How I a-living now?  You wants to know, honest?  Say honey, is you a relief worker—­one of them welfare folkses?  Lor’ God, how I needs help!  Honey, last summer when my husband and son die they wasn’t nothin’ to put on ’em to bury in.  I told the Welfare could I get something clean and whole to bury my dead; honey chile, it’s the gospel truth, it was two weeks after they was buried when they brought me the close (clothes).  Theys told me then I would get $10.00 a month, but in all this time now, I only had $5.00 one time.  I lives with my daughter here in this house, but her man been outen work so long he couldn’t keep up the payments and theys ’bout to loose it.  Lordy, where’ll we go?  I made big garden in the spring of the year, and sold a heap.  Hot summer burnt everything up, now.  Yessum, that $5.00 the Reliefers give me—­I bought my garden stuff with it.

I got the rheumatiz a-making the garden.  It look like I’m done.  I knowed a old potion.  It made of pokeberry juice and whiskey.  Good whiskey.  Not old cheap corn likker.  Yessum, you takes fine whiskey—­’bout half bottle, and fills up with strained pokeberry juice.  Tablespoon three times a day.  Look-a-here, miss.  Look at these old arms go up and down now.  I kin do a washing along with the youngish womens.

Iffen you wants to know what I thinks of the young folks I tells you.  Look at that grandchile a-setting there.  She fourteen and know more right now than I knowed in my whole life.  Yes ma’am!  She can sew on a machine and make a dress in one day.  She read in a book how to make sumthin to eat and go hatch it up.  Theys fast, too.  Ain’t got no time for olds like me.  Can’t find no time to do nothin’ for me.  People now makes more money than in old days, but the way they makes it ain’t honest.  No’am, honey, it jest plain ain’t.  Old honest way was to bend the back and bear down on the hoe.

Did you ask somethin’ ’bout old time songs?  Sure did have purty music them days.  It’s so long, honey, I jest can’t ’member the names, ’excusing one.  It was “Hark, from the Tombs a Doleful Sound.”  It was a burying song; wagons a-walking slow like; all that stuff.  It was the most onliest song they knowed.  They was other music, though.  Could they play the fiddle in them days, unh, unh!  Lordy, iffen I could take you back and show you that handsome white lady what put me on the floor and learned me to dance the contillion!

I’m a-thinking we’re a-living in the last days, honey, what does you think?  Yes, Mam!  We sure is living in the seventh seal.  The days of tribulations is on us right now.  Nothing make like it used to.  I sure would be proud iffen I knowed I had a living for the balance of my days.  I got a clean and a clear heart—­a clean and clear heart.  Be so to your neighbors and God will make it up to you.  He sure will, honey.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Mattie Fritz, Clarendon, Arkansas
Age:  79