<TITLE>12. Par 41-44</TITLE>L-41  Look, friends, it isn't a sin to be poor. No, it isn't. And maybe none of you has had to go down this trail; you don't know what it is. That's the reason that I could never be a rich man when I see poor little children on the street without clothes to wear, and people without coal in the wintertime. How could I set and hold money in my hands and such as that going on? I couldn't do it. No one with any kind of a heart could do it. That's right. I don't see how rich people can heap theirselves together treasures like that. No, sir. God have mercy. I'm seeking a city that is to come whose Builder, and Founder, and Maker is God.

L-42  And I remember, just a little brief case. I remember one year I went to school all year without a shirt. There was a rich woman my daddy was working for; she give me a coat. I never will forget it. When I went to school first, mama made me a pair of... some clothes, I think it was out of pop's coat when he got married [Blank.spot.on.tape--Ed.]... had great big white buttons on it. [Blank.spot.on.tape--Ed.] little pantywaist type, you know. All the kids laughed at me, said I looked wimpy. I didn't care what they said. If that was my daddy's coat, if it was good enough for daddy, it was good enough for me. I wished I had it today.
I remember that winter I had no coat to go to school. I remember one day going to... It was getting up towards March. I had this old coat and had it pinned up like this. It get wet or anything in school, I had to wear this little old coat. I didn't have nothing on, for I couldn't have none.
I remember the teacher said to me, said, "William, why don't you take off that coat."
I said, "Teacher, I--I'm cold." I wasn't. I couldn't take it off.
She said, "Move over there at the stove." She fired that stove up, and sweat run down my face. She said, "Aren't you warm yet?"
I said, "No, ma'am." Now, I couldn't take it off; I didn't have on nothing under it (See?), had it pinned up like this.
And she said, "Well, you've got to--a bad cold. You got to go home." And she'd send me home.

L-43  I remember the first shirt that I got after that. My father's sister's children come over. And one of them was a girl about my age. They stayed two or three days, and when they went back, the girl left a dress there, one of her dresses. I got to looking at that dress. It had short sleeves; I thought, "I can make a shirt out of it." And I cut the--the dress part off and put it on, you know, and took off my coat: looked pretty good. So... Only the buttons was in the back of it. But I got into it and had went down to school, and all the kids begin to laugh at me. I remember though that they had that little dugey-ma-flock stuff on it, you know, little what-do-you-call-it?. What is it? Rick-rat (That's right.), rick-rat all over it, you know, up and down the sides like that, and--and it... I said that wrong, didn't I? Rick rack? Rick rack. That's right. All right. Then I had all up and down it...
And I said, "You're laughing at that," I said, "Look, you just don't know. That's part of my Indian suit." Indian suit? My cousin's dress. They all laughed at me and made so much fun I had to go home crying. Oh, my. What crosses...?... That's right.

L-44  All right. Now, those old times pass by. I remember going to school. We kids, we couldn't take our dinner like other children. Lot of them had--would... Their mothers would bake bread; they'd make sandwiches, you know, and put stuff between them. But we couldn't afford that kind of bread. I had a little half of gallon syrup bucket. And we'd take a little jar in there, and had greens in one. The other one had, maybe, beans or whatever we had left over: a piece of corn bread laying there and two spoons. And we--we're ashamed to eat before the other children, brother and I. And we'd slip out and go over the hill, go down to the edge of the woods, and we'd set there and eat between us.


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