<TITLE>09. Par 31-36</TITLE>L-31 Last summer, Mr. Mercier here, Mr. Goad which is here also, and many of the--the--some of the campaign party that's not with me now, we were setting on my front steps. There'd been a--a Negro girl... It was in the paper that morning, a lovely, beautiful-looking, colored girl. And she had had a baby illegitimately born. And she'd took this baby, and smothered it in some blankets, wrapped some wire around it, and hired a cab. And she went out on the Ohio bridge and looked off, and like she was going to throw a bundle over, and she threw the baby in the river. The ta--cab driver reported it back to the authorities; they seined it out and found it was a baby.

L-32 Mr. Mercier here and Mr. Goad, I call them my student ministers. If you ever knew who they was, one's a Catholic and the other one (I think) is a steam-fitter. And they made themself a little FBI to come find out if these visions were right, and come in town posing as somebody else. And the Lord revealed it all to them right there. And they become friends of mine. And they were setting on the porch and I was teaching them. I said, "That woman isn't a mother. A mother wouldn't do a thing like that. No, sir." I said, "She's a female that gave birth to a baby, but she's not a mother. A mother's a greater name than that."

L-33 And while we were talking, coming down the road... I don't know whether you know what they are here (the animals), was a opossum.
Now, I live about two hundred yards from a little woods on the river bank. There's three houses between me and the woods with no fences. My house has a fence around it.

L-34 And this old opossum come up in the middle of the day, about ten o'clock (I guess) at morning, turned in the gate. And I said, "That opossum has rabies." Because a opossum, anyone knows, a opossum prowls at night. When the sun goes down they go out and prowl; in daytime they're practically blind. And here come this opossum, right in the hot summer, in the middle of the day, coming right up and turned in my gate.

L-35 Mr. Wood, who formerly was Jehovah Witness and his boy was healed with infantile paralysis, his legs drawed behind him. He don't even know which leg it was now, 'less his mother would happen to tell him which it was. He'd quit his contracting and moved in next door to me just to be with me. And he had been cutting, helped me cut the yard. And the rake was laying there, where I'd been raking the grass, 'cause it had gotten tall.

L-36 And Leo and Gene and I run out to the yard, and I took this rake and throwed it over the opossum to stop it. And when I did, it just started gnawing on the rake. Now, that's unusual. Because the opossum, usually when you touch him, he (what they call) play opossum; he just lays act like he's dead. And while he was in that condition, Mrs. Wood come up and Mr. Wood; and Mrs. Wood is a veterinarian. And while he was laying in that condition, I said, "Oh, I see what's the matter. The dogs had got her a few days before, or a car, and it mashed her left shoulder till it was swollen about that big, broken, hanging back behind her. And (this is an awful word to say, but) the flies had blowed it and maggots was working on it. And I said, "Just look at that." I said, "That poor, old thing is dying."  I said, "that's what made her fight like that."


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