“I was 21 when freedom finally came, and that time I didn’t take no chances on ’em taking it back again.  I lit out for Florida and wound up in Madison County.  I had a nice time there; I got married, got a plenty of work, and made me a little money.  I fixed houses, built ’em, worked around the yards, and did everything.  My first child was already born; I didn’t know there was goin’ to be 37 more, though.  I guess I would have stopped right there....

“I stayed in Madison County until they started to working concrete rock down here.  I heard about it and thought that would be a good way for me to feed all them two dozen children I had.  So I came down this side.  That was about 20 years ago.

“I got married again after I got here; right soon after.  My wife now is 30 years old; we already had 13 children together. (His wife is a slight, girlish-looking woman; she says she was 13 when she married Douglass, had her first child that year.  Eleven of her thirteen are still living.)

“Yossuh, I ain’t long stopped work.  I worked here in the phosphate mine until last year, when they started to paying pensions.  I thought I would get one, but all I got was some PWA work, and this year they told me I was too old for that.  I told ’em I wasn’t but 91, but they didn’t give nothin’ else.  I guess I’ll get my pension soon, though.  My oldest boy ought to get it, too; he’s sixty-five.”

FOLK STUFF, FLORIDA

Jules A. Frost
Tampa, Florida
May 19, 1937

“Mama duck”

“Who is the oldest person, white or colored, that you know of in Tampa?”

“See Mama Duck,” the grinning Negro elevator boy told me.  “She bout a hunnert years old.”

So down into the “scrub” I went and found the old woman hustling about from washpot to pump.  “I’m mighty busy now, cookin breakfast,” she said, “but if you come back in bout an hour I’ll tell you what I can bout old times in Tampa.”

On the return visit, her skinny dog met me with elaborate demonstrations of welcome.

“Guan way fum here Spot.  Dat gemmen ain gwine feed you nothin.  You keep your dirty paws offen his clothes.”

Mama duck sat down on a rickety box, motioning me to another one on the shaky old porch.  “Take keer you doan fall thoo dat old floor,” she cautioned.  “It’s bout ready to fall to pieces, but I way behind in the rent, so I kaint ask em to have it fixed.”

“I see you have no glass in the windows—­doesn’t it get you wet when it rains?”

“Not me.  I gits over on de other side of de room.  It didn’t have no door neither when I moved in.  De young folks frum here useta use it for a courtin-house.”

“A what?”

“Courtin-house.  Dey kept a-comin after I moved in, an I had to shoo em away.  Dat young rascal comin yonder—­he one of em.  I clare to goodness—­” and Mama Duck raised her voice for the trespasser’s benefit, “I wisht I had me a fence to keep folks outa my yard.”