mother was sold into this Abbott family for a house girl. She cooked and
washed and ironed. No'm, she wasn't a wet nurse, but she tended to Eddie
and Johnny and me all alike. She whoop them when they needed, and Miss
Maggie whoop me. That the way we grow'd up. Mos Ely was 'ceptionly good
I recken. No'm, I never heard of him drinkin' whiskey. They made cider
and 'simmon beer every year.

"Grandpa was a soldier in the war. He fought in a battle. I don't know
the battle. He wasn't hurt. He come home and told us how awful it was.

"My parents stayed on at Mos Ely's and my uncle's family stayed on. He
give my uncle a home and twenty acres of ground and my parents same
mount to run a gin. I drove two mules, my brother drove two and we drove
two more between us and run the gin. My auntie seen somebody go in the
gin one night but didn't think bout them settin' it on fire. They had a
torch, I recken, in there. All I knowed, it burned up and Mos Ely had to
take our land back and sell it to pay for four or five hundred bales of
cotton got burned up that time. We stayed on and sharecropped with him.
We lived between Egypt and Okolona, Mississippi. Aberdeen was our
tradin' point.

"I come to Arkansas railroading. I railroaded forty years. Worked on the
section, then I belong to the extra gang. I help build this railroad to
Memphis.

"I did own a home but I got in debt and had to sell it and let my money
go.

"Times is so changed and the young folks different. They won't work only
nough to get by and they want you to give em all you got. They take it