<TITLE>10. Par 34-38</TITLE>L-34 So I remember setting there and hearing those leaves a blowing, and I got up, and I couldn't see them anywhere. And I squalled a couple times, and picked up my buckets, and started on up. We had several gallons to pack. They was going to run whiskey that night. And on the road up, I heard It again. I turned around, and about half-way up a big old cottonwood tree, silver poplar it's called, It was, looked like a whirlwind. We call them little cyclones. They're whirlwinds in Kentucky, I think is the best name. It's whirling around in the bush.
Well, I'd noticed them things before. So, I... It didn't leave. And out of there... Now, you can think whatever you want to, friends. I can only be honest with you. But out of there come an audible voice, and said, "Don't never smoke, or drink, or defile your body in any way. There'll be a work for you to do when you get older."

L-35 Well, liked to scared me to death. I dropped both buckets,  starting running, screaming at the top of my voice. A lot of copperheads in that country, and mama thought a copperhead had bit me. She was only about twenty-two years old. She picked me up, and I was kissing her and hugging her. She put me to bed and went over to Wathan's and called the doctor. He said, "Oh, he's just nervous."
About... I said, "There's a man in that tree. And I heard Him, what He told me." And I said, "I ain't going to never go by there." And till this day, I have never been there. I'd go down the one behind the garden, going back to... The pump was down at the barn, and we had to pack water up to the house. I've never been there to this day, and from that time. And that was--been a long time ago.

L-36 So then, I remember about two weeks after that, I was playing marble with my brother, and there I--I felt something strange come over me. I didn't know what was taking place. And I went out, set down just a minute, and I looked, and right before me, I seen something moving. And the waters looked like the river was looking closer to me. And I seen the Municipal bridge that spans the river now, come up and cross the river, and seen the amount of men dropped off, and went in and told my mama. She said, "You had a dream, honey."
I said, "No, ma'am. I stood and looked right at it, and I seen what it did."
And--and twenty-two years from that very same year, the bridge which spans the Ohio River, and just exactly the same amount of men lost their life. And they just kept on going. Every time, everywhere, just vision after vision. Nobody...

L-37 I remember my first date I had with a little girl. You know how boys are. When you get about sixteen, seventeen, you got a sweetheart. And oh, that first one, you know how she looks. I was a big, old, bashful, country boy, but I remember the first girl that I had. Oh, she had teeth like pearls. She had eyes like a dove, neck like a swan. Oh, she was the prettiest thing I ever seen in my life.
So, she had just come into school, so I said to the other boy friend, I said, "You get your daddy's old Ford. I got seventy-five cents. And we'll get us two gallons of gasoline for a quarter. And so, and I'll have fifty cents left, and we'll go out and have a good time."

L-38 So we had to jack the old Ford up, and you know, make... Did you ever do that to your old Ford when it was about half backslid anyhow, you know? And--and pull it up till we got is started, and he got his girl, and I got mine, and away we went. My, I think, she'd go out with me. Went at nighttime, didn't have to dress too good, you know; we wasn't going nowhere anyhow. So I setting back in the back of the car talking to this little lady, her way over on one side, and me way over on the other, just a bashful, you know. I--I just... My, I know my face was bound to be red.


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