"They fed good on Alex Rogers' place. They'd buy a barrel of coffee, a
barrel molasses, a barrel sugar. Some great big barrels.

"Alex Rogers wasn't a good man. He'd tell them to steal a hog and git
home wid it. If they ketch you over there they'll whoop you. He'd help
eat hogs they'd steal.

"One time papa was working on the roads. The neighbor man and road man
was fixing up their eating. He purty nigh starved on that road work. He
was hired out.

"Mama and papa spoke like they was mighty glad to get sat free. Some
believed they'd git freedom and others didn't. They had places they met
and prayed for freedom. They stole out in some of their houses and
turned a washpot down at the door. Another white man, not Alex Rogers,
tole mama and papa and a heap others out in the field working. She say
they quit and had a regular bawl in the field. They cried and laughed
and hollered and danced. Lot of them run offen the place soon as the man
tole 'em. My folks stayed that year and another year.

"What is I been doing? Ast me is I been doing? What ain't I been doing
be more like it. I raised fifteen of my own children. I got four living.
I living wid one right here in dis house wid me now. I worked on the
farm purty nigh all my life. I come to dis place. Wild, honey, it was! I
come in 1901. Heap of changes since then.

"Present times--Not as much union 'mongst young black and white as the
old black and white. They growing apart. Nobody got nothin' to give. No
work. I used to could buy second-handed clothes to do my little children
a year for a little or nothin'. Won't sell 'em now nor give 'em 'way