"They always blowed a horn for you to go to work by and get off for dinner by and stop work in the evening by. When that horn blowed, you couldn't get them mules to plow another foot. They just wouldn't do it. Us always et dinner out in the yard, in the summer time, at a long bench. In cold weather us always went inside to eat. Whenever us didn't have enough to eat us would tell the overseer and he seed to it that us got plenty. Our overseers was colored."
Another old woman said she "started working at the age of seven as a nurse. I nursed, made fire in the house and around the wash pots 'til I was old enough to go to work in the fields. When I got big enough I hoed and later plowed. Us didn't wait 'til sun up to start workin', us started as soon as it was light enough. When it come to field work, you couldn't tell the women from the men. Of course my marster had two old women on the place and he never made them work hard, and he never did whip' em. They always took care of the cookin' and the little chillun.
"I'll tell you one thing, they had better doctors then than they do now. When folks had high blood pressure the doctors would cut you in your head or your arm and folks would get over it then. They took better care of themselves. Whenever anybody was caught in the rain they had to go to the marster's house and take some medicine. They had somethin' that looks like black draught looks now, and they would put it in a gallon jug, fill it a little over half full of boiling water, and finish fillin' it with whiskey. It was real bitter, but it was good for colds. Young folk didn't die then like they do now. Whenever anybody died it was a old person.
"I know more about conjuration than I'll ever be able to tell. I didn't believe in it at one time, but I've seen so much of it that I can almost look at a sick person and tell whether he is conjured or not. I wouldn't believe it now if I hadn't looked at snakes come out of my own sister's daughter. She married a man that had been goin' 'round with a old woman who wasn't nothin'. Well one day this woman and my niece got in a fight 'bout him, and my niece whipped her. She was already mad with my niece 'bout him, and after she found she couldn't whip her she decided to get her some way and she just conjured her.
"My niece was sick a long time and we had 'bout seven or eight diff'unt doctors with her, but none of 'em done her any good. One day us was sittin' on the porch and a man walked up. Us hadn't never seen him before, and he said he wanted to talk with the lady of the house. I 'vited him in and he asked to speak to me alone. So I went in the front room and told him to come on in there. When he got there he said just like this: 'You have sickness don't you?' I said, 'yes.' Then he said: 'I know it, and I come by here to tell you I could cure her. All I want is a chance, and you don't have to pay me a cent 'til I get her back on her feet, and if I don't put her back on her feet you won't be out one cent. Just promise you'll pay me when the work is done.' I told him to come back the next day 'cause I would have to talk with her husband and her mother 'fore I could tell him anythin'.
"Us all agreed to let him doctor on her since nobody else had did her any good. Two days later he brought her some medicine to take and told us to have her say: 'relieve me of this misery and send it back where it come from.' Seven days from the day she started takin' this medicine she was up and walkin' 'round the room. 'Fore that time she had been in bed for more than five weeks without puttin' her feet on the floor. Well three days after she took the first medicine, she told us she felt like she wanted to heave. So we gave her the bucket and that's what come out of her. I know they was snakes because I know snakes when I see 'em. One was about six inches long, but the others was smaller. He had told us not to be scared 'bout nothin' us saw, so I wasn't, but my sister was. After that day my niece started to get better fast. I put the snakes in a bottle and kept 'em 'til the man come back and showed 'em to him. He took 'em with him. It was 'bout three weeks after this that the other woman took sick and didn't live but 'bout a month."
Roy Redfield recalls that "when a person died several people would come in and bathe the body and dress it. Then somebody would knock up some kind of box for 'em to be buried in. They would have the funeral and then put the body on a wagon and all the family and friends would walk to the cemetery behind the wagon. They didn't have graves like they does now; they would dig some kind of hole and put you in it, then cover you up.
"In olden times there was only a few undertakers, and of course there warn't any in the country; so when a person died he was bathed and dressed by friends of the family. Then he was laid on a ironing board and covered with a sheet.
"For a long while us knowed that for some cause a part of the person's nose or lips had been et off, but nobody could find out why. Finally somebody caught a cat in the very act. Most people didn't believe a cat would do this, but everybody started watchin' and later found out it was so. So from then on, 'til the caskets come into use, a crowd of folks stayed awake all night sittin' up with the dead."
One old woman lived on a plantation where "every Saturday they would give you your week's 'lowance. They would give you a plenty to eat so you could keep strong and work. They weighed your meat, flour, meal and things like that, but you got all the potatoes, lard and other things you wanted. You got your groceries and washed and ironed on Saturday evenin' and on Saturday night everybody used that for frolicin'. Us would have quiltin's, candy pullin's, play, or dance. Us done whatever us wanted to. On these nights our mist'ess would give us chickens or somethin' else so us could have somethin' extra. Well, us would dance, quilt, or do whatever us had made up to do for 'bout three hours then us would all stop and eat. When us finished eatin' us would tell tales or somethin' for a while, then everybody would go home. Course us have stayed there 'til almost day when us was havin' a good time.