The doors were hung on wooden
hinges. The doors were never locked. They didn't have any looks on them.
You could bar them on the inside if you wanted to. They didn't have no
fear of burglars in them days. People wasn't bad then as they is now.
They had just one window and one door in the house. The chimney was
built up like a ladder and clay and straw was stuffed in the framework.
I have seen such houses built right down here in Scott's. My mother was
a field hand. She lived in such a house in Tennessee. There wasn't no
brick about the house, not even in the chimney. In later years, they
have covered up all those logs with weather boards and made the houses
look like what they call "modern", but theyr'e the same old log houses.
Food
My mother said her white folks fed her well. She had whatever they had.
When she came to Arkansas, they issued rations, but she never was issued
rations before. When they issued rations, they gave them so much food
each week--so much corn meal, so much potatoes, so much cabbage, so much
molasses, so much meat--mostly rubbish-like food. We went out in the
garden and dug the potatoes and got the cabbage.
But in Tennessee, my mother got what ever she wanted whenever she wanted
it. If she wanted salt, she went and got it. If she wanted meat, she
went to the smokehouse and got it.
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