Because I was so young when Crip stayed with us I did not know much about him other than he was a kind and gentle man. Except for the day we were sitting on the front porch and I called him an ugly word. When he tapped me pretty hard on the head with one of his walking sticks, I began to learn respect for people older and different than I. I feel bad about that incident to this day. My brother Wayne aka Paul told me the other day that Crip's father was a slave. When he was a young lad he was in the barn loft and saw a white man raping his young sister. He was so upset about that and trying to get down to stop it he fell and broke both legs. Being a poor black kid he had to heal the best that he could and that was why he was a cripple. He stayed with us for a season and then he was gone to help someone else. I saw him for a brief time when I was 6 or 7 and I remember him picking me up and holding me for a while. I don't know what ever happened to him, but I know that it was good.

Picking Cotton

My grandmother was the ultimate multitasker. Up before dawn, milk the cow, fix breakfast on a wood burning stove, make the biscuits from scratch, clean up the mess, go to the fields, leave there at 10:30 am, walk home and fix a substantial meal, clean up the mess, go back to the field, back at dusk dark, fix supper, clean up the mess, wash clothes, and still have time to relax. I'm tired just from typing what all she did. This is her when she was 45 and me at 45. I never did pick much cotton.

This is the Ozark, Alabama railroad depot. I guess the gentleman knows when the train is coming, or that the mules are too tired from working all week and pulling the family to town on Saturday to bolt and run when the train rolls in with the whistle blasting and the brakes a squealing like an old sow looking for her crying pigs.

Ozark Depot

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Black eyed peas

I told yall that I would tell you about the black eyed peas that Crip could cook. We had a wood burning stove and it got really hot in the summer time when he cooked. He would open the windows, but the breeze did little to cool the house. No electricity, no fan, no air conditioning, but we were ignorant of all that. All we had ever known was the gentle breeze to cool us in the summer and a wood fire to warm us at night. My parents may have known that they were hot or cold, but us three boys thought that everything was good. Talk to yall later