"We never called for no help. She cooked and I worked. She signed up but it will be a long time, they said, till they could get to her."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Mary Mays West, Widener, Arkansas
Age: 65
"My parents' names was Josie Vesey and Henry Mays. They had ten children and five lived to be full grown. I was born in Tate County, Mississippi. Mother died in childbirth when she was twenty-eight years old. I'm the mother of twelve and got five living. I been cooking out for white people since I was nine years old. I am a good cook they all tell me and I tries to be clean with my cooking.
"Mother died before I can remember much about her. My father said he had to work before day and all day and till after night in the spring and fall of the year. They ploughed with oxen and mules and horses all. He said how they would rest the teams and feed and still they would go on doing something else. They tromped cotton at night by torchlight. Tromped it in the wagons to get off to the gin early next morning.
"In the winter they built fences and houses and got up wood and cleared new ground. They made pots of lye hominy and lye soap the same day. They had a ashhopper set all time. In the summer is when they ditched if they had any of that to do. Farming has been pretty much the same since I was a child. I have worked in the field all my life. I cook in the morning and go to the field all evening.
"We just had a hard time this winter. I had a stroke in October and had to quit cooking. (Her eye is closed on her left side—ed.) I love farm life. The flood last year got us behind too. We could do fine if I had my health."