<TITLE>09. Par 12-12</TITLE>L-12 Now, I'm told by my mother and my father... Now, my dad was a logger in the woods. My mother and father were married when my mother was fourteen years old and my dad was eighteen years old. I was born when mama was fifteen years old: just a child having a child, that was all. I was born, only weighed five pounds, little bitty fellow.
I lived in a little old log cabin. The picture hangs in my house today, that a person painted for me in California, of the little old log cabin. And in there, in this little log cabin, that morning on April the 6th, when the midwife opened up the window, so the light could shine in to show--let mama see what I looked like, and papa. When they looked in the... In there was Light come whirling through the window about the size of a pillow. And it circled around where I was, and went down on the bed. Several of the mountain people were standing there. They were crying. My people back before me were Catholic. I'm Irish on both sides.
And so they were... They... My people, not my mother and father, because they'd gotten away from the church. And then, they didn't know what happened. 'Course, you know how superstitious the mountain people is, said, "That young'n that was borned over yonder on the hill," you know. "There was a Light appeared over yonder in a room. Wonder what kind of a young'n it'll be." See? "He will be born somewhere. He will be certain-certain things." You know how mountain people are. All right.
Now, that was all I knowed till I was about, all I know of, in the supernatural line till I was about three years old. My father was hauling logs with an ox. I guess you never seen a yoke of ox. They used to drive them in the mountains there, and then they'd take all the logs and put them in the river, and raft them, and go down the Cumberland River into the--on down into the Mississippi, or down into the Ohio River, come down the Cumberland River in rafts.
And pop was hauling logs with a ox, with the other man, and one day, as a little boy, with my little brother, who'd came on the scene then, who is in glory, today... I had a rock, and I'd walked out behind the house, where there was a little branch that run down behind the cabin; I picked this rock, and I'd throw it down in the mud. And you know how a bunch of loggers would be, just about like a bunch of--of sailors, I guess, on a high sea. They was always teasing me and going on. And I guess, I was a pretty bad little boy. They'd tell me how big a muscle I had, and how to blow it up with my thumb, you know. And I was telling my little brother what a big muscle I had. And I'd throw it down at the rock, and how deep it would fall in the mud.


<A HREF="P10">Next Page</A>