"We had possums and 'coons to eat sometimes. My father, he gen'rally cooked the 'coons, he would dress 'em and stew 'em and then bake 'em. My mother wouldn't eat them. There was plenty of rabbits, too. Sometimes when they had potatoes they cooked 'em with 'em. I remember one time they had just a little patch of blackhead sugar cane. After the freedom, my mother had a kind of garden and she planted snap beans and watermelons pretty much every year.
"The master fed us tol'bly well. Everything was wild, beef was free, just had to bring one in and kill it. Once in awhile, of a Sunday mornin', we'd get biscuit flour bread to eat. It was a treat to us. They measured the flour out and it had to pan out just like they measured. He give us a little somethin' ever' Christmas and somethin' good to eat. I heard my people say coffee was high, at times, and I know we didn't get no flour, only Sunday mornin'. We lived on co'nbread, mostly, and beef and game outta the woods. That was durin' the war and after the war, too.
"I was around about 6 or 7 years old when we was freed. We worked for George Reedes awhile, then drifted on down to the Frio river and stayed there about a year, then we come to Medina County and settled here close to where I was raised. We didn't think it hard times at all right after the war. The country was wild and unsettled, with ranches 15 or 20 miles apart. You never did see anybody and we didn't know really what was goin' on in the rest of the country. Sometimes something could happen in 5 miles of us and we didn't know it for a month.
"I was on the Adams Ranch on the Hondo when my master come out and told us we were as free as he was. He said we could stay on and work or could go if we wanted to. He gave my mother and father 50 cents apiece and 25 cents for the children. We stayed awhile and then went west to the Frio.
"I used to be along with old man Big-foot Wallace in my early days. He was a mighty fine man. I worked for the people that was gathering stock together there. Big Foot raised nice horses, old reg'lar Texas horses, and they was better than the reg'lar old Spanish bronco. I used to go to his camp down on the San Miguel. He lived in one part and his chickens in the rest of his house. His friends liked to hear him talk about his travels. He used to run stock horses and had a figger 7 on the left shoulder for his brand and the tip of each ear split was his earmark.
"The last man I broke horses for was Wilson Bailey. I was there about 12 years. He raised just cavi-yard—we called it a cavi-yard of horses, just the same thing as a remuda. We called 'em that later, but we got that from the Spanish. We would get up in a tree with our loop till the horse come under and drop it down on him. When they were so spoilt, we got 'em in a sort of cavi-yard and drove 'em under trees and caught 'em in a snare. We had lots of wild horses, just this side of Pearsall. 'Bout the only way I'd get throwed was to get careless. We'd ketch 'im up, hackamore 'im up, saddle 'im up and get on 'im and let 'im go. Sometimes he'd be too wild to pitch, he'd break and run and you had to let 'im run himself down. I used to rather ketch up a wild horse and break 'im than to eat breakfast.
"When I first started farmin' I taken up some state land, about 80 acres, down on Black Creek, in Medina County. I stayed there ten or twelve years. Cotton hadn't got in this country and I raised some corn, sugar cane and watermelons. I commenced with horses, but 'long 'way down the line I used oxen some, too. I used one of those old walking plows.
"I sold that place and moved to a place on the Tywaukney Creek (Tonkawa). I come up to church and met my wife then. Her name was Ida Bradley and I was 38 years old. We lived down on the Tywaukney right about 23 years and raised our children there. We jes' had a little home weddin'. I wore a suit, dark suit. We got married about 8 o'clock in the evenin' and we had barbecue, cake and ice cream. You see, in them times I wasn't taught anything about years and dates, but I judge it was about 25 years after the war before I settled on the Tywaukney."