“I don’t rightly know how old I is.  My mother used to tell me that I was a little baby, six months old when our master, Joe Potts was his name, got ready to clear out of Florida.  You see he had heard tell of the war scare.  So he started drifting out of the way.  Bet it didn’t take him long after he made up his mind.  He was a right decided man.  Mister Joe was.

“How did we like him?  Well, he was always good to us.  He was well thought of.  Seemed to be a pretty clever man, Mr. Joe did.” ("Clever” in plantation language like “smart” refers more to muscular than mental activity.  They might almost be used as synonyms for “hard working” on the labor level.)

“So Mr. Joe got ready to go to Texas.  Law, Miss, I don’t rightly know whether he had a family or not.  Never heard my Mother say.  Anyhow he come through Arkansas intending to drift on out into Texas.  But when he got near the border ’twix’t and between Arkansas and Texas he stopped.  The talk about war had about settled down.  So he stopped.  He stopped near where the big bridge is.  You know where Little River County is don’t you?  He stopped and he started to work.  Started to make a crop.  ’Course I can’t remember none about that.  Just what my Mother told me.  But I remembers him from later.

“He went at it the good way.  Settled down and tried to open up a home.  They put in a crop and got along pretty good.  Time passed and the war talk started floating again.  That time he didn’t pay much attention and it got him.  It was on a Sunday morning when he went away.  I never knew whether they made him go or not.  But I kind of think they must of.  Cause he wouldn’t have moved off from Florida if he had wanted to go to war.

“He took my daddy with him!  Ma’am—­did he take him to fight or to wait on him—­Don’t know ma’am, but I sort of think he took him to wait on him.  But he didn’t bring him back.  My daddy got killed in the war.  No ma’am.  I don’t rightly know how he got killed.  Never heard nobody say.  I was just a little girl—­nobody bothered to tell me much.

“Yes, that we did.  We stayed on on the farm and we made a crop—­the old folks did.  Mr. Joe, when he went off, said “Now you stay on here, you make a crop and you use all you need.  Then you put up the rest and save for me.”  He was a right good man, Mr. Joe was.

“No, we didn’t never see no fighting.  There wasn’t nothing to be scared of.  Didn’t see no Yankees until the war was through.  Then they started passing.  Lawsey, I couldn’t tell how many of them there was.  More than you could count.

“We had all stayed on.  I was the oldest of my mother’s children.  But she had two more after me.  There was our family and my two uncles and my grandmother.  Then there was some other colored folks.  But we wasn’t scared of the Yankees.  Mr. Joe was there by that time.  They camped all around in the woods near us.  They got us to do their washing.  Lawsey they was as filthy as hogs.  I never see such folks.  They asked Mr. Joe if we could do their washing.  Everything on the place that come near those clothes got lousey.  Those men was covered with them.  I never see nothing like it.  We got covered with them.  No, ma’am, we got rid of ’em pretty easy.  They ain’t so hard to get rid of, if you keep clean.