I was born in 47. And all of my sisters, they worked in cotton fields, but me. I wanted to, but I never could stay away from Daddy long enough to stay awake and stay off of his cotton sack. So he would let me ride on it, and then I would ride on his and fall asleep. And he took a little burlap, a little bag and put a string or a little, a wide piece of fabric, I guess, and would cut it and make a shoulder thing for me. And it fell a little way down my leg, and I'd pick a few boughs or something and put it in there, but never got it full ever, you know?

And, and my one sister, especially that, she and some others would get together and they would just pound their sacks to get more and more in them, against the ground, you know, packing them, they called. And, and they would have competition as to who could get the most in their sacks to go weight and who would have the biggest load.

My mother, she weighed the cotton. My daddy, he worked. My sisters worked in the field. But my mother was fortunate enough and, and astute enough that she weighed the cotton and everybody would come in with their loads because it was all people all over the community in little settlements that would work in the fields. And, she would weigh their cotton and keep a record of how much every family had totaled for that day, and then that week and so forth.

It was taxing. Because it was a lot of hard work that I know now and realize. Then it didn't seem that way to me because it was a way of life. So we made life good even when it wasn't. And we didn't know it wasn't.