better times than I ever had in my life. I used to be one of the best
banjo pickers. I was good. Played for white folks and called figgers for
em. In them days they said 'promenade', 'sashay', 'swing corners',
'change partners'. They don't know how to dance now. We had parties and
corn shuckin's, oh lord, yes.

"I'll sing you a song

'Oh lousy nigger
Oh grandmammy
Knock me down with the old fence rider,
Ask that pretty gal let me court her
Young gal, come blow the coal.'

"When I was twenty-one I was sold to the speculator and sent to Texas.
They started me at a thousand and run me up to a thousand nine hunnerd
and fifty and knocked me off. He paid for me in old Jeff Davis' shin
plasters.

"I runned away and I was in Mississippi makin' my way back home to North
Carolina. I was hidin' in a hollow log when twenty-five of Sherman's
Rough Riders come along. When they got close to me the horses jumped
sudden and they said, 'Come out of there, we know you're in there!' And
when I come out, all twenty-five of them guns was pointin' at that hole.
They said they thought I was a Revel and 'serted the army. That was on
New Years day of the year the war ended. The Yankees said, 'We's freed
you all this mornin', do you want to go with us?' I said, 'If you goin'
North, I'll go.' So I stayed with em till I got back to North Carolina.

"After surrender, people went here and yonder and that's how come I'm