Samuel Pepys’s (pronounced “Marshmallow Peeps”) diary is online now, a day at a time. American Memory has the life stories of ordinary people available, too, drawn from the Federal Writer’s Project. The only drawback is that an effort to present them as they really are makes some of them harder to read (every crossed out word is written out and bracketed with the information that it was crossed out.) Here’s one that is pretty illegible that I’ve streamlined. Original transcription is here. Keeping in mind that retaining dialect in transcription wasn’t always out of style.
Week ending Aug. 18, 1939.
LIFE STORIES SERIES.
Isaac Grove, Retired Negro Farmer, Hillsdale Road, Cottage Hill Ala. Mobile Co.
Ila B. Prine, Writer, Mobile, Ala.
“I’S WEAK AN’ WEARY”
“Jes a minnit, Miss, I’ll git right up and talk to you”
Isaac sounded as though it was an effort to get out of bed and open the door, as grunts came from the room.
When the door opened and he stepped out, it gave you the impression that an old prophet had come back in the form of a negro.
He is six feet tall, with broad shoulders that are very erect for a man eighty years old. His close-cropped hair and sparse beard were snowy white. His clothes showed signs of long wear, especially the thin faded blue shirt. The brown trousers were held loosely upon him by suspenders that had been mended with strings and his feet were bare. He stood with a Questioning expression on his face, and he hesitated before speaking.
You’ll have to excuse me, Miss,” he apologized, “I neber gits up early any more cause I’m gittin’ so I can’t hardly see. I’s nearly blind, and I’s too old to work, so I jes stays in bed unless somebody comes and calls me.
“You see I’s been livin’ in dis section ever since two years atter de S’render. I wuz six years old when my Ma and Pa brung me here. Dere wuz five of us chillun, two girls and three boys. Dey’s all dead now ‘cept me and one ob de boys, an’ I don’t know where he is. He strayed off some place an’ I ain’t got no record of him.
Yes’m, it gits pretty lonely here by myself, but de Lord has been good to me. I’s had good health all my life until not long ago I wuz a pullin’ on a vine and it broke an’ I fell against a stump an’ broke two or three of my ribs. Since den I’s got rheumatism and I gets weak spells.
“I sometimes wonders how I does manage, but God’s got a few christian people left in dis world, and some of dem comes and brings me somethin’ to eat. You take not long ago, I’d been up to de store to git a little kerosene, and de man what lives over yonder called to me and said, ‘wait a minute’. In a little while here come aa child bringing me a bucket wid some grub in it. Some church woman had sent it by him. Dere wuz a piece of meat in it, as well as cooked things, an’ dat’s de only reason I’s got any meat now.
“But I does know dat dere’s as much difference in people as dere is in chalk and cheese. For you take dat boy of mine, he’s de only one left out of de seven chillun me and de old woman had. One Sunday when dey had de big baptizing three months ago, I asked him for a quarter, he said ‘I’ll give it to you atter while. I’ll come by your house atter de baptisin’. Dat boy ain’t been by here, nor I ain’t seed him ’til de other day, when de ‘sociation had de big turnout. He aint neber give me dat quarter, and he had it de afternoon I asked him for one. Jes to think how I worked to take care of him, too. If I’d saved de money I’s made on dis place, ‘stead of lettin’ them run through with it, I wouldn’t be poor now, ’cause I’s made plenty on dis place. I used to haul some good stuff from under dis hill. I ‘members one load of ‘taters and beans, I got eighty dollars fer it. Law, yes, I’s raised stuff on de ten acres I cultivated, course I had fifteen all together, but only had ten fenced. It ain’t fenced now, though. Folk’s kept a stealing de posts and lumber for stove wood, until dere ain’t a one left. Den dey warn’t satisfied wid dat; dey stole my chickens, and finally toted off my chicken house.
“My first house where we lived wuz down dere under de hill, where you see dem big oaks trees. It got bad and de old woman wanted a bungalow built up here on de hill, so seventeen years ago I started dis house for her, but never did git it finished ‘fore she died thirteen years ago. It wuz a strange thing how she wuz taken. She hadn’t been feelin’ rail good for sometime, but wuz able to help in de field. She had a washin’ she always done on Mondays, den she helped me in de field ’til Friday when she ironed. Dis Friday I carried de clothes as I allus did. Dat night sometime she got up and fell in de floor. When she got back in de bed she said she wuz all right. Next day she seemed to feel bad an’ I watched her all day but didn’t say nothin’. Sometime durin’ de night I heard my old mule scufflin’ in de barn and I went out to see ’bout him, and while I wuz out dere I heard her fall again. So I hurried in de house and found she’d fell an’ pushed de window open, but had crawled in de bed by de time I got to her. I told her den not to try to git up any more by herself no matter where I wuz, call me. But she didn’t say nothin.’ Next mornin’ she warn’t able to git up, and by afternoon I noticed her tongue wuz gittin’ thick, and heavy. So I said to her “Ain’t you seed nothin’ this week?’ and she said ‘No.’ So I asked her if de Lord seed fit to take her, wuz she ready to die? She tol’ me, ‘You know I’s ready. I’s ‘pented an’ been saved a long time ago; and you know she never spoke again ’til de following Wednesday morning when it wuz jes a crackin’ day; she jus shouted herself away. Lord dat wuz a good woman. She’d been a member of the Ebenezer Baptist Church for years, an’ she was also a member of de Starlight Hall. De Hall is ‘sociation what takes care of de sick and buries de dead. I’s been a member of it ’til I got where I couldn’t keep up my sick fees. Dey tol’ me dey’d bury me for what I’s all ready paid in, but I jes’ has to ‘pend on de good christian people to help me when I gits sick.
“I sometimes thinks when I gits hongry, an’ specially atter de way my boy acted, I wish I could die. If God don’t care for me, de sooner and de quicker I wants to go, for I knows he’s ready for me. Long as he wants me to stay here, he’s go’na give me food.
“You know, Missie I stands for what’s right and I don’t believe in all dis dancin’ and frolickin’, an’ dat’s de reason my own boy treats me bad. Dey’s all de time havin’ dese wild dances and parties. Dat boy has got ‘leven chillun and dey is bad. One of his boys, my own grandson robbed me here ’bout two years ago. I wuz gittin’ a little help from de Government, and I had three dollars and ten cents in my pocket. De wey dey knowed it wuz, I went up to de store and I’m so blind I can’t hardly see, so I asked him to take a dollar and buy me some coffee, so dey seed me wid dat money. Dat night I took off my pants and hung dem on de bed post. When I gits on my back I snores loud, an’ dey could hear me, so dey work at my door and gits it open and takes my pocket book, and when I wakes my axe wuz lyin’ ‘cross my front door. I know dey had it to hit me wid, if I’d waked up. But you see God didn’t suffer me to wake ’til de next mornin’. I know God had a hand in caring for me, ’cause any other time I’d a heard ’em, ’cause nobody can put dere foot on dat step ‘less I hear ’em. But both of dem boys has paid for dere meaness; for Tunstall, my grandson wuz sent up for eighteen months for stealin’ a cow from de woman what raised him. He even called de woman mamma, den stole her cow. De other boy dat wuz with him is servin’ three years for stealin’ another cow by hisself. So you see, folks thinks they can git away with their meaness, but God sho’ will overtake ’em. He settles wid ’em.
“Jes like a fellow name Ed Seifert what has lived here close by me all my life. Me and him both farmed an’ I allus had plenty tools, and when Ed would need anything I loaned it to him. I’s loaned him as much as ten dollars at a time, when he needed money. Well, a few years ago Ed bought hisself a cultivator an’ mine wuz wore out, so I saw him one day, an’ I said, ‘Ed, I wants to borry your cultivator tomorrow if you ain’t usin’ it.’ He said, ‘Send over tomorrow and git it.’ So de next mornin’ my mind said don’t send, go yo’ self, so I went; and when I got dere he said: ‘You can’t git it.’ Well, I jes looked at him in ‘stonishment, ’cause to think of all the tools I had lent him, and even let him have money several times, I jes couldn’t help but say, ‘Well, what you know about dat?’ But I come on home, an’ I didn’t feel good t’wards Ed for a long time. But one day I seed him on de streets in Mobile, and I went up to him and say, Ed I don’t feel jes right t’wards you ’bout de way you treated me ’bout dat cultivator. Atter dat, de bad feelin’ left me and Ed’d. In fac’, he wuz here on de Sunday he died, he and some other mens come to see me, and Ed set on de bed by me. He left atter a little while and went to his mother-in-law’s house, an’ drapped dead face down`ard on de ground.
“Well, tain’t no use thinkin’ ’bout all dat now, for its all pas’ and gone. But dem things’ll come back to you sometimes, When you gits to thinkin’ of de pas’. Dat reminds me of a strange thing dat heppened to me years ago. One day dis same Ed Seifert I’s been talkin’ ’bout an’ me wus a-comin’ through de woods where we’d been chippin’ boxes for turpentine. Dis has been a long time ago, and night overtook us on de way home. Me an’ Ed’d been talkin’ about sperits, when all of a sudden one of dem come up behin’ us. We both heard it an’ stopped, an’ when we stopped she stopped. You know long years ago women folks wore big skirts wid a heap of starched clothes under dem. Well, dis sperit sounded jes like a woman wid starched skirts walking fast, and every step we’d take, she’d take a step. Dey would sound zum, sum, zum, zum. We never said a word ’til we got home, and I asked Ed if he heard dat sperit? He said ‘Yes” and I told him by the ‘turnel God I did, too.
“Another time over on Bluff Creek in Mississippi, I wuz goin’ up one trail-like road one night wid another man, and we had to pass old cemetery, and he’d been teasin’ me ’bout g’osts and’ h’ants, when all of a sudden we heard dis sound like de wind blowin’ through the grass. We had to pass one more grave dat was by itself up de road from de cemetery, and jes ‘fore gettin’ dere we had to pass a big crape myrtle tree, when all a sudden dis g’ost come right through dat tree an’ went ‘head of us, makin’ a noise jes like de wind. I told dat man to let it go, for I guess it was going to de grave ahead of us, and I sho’ didn’t want to interfere wid it. It sho’ scared us both, but I knowed if we trusted God it couldn’t hurt us. I’s always trusted him, and you see I’m still here.
“I come from a family of long livers anyhow,” my ma lived to ninety-nine years old and my grandfolks lived nearly dat long, too, so you see I’s liable to be here sometime yat, but I hopes not, for I’s weak an’ weary of dis sinful world.
Mos all dis younger generation is agin me ’cause I tells dem of dere sinful ways. But I’s go’na fight for de lord as long as I kin.”