"My father was a blacksmith and one day when I was six or seven I was
takin' his dinner when some dogs smelled the dinner and smelled me too
and they got after me. I had to climb a tree and they stayed around till
they heard some other dogs barkin' and ran off. I come down then and
took my bucket and left. Nother time some hogs chased me. They rooted
all around the tree till they heard somethin' crackle in the woods and
run off and then I'd come down.

"After the war I went to school three days and the teacher whipped me. I
went home and I didn't go back. I went home and went to the field. I had
a mother and a sister and I tried to make a living for them.

"I went to school a little while after that and then went to the field.
Most I know I learned by myself.

"Yes'm, I seen the Yankees bout a year fore the war ceasted. They come
to get somethin' to eat and anything else they could get. Got the mules
and things and took my two brothers and put em in the war. One come back
after surrender and the other one died in the war. They said they was
fightin' to free the niggers from being under bondage.

"I seen the Ku Klux. Looked like their horses could fly. Made em jump a
big high fence. They come and took my father and all the other men on
the place and was goin' to put em in the Confederate army. But papa was
old and he cried and old mistress thought a lot of him so they let him
stay. I just lay down and hollered cause they was takin' my brothers,
but they didn't keep em long. One of my brothers, six years older than
me, come up here to Pine Bluff to jine the Yankees.

"We could hear the guns at Marks Mill.