But the old man often came up to watch the children at play. He said it
made him happy to see them getting opportunities he never could have
had. Wait a minute--he might be outside at this very moment. A clatter
of heels and calls of triumph. "Yes! Yes! Here he is!"

Outside I dashed to _drop flat on the sidewalk_[HW:?] beside the
aged man I had passed a few minutes before. Out came my smile and a
notebook. With only a few preliminaries and amenities the interview was
in full swing. It neither startled nor confused him, to have an excited
young woman plant herself on a public sidewalk at his side and demand
his life's story. A man who had belonged to three different masters
before the age of 15 was inured to minor surprises. Tom Robinson long
since learned to take life as it came.

He is quite deaf in one ear and hears poorly with the other. Nobody
within a quarter of a block could have been in doubt of what was going
on. A youth moved closer. The kept-after-school pair emerged from the
building and stood near us, goggle-eyed thruout the interview. When
we were finished, Robinson turned to the children and gave them, a
grandfatherly lecture about taking advantage of their opportunities,
a lecture in which the white woman sitting beside him joined
heartily--drawing liberally on comments of ex-slaves in recent
interviews concerning the helplessness felt in not being able to write
and read letters from well loved friends.

"Where was I born, ma'am? Why it's my understanding that it was Catawba
County, North Carolina. As far as I remember, Newton was the nearest
town. I was born on a place belonging to Jacob Sigmens. I can just
barely remember my mother. I was not 11 when they sold me away from her.
I can just barely remember her.