"I jest don' 'member but it seems we did eat three times a day. I wus allays so glad to hear dat bell ring else a horn blow. Youse seed that kind of shell like calded 'Konk horn'—and could that 'nigger' blow lowd!
"Mammy cooked in the big house for 'Marse', and then som' time when her work was done in there she was took to the fields and lef' me and my brother and sister by our selves 'till she come and som' time when she did com' she would run in scared-like and lock de door and motion us quiet and say, 'Dey will think I'se sleep'. I didn't understand all that stuff den but fore long I did understan' what I'se tellin yu.
"'Nother thing our beds wus poor stuff, but mammy said she wus allays 'dog tired' and could 'a slep on the ground. They wus straw ticks and hard. Law no, chile, we didn't known what springs wus.
"One day I 'member bad, 'Ol Man Shap' sol' granma, she was mammy's mammy and all we ever hear, she was sol' down souf. We knowed not to do no takin' on for if'n we did the hide would got tooken off us.
"Mammy used to card wool and cotton and spin, then she would weave goods. I 'member one time, I wus little, I played 'rat under de loom'. I would crawl up and grab mammy and say 'e-e-e-k', and pinch her. She say, 'I'll puts a stop to that "rat" bothering me when I got work to do!' That didn' stop me but she sho' make me wish it had the nex' time I do it.
"I never knowed Sunday from Monday, 'cept on Sunday the white man come and we are called out under the brush arbor, didn' have no work in the fiel' at day, and he stand up 'fore us and preach out a little green-back book; I didn't know what it was then, but I knows now it was a Bible. I 'member every 'preach day' he say, 'Mind you not to steal from Missis or Marster'. He was plenty strong on that part.
"Well do I 'member dat 'nigger' overseer, big, 'smart aleck'; he wus called de 'nigger driver'. He say 'hurry up there, you get the hide split on you lazy back'. I wusn't hardly big enouf but the bigger ones when they wus gib a task to do, they better do it in a hurry else they would get the 'hide split' and some time salt put on.
"I never had no book larnin' 'cept two, three times when Miss Fanny La Forge, she wus the white school teacher, and she tried to larn me, she didn' have much time and couldn' do much with it. But I allays says, 'Give me good ol' common horse sense', and not braggin, Miss, but I have got that; always did have. Mos' these educated ones are smarty, big head, smarty, and I never did want to be that way 'tall.
"If they wus jails then fo us slaves I never seed one, jes whippin' fo' punishin', some one wus gittin' it all the time.
"'Ole Parker' like mammy and all her people and he tol' 'Ol Man Shap' if'n he lashed my mammy and her family he would com' and take us back, 'cause we wus good and didn't need no punishment but that was the only reason that we wusn't lashed like the rest of them.