PARKER POOL
"Good Morning, how is yer? Dat front door am locked Mister, but I'll come 'round and undo it."
"I'm not feeling ve'y well an' it looks lak dey'll rob me out'n all I got. Dey had a mortgage on my home fer $850. I paid it, an' den dey got to gamblin' on it, an' tuk it. I didn't git de right receipts, when I paid: dat's de truf. I got a farm loan on de house part, yes sir, an' I still has it.
"I wuz born near Garner, Wake County, North Carolina. I belonged to Aufy Pool. He wuz a slave owner. His plantation wuz near Garner. I am 91 years old. I wuz born August 10, that's what my grandmammie tole me, an' I ain't never fergot it.
"My missus name wuz Betsy. My fust master, I had two, wuz Master Aufy Pool. Den he give us to his son, er his son bought us in at de sale when Master Aufy died. After Master Aufy died, his son, Louis Pool wuz my master den, an' his plantation wuz in Johnston County. My mother wuz named Violet Pool. She died in child-birth two years atter I wuz born. My father wuz named Peter Turner. He belonged to John Turner in Johnston County, right near Clayton.
"My grandfather, I had two grandfathers, one on my mother's side and one on my father's side. On my mother's side Tom Pool, on my father's side Jerry Beddingfield. I never seed my great-grandparents, but my great-grandfather wuz name Buck. He wuz right out o' Africa. His wife wuz name Hagar. I never have seen dem, but my grandmother wuz deir daughter. Dey had three chillun here in America. My grandmammie and grandfather told me this. My brothers were name, oldest one, Haywood, den Lem, an' Peter, an' me, Parker Pool. De girls, oldest girl wuz Minerva Rilla.
"I had good owners. My missus and master dey took jes as good keer o' me as they could. Dey wuz good to all de han's. Dey giv' us plenty to eat, an' we had plenty o' clothes, sich as they wuz, but de wuz no sich clothes as we have now. Dey treated us good, I will have to say dat. Dey are dead in their graves, but I will have to say dis fer 'em. Our houses were in de grove. We called master's house 'de great house'. We called our homes 'de houses'. We had good places ter sleep.
"We got up at light. I had to do most o' the nursin' o' de chillun, case when choppin' time come de women had to go to work. We had plenty ter eat, an' we et it. Our some'in to eat wuz well fixed an' cooked. We caught a lot o' 'possums, coons an' other game, but I tell yer a coon is a lot harder to ketch den a possum. We had one garden, an' de colored people tended the garden, an' we all et out'n it.
"Dere wuz about 2000 acres in de plantation. All de farm lan' wuz fenced in wid wood rails. De hogs, cows an' stock wuz turned out in de woods, an' let go. The cows wuz drived home at night, dat is if dey didn't come up. Dat is so we could milk de ones we wanted ter milk.
"We dug ditches to drain de lan', blin' ditches; we dug 'em an' den put poles on top, an' covered 'em wid brush an' dirt. We put de brush on de poles to keep de dirt from runnin' through. Den we ploughed over de ditches.