We come on the train here.
"We come in 1920. The way we got down here now it is bad. We make big
crops and don't get much for it. We have no place to raise things to
help out and pay big prices for everything. I work. But times is hard.
That is the very reason it is hard. We got no place to raise nothing.
(Hard road and ditch in front and cotton field all around it except a
few feet of padded dirt and a wood pile.) Times is good and if a fellow
could ever get a little ahead I believe he could stay ahead. Since my
wife been sick we jes' can make it.
"We never called for no help. She cooked and I worked. She signed up but
it will be a long time, they said, till they could get to her."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Mary Mays West, Widener, Arkansas
Age: 65
"My parents' names was Josie Vesey and Henry Mays. They had ten children
and five lived to be full grown. I was born in Tate County, Mississippi.
Mother died in childbirth when she was twenty-eight years old. I'm the
mother of twelve and got five living. I been cooking out for white
people since I was nine years old. I am a good cook they all tell me and
I tries to be clean with my cooking.
"Mother died before I can remember much about her. My father said he had
to work before day and all day and till after night in the spring and
fall of the year.
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