“When I woke up, they had these homemade beds.  I couldn’t hardly describe them, but they put the sides into the posts with legs.  They were stout things too what I am talkin’ ’bout.  They made cribs for us little children and put them under the bed.  They would pull the cribs out at night and run them under the bed during the day.  They called them cribs trundles.  They called them trundles because they run them under the bed.  For chairs and tables accordin’ to what I heard my mother say, she was cook and they had everything in the big house and et pretty much what the white folks et.  But we just had boxes in the cabins.

“Them that was in the white folks’ house had pretty good meals, but them that was in the field they would feed just about like they would the hogs.  They had little wooden trays and they would put little fat meat and pot-liquor and corn bread in the tray, and hominy and such as that.  Biscuits came just on Sunday.

“They had old ladies to cook for the slave children and old ladies to cook for the hands.  What was in the big house stayed in the big house.  All the slave men ate in one place and all the slave women ate in one place.  They weren’t supposed to have any food in their homes unless they would go out foraging.  Sometimes they would get it that way.  They’d go out and steal ol’ master’s sweet potatoes and roast them in the fire.  They’d go out and steal a hog and kill it.  All of it was theirn; they raised it.  They wasn’t to say stealin’ it; they just went out and got it.  If old master caught them, he’d give ’em a little brushin’ if he thought they wouldn’t run off.  Lots of times they would run off, and if he thought they’d run off because they got a whippin’, he was kinda slow to catch ’em.  If one run off, he’d tell the res’, ’If you see so and so, tell ‘im to come on back.  I ain’t goin’ to whip ‘im.’  If he couldn’t do nothin’ with ’em, he’d sell ’em.  I guess he would say to hisself, ’I can’t do nothin’ with this nigger.  If I can’t do nothing with ’im, I’ll sell him and git my money outa him.’

“I have heard my mother say that some of the slaves that ran away would get destroyed by the wild animals and some of them would even be glad to come back home.  Right smart of them got clean away and went to free states.

“After the War was over, they all was brought back here and the owners let them know they was free.  They had to let them know they were free.  I never heard my mother tell the details.  I never heard her say just who brought her word or how it was told to her when they was freed.

“I never heard her say much about the church because she was a sinner.  After they was freed, I would go many a night and set down in a corner where they was having a big dance.

“The pateroles and jayhawkers were bad.  Many of them got hurt too.  They tried to hurt the niggers and sometimes the niggers hurt them.