ey never did catch him. They
caught many another one and whipped him. My daddy was a pretty mean man.
He carried a gun and he had shot two or three men. Those were bad times.
I got scared to go out with him. I hated that business. But directly it
got over with. It got over with when a lot of the Ku Klux was killed up.

"In slavery time they would raise children just like you would raise
colts to a mare or calves to a cow or pigs to a sow. It was just a
business It was a bad thing. But it was better than the county farm.
They didn't whip you if you worked. Out there at the county farm, they
bust you open. They bust you up till you can't work. There's a lot of
people down at the state farm at Cummins--that's where the farm is ain't
it--that's raw and bloody. They wouldn't let you come down there and
write no history. No Lawd! You better not try it. One half the world
don't know how the other half lives. I'll tell you one thing, if those
Catholics could get control there would be a good time all over this
world. The Catholics are good folks.

"That gang that got after you if you let the sun go down while you were
out--that's called the Pateroles. Some folks call 'em the Ku Klux. It
was all the same old poor white trash. They kept up that business for
about ten years after the War. They kept it up till folks began to kill
up a lot of 'em. That's the only thing that stopped them. My daddy used
to make his own bullets.

"I've forgot who it is that told us that we was free. Somebody come and
told us we're free now. I done forgot who it was.

"Right after the War, my father farmed a while and after that he pulled
a skiff. You know Jim Lawson's place. He stayed on it twenty years. He
stayed at the Ferguson place about ten years. They're adjoining places.
He stayed at the Churchill place. Widow Scott place, the Bojean place.
That's all. Have you been down in Argenta to the Roundhouse? Churchill's
place runs way down to there. It wasn't nothing but farms in Little Rock
then. The river road was the only one there at that time. It would take
a day to cone down from Clear Lake with the cotton. You would start
'round about midnight and you would get to Argenta at nine o'clock the
next morning. The roads was always bad.

"After freedom, we worked on shares a while. Then we rented. When we
worked on shares, we couldn't make nothing--Just overalls and something
to eat. Half went to the other man and you would destroy your half if
yo