“The young people today!  I’d hate to tell you what I do think of them.  The business is going to fall.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Casper Rumple, De Valls Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  78

“I will be, providin’ the good Lord spare me, 79 years old the first day of January.  I was born in Lawrence County, South Carolina.  The Big road was the dividing line between that and Edgefield County.  My mother belonged to John Griffin.  His wife named Rebecca.  My father was a Irishman.  Course he was a white man—­Irishman.  Show I did know him.  He didn’t own no slaves.  I don’t guess he have any land.  He was a overseer in Edgefield County.  His name was Ephraim Rumple.  What become of him?  He went off to fight the Yankees and took Malaria fever and died on Red River.  I could show you bout where he died.

“My mother had a big family.  I can’t tell you much bout them.  I was the youngest.  She cooked up at John Griffins.  He was a old man and the land was all his wife’s.  She was old too.  She had some grown girls.  He had no children.  They called him Pa and I did too.  I stayed round with him nearly all the time helping him.

“He had a room and she had a room.  I slept on a bed—­little bed—­home-made bed—­in the room wid him and she slept in the room with her two girls and my mother slept in the kitchen a whole heap so she be there to get breakfast early.  They riz early every mornin’.  John Griffins wife owned four plantations more than 160 acres in each one, but I couldn’t say how much.

“My mother was a field hand in busy times too.  Miss Rebecca had all the slaves clothes made.  She seed to that.  She go to the city, Augusta, and bring back bolts cloth.  One slave sewed for Miss Rebecca and her family.  She didn’t do all the sewing but she sewed all the time.  One woman done all the weavin’.  At night after they work in the field Miss Rebecca give em tasks—­so many bats to card or so much spinnin’ to do.

“Master John didn’t want em to work at night but she made em work all the same.  They b’long to her.  Another thing the women had to do was work in the garden.  It was a three acre garden.  They always had plenty in thar.  Had it palinged so the young chickens couldn’t squeeze through the cracks.

“They had plenty stock and made all the fertilizer needed in the garden and patches.  They had goober patch, popcorn patch, sorghum patches, several of em, pea patches but they was field cabbage patch and watermellon patch.  They had chicken house, goose house, duck house and way off a turkey pen.  It had a cover on it.  They had to be cleaned and all that manure moved to the garden and patches.  Old man John Griffin was a good man.  Things went on pretty quiet bout the place.  They had to do their own cooking.  They got for the grown ups 3 pounds meat, 1 pk.[TR:?] meal a week.  They fed the young chaps plenty so they wouldn’t get stunted.  They keep em chunky till they get old nough to grow up tall and that make big women and big men.  They stunt em then when they start runnin’ up, it cause em to be low.  The owners was mighty careful (not)[HW:  ?] to feed the chaps nough to eat so they make strong hands.