<TITLE>04. Par 27-34</TITLE>L-27   When I was a little boy I used to go to a great maple tree. In my country we have a lot of hardwood. And then we had this maple trees, the sugar maple, and what we call the "hard maple" and "soft maple." This great gigantic tree, it was the most beautiful tree. And when I would come in from the fields, of working in the hay and--and the harvests, I would love to go to this big tree and--and sit down under it and--and look up. And I could see its great, mighty branches sway in the wind, great huge trunk. And I said, "You know, I believe that this tree will be here for hundreds and hundreds of years." Not long ago I took a look at the old tree, it's just a snag.

L-28 "For here we have no continuing city." No, nothing here on the earth that you can look at will continue. It's got to have an end. Everything that's mortal has to give away to an immortality. So no matter how good we build our highways, how fine we make our structures, it all has to go, for here there's nothing can continue. Just the Unseen is what continues.

L-29   I remember the house that we lived in, it was an old log house chinked with mud. I... Perhaps maybe many never seen a house chinked with mud. But it was all chinked up with mud, and the great huge logs that was in the old house, I thought that house would stand for hundreds of years. But, you know, today where that house stood is a housing project. It's so much different. Everything's changing. But...

L-30   And I used to see my father, he was a rather a short, stocky man, very strong, and he was one of the strongest little man that I knew of. I met Mr. Coots, a fellow that he used to work with in the logs, he was a logger, and about a year ago, and Mr. Coots is a very good friend of mine, and a deacon in the First Baptist church, and he said, "Billy, you ought to be a real powerful man."
And I said, "No, I'm not, Mr. Coots."

L-31 He said, "If you took after your daddy, you would be." Said, "I seen that man, weighing a hundred and forty pounds, load a log on the wagon by himself, that weighed nine hundred pounds." He just knew how to do it. He was strong. I'd see him come into the place to wash and get ready for dinner, when Mother would call him.

L-32   And we had an old apple tree out in the front yard, and then there was three or four small ones along towards the back. And right in the middle tree there was an old looking glass, had been broke, mirror, large one. And had been tacked on the side of the tree with some nails bent in. Kind of like what some of you carpenters listening in would call "coat hangers." It had been bent in to hold the glass in its place. And there was an old tin comb. How many ever seen an old tin... the old-fashioned tin comb? I can just see it.

L-33 And then there was a little wash bench, just a little board with a little slanting leg beneath it, tacked against the tree. A little, old, half sulphur pump there that we pumped the water out, and we washed at this old tree. And Mama used to take meal sacks and make towels. Anybody ever use a meal-sack towel? Well, I'm sure I'm feel at home now. And those big, old rough towels! And when she'd give us little kiddies a bath, she'd... feel like she was rubbing the hide off everytime she rubbed. And I remember that old meal sack. And she'd pull some of the strings out, make little tassels, to kind of decorate it up.

L-34   How many ever slept on a straw tick? Well, I'll--will say! How many ever knowed what a shuck pillow was? Well, Brother Glover, I'm at home now, sure enough! Straw tick, well, it hasn't been too long since I just come off of one, and it was... Oh, it--it's good sleeping, cool. Then in the wintertime they take the old feather bed and lay on it, you know, and then have to put a piece of canvas over the top of us because the snow blowed in the--the--the cracks in the house, you know, where the old clapboard shingles would turn up, you know, and the snow would sweep through it. And, oh, I can remember that very well.


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