddle too. It must have been a fiddle; it sounded just like one. The soldiers were all just a singin'. They didn't bother nobody at our house. If they bothered anything, nothing was told me about it. I heard my uncle say they took a horse from my old manager. I didn't see it. They took the best horse in the lot my uncle said. Pardon me, they didn't take him. A peckerwood took him and let the Yankees get him. I have heard that they bothered plenty of other places. Took the best mules, and left old broken down ones and things like that. Broke things up. I have heard that about other places, but I didn't see any of it.
Right after the War
"Right after the War, my father went to farming—renting land. I mean he sharecropped and done around. Thing is come way up from then when the Negroes first started. They didn't have no stock nor nothin' then. They made a crop just for the third of it. When they quit the third, they started givin' them two-fifths. That's more than a third, ain't it? Then they moved up from that, and give them half, and they are there yet. If you furnish, they give you two-thirds and take one-third. Or they give you so much per acre or give him produce in rent.
Marriage
"I was married in 1883. My wife's name was Mary Elston. Her mother died when she was an infant. Her grandmother was an Elston at first. Then she changed her name to Cunningham. But she always went in the name of Elston, and was an Elston when she married me. My wife I mean. I married on a Thursday in the Christmas week. This December I will be married fifty-five years. This is the only wife I have ever had. We had three children and all of them are dead. All our birthed children are dead. One of them was just three months old when he died. My baby girl had three children and she lived to see all of them married.
Opinions
"Our own folks is about the worst enemies we have. They will come and sweet talk you and then work against you. I had a fellow in here not long ago who came here for a dollar, and I never did hear from him again after he got it. He couldn't get another favor from me. No man can fool me more than one time. I have been beat out of lots of money and I have got hurt trying to help people.
"The young folks now is just gone astray. I tell you the truth, I wouldn't give you forty cents a dozen for these young folks. They are sassy and disrespectful. Don't respect themselves and nobody else. When they get off from home, they'll respect somebody else better 'n they will their own mothers.