<TITLE>13. Par 46-49</TITLE>L-46 I set there and said, "I'll go home and finish the job. Nobody wants me, and nobody... My life is a misery, so what's the use in me living?" Setting out there in that field that night... God's grace... Wished I had more time, but I can't, to get into that right there, to say what taken place; but someday I will, with God's help.
You might wonder how I got married. I finally found a girl that didn't drink and smoke. Just look around; they're still here. The backbone of the nation... So, she was a lovely girl. How glad I'm...?... glad to talk about her and her boy, and about her and I setting back there listening at me. She was a queen. She was everything that a lady could be.
I went with her. She was out of a good family. I was... My family wasn't much. But she was such a real nice girl, Christian girl. I'd go with her to church; that's where she'd taken me, to church.

L-47 And I remember my conversion when I was a converted. I'll just have to bypass most of it to hurry up now. I remember in the... I begin to make up my mind that I... She was too good of a girl for me just to go with her. Somebody ought to marry her who'd make her a good living, and I was only making twenty cents an hour, so I--I knowed I couldn't make her no living at that, working as a ditch digger. And her father made five hundred and something a month during the time of the depression, a brotherhood organizer on the Pennsylvania Railroad.
But she loved me, and I loved her. So I thought there's just going to be a... I'd just have to tell her and just walk away. And I couldn't do it. I tried to. Every night I thought I'd tell her I just wouldn't come back no more, and let her go ahead and get with some--with some good boy that would--could make her a living, and make her happy. And I was taking up her time, her young life, and I--I didn't want just to do that. So I--I was all mixed up. And I didn't want to give her up, 'cause I loved her too much. And I certainly was in a bad shape.

L-48 So I was too bashful to ask her to marry me. I just couldn't do that. Guess you wonder how I ever got married. I wrote her a letter and asked her, if you would. It worked. Now, it wasn't, "Dear Miss," I... It was, you know, a little more than that. I set down one day and fixed it all up, and fixed me up a letter.
Now, her father was just a good friend. Her mother was a good woman, but she was out of a real starchy church, you know, that--that she believed in. Guys like myself, I guess, wasn't too much. So I--I thought, "I could get by with her daddy, but her mother is what was bothering me."

L-49 So I just went to work that morning. I said, "Now, if it don't work, all right, so that'll settle it." And I closed the letter and dropped in the mailbox, and went to work. And I had to take her to church on Wednesday night, had a date. So I went over and put the box Monday morning. So Wednesday night come along, I had to go to church. And I happened to get to thinking, you know. Never thought of it before, but me mailing that letter, what if her mammy got a hold of it? And then, well, if she didn't get it. I thought, "Oh, my. I'd sure be in for it when I get up there, if her mother got it besides, she didn't get it." Well, the more I thought of it, the more I thought I'd better stay away Wednesday night.


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