THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: Sharecropping
INTERVIEW WITH: Eugene Bullard
DATE: July 10, 1979
PLACE: Calvert, Texas
INTERVIEWER: Joe S. Graham
TAPE I, SIDE 1
B: …this calf now. If he’d be, if he’ll, ah, gain 350 pounds. He’d gain, he’ll make another $35.00. Now if that cow, where, if he’d a weighed 600 pounds, then if he gained 100 pounds, that’s another $40.00. Now then that ever 35 and 40, which’d be $70.00, a gain on that cow.
C: Oh, yeah.
B: See. Now you see, you just gotta set down there and fig, figure at these things.
C: Yeah.
B: See it, which way it goin’. Lotta folks, say “Oh, yeah. We makin’ money. Then I drove ‘em all in the pasture. _______ cows_______grazed. Then after a while I like to cry. There’s an ol’ big cow out there wit’ this here sore on the _____bone. And she ain’t getting well like she oughtta be; she’d a brought in maybe 7, 800 dollars, but she’s got her face all broke out. Big face, that is _________. I say, Bullard 2
“Lord, have mercy! Put her down.” My boss is having a fit right there.
G: Well, what kind of, what’s it, what’s she got? Cancer, or..
B: Cancer.
G: Cancer on her..
B: Oh, she’s done broken out all over her face.
G: Well, I’ll be damned.
B: Big cow.
G: Yeah.
B: If we’d sold her first of the year, she’d brought $700.
G: Hm. What’s she bring now if you sold her?
B: About twenty cents.
G: Is that right?
B: About twenty cents. Twenty cents a pound.
G: About half, what, yeah.
B: _______________hay
G: Is that right? What is he bringing now?
B: An old cow like that bringing about twenty cents...a pound.
G: Yeah, what about, what about if it didn’t have the cancer? What’d it be bringing?
B: She’d bring $800.
G: Hm. (Sigh) OK, well, anyway, let me, let’s get ourselves established here. We’re in the residence here of Mr. Eugene Bullard. Do you have any other names?Bullard 3
B: No, sir, that’s all. Just Eugene Bullard.
G: Eugene Bullard.
B: Yassah.
G: When were you born?
B: Nineteen-two, April the 6th.
G: April 6th, 1902.
B: Yes.
G: I think I told you not too long ago, that, ah, you’re about, I think about three or four months older’n my dad.
B: I see.
G: Ha-ha.
B: I see. Yeah.
G: So, he had a heap of livin’ goin’ on. Now see, you were born where?
B: Lexington.
G: Lexington, Kentucky.
B: No, sir. Lexington, Texas. ___________Little Rock there.
G: Oh, Lexington, Texas. Oh, OK.
B: Yes, I were born there.
G: Ah, huh. How many in your family?
B: Well, my mother was the mother of sixteen children.
G: Good Heavens!
B: And I was the second one.
G: You’re the second.
B: The oldest one still living. Bullard 4
G: Uh, huh. How many of the others?
B: I got, I got four sisters and one brother.
G: Mm-hm. What was your father’s name?
B: Jack Bullard.
G: Jack?
B: Jack Bullard.
G: Jack Bullard. And your mother..what was her maiden name?
B: Ada. She were Ada, ah, MacDowell before she married my daddy.
G: Ada MacDowell.
B: Yeah.
G: Do you know where they came from?
B: My mother come from, ah, Washington County. That where she was raised at, Washington County. My grandpa, after, his first wife died, had twenty children by her, well, then, he, he married another woman and he moved to Lexington. Bought him a little home down there.
G: Uh-huh.
B: Yes, sir.
G: So your grandfather then came to Washington County.
B: Yes, sir.
G: Is that right? B: Yes, sir.
G: Do you know about his father?
B: No, sir, I don’t know about his father.Bullard 5
G: About what time, about what year would that have been? Do you have any idea what year your grandfather was born in? The years?
B: No, sir. I really don’t. You see, I was small. See, my grandmaw and grandpaw raised me from a little tot.
G: Is that right?
B: Yes, sir. My mother and father separated just before my mother, just before I was born.
G: Uh-huh.
B: And then, uh, my daddy done left, went to Oklahoma and stayed. Mommma stayed around there and finally she was married again, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, and my father married again.
G: OK, now would your grandfather have been a slave, perhaps? ‘Cause you were born in 1902.
B: Oh, yes, sir, my, my granddaddy was a slave.
G: Uh, huh.
B: But now I don’t know where.
G: Yeah.
B: Where his people were. He was in Washington County, you see.
G: So he was a..
B: I heard him talk about ‘em, but I never did know the family, you know. I didn’t keep that much in my mind, you know.Bullard 6
G: Yeah. You don’t remember who he who, he was, what plantation he was with or anything like..?
B: No, no, no, sir. No, sir. ‘Bout all I can tell you is who is, I can tell you who all I worked for all of my life and all like that.
G: Yeah. And your own experiences, yes.
B: Yes, that’s all.
(Ringing phone – tape paused.)
G: Ok, so, you were born over in Lexington. What, what, ah, what year, how old were you when you came over to this part of the world.
B: Well, I come over here in 1932.
G: ’32, so you were 30 years old. Where did you work when you were there in Washington County..Lexington?
B: I worked fer..fer.. The first man I worked for was a fellow by the name of Jim Hillis. That’s the first man I worked for when I was comin’ twenty.
G: Uh, huh.
B: Then I was working for him. I worked for him two years. Then I married, and then I went to Mr., Mr. Choice Perry.
G: Uh, huh.
B: I worked for him. Then it took ’32.
G: Yeah.
B: In ’32, I left, left Mr. Choice Perry and come to Calvert. And my wife’s waiting for me man by the name, Mr.Bullard 7
W. C. Allison.
G: W. C. Allison.
B: Allison. That’s Mr. Wesley’s grandpaw.
G: Uh, huh.
B: Yes, Mr. Wesley’s grandpaw.
G: It seems, yeah. Well, can you, ah, you say you were reared by your, your grandparents.
B: My grandpaw, my grandpaw and grandmaw raised me.
G: Uh, huh. Yes. Yeah.
B: Yes.
G: Now were, what was their situation? Were they sharecroppers?
B: No, they owned, they owned, my grandpa owned his own little place.
G: Uh-huh.
B: A little place on Berlin Hill, family man.
G: Yeah. What was the name of the place?
B: Lexington.
G: I know, but what, what was the name of the hill? Did he have did this place of his own?
B: A little old place called Doke Springs.
G: Doke Springs.
B: Yes, sir. A place called Doke Springs.
G: Yeah. How big a place was it?
B: About 40 acres.
G: Well, that’s pretty good sized. That’s about all a guy Bullard 8
can run with one plow, I think, wasn’t it?
B: (Laughter) Yes, sir.
G: How, how many other kids grew up with you there with your grandparents?
B: Just me, one.
G: Just you.
B: Yes. I’ve always been one child, in one house and just, didn’t like to be worried with other folks.
G: (Laughter)
B: If other folks done something for me, me, I want to pay ‘em first.
G: Yeah.
B: That’s just always was my make-up.
G: Yeah.
B: And, like I told, told that man over there, I said when I was a little small boy, with that two sisters living at Rockdale, did live at Rockdale. One died last year and one’s living there now. They’s twin sisters. And, ah, momma would go off and she’d leave ‘em _________ with ah, with ah, with my other sisters to tend to.
Let me tell this man one thing.
G: OK.
B: (Indecipherable)
G: Never had a phone before, huh?
B: No, I never done.
(Indecipherable conversation)Bullard 9
G: What do you reckon would be the name of the school?
Unknown man: Albert, yeah.
G: Albert High School?
Unknown man: Yessah.
G: OK, Albert Public Schools, the high school would be...
(Background noise)
G: Then we’ll just have to ask for him to speak.
Unknown man: Yes. Yes.
Phone conversation in background – B & G speak softly.
Unknown man: Thank you so much.
G: So you grew up in a, in a house, just with you and your grandparents.
B: Just me and my grandpaw.
G: Do you remember, can you describe the house from your memory, the house you grew up in?
B: Well, it was a log house about 60, I think it was 60 by 10, I believe. Log house and then we, we finally build a little room, box in the house, you know, fourteen by fourteen. A little square box house, ____ house and man, I thought we got that house there, I thought we had a mansion.
G: And then you got out of that, out of that log house into the..
B: And then we used that log house for a kitchen. You see, at first, when we had that log house, well we had a little Bullard 10
old, old kitchen. I built it with logs, logs and that what we cooked in; didn’t have no floor in the house. Just dirt floor, you know.
G: Hm-hm.
B: It was dark up, you know, with dirt, you know, and all like that. And then when we moved out of that house, me and my grandmaw and grandpaw, in that pine house, you know and then we used that other house there for a kitchen. You know we were big folks then. (Laughter) You’d told me at that time, I wasn’t livin’ in a mansion, right, I’d be ready to fight. (Laughter)
G: About how old were you when you did, do you remember about how old you when you moved into the new house?
B: I must have been about fourteen.
G: Hm-mm.
B: I must have been about fourteen.
G: What did your grandmother cook on in the little log house?
B: We had a, I guess, a wood stove.
G: A wood stove.
B: Yeah, a little wood cooking stove.
G: Was it a cooking stove with a big flat top?
B: Yes, sir.
G: Four, the four eyes only?
B: I think it had six, six eyes. Six layers back there on it. I think she had, she probably got owned her big stove.Bullard 11
G: Yeah.
B: It had six eyes, six ________ back there.
G: That’s a pretty big stove.
B: Yeah, very..big house for a kitchen in that day, you know.
G: Yeah. (Pause) Well, in the area that you grew up there, now this is, was this in Lexington?
B: Yeah. This was Lexington.
G: Yeah.
B: A little place called Doke’s Springs, out from Lexington, out in the country.
G: Is the little house that you moved into still standing?
B: No, sir. It was tore down.
G: Torn down a long time ago.
B: It took, tore all, all the house down and put up a nicer house.
G: Did they ever add to that house?
B: No, sir. Never did add to that house. When they got ready, they just tore it down and put up another house.
G: Yeah. Well, did it look somewhat like the houses that we have have down, that we looked at down there...
B: Yes.
G: ...with the same steep roof?
B: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. The, steep, steep roof.
G: Yeah.Bullard 12
B: They made steep, steep roofs like that, you know, so to try and get that water would run off. It wouldn’t leak.
G: Yeah.
B: See, we’d..I’d been, I’d been..see the first house, the log house there was covered with boards, dry boards.
G: Uh-huh.
B: You know you’d cover that and after a while it would shrink, you know, and you’d look up and you’d see the stars, the moon, and all like that. I been used to that.
G: Uh-huh.
B: It’d rain and you’d have to get up and put ______ buckets around and keep it from raining on you.
G: Yeah.
B: (Laughter) Yes.
G: Well, when you built the other little house, where did you get the lumber?
B: We bought it from a lumber yard there in Lexington.
G: Yeah. What about shingles? Did you buy shingles?
B: We bought shingles, put on.
G: Do you remember if they were expensive or not?
B: (Sigh) They wasn’t, they wasn’t so, they wasn’t high like they is now. These cheap shingles, you know, you get a bunch of shingles then, you know, Lord a mercy. Maybe two dollars.
G: A thousand dollars..two dollars was worth a lot more money then. Bullard 13
B: Oh, Lord yes. So you got a dollar then, you ain’t got but about thirty-five cents.
G: Yeah.
B: A dollar don’t mean nothing now.
G: So your figure your grandfather then was farming about forty acres?
B: Yes.
G: What did he raise?
B: He raised about two bales of cotton a year. Raised cane for syrup. B___ off some ribbon cane.
G: Uh-huh.
B: Make some ribbon cane syrup, normally about half a barrel of ribbon cane syrup, you know.
G: How did, did y’all have your own..
B: No, we had, our neighbor right close to us had a mill.
G: Uh-huh.
B: We’d go out ______________ steers. (Laughter)
G: Steers, huh? Didn’t use mules?
B: Didn’t have no mules.
G: Didn’t have mules. Is that what he plowed with?
B: Yes, sir. With a steer.
G: How come he didn’t, how come he didn’t use mules?
B: Well, he just, in that day, everybody round there pretty well was usin’, usin’, ah, steers.
G: Yeah.
B: See they raised them cows, you know, they didn’t sell Bullard 14
no cows like they did now. Well, they had nothing else to do but you worked them steers and you plowed them steers.
G: Yeah.
B: Plowed them steers. Oh we, oh I reckon it must have been (pause) it must have been, you plowed them steers until 1917. Then we took, my grandpa got able to buy him a pair mules.
G: Mm-hm.
B: Then we switched over to using mules, yeah.
G: Were mules more, more expensive than steers? Did they cost more?
B: Yes, sir, they cost more. Yes, sir, they cost more. You could get a pair of mules for $150. In that day, you know, well that was big, big money for mules.
G: Yeah.
B: For a pair of mules. $75 apiece.
G: You say you raised a couple of bales of cotton.
B: A couple of bales of cotton a year.
G: How much was that, how much was a bale of cotton worth then?
B: Oh, it wasn’t, if you got $60 or $70 for a bale of cotton, that was a whole lot of money.
G: Uh-huh.
B: Yes. Yes.
G: So you’re talking about, you was making maybe $140 to $150 dollars a year. So a couple of mules would be a year’s Bullard 15
work.
B: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. (Laughter)
G: And what did you plow with? What did..
B: Turnin’, an old turnin’ plow. An old wooden stock turnin’ plow, you know, that turns it like these old turn plows they when had when they used to farm mules, you know, but it had a wooden stock still.
G: Hm-mm. Did he make his own?
B: Yes, he made..
G: Made all his stuff.
B: It’s an old, ah, I’ve got an old willow pole that broke out a wagon in the early ‘50s. Broke __________ out of the wagon and I just went there on the river and cut me a willow pole. And hewed it out, you know, and bored a hole in it and put it there for a couplin’ pole.
G: Hm-mm.
B: And I don’t know what made me..I can take that couplin’ pole out and I can show it to you at the barn up there now. I’ve got it stood up in the barn out there. Now, I don’t know why I kept it.
G: Is that the one you made, or..?
B: The one I made.
G: Yeah.
B: See, a couplin’ pole for a wagon. A boy went out there haulin’ wood and brought his couplin’ pole and come to the house and say ‘I done broke the couplin’ pole out my way’. Bullard 16
Well, I say ‘I don’t got no __________ ‘. Yeah. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s all right’. I got my axe and went down to the river then and cut me a willow pole and hewed it out on both sides and come on in and put it in there. I reckon we used that couplin’ pole ten or fifteen years. (Laughter)
G: Oh, my. It sounds like a pretty durable piece of work. Ok, then, your grandfather..what all did you raise besides cotton and sorghum?
B: Well, we raised sweet potatoes in the garden, peas, okra, watermelon. Well, we didn’t buy ourselves watermelon, we’d just raise ‘em and eat ‘em and feed ‘em to the hogs.
G: Hm-mm. So cotton was your only money crop then.
B: Yes, that’s about all. That was the biggest. Man, when we got a bale of cotton that sold, we asked for money. (Laughter) When you got out there and have $25, man, you had a lot of money in that day. Yes.
Grandma, she’d raise turkeys. When we stayed out there, we had plenty of turkeys and go around our house there was just chickens, chickens, chickens, chickens. Around our house, this time of day, chickens’d be layin’ up over the house, you know, in the cool, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: We had a heap of chickens, like I got now. There’s a whole bunch of chickens out there now.
G: Yeah, I was out and looked at ‘em.
B: Yes. All them _________ you see now, they big chickens, Bullard 17
now.
G: Well, if they, now you raised, so you essentially you raised all of your food, then.
B: Oh, we didn’t buy much.
G: What all did.. What kind of things did you buy from the store?
B: We bought some rice, dried apples, and see we’d _______ peaches course we dried ‘em peaches, see we had a big orchard.
G: Uh-huh.
B: See, that’s the reason, see _______ we got things around here. See, I was raised up with that. Yeah. And then I learned this one thing. You’re going to eat that what you raised. See.
G: Yeah.
B: See. And right now I used to eat so many tomatoes, the reason.. My wife says to me now why I don’t eat tomatoes. See, I don’t eat tomatoes now. ‘Cause I can’t, if I put salt on them, they make me sick. See, I can’t put a lot of salt on my _____________. I don’t eat watermelon like I used to ‘cause, see, I like to eat watermelon, put salt on it when I eat watermelon. But I put salt on watermelon, my you think snake bit me next mornin’.
G: Hm-mm
B: Hands will swell up.
G: But you grew up eating everything you grew. Bullard 18
B: Everything I ..it wasn’t no use or matter whatever we planted. And Grandma would cook it. I wasn’t choice about it, I just jump in there and eat. Like the children today, you go to the table now and if you got pork chops, they ____, I don’t want no pork chops. See. I don’t care too much about chicken. My wife gone away, with me and she got big, got a chicken and then, then got pork ribs. And ah, well, about one-thirty, I lay down and went to sleep and I got up and decided I’d go eat. I got the pan and looked at it, and said ‘Damn, I don’t want all these chickens. I ain’t going to eat more than my share of spareribs, I mean these ribs, here.’ ‘Cause I didn’t like ribs too much when I was a boy.
G: Yeah.
B: I like, I like meat, I don’t like bones. You see, when I go to town to buy some, ah, meat. Well my wife say bring some, well, then I’ll bring it. But, I don’t bring it for you young-uns, I bring it for her. Well, if I want a little taste of it, I’ll, I’ll taste some more, but I like meat.
G: Well, did y’all raise any kind..you raised, you had chickens and turkeys. Did you raise other kinds of meat? Did you have..you had pigs.
B: Oh, we had plenty of hogs. Oh, Lord, yessir. Two or three old big sows, male hogs. See, we raised our hogs.
G: Hm-mm.
B: And when take ‘em over and kill a hog, for the 19th of Bullard 19
June, well, we just go out there and kill a hog. Built a pit in the ground, now you knowing, put it on ..and we’d cook that meat and we’d eat all the meat we want. Then, ah, we had two _____ cow.
G: Gee.
B: Grandpa had several cows, you know. And we’d churn. We had all the butter and drank all the milk we want. Oh, got plenty of milk. Of course, we had ________I had to get _______ go to the cow pen, I had maybe two cows, _________ ____ two, that’s when we..kind of ________, we milked that cow, ___________. That’s the only reason we got any chance to get any money.
G: Yeah.
B: Well, there’s still, when they finally got the place where we could sell. People would come around and buy those steers and give us ten or fifteen dollars there for a great big steer. Steer be this high, and we’d get fifteen dollars for it and man, my grandpaw, man, he’d might near shout. Man, he’d might near shout when you go out there ‘Yeah! Fifteen dollars and they still take it!’ Well,____ we take..my grandpaw then that day would go to town and open an account, you know, for a little credit there. For a year..maybe three months, you know, twenty-five dollar. You know. When he’d get three or four dollars worth a day, and maybe a month from now, he’d go back and get three or four dollars more, you see. You’d see him get ________ sugar forBullard 20
a dollar. And that seventeen pounds of sugar when you get, a sack of sugar back home that was seventeen, seventeen pounds, you know. But man, ___________ heap of sugar.
G: Lasted you a while.
B: Long time. Yeah. And rice, see, we had corn bread twice a day, you see. See, early in the morning, we’d get up, well there wasn’t no biscuits. You’d just cook some cornbread. Hope you’d make some little ______, you know. Fried cornbread to have biscuits with, it was Sunday morning.
G: Hm-mm. Well, did you raise your own corn?
B: Yes, sir.
G: How did you grind it?
B: We had a, they had a, there was a mill in that county. Well, you’d go to the mill and grind it at the mill. You see, I’d walk ______________________meal off that Greenwald Family. I’d walk there every once in a while and buy a load meal, and bring it back here. And, ah, _________homemade meal, you know. I bought __________Greenwald____, last two years.
G: Well, when you worked at the store, did you ever buy canned goods? Did they have canned goods?
B: I don’t remember me buying..I don’t remember my grandma ever buying not nothing in no cans.
G: What about lard?
B: We raised that lard.Bullard 21
G: Yeah, off your pigs.
B: Yes, sir, we raised that lard.
G: How did you prepare the hogs? How did you go about when you were ready to butcher a hog, like say, on, on Juneteenth?
B: Just go out there, and out there and take a single blade axe and just knock them down and _______ ‘em and scrape him, you see. Then we always some kind of big tree around our house there, you know, and we get on his hind legs, you know, and stick it an object through there and pull him up and hang him up, you see. _____________, Good Lord.
G: Did you scald him?
B: Scald him. Yes, sir. Take a butcher knife and scrape all that hair off. He was just plumb white...when we got through. He was clean. I know how to clean hogs now. (Laughter)
G: Yeah, I bet so.
B: Well, I’d can clean a hog in a minute. Well, I can work on ‘em hogs. When I used to kill hogs and people would come and help me kill hogs, I’d tell ‘em “now, listen, y’all get back there on that ________, middlin’. Let me get on the head ‘cause I ain’t give no hog head to nobody.” See, when I used to kill big hogs, see out there on the farm. Why, it was three one time, I killed three hogs. One for each person in our family; we all had a whole and that hogs had Bullard 22
to weigh 350, had to have 350, that’s weighed. That’s my method when I got grown. You have, everybody have a hog. That’s the way my grandpaw did it. My grandpaw would go out there and kill hogs, well, he’d kill them about 15th of December. He’d kill hogs, you see. Well, then, ah, we’d, ah, you’d want to have a hog. You’d round that lard up. Cut that lard up. Put it in a ________, cook it out, you see. Then, she’d put it in cans, crocks, and things like that, you know. You’d save it. Well then she’d just get so much lard out and we didn’t know nothin’about going to town to buy no lard.
G: Yeah.
B: No, we didn’t know about that.
G: You did buy your salt, I guess.
B: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Get about 25, 25 pound bag of salt, about fifty cents.
G: Hm-mm. Would you make sausage, did you make cheese?
B: We made sausage.
G: You made sausage.
B: We made sausage out of, out of hog.
G: Yeah.
B: Kill a hog and, you know, we cut sausage, and... And we didn’t know nothing about buying no casing like they do now, you know. Buy casing and ___________.
G: Yeah.
B: We’d get them big shucks and get all the grit and stuff Bullard 23
off ‘em, you know, and just pin ‘em down and fill that shuck up and tie it up, you know, and hang it up in the smokehouse.
G: Corn shucks?
B: Corn shucks. Have big, big _________ that corn shuck, you know. And then tie it up and I used to, sometime my grandmaw would get ________ and make little sacks, and then hang them up. I still love those sausages and, and the ________ house. Still like these sausages when you put in your _________. You know, I don’t even like them sausages. See, I got some, we got sausages in there now and them old pigs that you buy in town, you know. Well, you ___________ _________________________________________________ .
I like them sausages when you cook em’, you know, and make them a little round, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: (Laughter) Yeah.
G: Well, how did you make the sausage?
B: We had a sausage mill. We had a sausage mill to grind ‘em.
G: To grind them.
B: Yeah.
G: What all, what all did you put in there? Do you remember?
B: Sage, and ah, pepper, you want red pepper, a little red pepper, black pepper, some ___ we’d put red pepper, black Bullard 24
pepper both in them sausages. Yeah, I can make sausage now. I haven’t forgot how to make them sausages.
G: When was the last time you made sausage?
B: Oh,..
G: Has it been a while?
B: I killed a hog about two years ago. Yes, I killed a hog, I got three or four sausage mills of _______________.
G: Is that right?
B: I got some good sausage mills up there.
G: That date back to when? How old are they?
B: I think one of those sausage.. (pause) Hm, I imagine the nearest one is about thirty years old. (Laughter)
G: What about the oldest one?
B: I don’t know how old it is, it’s terrible old.
G: Yeah.
B: Well,I just got ‘em up there. I’ve even got an old corn sheller up there.
G: Is that right?
B: Yes. One of those corn shellers you shell corn with.
G: Yeah.
B: Got an old corn sheller up there. Got four or five sausage mills out there.
G: Hm-mm.
B: I used to grind them sausage and make them sausages.
G: Yeah. Now, what about the corn? What, ah, where did you, what all did you do with corn? What all did you use itBullard 25
for?
B: We’d feed it to the chickens, feed it to the hogs, feed it to the mules out, we got mules. And then we’d go to the mill about, once a month which we’d __________, bushel of hay, corn, carry it to the mill. Have it ground up ___ our bread.
G: Did you raise enough during the growing season to last you all year?
B: The corn?
G: Yes.
B: Corn. From one season to another. We got _________ corn, we got __________, throw the corn, throw it out there and ____ the fence out there and feed it to the hogs. We raised enough corn to do us from June, from one season to the other.
G: Yeah.
B: We never was out. We just raised that corn.
G: Well, what about vegetables, like bad weather when wouldn’t, didn’t have you, good garden.. Well, did you have a garden during the summer?
B: We, we had a garden. We had a garden of collards. See, this time of year, well my grandmaw would always have a bunch of collards sitting out. _______________ you see some collards sitting out ___down there. Well, she had a bunch of collards there. Well she grew ____________ all ___summer, you know. Throw them out there to the chickens Bullard 26
and hogs and then wintertime started, rain wanted do, when I was a boy. We didn’t have no kind of drought like we have now. It was just rain, rain, rain, rain. And, ah, we had a good garden the year around, see. Cabbage, see, she just plant cabbage and then one crop get all full, she’d get another little crop started, you know. She even had _____, early in the spring she had cabbage headin’ up.
G: Yeah.
B: You see I set in my garden out last year, this year and one _____. And ah, next week I’m gonna go startin’ at workin’ on my garden. Gonna plant my water greens, you see. If I get, ah, long, long about September, I’m gonna plant. I’m gonna plant.
G: Is that pretty well the way you learned to do it?
B: That’s the way I learned. Yeah. I learned the way she did. Course, my grandpaw would break that land up, have it all broke up good. See, I know how to do it better than he do, he do now, ‘cause see, I know how to do it. He just go out there and break it up. My grandmaw had to go out there and level it off, you know...
G: Yeah.
B: ..and plant it, you see.
G: Hm-mm.
B: See, my grandmaw done more work than my grandpaw. My grandpaw just go out there and plow it up and go on. But she take a rake and go out there and level it off and have me goBullard 27
along then and plant it the way she said plant.
G: Hm-mm.
B: Grandpaw, he ain’t given no orders a’tall. Grandmaw used to give me orders what to do. And I’d level that row off good.
G: Yeah.
B: And she’d go out there and get that, clean the chicken house out. It was time our chicken house would get cleaned out. And, got to take that old wheelbarrow and carry it to the garden scatter it up. See, we didn’t know about this here fertilizer like we have now.
G: So your fertilizer was probably better.
B: I thought it were. I used things. But now, this ______, see, I go out clean my chicken, chicken yard out now. And I just carry, carry that stuff out and throw it out in the grass and let the grass grow. You let the grass grow. I don’t throw it in my garden now.
G: Hm-mm.
B: See, ‘cause they got some stuff now. You can go down and buy your little ten pounds of it, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: You know a fifty pound bag of, fifty pound bag. Go out there and have you, you can go out.. I can get a fifty pound bag now, I can put a fifty pound bag in this one, put a little in this one, and carry it to the yard up there. That fifty bag will just fertilize the whole thing. Bullard 28
G: Hm-mm.
B: Then when I get my stuff up, I go back get another fifty pound bag and then I put a little here and then the rest of that bin, I throw it out. I was out in the barn this morning, I looked upside the wall and I said ‘What all you see is here?’ I opened the sack up and I saw all the _____ and looked on it, it said ‘fertilizer’, I see the ______. I got some three stalks of pepper out there, in the garden out there. I give fifteen cents for three stalks. And I told my neighbor over there, I say “when I set that pepper out,” I say, “you three stalks of pepper, I give fifteen cents for”. I said “but, I got, ah, to sell five dollars worth of pepper off these stalks”. He looked at me and he said “You’re going to sell five dollars worth of pepper?” And I said, “Yeah”. And I ain’t sold but fifty cents worth.
Yesterday morning, I told Mr. Bob Davis __________ there. I said, “Mr. Bob, I’ve got some, some hot pepper on my..”. He said “well, bring it up”. So I went out there and picked it yesterday morning. Carried it up there to him ______________. Come back and had me two quarters. Well, that don’t pay... I had that book right up there, you see. I’m going to put that fifty cents down on that thing there, to keep count of. And this morning I found that fertilizer, you see, so I dug a hole around that pepper and I shredded it around there. I said “Well, this here fertilizer here Bullard 29
will kind of hurry you up.” See.
G: Yeah.
B: When I found that fertilizer, and I didn’t have to buy it, already had it tied up in a sack. I got it and carried it out there and put it out.
G: Yeah.
B: Well, that’s gonna hurry that pepper up. Well, I got, I got from now ‘til December to sell and make me a little money off that pepper.
G: Yeah.
B: Well, that fertilizer is going to push it on.
G: Yeah.
B: And next week, this time, if you go out there and look at them stalks there now, and then you come back here next week and look and look, and you’ll see ______.
G: Mm-mm.
B: That fertilizer..’course it, it already had fertilizer in there, you see. But this other fertilizer put on there is going to push it.
G: Yeah.
B: And then if I had to go out there one day and it looks it’s going to wilt a little bit, I’ll get a hose and stick a hose out there and put some water on there. It’ll make that fertilizer go on down.
G: Yeah. What all did, did your grandmother raise in her, in her, ah, fall garden?Bullard 30
B: Everything what would grow.
G: And she started planting about September.
B: Yes, sir.
G: What are, what are the vegetables you remember that she planted?
B: Every kind of vegetable what we got now. ‘Course, ah, ah, she planted lettuce, mustard, turnips, and ah, radishes. God, she planted the best stuff in the world. And the collards, of course they, the stalks, they, they, she just, if she planted collards, they, they’re spring, you see. Well next spring, ____________ find a use for it, for a crop of them, you see, a new crop.
G: Yeah.
B: But she’d always leave a stalk, where I, I can still eat collards if I want, while these little ones are small.
G: Hm-hm.
B: Kept us some big ones there, for to get greens off.
G: So you had fresh vegetables all..
B: All the year ‘round. Yes, we had some garden vegetables all the year ‘round. Yes.
G: Well, what about tomatoes? Could you raise those year ‘round?
B: Well, no, she couldn’t raise tomatoes the year around, but we’d have them from, ah, early spring until frost comes.
G: Hm-mm.
B: And she’d get them tomatoes _________, but we didn’t Bullard 31
have nothin’ to keep ‘em like we keep ‘em now.
G: Yeah.
B: See we didn’t have _________no icebox, you see, when, didn’t bought no ice. We bought some little ice to make some ice cream, once’t a year. (Laughter)
G: Once a year, huh?
B: Once’t a year.
G: Did you have a freeze..crank freezer?
B: We had a little old crank, crank freezer, yes. Yes. You turn it you know, put a little salt in there and get fifty pounds of ice, you know and, man, turn it down on the wash pot. Yes, sir. That’s the, that’s the only thing we had to keep the, keep the ice in..
G: Yeah.
B: ..in that day. We’d _________ side and put it on the wash pot. Now, you, you can get, you’d go out there and get a wash pot and carry it out there, rub some ice up on it, fifty-pound block. And put it on that pot and it’d stay out there two days.
G: Hm-mm
B: Right now.
G: Yeah.
B: You’d turn it bottom side up on the ground.
G: Yeah.
B: You don’t need no _______ there. Just put it there, where that pot will stay down low.Bullard 32
G: Where the air can’t move around.
B: Where the air can’t get in it.
G: Huh. That’s pretty good to know.
B: Well, I’ll tell you what. I stayed at the barn up there, me and this wife I’ve got now. We stayed at the barn there and can show you two of the pots right now. Out there in the parlor she is. Worth better than $1,500.
So one day, I told my wife, she’d had it hid ‘round the house there. “Woman, we’ve got too much money. Got too much money in this house here.” I say, “What we goin’ to do with this here?” _______all that’s in the barn out here. We’ve got three wash pots out here. We’ve got a small one, got another one, got another old _____big one. I say, “Mr. West’s got a big one out there”. And so we just put it under that little pot and turned the other pot down over, turned the big pot down over it. And if that barn catch afire, we’d be in luck with just tin barn there, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: Well, it fall down, well, that tin ________, it would keep, the pots would keep it from getting too hot.
G: Yeah.
B: Then I got skeered, out there. I say “Woman, you ain’t got no account in the bank a’tall. They don’t know about you in the bank. I got a little money there in the bank, but you ain’t.” I said, “We’re gonna start something over there... for ourselves.” I said, “Now, you go in the Bullard 33
parlor. We’ve got better’n $1,500, I know out there.” And I say, “I’ll go on in there to the bank with you and you just deposit your money in the bank...and start your account”. And I say “We’ll save that money. That’s gonna buy us a home.” And I say “Now, if we takes a notion to buy a car, I’ll pay for it out of my little account. If I take a notion to buy some groceries, I’ll pay for it out of my account, what I make. I’ll pay for that. But just leave your money over there to buy us a home.”
So, in wind-up, we got ready to buy us this home here, two acres and a half. Now I say, man say, “You want this room?” Yes. I added two rooms there on the back after I bought it. He say, “I want $1500 for this.” Well, a whole bunch of people in Calvert, colored people, some of them, they was fair. They say, “Oh, ______. I’m no good. Eugene ain’t got no money to buy no car. Pay no $1500 cash for that place. ‘Cause he done bought two new cars. He bought a ’69 and then he bought a ’72. And I know he ain’t no money to buy this”. Well, they don’t, they don’t have to know what I got.
G: (Laughter)
B: ‘Cause I’m glad they sayin’ that.
G: Yeah.
B: I ain’t mad at ‘em. I say it, when you just stop and stood about it, yeah he sure did buy two new cars. I say this would look like. But, we just went right on.Bullard 34
G: Yeah.
B: When they know them things, I __________. Yeah.
G: Hm-mm.
B: We went on and paid cash for it.
G: Well, that’s kind of a nice situation.
B: Yes, sir. All right. Then, Mr. West, the man I work for right now, he come in and got me and carried me to Franklin. He said “Eugene,” he say, “you can get a loan over at the Franklin over there, and get ten or fifteen, or maybe twenty years to pay for it.” I went to Franklin with him. Yes, I go on to Franklin with him. They told me I could get a loan to build them rooms there for $3,200 and I could pay as least $20. If I could get a long loan, I say I could get it down to where I could just pay $20. “No sir, I don’t want that.” Mr. West, I don’t want that. But he say “Well, ten years, pay $40.” I don’t want that. So, I just turned it all down. Come on back, and I say “Mr. West, I go down, I go down to Calvert. And people in Calvert know me. And bankers know me. And I say, I go there and get a loan, two years, three years. And I can show, show, show you the bill, what I’m talking about in there. I can go in there and get a little thing and show you, in the office. I owed them folks $90.55. See. Paid it off. Well, I ain’t paid, but if I can make the ______, if I can be able to see the _____, I can pay it.
G: Laughter. Uh-huh.Bullard 35
B: Yes. And them folks ain’t worried about the money. Because they know I’ve got more, more than that in the bank there.
G: Yeah.
B: See. They know I’ve got more than that in the bank. They know what, where their money. They know I can pay it. They call for it today, I can just give them the money. Well, they all just get the money.
G: Hm-mm. When you were growing up, did ya’ll celebrate Juneteenth different from the way it’s celebrated now?
[Phone ringing]
B: Well, when, when I..
[Tape stops and restarts]
G: Yeah, I just asked you if you, ah, how you, how you remember celebrating Juneteenth when you were a young man, a boy.
B: Well, when I was a boy, we’d always have, we’d finally get together a whole big bunch of people, you know. And we’d have a nineteenth of June. And I was so bad, that it fixed it so, that the nineteen of June was going to be a little holiday from now on.
G: Hm-mm.
B: See. Now a whole lot of people. I was raised up to celebrate on nineteen of June. And I liked to go to the nineteenth of June. I liked that. And then that’s the only, the nineteenth of June and Christmas, them’s the only two Bullard 36
holidays I recognize. See, the other days, I just go and work. But them days, when them days come, I want to go and celebrate. I didn’t want to get drunk. Nothing like that, just go and meet with my friends and have a big time.
G: Yeah.
B: And then it, it just seems we eat dinner.
G: If you were to go back and tell me about how the whole thing developed. In other words, I guess when you were fairly young, you’d start looking forward to Juneteenth quite ways ...
End of Tape 1 – Side A
Tape 1 - Side B
G: ..quite a ways before..
B: Oh, a month, month, month, a month’s time, anyways. Preparing for nineteenth of June for a month. Just putting up two bits back, whole bits back and all like that. And when I got up to five dollars, I had a whole lot of money. And sure wasn’t going to spend that, all that five dollars. Not Eugene, see. I had saved up as much as five dollars, now a heap of money. But I won’t spend two and a half and going to keep me two and a half.
G: Yeah. So, so, you were looking forward to it. What all, what kinds of things did you, did you look forward to?
B: I wanted to eat all the good fresh meat, beef. See in Bullard 37
that day, you know, we had dried beef, you know. See, we didn’t have no freezer there. We’d hang that meat out on the line, you know, and let it dry in the sun, put it on top of the house. And let it dry. Pick that meat up and ..
[Pause - Tape stops and restarts]
B: ..just any kind of fresh meat you want, you just have. But, the nineteenth of June, well, we go kill that cow. Maybe two, three people get together, and say, well say, [pause] we want to have a Nineteenth. Well maybe my grandpaw, he might get, get a calf this year, this year and next year, another might give a calf. And next year, another would give a calf, you see. So, it wasn’t all ______, that’s the only _______ we got to eat. You kill ‘em and eat ‘em.
G: Yeah.
B: And you had to, when you kill one, you have to just cook him and eat him up. Well, when all, everybody come by there, well, you want some meat, you just got all the meat you want. _____________________________ Because you can’t carry it home, it’s all eat up.
See, I told my wife last Sunday, I said, “we have a Homecoming at our church” and I say, “carry stuff out there to church and eat all that stuff up.” I say, “The day come back there__________, put that in the icebox there, in the deep freeze out yonder. Well, _______ big piece__________ eat it up. Carry it back home, ants will come, come in the Bullard 38
house, and crawl all. First thing you know, __________ some up there, and black ants got on it. And she _________ stuff. I said “Why didn’t you carry it the stuff and give it to the folks?”
G: Yeah.
B: ______ it up. See, some, it’s good to save. But it used to be you save stuff when you know you don’t need.
G: Yeah.
B: Give somebody the meat to. ‘Cause we don’t ever eat the potato pie and stuff. You know you don’t like cake up.
G: Well, how many people would share in the, the ...
B: For the Nineteenth?
G: Yeah, and the calf that would be butchered.
B: Well, like, maybe ten folks in this Nineteenth.
G: Ten families?
B: Ten different families.
G: Yeah.
B: They many not be kin, just neighbors, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: Maybe, my grandpaw give the yellin’ this year. The next year, another fella give a yellin’, next year another fella give a yellin’, the next year another, and go on ‘round. See. And see, if my granddaddy give a yellin’ this year, well another man give, give a hog. See. Another may give a goat. Another may have a sheep. See, they had all kind of different, people had sheeps, some of the people had sheep, Bullard 39
goats, and all like that. Just like it is now. See, different folks got different things.
G: Yeah.
B: See. Well, on the nineteenth of June, well you, we’d have pork meat, beef, sheep, and goat. Well, now you, you know we got plenty meat. See, ‘cause we different kind of meat. Well, I been used to eating all the pork meat I want. Pretty good, but I, I ain’t been getting no sheep meat. Well, then I want some sheep. Another fella wants some goat. Well, see, I didn’t like goat when I was young; I don’t like goat now. But, my wife love goat. I love sheep meat, but I don’t like no goat. I love, I love, I don’t care too much about beef now, but I love pork. See. Got some pork in there now. I don’t want that pork. Ribs, that’s what, that’s the reason I don’t want it.
G: Yeah.
B: Well, you see, well, it would just go around. Different people would just go around. So much would give and then it would start back over. Well one yellin’ wasn’t big enough. Oh, well, get one of mine and kill it. Well, it won’t, ain’t no, I got no..I can’t sell it; it ain’t bringing nothing.
G: Yeah.
B: I’m living pretty good. Just go on.
G: Yeah. OK, so you, you, you ever., butchered a bunch of different kinds of things. So, how did they prepare the Bullard 40
meat?
B: Well, they, they’d go, go and dress it. They’d just dug, dig it out, about as wide as that cement cross there.
G: Yeah.
B: And down in the ground about that deep.
G: About three feet deep or so?
B: Something like that. And have a big fire out there and put them coals up on it. And that meat would cook.
G: Barbeque all...
B: Barbeque. Barbeque. Man, I would, I was holding barbeques when I was a boy. Helped _______ cross that thing up. I’d take that fire and put under there. I went down that ________ not long ago, a few years back and helped ‘em barbeque. The fellow when, when I went there said, “Bill, you can barbeque.” I said, “Shore, I can barbeque. I used to work my daddy, when my granddaddy, help ‘em barbeque a whole lot.” I say, “My granddaddy barbeque for the white folks for a _________.”
G: Hm-mm.
B: [Laughter] Seven, eight big cows.
G: Yeah.
B: See, I’d be out there and help him.
G: Ok, so, then you’d have all other sorts of foods, huh?
B: Well, we, oh, we’d, we’d have everything: ice cream. See, we didn’t, couldn’t buy no ice cream in that day. You’d have to, people would have to milk their own cows, youBullard 41
know. Sweet milk, and mix sugar with it and cook, cook that stuff, you know, what you made that ice cream with. And then, put it in a big old freeze and freeze it, you know. And, man, we had a big time. Make lemonade. Get a, have an old wooden barrel, you know. And just squeeze in some lemons in there, you know and put sugar there and stir it up. And, you see, everybody come along there and you got cups. And they’d bring them big old cups there and you could have all the lemonade you want. And like they’d had a dinner. Like they’d have maybe, maybe, a hundred and fifty folks there that had dinner. Well they’d have, oh, a few cases of soda water. They wasn’t giving it, what, it wasn’t selling.
G: Yeah.
B: They give it away. Just come by and get a bottle. And children and grown folks who would like to get it now.
G: Yeah.
B: He, when he come and got one, but he ain’t gonna, he won’t come back out for another. ‘Course he got so much cold lemonade out there. Now that where I shine at. See, time I could get ___ bottle of soda water and save it for my girl. Give it to her.
G: So, you always, you always got your bottle, but you saved it for her, huh?
B: Yes, I saved my bottle for my girl. And I’d go ahead and drink that lemonade. And, you see, I love lemonade yet. Bullard 42
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, I love lemonade.
G: Where’d you get the lemons, from a store?
B: Bought them at the store.
G: Yeah. Ok, then so, essentially there on Juneteenth, a big part of your celebration was eating and drinking ..
B: Yes it were.
G: ..and fellowship? Well, did you have, what other kinds of things did you have on Juneteenth?
B: Oh, we’d have days and we would have night. You had night, it helped. People, you know them old folks, they could fiddle and play guitar. And they’d get out there and have a big dance, all the old ones would dance, go out there and dance, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: It wasn’t long before I was going home. Go to sleep. [Laughter]
G: Go to sleep so you could get up and go to work, huh? What kind of music did they dance to back then?
B: Well, the old guitar and fiddle. Guitar and fiddle, that’s all, that’s what I was raised, the only kind of music I know anything about.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes. Yes. Guitar.
G: What would they dance on? Where would they dance?
B: Just, they’d have some, be some little old house, you Bullard 43
know, they’d go to have their dance at, you know. Where folks could make a little noise, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: Plank floor little house.
G: OK, and what else? You had the food and the dance. Did you have any kind of ceremony?
B: No, sir. Just the dance, that was _________. ‘Course night time, you see, all them folks would, church folks, you know, they’d lead ______ ________ folks to have a little fun. ____________..fightin’ _________.
G: Yeah. Now, you talk about buying things from the store. Did everybody have a charge account, or did they pay cash, or ...
B: Well, all the city people, it would be twenty-five folks ________. Everybody would put in maybe a dollar, a dollar and a half, something like that. If it was a big family, it would be a dollar and a half, little family, put a dollar. Well, they’d take that money then, one man or two, would take that money and go to the store and buy you just whatever you want.
G: Yeah. (softly)
B: See, ______ all that little stuff what they had to buy, well, they’d go there and buy in one place. Well, you see, they’d be glad to sell it to you.
G: Yeah.
B: ‘Course they were gettin’ some cash. Bullard 44
G: Yeah.
B: (Laughter)
G: Then you had, I guess, pies and cakes..
B: Oh, we’d cook them pies and cakes there from the house, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes.
G: Everybody would bring something..
B: Yes, everybody would bring ‘em..
G: All sorts of vegetables..
B: Oh, yes, sir. Green peas and all that kind of stuff.
G: Cold watermelon.
B: No, well there was no cold watermelon, just hot watermelon. (Laughter) We didn’t brought no ice.
G: Well, you could throw it in the creek.
B: Well, they had plenty of barrels and things around there where they could throw the watermelon. And pour water on them, you know and eat ‘em that away.
G: Yeah.
B: There wasn’t actual ice, there wasn’t no ice.
G: Just for ice cream once a year.
B: Just for the ice cream once’t a year. And the watermelon, you know. By, by, we didn’t have watermelon around the nineteenth of June. You’d have watermelon ripe. Well, I was a boy, I’d go pull maybe four or five watermelon and carry them up there and put ‘em in a good shade tree. Bullard 45
Well, when I got ready to cut watermelon, ‘course I didn’t have to get the watermelon to cut.
G: Yes.
B: Yes. You see, we didn’t have no, there wasn’t no ___cars in that day. There was just wagons and some folks had buggies. You’d just go on a put them in the shade. I had a tree up yonder on the hill up yonder, now, anybody put in shade trees there.
G: Yeah.
B: There wasn’t anybody brought no ice cream or cold watermelon in that day.
G: It was just watermelon.
B: Watermelon.
G: Yeah. What did you..did you raise other kinds of melons besides watermelons?
B: (Pause) Well, some of, every.. you see, most of them was watermelons and cantaloupes and mushmelons, and like that.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes.
G: You raised a number of different kinds..
B: Yes. Yes, sir. It was just so, you see, in back yonder, the folks just raised some of everything what’d grow. Anything what’d grow. Well, it wasn’t nothing to go out there to a person’s house and, ah, find a person’s got a lemon tree. Bullard 46
G: Hm.
B: See. My grandmaw had a lemon tree in the yard. It just growed and beared lemons. We had a million, I pulled a million of them off that tree. And peaches, why, back when we were having dinner, why, we had a great big orchard. Peaches, we had, June, we had some peaches, we had some peaches get ripe in May, June, July, August, and September. Well, we had a big tree. Well, I’d just go out there to the peach tree out there and get a big water bucket of peaches and carry it up there to our dinner, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: Well, if I wanted to give some peaches away to some of my friends, I’d just go get some.
G: Yeah.
B: See. Well, others would do the same thing. You’d go up there and you may find two or three bushels of peaches up there and people just eating peaches.
G: Yeah. Well now, when you bought at the store though during the year for your family, did you have a little charge account there? Did the store people..
B: My granddad opened up a little account of twenty-five dollars for us three to use. And it done us three.
G: Yeah. For that whole year.
B: The whole year. Twenty-five dollars.
G: And then what’d you do at the end of..when you sold your cotton? Bullard 47
B: Go pay it. Pay that twenty-five dollars.
G: Yeah. You’d have to pay the twenty-five dollars.
B: You’d have to go pay that twenty-five dollars.
G: Hm-mm.
B: Man, man ran an account. Have account. Twenty-five dollars. That was still, well for his wife, and him can go there and trade off the twenty-five dollars for three months.
G: Uh-huh.
B: Are you aware that? Now it wouldn’t be a weeks’.
G: Yeah. Well, did you, did you settle up every three months? Is that the way you worked it?
B: Well, he’d open up an account for twenty-five, twenty-five dollars, that’s for a year.
G: Oh, okay.
B: And then, in, in, when he ___ his cotton, he’d go sell his cotton, then, he’d go pay his bill.
G: Uh-huh. Yeah.
B: Pay his bill.
G: That sounds like a pretty good system. Who owned the store that you bought from?
B: Fellow by the name of... Peoples.
G: Peoples, huh?
B: That..that..Sam Peoples. He, he was the one owned the store.
G: Yeah.Bullard 48
B: He was the man in _______. And they owned the store, you know.
G: Yeah. Were white folks?
B: White people. They was white people. White people. White people.
G: Let me turn this down...
(Train whistle in background. Tape off and back on.)
G: We left off there talking about, about, you say the people’s name was Peoples, that owned the store?
B: Yes, sir.
G: How did they treat ya’ll as, as Blacks?
B: They were mighty nice people. When I was a little boy I’d go in their store there, and have a dime, and I tell them, I’d say “I’d want a nickel-worth of candy”. And they’d just reach in, the man had great big fingers, he’d just reach down there and get me all the candy what he could, his hand would hold down there, he’d bring it out and hand it to me for a nickel.
G: What kind of candy was it?
B: Peppermint sticks of candy.
G: Peppermint sticks.
B: Peppermint, yes.
G: Ah, yes.
B: And I just eat the, and I’d be in town all half a day and I’d be eating candy off and on all day. And lotta time, my grandpaw would, ah, in the fall of the year, I’d love to Bullard 49
go to town with him. ‘Cause the apples would come in, in car boxes. And lotta time he’d, this people there would have ah, my grandpaw say, ‘you come inside and, ah, and, ah, unload a carload of apples’. Well, I’d be glad to go. Man, I’d go to town, say, in the morning early. Grandpaw’d get up early and get to town. Help, help unload a car, car box of apples, you know. All them bruised apples, we carried them home. And then when, he may give us a bushel or maybe two bushels of good apples. But we had so many apples we carried home and my grandmaw was a smart woman. When she carried them apples home..
(Unintelligible)
G: Ok, if you don’t mind..
Unknown voice: I don’t mind.. (Unintelligible)
B: Oh, I..and, ah, we’d a whole lot of apples and they’d carry back. Well then, my grandmaw would peel them apples and put ‘em up in jars. And she’d just make my grandpaw mad buying sugar. Well, ah, and put it up. And she canned a lot of stuff. And we et better, we et better in that day than we eat now.
G: Is that right?
B: I want to recall this on the ____. My grandmaw, when I was a small boy, she went out and picked some Muscadines and hold them up in a two-gallon churn. And ah, so one morning, one Sunday morning, she went and cooked some bread. She Bullard 50
said, “Lord, Mr. _________, I know what we’re going to have. We’re going to have Muscadines this morning for, for breakfast. Butter and biscuits and Muscadine preserves.” My feet got skeered. I, she ___________________ and then bent them walls back and ________ with little small bits, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: .. and bent that thing out and she put a lock on there and locked it. So, one day, I told my sister, “Sister,” I say, “let’s get them Muscadines and eat them up.” She say, “No, they’re locked up, Bertie.” I say, “I straighten them walls out so I can get in there.” The other day I went in there and I straighten them out, I know how to do it. And, ah, so, I went pulled them walls out and we got up on that churn and ate all them Muscadines out of that jar, that churn. So that Sunday morning when my grandmaw say she gonna ____ those Muscadines up, I run ____________. She said “Lord have mercy, Mr. McDowell! This here jar is empty. Somebody done ate all these Muscadines out of here and tied ‘em back up just like I had”. He said “You had ‘em locked up, didn’t you?” “Yeah, I had ‘em locked up.” Well, shoot, I done went there and got the key from her, you know. She __________________ _________ before she thought about it. I _________________ (Laughter) I was a good-sized boy when I did this. I went over _________. My grandmaw is a big talker, a loud talker. She say “somebody got all them Bullard 51
Muscadines”. I say, “Momma. I say, I bent them walls back and me and sister ate them Muscadines out of there. But now don’t whup sister. I was the one done that. I straightened them back out and got ‘em and then when you come back, I got the key from you and unlocked it and straightened that thing back out.” I say, “When you said that and then you see my feet runnin’ _____________ out to the cow pen. And you know I would have done left, but something done happened to me.”
G: (Laughter)
B: My feet just couldn’t face it. I went out there and I didn’t want to come back. But I come on back for the truth. And you know she, she didn’t whup me? _________ I said, “now don’t whup sister. Because sister didn’t have nothing to do with that.” I say, “I’m the one done that.” “You know, well, I, you done told me the truth and I sure ain’t going to whup you.” She said “You old devil, you know how to unstrip, ____ twisted them walls. You still, I’d have had sister out there untwisted them, but that crook there, would have interfered.” I said, “Now I couldn’t get them back through there.” I might not have had brains enough to ________ to get that same kind of wall and put it through there and then twist it, see. But, pulling it back _______,
_________ I can’t pull it through there.
G: Yeah.
B: ‘Cause that ______ was stuck. But you see, I _________ to turn honest folks, ________ turn a crook.Bullard 52
G: Yeah. That’s what I heard.
B: I know that to be true.
G: Yeah.
B: Because why did I say what I telling you, you see. That was just to turn honest folks, but I was a crook.
G: (Laughter) You figured out a way to do that.
B: Yes.
G: You know we were talking about, ah, about the relationship between the store owner and the Black folks there. Did the Black folks have it pretty..everybody live just about like y’all did when you were young.
B: No, sir. The people lived just like they’re living now. There were some people in the world now believe in responsible their own burden. You see, I believe in wrestling with my own burden. But my, just like you see my neighbor. Look how he burden me today, since you’ve been here. ____________ You see, I don’t believe in that.
G: Yeah.
B: See, if I burden him, him that way, I had to go in _________. We’ve always been that way. We always have people who would do things right.
G: Yeah.
B: Now, here’s one more thing, what I want you to recall this. Timothy Rawlinson, me and him was born, no, I’m older’n him, about two years older than him. And, ah, he said to me one day, oh, we didn’t have no cows at that time.Bullard 53
All our cows had weakened down and died and we didn’t have no cows. And we had a deep well. Well was 75-feet deep; couldn’t draw it dry. You could stand and draw water all day and it wouldn’t weaken. And, ah, so they was hauling water from us and Grandmaw would send me over to their house to get milk about twice a week. They’d give my grandmaw milk, you know. So Mrs. Morris said to me one day, she say, at school, she say “You have to come over to our house to get milk all the time”. That made me mad. ___________ I looked around there at him and I said “I’ll tell you one thing about it, water’s more important than milk. ‘Cause you can do without the milk, but you can’t do without the water. Now, I say, now if you’d ever thought about it, you all come to our well every other day. We have two wells. And that water’s more important than milk. And I say, Grandmaw would stop me from coming to your house to get milk. I say, ‘cause when this fall start, I’m going to the field and I’m going to go helping until my Grandmaw have, I’m going to pick cotton hard and I want you to save the money and buy you a cow. And we have our own cow to milk so we don’t have to go to your house after milk.” He insulted me and I wasn’t twenty-one years old. I was in my teens.
Unknown voice: Well he was wanting to know how did the white folks treat ya’ll when.. How did they treat your folks when, they, you know, ya’ll come in, that’s what he wants to know.Bullard 54
G: Well, I was wondering, wondering a number of things. I was just wondering, you know, you describe your life when you were growing up as, you had plenty to eat..
B: Yes, sir.
G: ..you had plenty of work to do..
B: Yes, sir.
G: ...you had enough money. You weren’t rich, but you had enough money to meet your needs.
B: Yes, sir. Well, ‘course, on Saturdays, I used to be bad about going to a-hunting. But when I got good size, in this part of ________, Mr. ________’s momma, she was a widow-woman, and, a she said..
Unknown voice: I know you ___________ back there in the ______ time.
B: She said to my Grandmaw, she say, “Aunt Judy,” say, ah, you know that they called me Chet, but my name is Eugene, they called me Chet ‘cause I looked like my daddy. They say, “Little Chet could come up here every Saturday and clean my chicken yard out, chicken house out, and rake my yard all. And I’ll give him, ah, four bits.” Fifty cents, now, and my dinner. And I’d get up early that morning, and that time when you are working, you didn’t have no watch. You’d work from sun to sun. Well Ms. ________ wouldn’t look for me up there at her house, because I had about two miles to go. She wouldn’t look for me until about 8, 9 o’clock. She’d wait, give me time to, I had an old donkey what I Bullard 55
could ride up there. My Granddaddy done bought an old donkey and I had an old donkey I could ride up there, you know. So I would get up there about 8, 9 o’clock and then I’d start work. Work right up until 12 o’clock, 12 o’clock would come, went on in their kitchen, sit down at the table there, and ate my dinner. And just what they had on the table there to eat, that’s what they left on the table there for me to eat. It wasn’t stuff they had out, good stuff, because nobody had good stuff, _____________, and go there and eat all I want to eat.
And they’d tell me, say “Now listen, you go and rest. You rest, you just go on out there and said, by the house out there and lay down. There’s a good place for you to lay down out there. Go on out there and lay down. And rest and I’ll call you when it come time for you to go back to work. ‘Cause you don’t get up from this table and go back to work. I want you to rest a little bit. And then in the evening about 4’oclock, she’d come out here, say “Chet, now it’s about time you start home.” And give me my four bits. And give me a sack. I carry something home with me from up there; good something; in a paper sack. Why, I carry it home for my supper.
G: Hm-mm.
B: When I got home, there’s some my grandmaw and grandpaw there was enough for all our supper. They was nice to, they was nice people to me. Bullard 56
G: What about the other Black folks in that area? Did they live about the same way y’all did?
B: Some lived better. And some lived worse.
G: Uh-huh.
B: You see, it always was. Some people lived a little bit better than others.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, sir. Some people would save. See, I carried four bits back. And I saved that four bits. I didn’t go back home and waste that four bits up. I’d carry it back and put it in..give it to my grandmaw. “Grandmaw, put this money up there.” First thing I know, I had seven, eight dollars. See. Yes, sir.
G: Well, what about the..during this period of time you all owned land. But what about the sharecroppers? What what their situation?
B: Well them, them, people what lived out there, them sharecroppers on Mr. Bob People’s place. They’d get out there and, ah, work and make big crops. And have plenty money. And Mr. Bob People’s, he told the white people in that community at that time..he was real caring. He said, “Now listen. Let them, ah, colored people, if they want a car,” say “have them get ‘em a car.” He say, “Cause if you don’t them get ‘em a car, they’ll save their money and they’ll buy homes and you can’t work, you can’t work ‘em. You, see, but all my hands, If they want a car, I’m gonna Bullard 57
get help ‘em a new car. And I ain’t even got no car. I’m drivin’ horses to a buggy carrying the mail. You see, but I’ll sign notes for my hands to get ‘em a car.” He say, “When they get a car, they’ll just throw ___ away all, and throw their money away. Monday morning, the hands’ll be back here to work.” Say, “But you can bawl them out, but you can bawl nobody out when they got money.”
G: (Laughter) You can’t bawl anybody out if they’ve got money; they get too independent.
B: Yes, sir.
G: Well, now, what exactly, how did the sharecropping system work? Who, who provided what in the sharecropping arrangement?
B: Them a, the landholder, he owned the land and if he kept the house up and everything, wells and everything up and he paid that rent and everything. I mean, he fixed the house up and everything for the hands to live on and he give them so much money every month for to live on. And he, he’d done that paying off hisself. And, ah, wind up in the fall, then what they made and he sold the cotton and he’d settle off with them. See. He’d settle off with them.
G: What..
B: Some of them would settle money, some didn’t, wouldn’t clear enough.
G: Yeah.
B: Now them, them what would be caught and go along and Bullard 58
save their money and they’d, then try to go to an extreme. They made money. They had enough money comin’. Some of the farmers, some farmers just, they just figured up, said well you ____ a little bit and comin’ out. You know, there’s always have been some good folks and then some bad ones.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, sir.
G: But, but, they, the land, landowner furnished the land?
B: Furnished the land and all the..
G: ..the house..
B: ..the house, plow tools and everything.
G: Mules?
B: And everything. Yes.
G: What about the seed?
B: He furnished the seed and everything. Yeah. Yes. He furnished everything.
G: And the sharecropper then furnished the labor.
B: The sharecropper, he just furnished the labor, that’s all he put out, put out against it. The labor.
G: Yeah. OK, and what did they do to split it fifty-fifty, at the end?
B: That’s what you’re supposed to did.
G: Yeah.
B: Well, now, I, just talking about it, me direct, when I come here in Calvert, in ’32. And I told Mr. Anniston, I said, “Mr. Anniston, I work for your crops, not my wife. I Bullard 59
work for your crops and not my wife.” I said, “Now when you give to all of us, for us to go to chopping, and you may not go out there and you may not see my wife in the fields, but don’t you worry, I’ll be through chopping when the others get through.” Because I always did know how to look out for myself. See. And I didn’t want the other men talking to my wife. You know others. Well, I tell him that in the beginning. Well, then, if I got some cotton out there to be chopped, I oughta have sense enough to get some hands to go out and chop that cotton. And then pay the folks myself. See. All right. I remember one day, my wife was, ah, she be going to the field that morning to chop. And another fella, he passed by and he seen his wife washing. He went by to raise sand with him. And so, that man say to me, he say “Well, ah, Eugene, Mr. ______ raising sand this morning. Your wife were in the field.” I say, “There ain’t but one thing you can do. He can make me move. I can move.” But if he gonna bawl at me about that, I’m out there in this field and I say, “This morning I done picked about two hundred fifty pounds of cotton.” I’m out here on time and I picked it. It done weighed up two hundred fifty pounds. What I picked this morning. My wife, washin’, and I say if you, if he’d put it all together picking cotton. And ah, says we’re all in a squad there together, but he put me in my crop, tell me, say “You go to your crop. And you pick your crop.” I say, “I’d get hands to go out there in my cotton and Bullard 60
pick.” And, ah, get my cotton out. Storm won’t get it. That’s ‘cause when, I’ve always when I raise a cotton crop, well, when the cotton open out, I want my cotton picked. So it won’t blow out on the ground.
G: Yeah.
B: I say, but since he put us all together, ever one tells me to do is get out there and pick all I can pick. I get out here, you all know I get out here and pick four, five hundred pounds cotton a day. And I do it great. I say, but now, no man mouth at me about my wife. ‘Cause I’ll move. And go where someone won’t mouth at me. ‘Cause I’ll work. I give work from sun to sun, I say they can mouth at me, but they can’t mouth at my wife. I know what I want my wife to do. Ought to be have that much authority over her. So [unintelligible].
G: Hm-m. Well most men, did most sharecroppers, did their whole families work the, work the land?
B: If, ah, if I had ten in my family. How many they gonna work? They’d determine how many was able to chop. You’d get, if you got five, you tell me I got five hand supposed to chop, you put that down on book. When he pass by the field there, well, Eugene supposed to have five out there in this field. Well, he got it down on books how many he issued them what there is to chop, he’s going to put a pension on that for them. But, now, these other what is, what can’t work, he ain’t issue no pension for them. They Bullard 61
just got to live off what these others got.
G: Now you, when you talk about pension, you’re talking about the money he advances for you to..
B: ..for you to buy groceries with.
G: ..buy groceries.
B: Yes. Yes. Yes.
G: OK, so, so, how big, how much land could a sharecropper with, ah, five people to work. How much land could they, could they manage successfully?
B: Well, I tell, tell, now I just want to talk about one man and that’s Eugene.
G: Yeah.
B: One time, I worked forty acres of land. And I was staying in the big house and my brother-in-law was staying in the small house. He had forty-two and a half acres, two teams and five to chop. I had one to chop and that was my wife. He had a half acre of land more than me and had four mules to work that land with. I, I worked my land. I’d be a day and a half behind him getting through plowing. ‘Cause I’d get up and go to the field and go to plowing. And I stood to plow …..where I had a good team. And I just continue work, plow you know. And he’d stop and sit down and talk. Soon’s the boss passed, he’d stop and sit down. For you see, when the boss come by, just like you seen me out here working when you come up, that’s the way I always did work. But old age is hittin’ me now and I have to go layBullard 62
down sometimes. But in that day, when I got up and I go __ to eat my dinner, now I rest 15 minutes and I’m ready to go back to work. See. And at that time, they was ringing bells, yeah, well, I knowed the order, I wasn’t going to disturb them mules until the bossman rang the bell. And when he rang the bell, I get my jug already filled up to go to the field. And I’d go on and get my mules. And the same way, I didn’t rush my mules going to the house. I didn’t rush ‘em goin’ back. See. Let them take an ordinary gait. And ride. I rode one, ever, always had one mule what I’d ride, you know, ‘course to the field. Well, but, some of them were ripping and roaring, but I didn’t do that. And I waited for the bell to ring for me to go to the house. See. Some of the, some of the mules on the farm there, they’d hear the bell ring and they’d stop in the middle of the field and they’d take out. I seen a many one take out. But my mules wasn’t trained that a-way. Bell rung, I’d go on to the end and turn around and them mules was going on turn around and they go on back to the end if I don’t say ‘Whoa’. If I say ‘Whoa’, they stop. Take ‘em back. And I didn’t start to run ‘em to the house. ‘Cause I know the mules tired. And I just let ‘em just take an ordinary gait on to the house. I didn’t rush ‘em to the field, didn’t rush ‘em back. Some would run the mules to the house. I told the people that wasn’t fair. You don’t want to race your mules to the house when you know you worked them. That’s wrong.Bullard 63
G: Yeah.
B: See. People have always recognized, the white people have recognized, people what thought they were somebody. And acted like they was somebody.
[Pause]
G: Did, ah, you talk about, you were taking care of, you and your wife were taking care of about forty acres.
B: Forty, forty-two acres.
G: Well, was it a common practice during the sharecropping period for, for women to work in the fields right along with the men?
B: If you, only big plantations. A man would ask you, see, how many in the family? Nobody but me and my wife. They going to issue a pension for me and they issue a pension for my wife. And if another man have five in the family – how many you got to work? The three oldest work. Three to work. Me and my wife, and one child. Well, he got a pension for three folks.
G: Yeah.
B: Well, here, me and my wife, we getting a pension, it says I’m drawing a pension for it, she’s supposed to work.
G: Yeah.
B: Says she’s drawing a pension for. All, I had a wife, when I had a wife I lived with on, on, on that farm up there and she got sick. And she wasn’t able to work. So they give, I told the people, I went and hired an old lady to Bullard 64
come there and stay with her and wait on my wife and go to the field and chop. But I paid her myself. ‘Cause every day she chopped, I paid, she paid, I paid her. And I ___ job for her and paid her myself. I didn’t carry it back to the farm. When pension time come, I say I’m not drawing a pension for my wife. Some people say, “Why?” I say, “She is not able to work. What in the world I want draw a pension for her, she not able to work?” I say, “I’ve always had good sense. She not able to work, so don’t draw no pension for her.” That’s my wife, ain’t any _____, that’s my wife. People looked at me funny. I say, well you may can not see into it, but I see into it.
So finally one day, I got to pull this, give this flower to give to Mr. Anderson, that’s Mr. Wesley’s granddaddy. “Come on ___”, he said to me. He say, “Eugene, your wife is sick.” And say, ah, “I’ll tell you, you carry her to your doctor, ain’t you?” I carry her to a colored doctor, Dr. Wade. He say, ah, “Let me send my doctor out here to her.” “Yes, suh.” “And let him examine and see ‘bout her”. “Yes, suh. I sure appreciate it, Mr. Anderson.” So, he send out there. That doctor looked at the medicine. He say, “You ought to indict him”. “No, sir, I don’t want to do that.” I got race respect. The way I told Mr. Anderson. I got race respect. He done all he could. And every man got a different opinion about a person who’s sick. He said, “This medicine’s too strong.” Well, I’ll tell you Bullard 65
what I’ll do. I’ll throw the medicine away, but I ain’t going to indict him. I’ll throw that medicine away. ____ and let him take Dr. Palmer’s medicine. And we did. Dr. Palmer’s told him he’d have her ready to go to work in three week’s time. And I ain’t drawing no pension for her.
I’m still working that same amount of land what I was working by myself. I done hired a lady to come there and wait on my wife and in the evening, I tell her, now when four o’clock comes, you quit and go home. You quit at four o’clock and go home and cook supper and see about my wife. Well, she did that. I’d be chopping and I had a watch and when four o’clock comes, I’d wave a hat at her for her to go. So, she’d go home. Sun go down, I’d quit. Come home. All right, goin’ on about this medicine. She looked like she was going to get well. I being think she was going to get well. I looked around there and I said ___. She got up and began to kinda cook supper once’t in a while. Then finally she just went, wasn’t ______ do my pills so bad, I couldn’t do nothing. I couldn’t cook. Well that’s all right. I still got this lady here, she still helps me. She still come to the house at the same time.
“Eugene, I just got to..________” So, finally I got her and carried her to the mall, to the hospital up there. Them doctors, they say I’m.. I said, “Now, if she did the operation, we’ll operate. Now, whatever she needs, just ya’ll be the judge. I don’t know what’s the matter with Bullard 66
her.” ‘Cause I don’t. But, I’ll pay you. So they began to treat her. So, ____, come on back then to Mr. Anderson. He say “Well, say, Eugene, you done carried her all around this place and that place, Mr. Billy’s, Mr. Wesley’s granddaddy.
End of Tape 1, Side 2.