"I don't know where the world gwine come to in the next five years. I reckon they'll all be dead way they're gwine now. Storms takin' 'em away here and war in them other countries."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: J. Roberts, Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 45 or 50
Occupation: Methodist preacher
"My father was a Federal soldier in the Civil War. He was from Winston, Virginia. He went to war and soon after the end he came to Holly Grove. He was in Company "K". He signed up six or seven papers for men in his company he knew and they all got their pensions. Oh yes! He knew them. He was an awful exact honest man. He was a very young man when he went into the war and never married till he come to Arkansas. He married a slave woman. She was a field woman. They farmed. Father sat by the hour and told how he endured the war. He never expected to come out alive after a few months in the war.
"John Roberts Collins was his owner in slavery. I never heard why he cut off the Collins. I call my own self J. Roberts."
"The present times are hard times. Sin hath caused it all. Machinery has taken so much of the work."
"The present generation are fair folks but wild. Yes, the young folks today are wilder than my set was. I can't tell you how but I see it every way I go."