oy and 'bout my
age and we played together all the time even if I was black. I was the
only black boy on the place, all the other cullud chillun was gals. Us
chaps was out in the yard making frog nesties with our bare feet in the
sand. They was fightin' in Vicksburg then. They was doing a whole lot of
shooting. You could hear it one right after the other and it got so
smoky. I thought it was thunder and said something 'bout hit. Mistress
was setting on the gallery sewing and when I said that she said, 'Aw
Lawd, that ain't no thunder,' but she didn' tell us what hit wuz."

_Talitha_: "Course I wasn't old enough to know anything 'bout hit but I
heard my mother say it got so smoky the chickens didn't get off the
roost while they was bustin' all them big cannons."

_Jack_: "All us chillun was just as fat and healthy as hogs. Warn't never
sick. They'd feed 'bout this time every evening (4 p.m.) and by sundown
I was in bed. My mother worked in the field and I've heard her say that
sometime she didn't see her chillun from Sunday to Sunday. Old lady
Hannah Banks done the cooking for everybody and she cooked on a big
fireplace. They didn't have no stove. _Why, I got here before the stoves
did._ Ma and pa and all the grown ones would get up at four o'clock and
eat breakfast and be in the field workin' by sunup. They had a box with
shelves drove up on the side of the wall to the cabin where we slept and
old lady Hannah Banks would put our breakfast in that and when we woke
up we would get it and eat. One morning I woke up before the other
chillun did and 'cided I'd git my breakfast first 'fore they did. I clem
up, rech up and got holt of that box and I was so heavy I pulled it down
and broke all the old blue edge plates. That woke the other chillun up
all right, and I can jes see them old blue edge plates now. For dinner
they would give us boiled greens or beans wid bread and for supper they
would save the slop (liquor), cram it full of bread, pour it in a tray
and give it to all the chilluns and me, sister Julia, Nancy, Lizzie,
Marthy, and all the little nigger chillun."

_Talitha_: "Huh! Old man Givens had so many little nigger chillun couldn'
feed 'em in no tray. Had to have troughs. They'd take a log and hollow
it out and make three tubs in a row and put peg legs on it and a hole in
the bottom of each one with a pin in it. They would use these tubs to
wash the clothes in and pull the stem up to let all the water run out,
cle