"Our Mr. Tommy Angel went to the war, and he got so much experience
shooting at the Yankees that he could shoot at a target all day long,
and then cover all the bullet holes he made with the palm of one hand.
Mr. Tommy was at home when the Yankees come though.

"Folks around our settlement put their darkies on all their good mules
and horses, and loaded them down with food and valuables, then sent them
to the nearby mountains and caves to hide until the soldiers were gone.
Mr. Angel himself told me later that lots of the folks who came around
pilfering after the war, warn't northerners at all, but men from just
anywhere, who had fought in the war and came back home to find all they
had was gone, and they had to live some way.

"One day my father and another servant were laughing fit to kill at a
greedy little calf that had caught his head in the feed basket. They
thought it was just too funny. About that time a Yankee, in his blue
uniform coming down the road, took the notion the men were laughing at
him. 'What are you laughing at?' he said, and at that they lit out to
run. The man called my father and made him come back, 'cause he was the
one laughing so hard. Father thought the Yankee vas going to shoot him
before he could make him understand they were just laughing at the calf.

"When the war was over, Mr. Love called his slaves together and told
them they had been set free. He explained everything to them very
carefully, and told them he would make farming arrangements for all that
wanted to stay on there with him. Lots of the darkies left after they
heard about folks getting rich working on the railroads in Tennessee and
about the high wages that were being paid on those big plantations in
Mississippi. Some of those labor agents were powerful smart about
stretching the truth, but those folks that believed them and left home