"My master wouldn't let us go to school, but his chillun would slip 'round and teach us what they could out of their books. They would also give us books to read. Whenever their pa or ma caught them tryin' to teach us they always whipped them. I learned to read and write from 'em and I'll never forget how hard it was for 'em to get a chance to teach me. But if they caught you tryin' to write they would cut your finger off and if they caught you again they would cut your head off.
"When I was a young man, a old man stole the head and pluck (pluck is the liver and lites) out of the hog (some people call it the haslet) and hid it up in the loft of his house. When his marster missed it he went to this man's house lookin' for it. The man told him that he didn't have it. He had already told his wife if his marster come not to own it either. Well his master kept askin' him over and over 'bout the head and pluck, but they denied having it. The marster told 'em if they didn't give it to him and that quick he was goin' to give 'em a thousand lashes each, if less didn't kill 'em. This woman's husband told her not to own it. He told her to take three thousand lashes and don't own it. So their marster whipped her and whipped her, but she wouldn't own it. Finally he quit whippin' her and started whippin' the old man. Just as soon as he started whippin' the man he told his wife to go up in the loft of the house and throw the head and pluck down 'cause he didn't want it.
"You always had to get a pass when goin' out. Sometimes, when you wouldn't be thinking, a patter roller would step up to the door and ask who was there. If any visitor was there they would ask 'em to show their pass. If you didn't have a pass they would take you out and beat you, then make you go home and when you got home, your marster would take you to the barn, strip you buck naked, tie you to a post and beat you. Us didn't have to get passes whenever us wanted to go visitin'. All us had to do was tell 'em who us belonged to, and they always let us by. They knowed our marster would let us go 'thout passes.
"Us used to go to barn dances all the time. I never will forget the fellow who played the fiddle for them dances. He had run away from his marster seven years before. He lived in a cave he had dug in the ground. He stayed in this cave all day and would come out at night. This cave was in the swamp. He stole just 'bout everythin' he et. His marster had been tryin' to catch him for a long time. Well they found out he was playin' for these dances and one night us saw some strange lookin' men come in but us didn't pay it much 'tention. Us always made a big oak fire and thats where us got mos' of our light from. Well these men danced with the girls a good while and after a while they started goin' out one by one. Way after while they all came back in together, they had washed the blackenin' off their faces, and us seen they was white. This man had a song he would always sing. 'Fooled my marster seven years—expect to fool him seven more.' So when these men came in they went to him and told him maybe he had fooled 'em for seven years, but he wouldn't fool 'em seven more. When they started to grab him he just reached in the fire and got a piece of wood that was burnin' good on one end and waved it all around (in a circle) until he set three of 'em on fire. While they was puttin' this fire out he run out in the swamp and back in his cave. They tried to catch him again. They painted their faces and done just like they did the first time, but this time they carried pistols. When they pulled their pistols on him he did just like he did the first time, and they never did catch him. He stopped comin' to play for the dances after they was straight after him. Dogs couldn't trail him 'cause he kept his feet rubbed with onions.
"I have seen some marsters make their slaves walk in snow knee deep, barefooted. Their heels would be cracked open jus' like corn bread.
"The only real mean thing they did to us when I was young was to sell my father when our marster died. They sold him to somebody way off, and they promised to bring him back to see us, but they never did. We always wished he would come, but until this day us hasn't laid eyes on him again. My mother worried 'bout him 'til she died.
"Chillun didn't know what shoes was 'til they was 'bout fifteen years old. They would go a mile or a mile and a half in the snow for water anytime, and the only thin' they ever had on their feet would be somethin' made out of home-spun. You don't hardly hear of chilblain feet now, but then most every child you saw had cracked heels. The first pair of shoes I ever wore, I was sixteen years old, was too small for me and I pulled 'em off and throwed 'em in the fire."