“My mother was awful good on head countin’ and she learnt me when I was a little fellow.  My oldest brother use to help me.  We’d sit by the fire, so you see you might say I got a fireside education.

“When I left Forrest City I moved to England and made one crop and moved to Baucum and made one crop and then I moved on the Sheridan Pike three miles the other side of Dew Drop.  I got the oil fever.  They was sellin’ land under that headin’.  Sold it to the colored folks and lots o’ these Bohemians.  They sho is fine people to live by—­so accommodatin’.

“Then I came here to Pine Bluff in 1921.  I hauled wood for two years.  Then I put in my application at the Cotton Belt Shops.  That was in 1923 and I worked there fifteen years.  I retired from the shops this year and took a half pension.  I think I’ll get about fifteen dollars a month.  That’s my thoughts.

“I have two daughters in Camden.  One teaches school and one operates a beauty parlor.

“All six of my children finished high school and three graduated from college.

“I think the younger generation is livin’ too fast.  I know one thing, they has done—­they ’bout wore out the old folks.  Old folks educate ’em and can’t accumulate anything.

“They don’t settle much now till they marry.  Seems like the young folks don’t have much accommodation.

“I’ll tell you another thing, the children aren’t carryin’ out things like they use to.  I think when us old folks plays out this world is goin’ to be in a bad shape.

“I belong out here to the Catholic Church—­the oldest church in the world.  I use to belong to the Methodist Church, but they got along so bad I got tired, so I went to the Catholic.  I like it out there—­everthing so quiet and nice.”

Name of Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Rachel Bradley. 1103 State Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  107?

Upon arriving at the humble unpainted home of Rachel Bradley I found her sitting in the doorway on a typical split-oak bottomed chair watching the traffic of State Street, one of our busiest streets out of the high rent district.  It is a mixture of white and Negro stores and homes.

After asking her name to be sure I was really talking to Rachel Bradley, I said I had been told she was a former slave.  “Yes’m, I used to be a slave.”  She smiled broadly displaying nearly a full set of teeth.  She is of a cheerful, happy disposition and seemed glad to answer my questions.  As to her age, she said she was “a little girl on the floor whan the stars fell.”  I looked this up at the public library and found that falling stars or showers of meteors occur in cycles of thirty-three years.  One such display was recorded in 1833 and another in 1866.  So if Rachel Bradley is really 107 years old, she was born in 1830.  It is a question in my mind whether or not she could have remembered falling stars at the age of three, but on the other hand if she was “a little girl on the floor” in 1866 she would be only somewhere between seventy-five and eighty years of age.