every ten years is a complete turnover of china.  Glassware goes faster, and of course, the linen is the greatest overhead.  Yes ma’am, as I was telling you, catering is slack because of clubs.  So many women take their parties to clubs now.  Another thing, the style of food has changed.  In those old days, the table was loaded with three four meats, fish, half dozen vegetable dishes, entrees, different kinds of wine, and an array of desserts.  Now what do they have?  Liquid punch, frozen punch and cakes.  In June I had a wedding party for 400, and that’s all they served.  I had to have 30 punch bowls, but borrowed about half from my white friends.

“You have got that wrong about me living with my grandchildren.  No ma’am!  They are living with me.  They make their home with me.  I don’t expect ever to marry again.  I’m 86.  In my will I am leaving everything I have to my three grandchildren.

“Well, miss, you’re looking young and blooming.  Guess your husband is right proud of you?  Say you’re a widow?  Well, now, my goodness.  Some of these days a fine man going to find you and then, er—­er, lady, let me cater for the wedding?”

Interviewer:  Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed:  Henry Kirk Miller [HW:  Same as H.K.  Miller]
                    1513 State Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age 87 [HW:  86]

“I am eighty-six years old-eighty-six years and six months.  I was born July 25, 1851.  I was a slave.  Didn’t get free till June 1865.  I was a boy fifteen years old when I got free.

“I have been living in this house fifty years.  I have been living in Arkansas ever since 1873.  That makes about sixty-five years.

“The engineer who got killed in that wreck the other day (a wreck which occurred February 7, 1938, Monday morning at three and in which the engineer and five other people were killed) came right from my town, Fort Valley, Georgia.  I came here from there in 1873.  I don’t know anybody living in Fort Valley now unless it’s my own folks.  And I don’t ’spect I’d know them now.  When I got married and left there, I was only twenty-one years old.

Parents and Relatives

“My mother and father were born in South Carolina.  After their master and missis married they came to Georgia.  Back there I don’t know.  When I remember anything they were in Georgia.  They said they came from South Carolina to Georgia.  I don’t know how they came.  Both of my parents were Negroes.  They came to Arkansas ahead of me.  I have their pictures.” (He carried me into the parlor and showed me life-sized bust portraits of his mother and father.)

“There were eighteen of us:  six boys and twelve girls.  They are all dead now but myself and one sister.  She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.  I am older than she is.

Occupation

“I am a caterer.  I have been serving the Scottish Rite Masons in their annual reunion every six months for forty-one years.  We are going to the Seventh Street Entrance this Friday.  One of the orders will have a dinner and I am going down to serve it.  I served the dinner for Teddy Roosevelt there, thirty years ago.  This Roosevelt is a cousin of his.