those were nice. What they give is a help to a man in my condition.

"I don't know where I was born and I don't know when. I know I am
eighty-two or eighty-three years old. The white folks that raised me
told me how old I was. I never saw my father and my mother in my life. I
don't know nothin'. I'm Just on old green man. I don't know none of my
kin people--father, mother, uncles, cousins, nothin'. When I found
myself the white people had me.

"That was right down here in Arkansas here on old Dick Fletcher's farm.
There was a big family of them Fletchers. They took me to Harriet
Lindsay to raise. She is dead. She had a husband and he is dead. She had
two or three daughters and they are dead.


Slave Houses

"I can remember what they used to live in. The slaves lived in old
wooden houses. They ain't living in no houses now--one-half of them.
They were log houses--two rooms. I have forgot what kind of
floors--dirt, I guess. Food was kept in a smokehouse.


Relatives

"The whole family of Fletchers is dead. I think that there is a Jef
Fletcher living in this town. I don't know just where but I met him
sometime ago. He doesn't do nothing for me. Nobody gives me anything for
myself but the man I used to work for--the concrete man. He's a man.