<TITLE>16. Par 169-180</TITLE>L-169   Now, when I was a little baby. My people, course, being Irish descent, perhaps we were formerly Catholic, but my father and mother didn't go to church at all. In a little mountain home, up in the state of Kentucky; one morning, April the sixth, 1909, in a little old house that didn't even have any windows in it; just a little door like, you went, let the light in. When the Lord Jesus permitted me to come to the earth, being the firstborn of my mother and father; her fifteen, my dad eighteen. And on a little straw tick.

L-170 I guess you people around here never know what a straw tick was. But, us, how many ever know what a straw tick was? Well, what part of Kentucky you from? See?

L-171 So then, a straw tick, on a little straw tick, with a shuck pillow, that one little bed in the room. One little room, and a little kitchen, was just about, the whole thing together, wouldn't be twenty feet, altogether. Little old log cabin, no floor at all, a table is made out of a stump.

L-172   And there, in that little room, when Jesus Christ permitted me to come to the earth. I can only say this by testimony of my parents, which was not religious. But they didn't have no lights like we have here, not even a coal oil lamp.

L-173 I don't know whether you ever know what a grease lamp was, or not. Take some lard and put it in a can, and put a little piece of flannel in it, and light it, and it'll burn.

L-174 The light, that early in the morning, wouldn't show enough light to let mama see what I was, or looked like. And they opened this little window on the side towards the East, for some robins was setting in the bushes out there, singing, as it breaking day at five o'clock.

L-175 And when they opened up the window, a Pillar of Fire, Light, came moving through the window, and come and hung over the little bed. My mother screamed. The midwife was there. We had no doctor. And the midwife was there. They didn't know what It was.

L-176   About two weeks after that, I was carried up to a little Baptist church, called Opossum Kingdom. The minister held me in his arms and dedicated me to God.

L-177 The mountain people didn't know what to think about That. They, they told them. They thought maybe mama was just out of her head, or just thought that.

L-178 Three years later, we come to Indiana, and papa got a job. He was a rider, breaking horses for the ranchers and farmers, and so forth. He come out there to break some hackney ponies, for a--a rich man named O. H. Wathen, lives on the Utica Pike. He's a great owner of the Colonels, and also the R. E. Wathen Distillery, and all them in Louisville, and O. H. and R. E. And daddy was breaking saddle horses for him. And then he got hurt, and he went to being a private chauffeur for him.

L-179   And at the age of about seven years old, I'd entered school. And one September afternoon... I hate to say this, but I'm on the witness stand. My father, being a real Irishman, a strict Kentuckian, he made his own drinks. And I was packing water to this little still that he had, and couldn't go fishing at the back of the pond. I was crying, packing water about a city block, from a barn, where the horses stayed. And I was packing water there, to come up to cool the coils on that still for that night.

L-180 I set down under a white poplar tree, and was crying. Little dirty face, hair hanging down, corn cob under my toe, keep from big stumped, you know, going along like that, coming from school. All the rest the boys was out at the old ice pond, fishing. I was setting there, crying. I thought, "Why do I have to do this? Them other children don't do that."


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