<TITLE>03. Par 17-28</TITLE>L-17 Now, I beg your pardon, I can remember when I was wearing a long dress. I don't know whether you (any you all) old enough to remember when little boys used to wear long dresses. How many in here remembers when children wore, yes, long dresses? Well, I can remember, in my little old hut there where we lived, I was crawling on the floor. And it was someone, I don't know who it was, come in. And Mama had worked a little--little blue ribbon in my dress. And I was just barely able to walk. But I was crawling then, and I stuck my finger in the snow on their feet, and was eating the snow off his foot standing by the side of the fireplace, getting warm. I remember my mother jerking me up for it.

L-18   And then the next thing I remember, must have been about two years later, I had a little rock. And that would make me about three years old, and my little brother then would just been about not quite two years old. And so we were out in the back of the yard where there was just an old chip yard where they used to bring the wood up and chop the wood. How many remembers them days when you used to pull the wood up in the back yard and chop it? Why did I wear a tie even tonight? I--I'm right at home.

L-19 Then when they... Out there in the old chip yard there was a little branch that run down there, come from the spring. Had an old gourd dipper up there at the spring where we'd dip our water and put it in the old bucket, old cedar bucket, and bring it down.

L-20   I remember the last time I seen my little, old grandmother before she died, she was one hundred and ten years old. And when she died, I picked her up in my arms and held her like this just before she died. She put her arms around me, and said, "God bless your soul, honey, now and forever," when she died.

L-21 And I don't think the woman ever owned a--a pair of shoes of her own, in her life. And I remember watching her, and even when I was a young man, would go down to see them, every morning she'd get up, barefooted, and go through that snow up to the spring, get a bucket of water and come back, her feet right in that. So it don't hurt you, she lived to be a hundred and ten. So (yes, sir) she was very, very rugged, too.

L-22   So then I remember she was going to tell me about my father's marbles that he played with when he was a boy. "And that poor old thing," I thought, "how's she going to get up in that attic?" A little, old two-room shack, and it had an attic up there. And they had two saplings cut, and a ladder made, to go up. Well, I said...

L-23 Well, now, she said, "Now, after dinner I'm going to tell you, show you your--your daddy's marbles."
And I said, "All right."

L-24 So she was going to show them to me, in a trunk upstairs where she had her stuff put away like the old folks do. And I thought, "How in the world is that poor old thing going to get up that ladder?" So I got around there and I said, "Grandma," I said, "now, wait, honey, I'll get up here and help you."

L-25 She said, "Stand aside." Up that ladder she went like a squirrel. She said, "Well, come on!"
And I said, "All right, Grandma."

L-26 I thought, "Oh, my, if I can just be like that, that much of strength in me yet at a hundred and ten years old!"

L-27   Now, then I remember being at this little old spring, and I had a rock and was throwing it down like that, in the mud, trying to show my little brother how strong I was. And there was a bird sitting up in the tree and he was chirping, tearing around, a little old robin or something. And, the little robin, I thought he spoke to me. And I turned and listened, and the bird flew away, and a Voice said, "You're going to spend a big part of your life near a city called New Albany."

L-28 That's three miles from where I was raised. Went, about a year later, to the place, having no idea of ever going... New Albany. Along through life, how those things...


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