like my fingers. Anybody that knowed how could sure make music on 'em.
Tom Rollins, that was my baby uncle, he was a banjo picker.

"I can remember a heap a things that happened, but 'bout slavery, I
didn't know one day from another. They treated us so nice that when they
said freedom come, I thought I was always free.

"I heered my grandmother talk about sellin' 'em, but I was just a little
kid and I didn't know what they was talkin' about. I heered 'em say,
'Did you know they sold Aunt Sally away from her baby?' I heered 'em
talkin', I know that much.

"After freedom, our folks stayed right on Paul McCall's place. My
grandmother cooked for the McCalls till I was eight or nine years old,
then she cooked for the McCrays--they was all relatives--till I was
twenty-one. Then I married.

"Paul McCall first married in the Baxter family and then he married into
the McCray family. I lived on the McCall place till I was grown. They
all come from Alabama. Yes'm, they come befo' the war was.

"Chillun in dem days paid attention. People _raised_ chillun in dem
days. Folks just feeds 'em now and lets 'em grow up.

"I looks at the young race now and they is as wise as rabbits.

"I never went to school but three months, but I never will forget that
old blue back McGuffey's. Sam Porter was our teacher and I was scared of
him. I was so scared I couldn't learn nothin'.