"Since I been in Pine Bluff I worked sixteen years at night firing up
and watchin' engines, makin' steam, and never lost but one night. I
worked for the Cotton Belt forty-eight years. I worked up until the fust
day of this last past May, five years ago, when they laid me off.

"I'm disabled wif dis rheumatism now but I works every day anyway.

"I'll show you I haven't been asleep atall. I worked for the railroad
company forty-eight years and I been tryin' to get that railroad pension
but there's so much Red Cross (tape) to these things they said it'd be
three months before they could do anything."




Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Jim Davis
1112 Indiana Street
Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 98


"Well, I've broke completely down. I ain't worth nothing. Got rheumatism
all over me.

"I never seen inside a schoolhouse--allus looked on the outside.

"The general run of this younger generation ain't no good. What I'm
speakin' of is the greatest mass of 'em. They ain't healthy either. Why,
when I was comin' along people was healthy and portly lookin'. Why, look