|
|
Biscoe, Arkansas
Age 49
"Gran'ma was Pheobe West. Mama was Jennie West. Mama was a little girl when the Civil War come on. She told
how scared her uncle was. He didn't want to go to war. When they would be coming if he know it or get glimpse of
the Yankee soldiers, he'd pick up my mama. She was a baby. He'd run for a quarter of a mile to a great big tree
down in the field way back of the place off the road. He never had to go to war. Ma said she was little but she was
scared at the sight of them clothes they wore. Mama's and grandma's owners lived at Vicksburg a lot of the time but
where that was at Washington County, Mississippi. They had lots of slaves.
"Grandma was a midwife and doctored all the babies on the place. She said they had a big room where they was and
a old woman kept them. They et milk for breakfast and buttermilk and clabber for supper. They always had bread.
For dinner they had meat boiled and one other thing like cabbage, and the children got the pot-liquor. It was brought
in a cart and poured in wooden troughs. They had gourds to dip it out with. They had gourds to drink their cool
spring water with.
"Daylight would find the hands in the field at work. Grandma said they had meat and bread and coffee till the war
come on. They had to have a regular meal to work on in the morning.
"Grandma said their something to eat got mighty slim in war times and kept getting slimner and slimner. They had
plenty sorghum all the time.
Them troughs was hewed out of a log and was washed and hung in the sun till next mealtime. They cooked in iron
pots and skillets on the fire. Grandma worked where they put her but her main trade was seeing after the sick on that
place.
"They had a fiddler on the place and had big dances now and then.
"This young generation won't be advised no way you can fix it. I don't know what in the world the folks is looking
about. The folks ain't good as they used to be. They shoots craps and drinks and does low-down things all the time. I
ain't got no time with the young generation. Times gone to pieces pretty bad if you axing me."
Interviewed Watt McKinney"
