Farm Woman
"In the fall of the year, it's the prettiest place you've ever seen. When the leaves is colored . .. it's beautiful to see the hills when it's colored like that, brown and red and green and yeller. The pines always looks green and if the rest is all colored, the pines shows up.
"There was more big trees then, but the fields were cleaned up and tended. You can see there's nothin' cleaned up any more, 'cause I ain't able to do it . .. "
Housework and farmin' is all I done, never worked at nothin' else. Eighteen hours out of every twenty-four. Out-of-doors and then in the house at night. I have worked out in the fodder field and carry it in some time after dark. We'd stack it by moonlight. Never got much rest on what little time I was in bed. (Laughs.)
You usually didn't get much rest on Sunday, had to cook for ten children on Sunday. I've raised ten and I had eleven. Three meals a day I cooked on Sunday. I got so I couldn't cook like I used to. I used to be out here just runnin' and cookin' those meals in a few minutes and fillin' the table full. But my mind just jumps from here to there and I can't do that no more. Just hard work, that's all I ever knowed.
I can run circles around every girl I've got in the house today. I'm awful thankful for it, but I won't hold up much longer. I';n a gittin' down. Used to be I could stand and split wood all day long, but now I go out there and split a little while and it hurts the back of my legs to stoop over. But I done awful well I think.
I just don't know. I was just raised an old hillbilly and I'll die one. Radio, it's sittin' up there, but I cain't hear too good. Don't have a television. I say there's too much foolishness on for me to watch. I hear a little about Vietnam. And I study a lot about it. But I have enough worry on my mind without listenin' to that to worry more about. What was to be would be. No, I don't guess I have a grandson in Vietnam now. Terry's boy, I actually don't know if he's out of Vietnam or not.
They wasn't much to think on when you didn't have no education. I didn't get half through the third reader, so I've got no education at all. Only five months of school. I just quit out until we got the fodder saved. Then it got so cold, I couldn't go back. I'm just a flat old hillbilly. That's the only way I know to talk and the only way I'll ever try to talk.
There was fifteen in the family and we were raised in a log house. There wasn't a window in the house. If we seen how to do anything in the winter, we done it by firelight. There wasn't even a kerosene lamp. We had to keep the door open regardless of how cold it was. If you needed to work at somethin' we either done it by the light of the fire in the grate or opened the door. We always kept a good fire.
That was the way I learnt to write. I'd get me a piece of clay dirt out of the cracks and write on the side of the log house. I couldn't write a line when I was goin' to school. Now that's the truth. l
