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910 Spruce Street Augusts, Georgia
(Richmond County)
BY: (Mrs.) Margaret Johnson Editor Fed. Writers' Proj. Augusta, Georgia.
Mary Smith, 910 Spruce Street Augusta, Georgia
Such a hovel, such squalor it would be hard to imagine. Only first hand observation could be a reliable witness to such conditions.
Into a tiny room was squeezed a double and a single bed with a passage-way barely wide enough to walk between the two beds. The door from the small porch could be opened only enough to allow one to enter, as the head on the single bed was against it. A small fire burned in the open fire place. An old man, ragged but respectful, and two old women were sitting in the room, one on a broken chair, the other on an empty nail keg. As we entered the room one of the old women got up, took a badly clipped and handle less teacup from the hearth and offered it to a girl lying in the single bed, in a smother of dirty quilts.
Mary was a squat figure, her head tied up in a dirty towel, her dress ragged and dirty, and much too small for her abund- dant figure. She welcomed us telling us the "po chile was bad sick" but she would talk to us. As the door of the lean-to kitchen was open, it offered a breath of outside air, even though polluted with the garbage scattered on the ground, and the odors from chickens, cats and dogs meandering about.
Mary's round face was unwrinkled, but the wisps of wool showing beneath her "head rag" were grey, and her eyes were rheumy with age. She was entirely toothless and her large tongue rolled ceaselessly in her mouth, chewing nothing.
Her articulation necessarily was very poor. "I wus seven yeres old when Freedum cum. My ma and pa belonged to Mr. McNorrell of Burke County. Miss Sally was a good lady and kind to evebody. My marster was a good man cuz he was a preacher, I never member him whuppin' anybody. I 'members slavry, yes mam, I 'members all the slaves' meals wus cooked in de yard, in big pots hung up on hooks on a iron bar. The fust wurk I ever done wus to push fire wood under dem pots. Mostly I stayed home and minded de baby. My ma uster pin a piece of fat back on my dres' before she went to de fiel' and when de baby cry I tek him up and let 'em suck 'em. My brudder you see sittin' in dere, he de baby I uster mine. My pa was the blacksmith on the plantashum, and he mek all de plows and tings like dat. My ma tek me to de fiel when I was 'bout sever yeres ole and teach me to chop cotton, I dont member what happen when freedom come, tings was 'bout de same, fur as we chillun knewed."
(Elizabeth Watson, M.G. 7/15/37, Ex-Slave, #7)
