"I've forgot who it is that told us that we was free. Somebody come and
told us we're free now. I done forgot who it was.
"Right after the War, my father farmed a while and after that he pulled
a skiff. You know Jim Lawson's place. He stayed on it twenty years. He
stayed at the Ferguson place about ten years. They're adjoining places.
He stayed at the Churchill place. Widow Scott place, the Bojean place.
That's all. Have you been down in Argenta to the Roundhouse? Churchill's
place runs way down to there. It wasn't nothing but farms in Little Rock
then. The river road was the only one there at that time. It would take
a day to cone down from Clear Lake with the cotton. You would start
'round about midnight and you would get to Argenta at nine o'clock the
next morning. The roads was always bad.
"After freedom, we worked on shares a while. Then we rented. When we
worked on shares, we couldn't make nothing--Just overalls and something
to eat. Half went to the other man and you would destroy your half if
you weren't careful. A man that didn't know how to count would always
lose. He might lose anyhow. They didn't give no itemized statement. No,
you just had to take their word. They never give you no details. They
just say you owe so much. No matter how good account you kept, you had
to go by their account and now, Brother, I'm tellin' you the truth about
this.
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