“I was a section foreman for the Missouri Pacific for twenty-two years.  I worked there altogether for thirty-five years, but I was section foreman for twenty-two years.  There’s my card.  Lots of men stayed on the job till it wore them out.  Lewis Holmes did that.  It would take him two hours to walk from here to his home—­if he ever managed it at all.

“It’s warm today and it will bring a lot of flies.  Flies don’t die in the winter.  Lots of folks think they do.  They go up in cracks and little places like that under the weatherboard there—­any place where it is warm—­and there they huddle up and stay till it gets warm.  Then they come out and get something to eat and go back again when it cools off.  They live right on through the winter in their hiding places.

“Both of my parents said they always did their work whatever the task might be.  And my daddy said he never got no whipping at all.  You know they would put a task on you and if you didn’t do it, you would get a whipping.  My daddy wouldn’t stand to be whipped by a paterole, and he didn’t have to be whipped by nobody else, because he always did his work.

“He was one of the ones that the pateroles couldn’t catch.  When the pateroles would be trying to break in some place where he was, and the other niggers would be standing ‘round frightened to death and wonderin’ what to do, he would be gettin’ up a shovelful of ashes.  When the door would be opened and they would be rushin’ in, he would scatter the ashes in their faces and rush out.  If he couldn’t find no ashes, he would always have a handful of pepper with him, and he would throw that in their faces and beat it.

“He would fool dogs that my too.  My daddy never did run away.  He said he didn’t have no need to run away.  They treated him all right.  He did his work.  He would get through with everything and sometimes he would be home before six o’clock.  My mother said that lots of times she would pick cotton and give it to the others that couldn’t keep up so that they wouldn’t be punished.  She had a brother they used to whip all the time because he didn’t keep up.

“My father told me that his old master told him he was free.  He stayed with his master till he retired and sold the place.  He worked on shares with him.  His old master sold the place and went to Monticello and died.  He stayed with him about fifteen or sixteen years after he was freed, stayed on that place till the Government donated him one hundred sixty acres and charged him only a dollar and sixty cents for it.  He built a house on it and cleared it up.  That’s what my daddy did.  Some folks don’t believe me when I tell ’em the Government gave him a hundred and sixty acres of land and charged him only a dollar and sixty cents for it—­a penny a acre.

“I am retired now.  Been retired since 1938.  The Government took over the railroad pension and it pays me now.  That is under the Security Act.  Each and every man on the railroad pays in to the Government.