tist Church, and I sure believes in always tellin'
de trufe and nofin' but de trufe; we better tell de trufe here, for some
of dese days we all gwine where nofin' but de trufe will be accepted.

"No suh, I ain't never took any interest in politics and ain't never
voted.

"Dese young'uns today is simply too much for me; I can't understand em,
and I dunno which way dey headed. Some few of em seems to have sound
common sense, but--well, I just refuse to talk about em."

Interviewer: Pernella Anderson
Person Interviewed: Edmond Smith
D Avenue
El Dorado, Ark.
Age: ?

"I was born in Arcadia, Louisiana a long, long time ago. Now my work
when I was a child was farmin'. I did not stay a child long, I been
grown ever since I was fourteen. My father lived till I was eleven, and
I thought since I was the oldest boy I could take his place of bossin',
but my mother would take me down a button hole lower whenever I got too
high.

"Before my papa died we had a good livin'. We lived with his mistress's
daughter, and we thought we lived in heaven. My papa made all of the
shoes and raised all of the cattle from which he got the hide. We raised
all the wool to make our wool clothes and made all of the clothes we
wore. And food--we did not know what it was to go to a store to buy.
Didn't have to do that. You see, people now living out of paper sacks.
Every time they get ready to cook it's go to the store. We old timers
lived out of our smokehouse.

"In there we had dried beef, cured pork, sugar from syrup, sweet
potatoes, onions, Irish potatoes, plenty of dried fruit and canned
fruit, peanuts, hickory nuts, walnuts; eggs in the henhouse and chickens
on the yard, cows in the pen and milk and butter in the house.

"My mama even made our plow lines. She had a spinning wheel and you know
how to spin?--you can make ropes for plow lines too. Just twist the
cotton and have it about six inches long and put it in the loom and let
it go around and around. You keep puttin' the twisted cotton in the loom
and step on the peddle and no sooner than done, that was worked in a
rope. Now, if you don't know what I am talking about it is useless for
me to tell you.

"After papa died that left no one to work but mama and I tell you time
brought about a change. A house full of little children--we lived from
hand to mouth. Not enough corn to feed one mule. No syrup, no hogs, no
cows. Oh! we had a hard ti