“We never knowed how Massa Tom got drowned.  They brought him home and buried him.  His horse come home.  He had been in the water, water was froze on the saddle.  They said it was water soaked.  They thought he swum the branch.  Massa Tom drunk some.  We never did know what did happen.  I didn’t know much ’bout ’em.

“He had two or three families of slaves.  Ma cooked, washed and ironed for all on the place.  She went to the field in busy times.  Three of the men drove horses, tended to ’em.  They fed ’em and curried and sheared ’em.  Ma said Massa Tom sure thought a heap of his niggers and fine stock.  They’d bring in three or four droves of horses and mules, care fer ’em, take ’em out sell ’em.  They go out and get droves, feed ’em up till they looked like different from what you see come there.  He’d sell ’em in the early part of the year.  He did make money.  I know he muster.  My pa was the head blacksmith on Masaa Tom’s place, them other men helped him along.

“I heard ma say no better hearted man ever live than Massa Tom if you ketch him sober.  He give his men a drink whiskey ’round every once in awhile.  I don’t know what Miss Liza Jane could do ’bout it.  She never done nothin’ as ever I knowed.  They sent apples off to the press and all of us drunk much cider when it come home as we could hold and had some long as it lasts.  It turn to vinegar.  I heard my pa laughing ’bout the time Massa Tom had the Blue Devils.  He was p’isoned well as I understood it.  It muster been on whiskey and something else.  I never knowed it.  His men had to take keer of ’em.  He acted so much like he be crazy they laughed ’bout things he do.  He got over it.

“Old mistress—­we all called her Miss Liza Jane—­whooped us when she wanted to.  She brush us all out wid the broom, tell us go build a play house.  Children made the prettiest kinds of play houses them days.  We mede the walls outer bark sometimes.  We jus’ marked it off on the ground out back of the smokehouse.  We’d ride and bring up the cows.  We’d take the meal to a mill.  It was the best hoecake bread can be made.  It was water ground meal.

“We had a plenty to eat, jus’ common eatin’.  We had good cane molasses all the tine.  The clothes was thin ’bout all time ‘ceptin’ when they be new and stubby.  We got new clothes in the fall of the year.  They last till next year.

“I never seed Massa Tom whoop nobody.  I seen Miss Liza Jane turn up the little children’s dresses and whoop ’em with a little switch, and straws, and her hand.  She ’most blister you wid her bare hand.  Plenty things we done to get whoopin’s.  We leave the gates open; we’d run the calves and try to ride ’em; we’d chunk at the geese.  One thing that make her so mad was for us to climb up in her fruit trees and break off a limb.  She wouldn’t let us be eating the green fruit mostly ’cause it would make us sick.  They had plenty trees.  We had plenty fruit to eat when it was ripe.  Massa Tom’s little colored boys have big ears.  He’d pull ’em every time he pass one of ’em.  He didn’t hurt ’em but it might have made their ears stick out.  They all had big ears.  He never slapped nobody as ever I heard ’bout.