"My husband brought me to Arkansas when I was 35 and I been workin' in
the same family, Captain Jeter's family, ever since-forty odd years.

"I always have worked hard. I've had the flu only reason I'm sittin'
here now. If I had to sit and hold my hands very long, they'd have to
take me to Little Rock.

"I been married twice. My last husband was Sam Shaw. He was a great
whiskey man and when whiskey went out, he went to bootleggin' and they
got behind him and he left.

"He wrote me once and said if I'd borrow some money on my home and send
it to him, he'd come back. I wrote and told him just like I'm tellin'
you that after I had worked night and day to pay for this house while
he was off tellin' some other woman lies just like he told me, I wasn't
goin' to send him money. So I ain't seen him since.

"I ain't never been to school much. When schools got numerous in
Mississippi they had me behind a plow handle.

"Mrs. Jeter made me mad once and I quit. My first husband was a porter
on the railroad and I got on the train and went to Memphis with him.

"One time he come back from a trip to Pine Bluff and handed me a little
package. I opened it and it was a note from Mrs. Jeter and a piece of
corn bread. She said, 'Now, Mary, you see what I've had to eat. I want
you to come back.' So I went back and stayed 'til she died. And now I'm
workin' for her daughter, Mrs. McEwen. Mrs. Jeter used to say, 'Mary,
I know you're not a Arkansas woman 'cause you ain't got a lazy bone in