THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: Sharecropping
INTERVIEW WITH: Eugene Bullard
DATE: July 12, 1979
PLACE: Calvert, Texas
INTERVIEWER: Joe S. Graham
TAPE II, SIDE 1
G: Eugene Bullard and this is July the 12th, is that right?
B: Right.
G: July 12th.
B: Yes.
G: Thursday.
B: ..to know what she’s talking about.
G: [Laughter] You don’t worry too much about the day is.
B: No, sir. No.
G: Well, you know, last time when we were talking, we talked a lot about your growing up experiences and your childhood back on the farm and I run across a word that I’m curious about. And that’s the term “fellow man”. You ever use that term to talk, describe the group that you shared food with and in your little community?
B: “Fellow man”?Bullard 2
G: Uh-huh.
B: Yes, sir. [Pause] Do, do unto others as you’d desire them do unto you.
G: Now, when you talk about “fellow man”, did that have a particular meaning to you or did that include everyone in the world? What did the term “fellow man” mean to you?
B: Well, the term “fellow man” is doing to everybody as I desire them to do to me.
G: Yeah. It didn’t mean a specific group?
B: No, sir.
G: Oh, OK.
B: No, sir. It meaned the whole entire world.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, regardless of the color. You treat everybody..See, I don’t you to want you to say bad things about me. I’ll not say bad things about you.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes.
G: OK.
B: I used to use that word out on the farm to, to the people, out there working. “Be thou faithful until death”. See, if you be faithful, and then there be a resurrection, if God’s faithful to the colored man here, then my Heavenly Father ought to receive me... Because I was faithful. You come out here the other day..
G: Yeah.Bullard 3
B: .. and I was working. You come right back here today, and I was off working. See.
G: Yeah.
B: Because here _________ . If I be faithful to my earthly, earthly master, then I sure ought to be faithful to my Heavenly Master.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, sir.
G: I was just wondering, did you have a specific name that you called the group of people that you shared food with. You know you were talking about, you know..
B: It was the old ____
G: Yeah, well, back, no, back when you were growing up and your folks would kill a hog and everybody would come and take part of it. And when they’d kill a hog, you’d get part of it. Did you ever have a, did you have a name for that particular group of people?
B: Well, my method were, regardless to my fellow man, if they come by, if somebody come by, and I cut my hog up. Here I’m killing hog, you want to ______. And I tell the people ___, ‘I’m so stingy, I don’t give none of my meat away.’ I say, ‘This hog is mine. I raised him, I fed him, and all like that. Well, when you come by here and I ain’t seen you in maybe six months. But you here and I’m cutting up, and I give you a little mess of meat and so you go home.’ And, different people have come by and ‘No, I’m not Bullard 4
lookin’ for no meat!’ See. If had cut ________, _______ that garden out there, and that’s ________. When you get ready to go home, I’m gonna ask you, ‘Do you want something of the _____?’ That’s just my make up.
G: Yes.
B: See. I’m just make up, made up that way. See. Just concerned about the people what I come in contact with.
G: Yeah.
B: See.
G: Now I was thinkin’ back when you were young, you know, you were telling me that, ah, on the farm there, at certain times of year, you would butcher a beef and then you’d distribute that meat among a group of people there that were your neighbors. And then, then, ah, when they butchered a beef, then they’d would share it with you.
B: Yes, sir.
G: Did you have any special name or any special, ah, relationship with those people that you shared with?
B: Well, they was the people, you know, what lived around me.
G: Yeah.
B: You see, they lived right around my _____, you see. Well, when I kill a hog, if they wasn’t home, over there, I’d carry them some meat and give it to them. And then, I wasn’t so much looking for it when they kill a hog for them to come back and return it. Just doin’ it because it was Bullard 5
right.
G: Yeah.
B: See. But, when they’d kill a hog, they’d send me a little, little meat. They were bad about sending me the ribs and stuff like that. But when I send them some meat, I’d used to cut it off the ham and give them some meat what they had some meat to eat.
G: Yeah.
B: See. Like when you say the other day, ‘bout I have some barbeque ribs in there. I buy ribs, but ain’t gonnna buy no ribs until my wife give me the order. ‘Cause I buy meat. I buy ham meat, shoulder and stuff like that. Middlin’.
G: Yeah.
B: See, I didn’t like that. I wouldn’t attempt to give nobody a hog head because I wanted hog head for myself to make sausage out of.
G: Yeah.
B: See, that’s important meat to me. The hog head and feet.
G: Hog head and feet are important.
B: Important to me.
G: Yeah. Well, OK, when, did your neighbors come over and help you butcher..
B: Yes, sir.
G: ..when you butcher a hog?Bullard 6
B: Yes, sir. They’d come over and help me.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, sir. They’d come over and help me cause they know if they help me, they gonna get some.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, sir. They know that.
G: OK, you’re talking about the different parts of meat. What, for, for the people that you grew up with, what was the best part of the hog?
B: The best part of the hog for me what the head and the feet and make that hog head souse. That was the best meat, for me, I’m talking about. I like that better because you make that souse, you know. And my grandmother learned me how to cook that souse and make that souse and I put it in that sausage mill and grind it up, you know, and put a plate on top of it in the crock and pack it down. Cut me a slice, there aren’t no bones or nothing. The bones are all out of there and you just got meat to eat. And, man, you got good eating.
G: Well, how do you make that?
B: That hog head souse? That hog head souse? You clean them heads and feet good and, ah, then put it in a wash pot and boil it. Then you cook, well, you cook it plumb done. Then you pick all that bones out, put the meat in there, you know. And do the feet the same way, you know. Get just the meat. Pull the bones out, give the bones to the dogs. And, Bullard 7
then when you get all the bones out and you go ahead and put it the sausage mill, well, you know at that sausage mill gonna catch all them bones. And when it go through there and grind up, you know, like sausage, you see, well you got sure enough meat there. And you don’t mind biting it ‘cause you don’t get no bones. Because that sausage mill catch every little bit of bones.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, sir. And grind it up and put it in a crock and put a plate on it and a rock. Pack it down there, you know, where it be solid.
G: Yeah.
B: See. You just go out there and slice it off, you know. And, you have, it’s the best part about a hog. That was better than the sausage.
G: Yeah. Well, did it, did it, did it did the fat make kind of a jelly or jell stuff?
B: See, when you grind it up and pack it down, well, it just like you go to the store there and buy..
G: ..pressed ham.
B: Pressed ham. It was pressed down. you see.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, sir. It was pressed down. You can go buy homemade souse in town there now, but it really ain’t good as this souse what I’m talking about make, what I can make.
G: Yeah.Bullard 8
B: It has a different flavor, ‘cause I put that sage, and black pepper and stuff in it, you know. And pack it down there. And man, when you get ready and set it in the deep freeze there. And, man, you got something good to eat.
G: How long would it last whenever you didn’t have a cooler?
B: Well, when we didn’t, all back yonder, you had to go and eat it up pretty quick.
G: Yeah.
B: See, in other words, I don’t see why those old folks didn’t die. You mean all the rest of them, ‘cause you see, we didn’t have no icebox. But long as it wasn’t sour, we ate it. [Laughter]
G: [Laughter]
B: But now, see, I make hog head souse and put it in the deep freeze there and it stay there until a year, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: And it still be just as good. My wife got some cakes out there in the deep freeze out there.
G: Yeah.
B: Well, she got it out there for herself. But, it ain’t for me. But now, we have company, she go out there and get that cake, bring it out there, and slice it up, you know. Cut real neat, but see, it ain’t for me. It’s for her.
G: OK, now, so you, you like, you particularly like hog head and pig feet souse.Bullard 9
B: Yes, sir.
G: OK. What, what was next after that?
B: Well, ham. [Laughter]
G: Ham was best after that.
B: Ham was the best after that, you see. And then the, then the, then the shoulders. And then, I’d just work on back. And, of course, you know, when I cooking it, I have greens and like that, see. When I, in my day, a hog, the jowl, is another piece of meat you get, is a extra choice meat to me. ‘Cause any time, you come to this house, you gonna find some jowl meat being here, see. Some jowl meat in there and some peas, in there now. Jowl meat. Well, see, my wife she go off, she leave my dinner. And, see, if she don’t get back, well between twelve and one o’clock, I go in there and boil me some beans and things up, you know. And I just put what I want, what I want to eat, you see. ‘Bout what I can eat, I get me a boil and put it in there, ‘cause she tell me, say “Don’t you put no _____ on the stove, just cook what you want to eat ‘cause you’ll burn them all up.’ Well, that’s true. I done burned so many boils up I couldn’t eat. She come in here, used to, and I was sittin’ over there _________ and you wouldn’t want to eat them.
‘Bout one o’clock, she come on in, she went to sewing in there. So finally, I got up, went in, put them peas on. After a while, I heard them, smelled them peas burnin’. I jumped up and go on in and stirred ‘em right quick and Bullard 10
poured some more water in ‘em. And, lately, she smelled ‘em, said “You done burned them peas up.” I said ‘Well, I sho’ did.’ I said, ‘Now I know you can raise Hell with me,’ I said, ‘cause you was here.’ I say, ‘You know I’m bad about burning.’ She got up there and went up there and changed them and boiled them.
G: [Laughter]
B: And put the peas, you know, keep them to eat. They scorched just a little bit, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: But she put them in another boiler and she just squawked right me about it because she know good and well she was here.
G: So the hog jowl was a..
B: Hog, hog jowl..
G: Hog jowl..
B: That’s the piece on the, on the head, you know.
G: Well, is that more fat or is that meat?
B: Streak of lean and streak of fat. A streak of lean and streak of fat.
G: Yeah.
B: And it’s a different meat. It eats a little bit different from the ham and shoulder. All parts of the hog is different. You see, the ham is the, whole lot of people ‘cause it’s got some lean and all in it. That, that ham eats different from, ah, the shoulder. I don’t know what make Bullard 11
it, but it’s a different taste in the shoulder, in the ham, in all the middlin’. It all got different taste.
G: Yeah.
B: And the shoulder tastes different.
G: Now what do you call the middlins?
B: That’s the side, the side. So, you get the middlin’ right along here on the hog.
G: Along the ribs.
B: Yes, sir. Yes, along the ribs. Well see, that’s the middlin’ line. See, if I was a hog, this would be the middlin’. And, that piece right up and down the back there, that’s the back lard, you make lard out of that, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes.
G: OK now, you use the head and the feet to make souse.
B: Yes, sir.
G: Um, you used the other parts, what part did you use to make sausage?
B: It’s a lean fat. I mean, it’s a big lean, come right down the back. It’s about that wide, you know, big round strip, come in there, you know, it’s kind of round.
G: Yeah.
B: Well, you pull it off and make sausage out, you see. And then you trim the middlin’ and get little pieces off the, off the middlin’ when you trim it and get little lean there and little fat and make that out of your sausage.Bullard 12
G: Uh-huh.
B: But, come right down from the tailbone, there’s a piece of fat come down there what goes in lard. They call it..
G: From the back.
B: Up on top of the back. See, on the big hogs, it would be about that wide. See, on the big hogs.
G: So, how did you make lard?
B: Well, you cut that, cut that, that fat up, you know, in pieces, you know and let it. Cut it up and put in a wash pot and boil it. Just put, see that big pot out there would hold about 50 gallons ____. Have that lard cut up and then you put about a gallon of water in there to start it to boiling. And then it’ll, see, it’ll start it to boiling and then after it starts to boiling, the juice gets coming out of there, then it just fries and fries and fries and turns to grease, you know. And then it wants to, all you got to do is stay there and stir it, you know, keep it from sticking. And it just fries up, keep your fire down there and ___.
G: Uh-huh.
B: And make your lard. And that gallon of water won’t take long for it to evaporate away, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: See, a gallon of water is enough to start the hog, cooking lard off in the wash pot.
G: How much lard do you get out of a big hog?
B: Well, that hog weighed three hundred and fifty pounds. Bullard 13
Well, you get ten to twelve gallons out, of lard out of a hog weighed three hundred and fifty pounds.
G: Uh-huh. Well, where’d you put the lard?
B: Put the lard in, in, we had a ten-gallon lard can you could buy. And I still got a ten-gallon jar what I used to put lard in.
G: Yeah.
B: The bigger your hog is, the more lard you get out of it.
G: Yeah.
B: But about a three hundred and fifty pound hog, on average, just trim it, you get ten gallons lard out of a three hundred and fifty pound hog easy.
G: Yeah.
B: That, that, that, you want to put that, uh, lard fat, you know, what you get off the chitlins, you don’t have to put that in there ‘cause, see, that makes a kind of a different kind of grease, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: That fat would come off the chitlins, that, that, some people would mix it. But, I always cooked it separate. It come off the lard, off the chitlins. I put it, have it cooked in something else, put that in a different thing.
G: What did you use the different lards for?
B: Well, that lard, I just, oh, it was good lard, all right enough. But it just taste different.Bullard 14
G: Yeah.
B: It taste different and smell a little different.
G: Yeah.
B: See. But that, up and down the back and that fat coming right off the shoulder and ____ and around the middlins’ and all like that, I cook all that together. But that come off the chitlins, it had a different scent.
G: Yeah.
B: Smelled a little different.
G: Yeah. So you had pure lard up there. OK, did you make cracklings out of it?
B: Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
G: Now with all the grease, all the lard comes out it..
B: Then you got cracklins.
G: Did you eat a lot of those when you were a kid?
B: Well, ah, my, my grandpaw, grandpaw and my grandmaw, they would, ah, they’d keep them cracklins down there and they’d eat ‘em, they’d eat ‘em up. You know, ___, but you see, I never did like ‘em. See. I’d eat all the day they killed hogs. I’d eat cracklins that day, eat a little cracklins. Might _________ plumb loose, then after that I didn’t eat no more, when they got dry.
G: Did they, people, they ate them all up?
B: They’d keep ____ just continue to eat ‘em.
G: What did they, what did they put salt on ‘em, or?
B: Well, yes, they’d put a little salt on ‘em.Bullard 15
G: A little salt and eat ‘em.
B: I still see my granddaddy would come in and get some cracklins and put ‘em in the stove there, a pan, you know, tin plate and let ‘em get warm, you know. And then, he’d go on and eat. I said, ‘Grandpaw, I wouldn’t eat that if I ain’t going to eat that. Now, I know you, you love that kind of stuff. I’d eat syrup and bread before I’d eat that.’
G: Uh-huh.
B: See, I’d go ahead and fry me some meat.
G: Yeah.
B: And eat that. See, I didn’t, I was raised up with one child..
G: Yeah.
B: .. in one house, you know. And I’d eat certain things, I’d eat, I didn’t eat everything like white folks.
G: Yeah. Ok, then you, ah, ah, you cured the hams, right?
B: Yes, sir.
G: How’d you cure, what did you do to cure those, preserve them?
B: Well, we killed a hog, cut that, cut it up. Then you put three or four pounds of salt on a good-sized ham, you know. And rub it in, you know, good. You just rub it. And then a whole lot of time, we’d put a little syrup. Put a little syrup there, you want that ham to be ____pigs good, you know. And have some of that syrup, we’d put a little Bullard 16
syrup with that salt, you know, and rub it. That salt would salt that meat down just quick as you can, you see. And that’d draw all that animal heat out it, you see. And then the next morning, you’d turn that meat over, so it would drain, you know. Then you rub it again, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: Then you’d let it stay down about twenty-one days.
G: Twenty-one days.
B: Yes, about twenty-one days in that salt. Then take it up, wash it off, and stick a string through there and hang it up on an old pole out there in the smokehouse. Then you get you some green hickory wood. Get to a hickory nut tree and cut a hickory nut tree down, bush, you know. And get you some little bark and come there and make you some smoke and smoke it with that hickory wood and that give it a good taste. Need a taste a whole lot when you smoke it with green hickory.
G: How long did you have to smoke it?
B: About two days. Yes, keep a little smoke on it about two days. And then, it’s all right, I’d used to let it just hang up there.
G: How long would it last?
B: If you kill a hog the fifteenth day of December, and, ah, the meat would last until about the first of August. Yes. If you take it down and wrap it up in some shucks. See, if you wanted that meat to keep pretty good, you go outBullard 17
there in the crib and get you some shucks in a box and take that meat down and lay down them shucks and lay them shucks over it, you know. And if you got plenty cats to keep them rats away from around there, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: We always did have plenty cats to keep the rats down. Well, they wouldn’t get in there. Well, them rats get in there, they’ll get down in the shucks there and they’ll eat the meat right down.
G: Yeah. What did the shucks do for the..?
B: Keeps the air off it. Keep the air of it and it won’t turn yellow.
G: Yeah.
B: See, if you put it down, down in them shucks and then, when you go out there to get a piece, well, then you, if you want a ham, you just get you a ham out of there. You cut off what you want, unless you put it back and wrap them shucks back down around, pack them down, keep the air off it, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: And that it’d keep it, keep it from turning yellow.
G: I see.
B: Yes, them shucks are sure --- the flavor. And that be’s down in them shucks there. and then along in August when all your meat’s gone, you pick up them shucks up and carry them out there, throw them out there to your cows and Bullard 18
like that. You expect them the cows, they’ll smell them shucks and they be greasy, them shucks’d be greasy. And they’ll smell them, but you put them out there and let them stay out there for a day or two and they’ll come back and they’ll start eating on them for the salt on ‘em.
G: Yeah.
B: They’ll come back, come back and eat ‘em.
G: OK, how did you, how did you make bacon?
B: Well, that’s how we did our bacon. See, that’s what we called our bacon. Bacon, there was them hams, you know, and shoulders, and middlins. See, this is middlins, see here?
G: Yeah.
B: That’s what we called our bacon, right here, you see. That’s your middlins.
G: So you did this the same way you did the hams?
B: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Rub that salt on ‘em and a little syrup there, you know, to make it taste good.
G: You let it go twenty-one days, too?
B: Yes, sir. Let it all go twenty-one days. Yes, sir.
G: And then smoked it for about two days?
B: Yes, two, three days and then hang it and let it.. and after you smoke it two or three days, take it down and put it in that box and put them shucks around.
G: Yeah.
B: And then just use it as you want it.
G: How else did you do the ribs, other than..Bullard 19
B: Got the ribs, well, [chuckles] shoot, we’d eat them up.
G: Just cook ‘em and eat ‘em up.
B: Just cook ‘em, yes, sir. Yes, sir, we’d just put a little salt on ‘em and lay ‘em out there in a little box for somebody, you know. And just let ‘em stay there, well. Old folks, old folks, it wouldn’t be long before they’d eat them ribs up. Well, you see, shucks. My grand.., my granddaddy, he killed a big hog, well, him and grandmaw. They eat up one side of ribs in a day’s time.
G: Is that right?
B: They both was big meat eaters.
G: Yeah. How did they cook ‘em?
B: Put them on and boil ‘em. But they’d boil em’, sometimes they’d fry ‘em.
G: Never barbeque them?
B: No, sir. ----- barbeque them, for they used to get out there and put them on there and boil ‘em, you know. And then, and sometimes, they’d fry..
G: Yeah. Ok, now, what about the inside part of the pigs. What-all did you use of that?
B: Well we used, we used them chittlins.
G: OK.
B: The big chittlins. We ate them the next, next day. See, we washed them hog chittlins, see. In that day, I was crazy about hog chittlins and still love hog chittlins now. See. I buy, every once, I buy a box of hog chittlins, once’t a Bullard 20
year. But you see, when people get old, they can’t eat them hog chittlins like they did when they young. They make your stomach hurt, you see.
G: Uh-huh.
B: But I still love ‘em. But I..
G: How did, how did you prepare them?
B: Well, my grandmaw would, she’d just take them big chittlins, and the little chittlins and throw them away. But them big chittlins, we’d cook them.
G: Did you cut them up?
B: We’d ah, she’d wash, she’d cut them in pieces about like that.
G: About a foot long?
B: About a foot long, yes. And wash them good and then she’d soak them a day or two and then she’d wash them again, you know and turn ‘em and scrape them and all like that. But inside the third day, they’d et up. [Laughter] They’d just stay all of three days at our house, we’d kill a hog. And if I kill a hog right now, my wife would’ve have got now. I tell her, I say ‘Listen, woman, you, ah, you cook some of them chittlins.’ More likely, if I killed a hog today, she’ll want to have some chittlins cookin’ tomorrow. And see, it ain’t no use talk like that, they’ll go in the icebox and just soon’s they get done, well, I’ll get me about two --- about that long on my plate and I’ll --- me some good old cornbread. They ate cornbread. And, man, I’dBullard 21
eat two pieces like that. And I’d get up and trot the rest of the day.
G: Yeah.
B: ..working.
G: Well, now, how, how do you prepare the chittlins?
B: Well, ah..
G: After you wash ‘em and cut them up, then what do you do with them?
B: Well, when you get ready to cook ‘em, she’d wash, wash ‘em and put ‘em on the stove and boil ‘em. Oh, she put ‘em on this morning about 9 o’clock. Well, about dinner time, they fairly done. Well, I like, I like them hog chittlins fried. See, I like, I can eat ‘em right out of that boiler, or else she puts them, a little, some kind of batter they put, they fix ‘em, you know. And put a little batter on ‘em and turn ‘em over in that thing and you put it, then you got a little thing and make ‘em, that batter be thick thataway, you know. You can cut that thing up, and man, m-m-m-m-m!
Man, that is good. They good. To me, they was. ‘Course now, there’s some people wouldn’t eat ‘em. My grandpaw, I raised --- and he wouldn’t a hog’s liver for nothin’.
G: Huh.
B: ‘Course..
G: Well, how big a pieces did you cut off when you fried ‘em? Did you just cut ‘em into slices, or..
B: Well, we just, see. We cut pieces off about like that Bullard 22
where you ate it, when you get ready to slice it, the ---, well, she cut ‘em in little short pieces about like that, you see.
G: About two, three inches long.
B: Oh, something like that, yes. Little old pieces and put ‘em in the frying pan and fry ‘em, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: Put some kind of little batter on ‘em, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: And fry ‘em. But they’s already done been fairly done when she get ready to fry ‘em. They’s just ready to eat but she just put ‘em on there to get that batter.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes. Have you, have you ever ate any steak you beat, you fry that steak done and then, you just get you some eggs and beat them eggs up like you gonna cook cake, and then have a little flour. And you lay that done piece of meat over in that batter you got and lay it on that egg and turn it over two times and laid in that frying pan with some hot grease and let it fry right quick and let it.. And it’s already done, you see, but you just put that on there to make it pick up a little flour and a little of that dough and eggs, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: And, man, that, that egg on there is sho’ enough will make a steak good. You do that chittlins the same way, if Bullard 23
you want. And man, you got something there.
G: Now, when you boil them, do you just..
B: Boil them..
G: ..boil them with water?
B: Boil them with water.
G: A little salt, maybe?
B: Have a little salt in them. ‘Course, see, they’ve been soaked in salt.
G: Yeah.
B: See. They’ve been soaked, soaked in salt. So, you don’t have to put much salt in them.
G: Yeah.
B: ‘Cause they’ve been soaked a day or two in that salt.
G: Yeah.
B: And that salt already on them. You don’t have to put much salt, you got to watch it ‘cause you know you get them too salty.
G: Yeah.
B: And, them chittlins is awful good.
G: Yeah. Well, did they ever use the small chittlins as a, as a sausage casings?
B: Well, you basically, you basically, through the years the people learned how to kind of skin that thing out and get the outside line in there and pull it off and get that little outside thing there..
G: Yeah.Bullard 24
B: ..and have it for the stuffed sausage with.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes.
G: But you all used corn shucks, is that right?
B: You see that’s where, that’s where we started off with doing.
G: Yeah.
B: See. In the day, me, if I was killing the hog, I’d druther my sausage go either in corn shucks, if I could get ‘em, big corn shucks, or else put it in a sack and hang ‘em up. And then, put ‘em in sacks about, ‘bout that thick, you see, and mash ‘em out and hang them up. Well then when you get ready to cook ‘em, you just got the meat. You ain’t got, I don’t like the casings.
G: Yeah.
B: See.
G: Yeah. So, what you did with your sausage is you, you ground it up and spiced it with sage and black pepper..
B: Black pepper.
G: ..and a little salt.
B: Yes.
G: And you first put it in corn shucks..
B: Yes, sir.
G: ..or in a cloth.
B: Yes, sir.
G: And then you hung it up and smoked it?Bullard 25
B: Yes, sir. Hung it up and smoked it.
G: How long did you smoke the sausage?
B: Aw, yes, it, what..two or three days.
G: Yeah.
B: And then you through with it.
G: And how was that last, would that last? Before it go bad?
B: Oh, Lord. I tell you what I did one time. I killed hogs. And I had sausages about that long. Just had stuffed them and cooking the lard out. And I grabbed a sausage, a double length, it was about, oh, it was about, about that long. But, it was double, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: And the lard was hot. And I just picked that sausage up and dropped it down in that ten gallon can of lard and didn’t tell my wife nothing about it. So, finally, one day she done used that lard, that can of lard up. She found the sausage in there. Man, I coming home one evening just about sundown, wasn’t even --- about it. And my wife was coming on, say, “Eugene, what you reckon, I found a sausage in that, in that, in that lard today.” Say, “This, it sure is good. That what we got for supper.” Say, “Hurry on, supper’s ready.” Oh, ---- and, ah, so I didn’t hurry up. What do you think is our hurry? I said, “Well, is it all right?” She say, “Yeah.” I say, “Well, I was sure it was bad, one I’d ruined that whole can of lard, put that sausageBullard 26
in there.” And ah, it wasn’t cooked, but the lard was cooked, was hot enough to cook that sausage through and through.
G: Hm-m.
B: I guess that --- one that lard---
G: So, ah, how long did it stay in there before you found it?
B: Stayed in there, ah, nearly six months.
G: Uh-huh.
B: Before we even found it
G: Yeah. How long would it stay, how long would it last if you just hung it up and smoked it? Now, when you hung it up and smoked it, was it cooked? Did that cook it?
B: Well, you see, when. They’ll dry out, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: See, when you stuff ‘em and put ‘em in them casing and then you hang them up and they’ll just dry out. But, this sausage was just put in the lard there.
G: Yeah.
B: It’d stayed there twelve months.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, of course, it was first lard went all through it. You just cooked that sausage, done, all the way through.
G: Yes.
B: Man, I, ‘course I got a piece of that sausage and pulled it out and cut a piece off and it was just cooked Bullard 27
plumb done. Just done all the way through.
G: Yeah.
B: Wasn’t no streak rotten or nothing, just cooked done. Just done.
G: Hm-m. Did it..
B: Yeah. It’d stayed there twelve months.
G: What other parts of the hog would you eat? You ate the chittlins. You used the small chittlins sometimes later on..
B: ..for, for..
G: ..to stuff sausage in.
B: To stuff sausage with.
G: What else did you, did you eat?
B: Well..
G: Out of the h-h-hogs..
B: ..well..
G: ..insides?
B: Well, we eaten away at kidneys and liver.
G: OK, you ate the kidneys and liver.
B: Yes, and the ‘lights’.
G: And now, what are the ‘lights’?
B: That’s lungs.
G: Yeah, you ate the lungs. How did you fix the lungs?
B: Oh, good night and the morning. I love that. I love that now. We just cooked them lungs up. The ‘lights’, we called them the ‘lights’. That’s it, and the heart and Bullard 28
things are all there, you know. And, ah, we’d chip ‘em up in little pieces and put ‘em on the stove and boil ‘em and put onions and black pepper and salt and make a kind of hash out of it.
G: Yeah.
B: Man, that stuff was good.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes.
G: OK, how did you prepare the heart?
B: Well you just, you see, when you first kill a hog, you cut them little deaf ears off, them little things what flops on the side there. You cut all that off and throw it away to the dogs and cats. Eat that and strip that heart, you get blood out it, you see. Then you just cut that heart up, and it, it boiled and be done.
G: Yeah.
B: OK, you can cook it. You cook it done.
G: Hm-m.
B: You see, you see, you can eat the heart and the lungs and leave all that together and make you a hash. Cut it up in little, small pieces and put it on the stove and boil it. And put onions and garlic and black pepper and stuff. And, it, man, it’s good eating.
G: Uh-huh.
B: That make me hungry talking about that.
G: [Chuckles] Well, again, what about the, how did you fix Bullard 29
the kidneys?
B: Well, what, when I was a young man, and help the folks kill hogs, when I got to cutting the hog, hog up, I’d pull the kidney out and split it in two and cut it up. And put it on the coals and it weren’t hardly going make it to the house, ‘cause I was going to eat it off the coals. Man, I used to love hog kidneys. I boiled them out there on the fire and eat them when they was half done, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: Man, I used to love hog kidneys. I boiled them out there on the fire and eat them when they was half done, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes. See. When I was a young man, well you wouldn’t, kidneys they wouldn’t get to, get to my wife. ‘Cause they was cooked on, cooked out there on the stove, on the fire.
G: Yeah.
B: But no hot, on the coals, you know. And, get ‘em about half done and I was going to eat them up.
G: Yeah.
B: See.
G: What about the liver?
B: I, I used to do the liver the same way. Just cook, you’d cook liver out there, but never. See, there’s so much liver, you know when I..
G: Yeah.Bullard 30
B: ..when I get one little piece of liver and them kidneys, and them kidneys out there on that fire, well, it ain’t going to be long before she would holler dinner ready and I’d go to dinner and I’m through. But I’m going to eat them kidneys out there.
G: Yeah.
B: And I ate kidneys until I find out that all the hog got any kind of disease, all that stuff got to go through its’ kidneys. And when I got to studying about it, then I quit eating kidneys. Well, mind me, I’m an old man before I even found that out.
G: Well, didn’t look like it did you too much damage.
B: It didn’t do me no, no damage. [Laughter] But I just finally quit.
G: Yeah.
B: See.
G: OK, what about the tongue? Did you, did you, did that go in the souse?
B: Well, the tongue, tongue we would let dry that tongue, you know. And then it, someone would scrape little, scrape it all that tongue there, you know. And just put it in there and boil it done, you know. And man, it’s good eatin’.
G: Yeah.
B: See, I’d go to boil one now. And go to that ___ up at that mall and I buy a whole tongue about once’t a year now. Go up there; I want a whole tongue, you know, whole tongue. Bullard 31
Bring it home and we come on back here at home, cut a piece off, warm it up and eat that thing. But, see, you got to kind of skim that tongue, you know, little stuff on top right..
G: Yeah.
B: ..there, you got to kind a scrape if off, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: And that, inside that tongue is good.
G: Yeah. What other parts did you eat? On the hog.
B: Well, that’s about all there..
G: That’s about all there is.
B: [Laughter]
G: Everything but the squeal, huh?
B: Yes, sir. That’s everything. We done talked about the ham, and the middlin’..
G: Yeah.
B: ..the shoulder, and the ham, what’s the other?
G: Yeah. Well, did you castrate the pigs when they were little?
B: Yes, sir. Cut them little pigs when they, oh, month old.
G: Uh-huh.
B: Just catch them and work on them, you know. Cut them, then they..
G: Did you, how did you do that?
B: Well, you just catch a pig and you hold them and take a Bullard 32
knife and squeeze that thing on the side there, each, each side. Now there’s a little seed in there, you know, you..
G: Yeah.
B: ..cut ‘em on each side. And they always trained, don’t cut cross that seam. There’s a little seam between them two little seeds, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: And don’t cut cross that little seam. I cut a many pig, but I always cut ‘em cross and cut ‘em low, you know. And then, it’ll drain. But if you cut ‘em high and go to get ‘em then, and, ah, say that, you cut, but you got to cut ‘em where it be, where it be, low, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: Where it be, low..
G: Yeah. Bottom and the side.
B: Bottom and the side.
G: Yes.
B: Yes, sir.
G: Well, did you eat the testicles?
B: If they, if you keep them until they get pretty big, big hog while you have a thing about like that, you know. It’s a little thing in there you can whack out there and go right out there and you can skin it out there and throw the other part away and that’s good eatin’, too. [Laughter]
G: Mountain oysters, huh?
B: Yes, sir.Bullard 33
G: Is that what you called them?
B: Yes, sir.
G: What’d you call hog..
B: Mount, mountain oysters.
G: You called them mountain oysters.
B: Yes, sir. I’d, see, I’d go round some people now, different people, I’d go round there and they’d got four or five hogs, or two hogs to cut. And I’d tell them __________
‘Yeah, I’d cut your hogs if you give me them mountain oysters.’ Cut ‘em for nothing.
G: [Laughter]
B: And I’ll put them, I’ll put them in a sack and bring ‘em on home, if they pretty good size there.
G: Yeah.
B: And skin ‘em out there and put ‘em in the ice box there. Have them for my wife. She come in and find them and she gonna fry them right away.
G: Yeah. Well, did you use the, the, the bristles for anything?
B: The gristles?
G: Yeah, the hog bristles?
B: Well you see, you fry a little gristle in different parts of the meat, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: Well, lot, well you see, a whole lot of people like them little gristle things.Bullard 34
G: No, I’m talking about the bristle. You know, the hair, hog hairs.
B: Oh, you just throw it away.
G: Throw it away. You don’t use it for anything.
B: No, sir. No, sir. Throw it away. Always did. Just carry it to the ditch and throw it off in the ditch. And I tell you one thing about it, wherever it had laid around there and it had rot, it shore made good fertilizer.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, sir.
G: Well, when you were either castratin’ hogs or plantin’ crops and this kind of stuff, did you pay any attention to the moon and the signs of the moon?
B: Yeah, I did.
G: The almanac?
B: I didn’t for a long time until, ah, it used to be. See I got an old ’62 almanac I found the other day. Well, I used to look in that almanac. And, tell about what signs to plant on. But we, by and by, they got it on this calendar, back of this calendar. And we got that calendar up there.
G: Yeah.
B: And it tell you what day to plant. Good day to plant. And then after I found that sign, I done away with my almanac. Quit using the almanac, ‘cause I get my, my sign right there.
G: Yeah.Bullard 35
B: I guess you seen the almanac?
G: Yeah. Uh-huh.
B: Well, in ’62, I got almanac layin’ out on there on the.. out there, I finally used it. And, ah, I used to look on that thing there, when to plant. And so in 1962, I commenced to using this calendar, what give me these calendars.
G: Yeah.
B: And I done away with my almanac.
G: Yeah. Well, when did you learn, where did you learn about the signs of the moon? Which are the good signs and the bad signs?
B: Well, my, my, my, my granddaddy would, you know, he just taught, taught us that.
G: Yeah.
B: You turn on twin days and all like that.
G: On twin days.
B: Yes, sir.
G: What are twin days?
[Pause, sound of movement]
G: This is your ’62 almanac, huh?
B: Yes, sir. See where you see some twins there?
G: Yeah.
B: See, now my granddaddy say that a good time to plant, when the sign is on the twin days. Things would grow off better. And you see where, that’s the insect there, see. Bullard 36
You see, that was a bad day.
G: What, on the crab, there?
B: Yes.
G: So, on the, on Gemini days, May 21st to June 20, is a good day to plant, but you don’t plant on June 21 to July 22? So, Juneteenth is a pretty good cut-off day. You don’t plant after Juneteenth, is that right?
B: Well, on the..
G: Now, what did you plant on those days?
B: On Juneteenth?
G: Well, in that, in that period of the twins?
B: Well, I say, I say ____ planting. Plan my garden. Well, I’d always try to plant on, on, ah twin days and all like that. But, when, and then when ’62 come, I quit this-here almanac.
G: Yeah.
B: And I come out, look, look, look there on the back of that calendar there, you know, and whatever day I take a notion to plant, well I just look on the back of that thing. And ah, you see, and it tell you what day to plant. You see and this what I go by now. It, if-if-if-if, if it. See..
G: Yeah.
B: See, tell ‘bout what day to plant, you know.
G: Yeah. OK, like in, yeah. All right. Say you’re planting in, in January, you plant on the 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 8th, Bullard 37
11th, 12th, 13th, 19th, 20. And you don’t plant on the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th, 10th, 14th, and so on.
B: Yes.
G: Well, does that have to do with the light or dark of the moon?
B: Well, they already got, they already got..
G: They already got it figured out.
B: ..already got it figured out.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes. They already got it figured out. Now, when planted my peas and things, well I plant, plant, plant ‘em by the.. Anything I plant now, I just look on this calendar.
G: Yeah.
B: Just like the days that, days that, well. Oh, I got the calendar I’m lookin for. Yeah. Today’s the 12th. Well, you see if I was gonna plant on that day.. See, I can’t even see that ‘cause I ain’t have my glasses on.
G: Yeah.
B: And, see, and I look on there for, for what time to plant, you know.
G: Yeah. If it says, don’t plant on the 12th, then you didn’t plant today?
B: No, sir, you see, I’d hang it up.
G: Yeah. OK, now what happens if you plant on the wrong days? Say you plant, you got some kind of a, you want to Bullard 38
plant potatoes?
B: Insects. Insects. It may come up with insects’ll eat it up.
G: Yeah.
B: And somehow, it, it, it just won’t do good.
G: Yeah.
B: No, sir.
G: Well if you planing, is part of the idea if you plant underground, what sign of the moon do you plant under? You plant under light or dark moon?
B: Well, I, I just let all that, all that there moon ___, ‘cause, see I ain’t planting in the moon. No way, I’m planting in the ground.
G: Yeah. Yeah.
B: And, ah, I did plant some peas, some peas one time. And, ah, the moon, it just had changed. And them peas growed up, they was tall as me and never beared no peas.
G: Is that right?
B: Yes. They growed tall, shore enough made a big vine, but I didn’t get no peas.
G: Huh.
B: But, I had a terrible vine. And I wondered about that. I said, now, these here peas, tall as they growed, it ought not to bear none, it ought to have..peas and stuff on it, but it didn’t. And I planted some peas as bit later on, a different sign, and they just beared peas. You see all themBullard 39
peas out there, when I get ready to plant them peas out there. If there’s a calendar, it say don’t plant, I don’t plant ‘em. We select the time, the thing says plant ‘em.
G: Yeah.
B: You see them folks out there, they figure it out and they know just what is what.
G: Yeah.
B: And I do know this one thing and I told the people, I say, I tell you one thing about it, we ain’t plantin’ in the moon, no way. And, but, I do believe that you ought to, if somebody, somebody figure that thing out. And so, they figured it out for me.
G: Yeah.
B: And whatever day I want to plant, well, I look on that calendar.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, sir. Now, I used to plant corn. Now, this happen in 19... [Pause] I want to tell that story, Mr. Marcus, down in ____. And on the 10th day, on the 10th day of March, 1923, I go out, working on ________. I go, had three mules and a horse, to ride and plow. And I just start planting corn.
[End of Tape 2, Side 1]Bullard 40
[Tape 2, Side 2]
G: You know that you were saying that, ah, that, ah..
B: I was too late, too to plant corn, I said. I tell you what, I say, I still say..
[Phone rings] You get ‘em Bess.
[Sigh] Well, now, so long in June, here come a rain.
G: Now you told them you were going to make a crop anyway, huh.
B: I tole them, I said ‘I’ll be..You’ll get the best roasting ears for dinner and I’ll get a mess for supper.’ And so, sometime in June, it come a rain. And I come on down through the field, went up the field and met up, me and him met up about the same place. While we was talking about it, I’d.. “Chet, it’s too late for you to plant corn. I’m plowing corn and you’re going to plant”. So we got out there, he did walk on down through his field and he got come on through the fence, and come on over there where I was.
He said, “I believe I got roasting ears.” I done just like this, “I believe I got one.” I walk on down to the field, pulled an ear and showed it to him. And I had roasted ears with the leaves was ready to be that big for dinner. And he said to me, then, he said “The Devil! I hadn’t a mess of roasting ears yet.” He got over the fence, went over there and pulled an ear on his and brought it over across the fence there where I was and put ‘em together. He Bullard 41
say, “You know one thing. Y’all corn is fill out just about as full as mine. Mine planted fourteen day of February.” That’s when he planted his corn, the fourteen day of February. And I started planting that corn there the 10th day of February. I squatted down, I said “I tell you one thing about it. When we get ready to cut the tops off this corn here, I will ____________.” I say, “It’s going to be a longer ___ than yours.” I say, “Our corn is taller than yours.” He look..
Hello, hello.
Unknown speaker: Hello. You have a ____________.
B: Killed a little kitten?
Unknown: Killed that little kitten. Boy, everything’s brung me crazy.
B: Shoot. That thing say, “You, you get your best roast ears just like I can. You can eat yours for dinner and I eat mine for dinner.” I say if you wait until the ground is warm, then your stuff will come up and it will grow fast. And then if you work it, it’ll come up quick before the ground warm. And then you get out there and plow it and get out there and do what you’re going to do to it and work it out, it’ll grow fast. I say “Our corn a whole lot, about a foot taller than yours, yours.” I say, “Your corn stunted in the ground and ours is just come up and just kept growing.”
G: Yeah.
B: He say, “You know one thing, I think another year, pays Bullard 42
for me planting corn 14th of February, I’m gonna wait ‘til along some time in March. I’m gonna plant.” I say, “If it was left with me,” ‘cause I say I always told Mr. Ferris, “In big, to wait and plant corn when March come in. Just don’t, just have everything ready to go, so when the 10th of March come, he’s get up in the morning just as early as you can and get them mules to the field just as quick as you can. And say come up and try your best to plant all the corn you can plant ‘til you get it all planted that day. See, from the 10th on, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: And just be in a hurry for to get through planting corn. And you’ll make corn. And then when that corn come up and make a stand, be right back there with your ____ and plow it. And then, soon as that corn is big enough to chop, get right in there and thin that corn out, and go right back there and plow again. And work that land in a hurry, about every eight days. And you’ll make corn.
G: Mm-hm.
B: I say that was my method. He say, “You know one thing. I believe you talk your boss up in doing the right thing.” I say, “Well, that’s my talk.” I say, now when the 10th come, man I’m gonna be about get them mules and I’m gonna plant that corn. And I’m gonna keep them mules all thin. See, if you plant it, plow it, every eight days.
G: Yeah. Go over it every eight days, huh.Bullard 43
B: Every eight days.
G: What, with a cultivator or what?
B: Cultivators. See, we had riding cultivators.
G: What’d it do, just break up the..
B: Just re-plow it. We plow the land out about every eight days.
G: Way down in the bottom of the furrows?
B: Where you planted, where you planted that corn, right there. You got that land broke up in rows, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: Well, that cultivator come right down that row and plow it. Plow all them rows, you see. Got it build up like that, and we’ll use a plow about every eight days there.
G: And your corn’s planted in the top?
B: Yes, sir. On that build. Yes, sir. And you come in and plow it. See, you like it here, it here.
G: Yeah.
B: It’s builded up here, like them rows.
G: Yeah.
B: See. And about every eight days, you plowed that. And..
G: Thinning out, when did you start thinning your corn?
B: Well you start thinning the corn in March, about the last of March.
G: About the last of March, huh.
B: Yes, last of March, first of April. Bullard 44
G: And how, how close did you leave the plants?
B: Well, you just _______, you just ________, according to the land, you know. If the land was rich, well, you thin it out about three feet apart. ‘Bout three feet apart, if, if your, land is rich. Well if it ain’t, well you chop it out about four feet.
G: Yeah.
B: See, if your land is on coastal sand, well, the further, if you got it four foot, you can get more air, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: And it make heap better corn.
G: Yeah.
B: But if you leave it too thick, well, you just burn up, you know.
G: Yeah, I know. If you.. Is that for water purposes, primarily, so they wouldn’t use all the water?
B: Well, you thin it out, out so it can get air.
G: Yeah.
B: See. And then, where it can get air, you see. And, and see if you plant too close together there, stalk will draw up all the water out.
G: Yeah.
B: Water out, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: And then the vegetation get round there. Too much Bullard 45
where you plowed it.
G: Yeah.
B: To keep that vegetation down, so, so, so that corn can..
G: Gets all the water.
B: ..get all the water it can get.
G: So you, you set them out on dirt, rich stuff, about corn, about that far apart?
B: Well, if it’s rich soil, about three feet..
G: Yeah.
B: ..apart. And if it’s light land, you go about four feet.
G: About four feet.
B: Yes.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes.
G: OK, then you, ah, kept working it, the, kept cultivating about every eight days.
B: Every eight days until you plowed about four different times.
G: Yeah.
B: After you get it plowed about four different times, then you can get a little further apart on them days plowing.
G: Yeah. Well, how does the cultivator get over it without hurting the corn? How high does the corn get beforeBullard 46
you quit cultivating?
B: Well, when it, when it starts, ah, tasseling, you go there and plow it then for the last time.
G: When it starts to tassel.
B: When it starts tasseling, then just back out and get away from it. Go on to the house and let it alone.
G: Yeah.
B: When you go over it the last time, you just put that bit up high around there. Then you say, ‘I’m laying you by’. You don’t go in there no more. I’ve done all I’m supposed to do.
G: OK, then from the time it starts to tassel until the time roasting ears come along, how long does that take?
B: Well, you see, you used to have roasting ears, in ah, around the nineteenth of June. See. You usually have roasting ears about the nineteenth of June. Well, see, roasting ears won’t last but about two weeks. [Laughter] But now, a whole lot of people don’t know that.
G: Yeah.
B: They think roasting ears last six months. But you don’t have roasting ears over two weeks.
G: Yeah.
B: And the corn done got hard.
G: So, what did you do then? Go in and pull off just enough for you to eat?
B: Well, when you get roasting ears, you just go in and Bullard 47
pull yourself, just go out there and get you some roasting ears.
G: Just pull ‘em, pick a mess of them.
B: Yes, sir.
G: And how’d you fix them?
B: Well, we, if they’s soft, you just cut, take a knife and cut them, cut corn off. And if, and, ah, if it’s too hard, for, for roasting ears, you just have..
G: Just let them dry.
B: Just let them dry out. Yes, and stay there, you see. I’ve got some roasting ears in there what them fellows passed up there and got twelve ears of corn.
G: Yeah.
B: For roasting ears. And found about four ears for roasting ears. The rest there, done got too hard.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes.
G: OK, so when you went out and got the roasting ears, you, ah, did you roast them in the shuck?
B: No, sir. We bring ‘em to the house. You can roast them in the shuck if you want. But you bring them roasting ears to the house and just cut, cut it off the cob. Take a knife and cut down thataway. And it did have them little old.. [aside] what do you call them old thing, woman? That old ___, what do you call?
Unknown: What done?Bullard 48
B: You know that thing what you used to could mash it down over that roast ear. What you call them things?
Unknown: Well, I don’t know..[unintelligible]
B: I used to have one of them...things what you could rub it over there, you know, and cut them roast ears off, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: But you, you take, in other word, take a butcher knife and go down there. Don’t go down plumb to the cob that way. You cut about half of that grain off and then you go back and then you turn the ear around. You go on there like that, you see, until you get all the way around. But you cut that grain half in two, you see, first time. Then you go to the cob and cut down there.
G: Yeah.
B: And then that, you take your fryer there, you see.
G: Fry it in grease.
B: Yes, sir. Put a little grease in there. Fry it.
G: Mm-hm.
B: And it’s, it’s good eatin’. I’ve got a little roastin’ ears in there now.
G: Put a little salt and pepper and..
B: Yes, sir.
G: ..stuff like that on it.
B: Yes. Yes.
G: Say now. Well, did you ever, did you ever boil corn?Bullard 49
B: Yes, sir.
G: Two. Just take the ears and then stick them in there and boil them.
B: I ate four ears in the ____ the other day and boiled them. But never did even taste them. I finally throw __ to my dogs. Yes.
G: Just not the good way to fix ‘em, huh?
B: Well, they were a little too hard.
G: Oh.
B: And the, and then, ah, see, I’ve got false teeth now. I done got old, you know. And I can’t bite that corn off the cob like I did.
G: Yeah.
B: And I ain’t gonna mess around trying to bite that corn with these false teeth.
G: Well, was corn on the cob the most popular way when you were growing up to eat corn?
B: It, it was shore, shore good in that day. Yes, sir.
G: Put a little butter on it and a little..
B: No, sir. No, sir. Didn’t put no butter on there. Just, if I boiled it on the cob, I just get out there and go and bite it off that cob just like a hog would. And eat it.
G: [Laughter]
B: Yes, sir. But now when you fry that corn and you put that, put a little grease and stuff on it and if you want to put a little butter in it, it’s all right. But I didn’t Bullard 50
have any time to put butter in it. ‘Cause, man, I’d get to my plate and it’s done, you see, and I’d have to go to my mouth with it.
G: Yeah.
B: It take me a while ‘til I’m full, then I’m ready to go.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, sir.
G: OK, did your, did you can, did your momma can the corn? In jars?
B: My, my grandmaw used to can it, but corn was always hard to keep. Corn was a hard thing for my grandmaw and she used to can most everything. But she never did have much luck saving corn. She tried mighty every year.
Unknown: Well, it was hard, you see.
B: Corn was hard, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: Now, the best way to save corn is way we do it now. Now we got a way that deep freeze. Now that one right there can.. I wouldn’t be surprised, I might actually find some roasting ears in that box out yonder there where she it put up there last year. Just cut it and put it in them little bags and put it in that deep freeze.
G: That’s the way to do that.
B: See, now that woman, woman can keep that stuff..
Unknown: [Unintelligible]
B: Shore. Well, ___ I ain’t gonna do nothing.Bullard 51
G: Uh-huh. Well, OK, then, ah. After roasting ear season was over, you just left the corn..
B: Stay out there.
G: ..ripen out there on the..
B: And get ready to pull.
G: Yeah.
B: Get ready to pull. When the shuck begin to get, get so you could shell it off the cob. Well, you get ready to pull.
G: And you go out there with baskets or bags, or what?
B: Go out there with a wagon and drive it down through the field there. And, ah, if there’s three or four pulling, you straddle one row and then, this man coming down right behind there, he get that down row and one row what he ain’t straddling. And another man, he got two rows over here and two over there and throw it on the wagon. You get you a load, ___ clear one load and throw it in the barn.
G: Well, did you just peel ‘em off or did you have to cut ‘em?
B: No, sir, just.. When it get dry, you just go on there, it’ll break off.
G: Yeah.
B: It’ll break off. You just give it a little pull, jig that way, and you know, just jig off and throw it in the barn.
G: Yeah.
B: See. But now if you pull down this little part, little Bullard 52
part on there, if you break it a certain place, it’ll just break off easy. But if you get, bring that old long thing all off that stalk, there, you don’t want that on the wagon. You want to slip-shuck that stuff.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes.
G: OK, so you took it in there, in the shuck, and you put it in the crib.
B: Put it in the crib.
G: OK.
B: Yes.
G: And then what did you do with it? Just leave it there in the shuck, in the crib, because you needed it?
B: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Feed it out and in that day, you know, a crib was mighty fine get that meal, that was the way we get our bread.
G: So you go out there, you go out to the crib then to..
B: Shuck it. Shuck it and shell it and carry it to the mill.
G: OK. How do you shuck it? How do you shuck corn?
B: Well, you just pull that shuck down, down to that corn, break that shuck off. Throw it here, over there for that, to that mill, where you got to shell it, you see. I got an old corn sheller, out..
G: Yeah.
B: Yeah. Throw it on there, stick it down through there, Bullard 53
and that handle there and turn it, shell it right quick.
G: Uh-huh. OK, then, so you shelled the corn there. So what did you do with the corn shucks?
B: Feed ‘em to the cows.
G: Cow eat them corn shucks.
B: Yes, sir.
G: Did you use similar corn shucks at the house?
B: Well, in that day, you know, we use a whole lot of them shucks to make our mattress.
G: Uh-huh.
B: Our bed mattress.
G: How’d you do that? What’d you, how’d you make your mattress?
B: We’d just take them shucks, that big part there, you see, we’d take that heavy side and cut that heavy side out and leave that soft shucks in there, where laid our mattress out. See. And on, my grandmaw’d have a ____ and she’d shove it down and she’d cut them hard things off, you know, and leave that little soft in there. And make our mattress.
G: Did you change them every year?
B: ‘Bout every two years.
G: ‘Bout every two years.
B: Yes, sir. ‘Bout every two years.
G: How thick a mattress did you make with them?
B: Oh, it’d be as big as two feet thick.
G: Your mattress would?Bullard 54
B: Yes, sir.
G: Well, did you stuff it into a..
B: No, sir. We’d just put ‘em in there and we’d just pack ‘em down. Just, you just pack that mattress, you know. See, in that day, you’d go in there, and you’d go to a person’s house and you’d see a mattress on the bed. That shuck mattress..on the bed there. And it may be that high.
G: High as that bed there, huh.
B: And you’d take that, and you’d get in the bed, well, you feet, you’d sink down. See. It wouldn’t be as like we got now. You get in one of them shuck beds there, well, you get into a hole. You’ll sink down and it’s level. She make that bed up in the morning and it’s level, but in, you can tell where grandpaw slept and you can tell where grandmaw slept, in the bed there. The same bed, just one bed there, but in the morning, now she got to get up there and ___ them shucks and.
G: Fluff them around.
B: Fluff them around, you know, and to get the level back up. But they got the beds now, you see, you couldn’t tell where nobody sleep.
G: Yeah.
B: See, they got them mattress fixed in that way.
G: Yeah.
B: But in that day, my granddaddy, if my granddaddy was going to get in the bed on that side, well, and grandmaw Bullard 55
slept on the left, you can tell just where grandpaw slept and where grandmaw slept.
G: Mm-hm.
B: See. But now in the morning now she got a big job there with patting that bed, mattress back down and get that shucks to lie on there. She got to pull ‘em up and do like that, you know. And beat on it and all like that. It hard work to make a bed up.
G: Yeah.
B: In that day.
G: Well, how was the bed made? I, I don’t, were they cut, I don’t understand how they would stay up there if you had them that deep. Two feet deep.
B: Well..
G: Did you have side boards?
B: Put ‘em in, put ‘em inside of a mattress, see. In other words, you got to measure these on the beds they have now. You put them, put them shucks inside of a mattress.
G: Yeah.
B: And it’d be just one big mattress. And, and when she got through fixing that mattress there, well, she make it up, you know. She whup it down and level it up and she got to mess around with that mattress. ‘Course she got a big round, she put ‘em in just like a cotton sack.
G: Yeah.
B: You’ve seen cotton sacks, ain’t you?Bullard 56
G: Yeah.
B: Well, well, that mattress there, now she got made a big mattress, big enough to go on that bed. Well she’ll stuff it, put shucks in it, in that bed there, in that big mattress, you see. And then she’ll sew it up. Sew it up so the shucks can’t get out.
G: Yeah.
B: See. And my grandmaw raise a whole lot of geese. And finally she got to the place where, that, she made her, plucked enough geese and made her a feather bed. And made me a feather bed. And I had a feather mattress on my bed. Well, she had fixed a feather mattress for herself and then one for my bed, I had a little half-bed. And, man, I’d get in that feather bed there and I’d lay down and get in that hole and, man, then I’d go to sleep. And them feathers would just come up around me, you know. Get in, get in around that hole.
G: Yeah.
B: See. In the morning, now, she’d got to get up there and pick that mattress up and shake that mattress around you know, stir them feathers up, you see. Turn the mattress over.
G: Yeah.
B: And shake it up and beat it up and pat it and get that hole out of there, you know.
G: Yeah.Bullard 57
B: Them old folks worked. ‘Course she’d go in there to make her bed, that feather bed, she got a big old hole. A whole round outfit there where she’s..
G: Pulling to work on it.
B: On that mattress, which you see..
G: Yeah.
B: ..line them feathers up. But it taked, maybe ten minutes for her to make that bed up in the morning.
G: Yeah. Was it a pretty good mattresses?
B: It was a good mattress. Feathers wouldn’t come through the mattress.
G: Well, what about the cornshucks? Were they pretty good mattresses?
B: They were, they would just rattle, that’s all. Every time you turn over, you hear, you’d hear, you can tell when somebody is turning over in them shucks. Until they finally learned out how to get that hot water and, ah, and, kind of boil, work them shucks, you know, in that hot water and do something to them and wet ‘em and then they wouldn’t rattle. Then you got to bring them out, you know, and let them dry, you know. When you put that hot water on them, you know..
G: Yeah.
B: Until you put the hot water on them shucks, before you put them in there, then lay ‘em out and get dry. Well, then they won’t rattle.
G: They won’t rattle, huh?Bullard 58
B: No. They won’t rattle then. But if you just tear them shucks up from the crib and fix it and get that mattress stuffed full, every time you turn over, you can just, you can hear in the next room somebody turning over on them shucks, they rattle. But if you put hot water on ‘em, lay ‘em out in the sun, let ‘em get dry, then they won’t rattle.
G: Yeah. How did parents have more kids after they had a few, if you had rattling mattresses?
B: Well, some people just didn’t care. Well, see, my, my grandmaw and grandpaw, they didn’t want them rattling mattresses. My grandmaw didn’t want them rattling mattresses. So, she’d get out there with a pot of water, I’d ___, and boil that water, boil that pot, and just do them shucks. And that pot there, then lay ‘em out and get dry. ‘Cause she didn’t want them rattling mattresses.
G: Yeah. You know what, that’s understandable.
B: And man, and, our farm got to ____ this old crabgrass. See, there is an old grass they call crabgrass. And, this here coastal Bermuda grass what the people got now, if we had a had a chance back yonder, had that coastal Bermuda grass. Now Mr. ________ got some coastal Bermuda grass up there and they cut here out along the road. I went down there where they was cutting and I said ‘Lord have mercy’. Now if this coastal Bermuda grass, if my grandmaw and grandpaw was living, and we had a chance, we’d, I’d come down here and get me a cotton sack of the coastal Bermuda Bullard 59
grass and carried it back home. And my grandmaw would be, shoot, she’d be willing to give two dollars for that coastal Bermuda grass to made a mattress out of.
G: Yeah.
B: See, it’s soft.
G: Yeah.
B: And she wouldn’t had to work her _____ for it, near as hard. But see, this coastal Bermuda grass, we didn’t have no coastal Bermuda grass in that time or we’d go out there and get it. _______ grass, you’ve seen it.
G: Yeah.
B: Grass growing along, fine grass?
G: Yeah.
B: Well, now, you better not get any of this needle grass in there. ‘Cause you buy no needle grass, the little sticks would come on through that mattress, you know.
G: Uh-huh.
B: And, and if you use a cloth, grass mattress cloth that you can buy, that needle grass won’t come through.
G: Yeah.
B: See, and, now like them feather mattress, now them feathers, you go buy that ticking for that feather, to make them feather beds, well grandmaw would sew one them up, why you’d never would find no feathers come through that feather mattress.
G: Mm-hm.Bullard 60
B: She just put that mattress, put it in there, just solid, put it in there. And then she got to take off some or other, bone and hit them, you know, ____ this way and make them feathers just ____ all up, you know.
G: How thick was the, were the..
B: Feather mattresses?
G: ..feather mattresses?
B: Well, she had them about that thick.
G: About a foot thick.
B: Oh, something like six to eight inches thick, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: She just put all them feathers in there and she got to pound them out. And they didn’t have no way to level them up. You just got to pound them.
G: Yeah.
B: Just move ‘em around and pound them ‘til you get ‘em level.
G: Yeah.
B: They were pretty easy to sleeping with it.
G: Oh, they was good sleeping. They was good sleeping.
B: Was they any softer than corn shucks?
G: A whole lot, whole lot, whole lot, whole lot better than corn shucks. Sh..I had corn shucks on my bed and I got tired of them corn shucks. And I told grandmaw, that I tell you one thing, I’m gonna get some ____ grass to put in my mattress. And, you’ve see the moss, ain’t you? These moss Bullard 61
trees..
G: Yeah.
B: ..like down that ____?
G: Yeah.
B: Now, some people went, and, some of them older folks. They went and got some of that moss, right down that ____. And now ______, used to be moss down there. Well, a whole lot of people went and ___ moss.
G: Mm-hm.
B: And they’d pull it and bring it to the house, and lay it up, you know. Moss’ll die.
G: Yeah.
B: If you bring it home and lay it up. Pull it off the trees and bring it home and lay it up, it’ll die.
G: Yeah.
B: And then when it die, it laid out in the sun long enough so it die, and then you put it in your mattress, in, in about, it’ll last about two years. And you won’t have no trouble.
G: Mm-mm.
B: And they sleep pretty good. Now that moss might ____ sleep good. And you can make them up easy. And you can’t tell when a person turn over in them.
G: Yeah.
B: And you can just level off them moss mattress easy.
G: Mm-hm.Bullard 62
B: And it makes up a beautiful bed to sleep on, see. Now, I was down there in the boiler one day, and pulled, ah, first ____ and got some grass and put it in my mattress. And finally, a bit later on, I told, ah, grandmaw, and she had ___ and finally it, it finally just rot.
G: Yeah.
B: It just give away. And it just like powders, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: And so I told grandmaw one day, I said ‘Well, I done put Colorado, Colorado grass.’ She said ‘What you going to do now?’ ‘Well, I’m going down to the ______, I’m going to pull me some moss.’ I’m going to make me a moss mattress. She said ‘Oh.’ It’ll take, see, it’ll take about haversack full of that moss. I went down to that ___ there and pulled me some moss, come back. She made me a mattress out of it. And I slept on it couple of years.
And then, ah, I went out there to Mr. Perry’s farm and lived picking cotton. And I told them ____ when they got through picking cotton, I was going to ____ me some cotton. And was going to carry it to town and get granny to gin it for me and then, I’d have me a mattress.
G: Yeah.
B: Cotton mattress.
G: Why didn’t people make more cotton mattresses? They were raising cotton.
B: Well they, well you see when, a man like my grandpaw, Bullard 63
well you see, about two bale of cotton about all he made a year. He’d have to sell it. He’d have to sell.
G: Yeah.
B: To pay his own debts, you see.
G: Yeah. In other words, it was too expensive to make beds out of.
B: That’s what I’m talking about.
G: Yeah.
B: That’s what I’m talking about.
G: OK, so you used corn shucks then for, for your mattress.
B: Yes, sir.
G: All right, what else did you use corn shucks for in the house?
B: Just mattress and pillows.
G: Made pillows the same way.
B: Yes, sir.
G: Well now, you used them in, in, in food preparation, right? You used them to, to put sausage in. How did you put sausage in them? How did you stuff corn shucks with sausage?
B: Well, you, you just cook that shuck off and then you peel, peel layers off down to where you had enough shuck to cover that sausage, you see. And then you just fill that shuck full and ___ and then tie it up with a string. And you got a big ball of sausage. And then you open that shuck; itBullard 64
look like an ear of corn, you know, and you..
G: It’s just about the same size as an ear of corn.
B: It’s about the size of an ear of corn.
G: Hm-mm.
B: Yes, sir.
G: That’s an interesting..
B: Yes.
G: .. interesting way of doing it. Well, did that make a pretty good way of, of..
B: It kept the sausage in good shape.
G: Yes.
B: Keep them sausage in good shape.
G: And then you used some of the corn shucks to, to put your hams and stuff in, to..
B: Yes, sir.
G: ..in a box.
B: Yes, sir.
G: Nibblins’ and shoulders. Put them shucks down there on that ____ to keep the air off it.
G: Yeah.
B: See, air.. See, people didn’t know how they, they didn’t have no chance to get paper and stuff to wrap around that stuff to keep the air off it.
G: Yeah.
B: See. And so we had to use shucks for that.
G: Yeah. Well, what did you do with the cobs?Bullard 65
B: Throw ‘em away.
G: The hogs eat ‘em?
B: The cobs, you just throw ‘em, no, the hogs wouldn’t eat ‘em. You just throw the shuck, the cobs away. Now, something, now like, people be setting out potatoes. Lot of time they’d used them cobs, for the, soak ‘em in water, you know. And then go out there and wrap tape all around it and they gonna set potatoes out with the cobs. The cobs would be soaked in water, you know, then you wrap potato vine around it and set it in the ground there, well. See, that cob got a heap of water in it..
G: Yeah.
B: ..and it, it be keep them, make them potatoes ____.
G: Hm-mm.
B: Yes, sir.
G: That’s an interesting system.
B: Yes, sir. You take some, put a cob in water, let it stay a day or two and then wrap a potato vine around it, and then just dig a hole and you set it out. And put it the dirt on it, set it out in the evening. And then next morning you go back there and that potato is gone ____. ‘Cause that cob got enough water there to take care of that vine, you see.
G: Huh.
B: See. See.
G: That’s interesting.
B: Yes, sir. Man, we used to, we go out there and get cobs Bullard 66
and just put ‘em in a barrel and put water on ‘em. And get ready to set out potatoes, just wrap a potato vine around them, dig a hole, and stick it down in there. And go head home. People what did that, they wouldn’t have to wait on no rain. They gonna set their potatoes out.
G: Yeah.
B: Now this time of year, what people done set their potatoes out and they want to set some vines out. Well, you just get a vine, cut a vine about that long, wrap it around that cob, go out there and dig a hole. Dig a hole about that deep and put that cob and that vine down there and just leave a little, little space, about like that, sticking out. It’s gonna live.
G: Yeah.
B: And gonna grow. ‘Cause that cob got enough water there to support until it take root.
G: Yeah.
B: And then if it comes a rain, well, when it rains, the cob will take some more water.
G: Soak it up. Hold it.
B: Hold it, you see.
G: It will let it out enough.. yeah.
B: Enough to support that potato vine.
G: Yeah. Well again now, what, ah, so you put the cobs where you use them this way.
B: Yes, sir. Bullard 67
G: Kids ever use them to play with?
B: Oh, we used cobs like a dog had distemper. Had distemper, what you go burning some cobs, stick a hole through there, you know. And put it around a dog’s neck what had distemper, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: That’s way we kept our dogs had distemper. Burn them cobs and put ‘em around his neck.
G: Yeah. Did you use ‘em, can you think of any other ways you used those?
B: Cobs?
G: Yeah.
B: No, sir, that’s about all, all ways we used them cobs. ‘Course you’d get..cobs just good fertilizer.
G: Yeah.
B: ‘Cause if you plant something over there, they just hold moisture.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, sir.
G: OK, did you, ah, what did you do with the rest of the corn stalk?
B: The corn stalk, well, we just leave ‘em in the field. The cows go over there and pull off, eat all they want to eat off. Take a stalk cutter and cut the stalks up, you see. And leave them on the ground there and plow them under.Bullard 68
G: Yeah. Never did burn ‘em off, huh?
B: Not too much.
G: Yeah. Farmers, they just cut ‘em off and plowed ‘em under..
B: Plowed ‘em under.
G: ..to rot.
B: Yes.
G: Yeah. Well, you got a lot of use out of corn, then didn’t you?
B: Oh, yes, sir. Yes, sir. You get a whole lot of use out of corn. You used the cobs for different things. And the corn, it was so valuable. For bread, feeding the hogs, feeding the chickens and dogs and cats, and everything.
G: Yeah. You shell, you shell your corn, then when you get ready to go have cornmeal made.
B: Yes, sir. Shell that, shell that corn. Go to the mill. And you’d make cooked corn. Put some ash in, see, everybody had wood stoves, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: And, ah, when you cleaned the stove out, clean the house, you know. Well, then you put you some ashes in a, in a sack, you know, tall sack. Oh, maybe you put a water bucket of ashes, you know. That bucket full there of ashes and put it ‘em a sack, and ah, put ‘em in a pot and then put that shelled corn in the pot. Just go ahead and shell some corn and put that water bucket of corn in that pot there Bullard 69
with a water bucket of ashes in a sack, you see. And you put a fire around that pot, boil it, with them ashes, and it make that corn ______, you see. And then when that corn, well, you the place where you pick it out, you know, and you wash it in that, husk will come off it, you know. Well then you go out there and wash that corn and that husk will come off you, you know. And that corn soft, you know. And then you got lot, lot, lot, hominy, you see. You can make lot of hominy.
G: Lot of hominy, huh.
B: Yes, sir. In place of, __________
G: Yeah.
B: Yes.
G: Do you eat a lot of hominy?
B: Oh, Lord, yes, sir. Yes, sir, eat a lot of hominy. Man, that’s our, that’s our favorite _____. I be so bad, they good _____ corn about every two weeks. And, man I’d be so bad and they go cook my corn, shucks, they gonna wash that corn up, I’m gonna _______. They just couldn’t, they didn’t know how to save it. Didn’t have no place to put it. You just gotta eat it, eat it up right away, you know. ‘Course..
G: Yeah.
B: ..they didn’t have no, no way to cook it, to fix it.
G: Season it with a little salt and pepper, huh?
B: Salt and pepper. And mash it up, you know, and fry it.Bullard 70
Mash it together, you know, and fry it, you know. There’s salt corn, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: ___________ two-three times a year, now. I like to roast me a hominy.
G: Yeah. Well, do they make grits out of corn?
B: Yes, they make grits.
G: How do you make grits?
B: Well, ah. They had a little, old outfit you could..
Unknown voice: My parents had a little what they call a corn mill. Hand corn mill?
G: Yeah.
B: And we shelled that corn and put it in the little mill, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: And grind it up and make grits out of it. That what we used to do.
G: While it’s coarse, just kind of grind it real coarse?
B: Yes, that’s what I..
Unknown: Well, it wouldn’t be too coarse, and you know, there’s a mill what you can tighten up where it can grind fine ____
G: Yes.
Unknown: And then you could open it up and let it grind coarse _____.
G: Uh-huh.Bullard 71
Unknown: And so that’s the way my folks hadd. That’s what we used to do.
G: Yeah. And then, what did you do? Soak it?
Unknown: Yeah, we soaked it.
G: After you grind it up, then soak it for a long time?
Unknown: Oh, no. When we grind it up, well then go and cook and et it up.
G: Oh.
Unknown: Put some little salt and pepper in it and butter in it, and man, it was good, too.
G: Yeah.
B: Shucks. Just like, ah, we’d rather..
Unknown: Used to have ‘em.. _______________________
G: I do..
Unknown: They made ‘em on the side of the house there.
G: Shucks..
Unknown: And ______ you see these coffee mills?
G: Yeah.
Unknown: Well that’s just the way those little old corn mills was.
G: We..
Unknown: We’d get out there and make them grits.
G: We, we’d run, run, run, run out of meal. Wouldn’t have no, no, no, ah meal.
Unknown: Yeah, we done the same thing.
G: And we had a corn, a little old corn mill there. And Bullard 72
we’d just go on to the barn out there and get ten-twelve ears of corn and come on back and shell it. And grind us some meal. And, ah, we never was out of meal, out of bread. See, we was _____, go get ten-twelve ears of corn and grind it up.
Unknown: Mm-mm-hm.
B: And had a whole meal right away. And you go sift it and that bran’d come out it, you know. I went to the crib many time, get me twelve ears of corn.
Unknown: Yeah, we grind corn _________
B: And come, come on back and, ah, get, I just threw it down and make it fine and make us a meal. First thing, grandmaw is out there cooking bread. Sifting it, you know, and _______ cooked bread.
G: OK now, most of the time, though you would take corn to a mill and have them grind it.
B: Yes, sir. But see, sometime, we’d just run out.
G: Yeah.
B: Well, see, when we run out, we’d get our little mill what they had at the house there and just grind up some meal, some meal to make us some bread for a day or two.
G: Yeah.
B: ‘Cause there was just certain days you sent to the mill, you see.
G: OK, now. When you, what-all did you make with the corn meal that you brought back? Just bread?Bullard 73
B: Just bread. Yes. Just bread.
G: So, did you make corn pone?
B: Some time we’d make corn pone and some time we’d make plain bread. Make it up and put it in the stove.
G: Cornbread, huh.
B: Cornbread. Yes, sir.
Unknown: Sometimes we’d make cornbread dumplings, you seen that?
G: No, I never did, didn’t know you made dumplings. Hm-mm, that sounds interesting. Well, how did you, how did you make pones with the same kind of mixture you made cornbread, but just cook them different?
Unknown: Yeah. You can make ah, you can make pones with the same kind of bread ____.
G: Uh-huh. Well, did you mix it up the same way?
Unknown: Yep. Mm-hm. And you could cook, ah, oh, you could take greens. You could, you know, collard greens, make them the same time. They sure was good.
G: Yeah.
Unknown: ____ the year, well, ah, momma would take, make up some cornbread, you know?
G: Uh-huh.
Unknown: And then with a little half a spoon and kind of roll it together and pour it and, ah put it in there with greens. And they shore was good. That was called cornbread dumplings.Bullard 74
G: Oh, yes!
B: Shucks, I eat that once’t a year now.
G: Uh-huh.
B: Time greens first come up in the spring..
G: Yeah.
B: I eat them for dinner. I tell my wife, I say, ‘make some dumplings, some cornbread dumplings.’ And she’ll make up some kind of pones about that big around, you know, and have them dropped in them greens. And I get me a spoon and then I don’t have to, you don’t have to get no.. I tell her ‘You don’t have to cook no bread because I got my bread already boiled on the stove.’
G: Yeah.
B: So you just put some of them there like this. Get some of that there and you.. I eat, oh, about twice a year I eat that now.
G: Yeah. OK, so you’d mix up, how do, what-all did you put in the cornbread mix or in the, ah, mixture?
B: Well, you them about that, that mixture.
Unknown: What’s that?
B: Made them cornbread out of.
Unknown: Them cornbread dumplings?
B: Uh-huh.
G: What-all did you, what-all did you mix in when you were making cornbread?
Unknown: __________ put some salt in there and, and, and Bullard 75
put a little hot water in there, where it stick together.
G: Yeah.
Unknown: And just kind of roll it in my hand and put ‘em in the gravy.
G: And that’s the way you made dumplings?
Unknown: That’s the way she made dumplings.
G: How did you make, ah, corn pone?
Unknown: Oh, well. You take, ah, corn pone, well you make it up, you put _____, a little flour in there and baking powder and throw in eggs.
G: Uh-huh.
Unknown: And, ‘course she had a little old, what you call a cornbread cooker, ah, you know.
G: Yeah.
Unknown: And she just _____, pour it in there. And it come out just pone.
G: Yeah.
Unknown: Mm-hm.
G: Well did, is that the same way you mix cornbread?
Unknown: Mm-hm.
G: Yeah, the same way.
Unknown: Yep.
[Unintelligible]
G: Well, did you ever take some of that and drop it in hot grease?
Unknown: No, sir, didn’t. Bullard 76
G: Never did do it that way?
Unknown: No.
G: OK, now so you use corn then to use bread, your pones, and the dumplings. What else did you use it for? ‘Course you used it roasting ears..
B: [Chuckles]
G: .. you fried it..
B: Yes, sir.
G: What else did you use corn for? Did you make, you ever use, have cornstarch?
B: Well, I see grandmaw make cornstarch, starch, but now I don’t know did, she could have gone to the store and bought it. Now what she done, I don’t know.
Unknown: What’s that?
B: Starch.
G: Cornstarch.
B: See, I know she starch her clothes..
Unknown: I don’t remember about that cornstarch. I know she used to make _______.
G: Yeah.
B: But, but, ah. Oh, I don’t know too much about that starch.
G: Yeah.
B: But I see her in there doing something, but, I know she didn’t buy it.
G: Yeah. She made it.Bullard 77
B: She made it, but now how she made it, I don’t know.
G: Yeah.
B: That just the way it is.
G: Yeah.
B: How she made it, I don’t know.
G: Well..
B: But it was mighty little, little things what, what, what we bought.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes. Mighty little things we bought. And we et three times a day and had plenty to eat. Dogs was fat, cats was fat. And everything, but there wasn’t too much buying around there.
G: Yeah. Well, how would you evaluate corn in the home? Its importance.
B: Awful important. Yes. Corn was awful important.
G: Was there anything else, any other kind of food staple that was as important as corn?
B: Well, I tell you one thing about it, that corn was awful valuable. Awful valuable. Peas was good in, in their place, but they just fill one spot. But corn just, it just so, so many different things can use it. Everything around that can use it. It’s just not like peas..
End of Tape 2, Side 2Bullard 78
Bullard 79
THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: Sharecropping
INTERVIEW WITH: Eugene Bullard
DATE: July 12, 1979
PLACE: Calvert, Texas
INTERVIEWER: Joe S. Graham
TAPE III, SIDE 1
G: We left off this morning talking about corn. OK. Now, there was one question that I had in my mind that I forgot to ask. And that was, what happened to the black folks when they didn’t make the crop? The corn. What did they do for, for _____ for food?
B: Well, when they got to the place where they quit raising corn, they just all, they didn’t hardly know what to do. They just like a bunch of yard geese, they just circlin’ ‘round wondering what they gonna do. Worried. And you see, back when Mr. Wesley’s daddy, Mr. Lilly, he come out there one day, he say, “Eugene,” he say, “you gonna quit working sharecrops”. He say, “My, my”.. that’s Mr. Wesley’s daddy, he say “we gonna, we gonna quit having sharecrops.” He say, “I’m gonna raise your salary and let you help feed the cows.”
“Mr. Wesley, now you raise my salary and then all these Bullard 2
other hands here that been here all the years and have been working crops and all like that, the first thing they do.. You, you just can’t turn them loose.” That’s what I told him. “You can’t just turn them loose, just like a bunch of cows.”
He said “____.”
“You got to fix a little place there, for them to stay there. ‘Cause they don’t know where to go. They don’t know where to go. They lost. They don’t know how to look after theyself. Y’all been looking out for them so long, until they don’t know how to look out for theirselves.”
I said, “Set up some kind of little plan that you can go work in, give them a little three month paycheck for a year or two. And let ‘em work thataway. And they’ll kind of get used to theirself. Then if they finally just walk on off, off and leave you, and it’s ________, then your farm will still be ______.”
And it, his farm is still _______. So you ________. “So what you do”, I said, “give them a little paycheck, about half what you give ‘em when, ah, you working the crops. Give them ‘bout a, ‘bout half a paycheck. That’s in order to help them three months, January, February, March.” So he did that. And _____. And next year, then, ___ got him to go up a little bit. And I had tell him to begin to talk to about it. They hadn’t gone, and they just still out there on the farm, wandering around trying to decide what to do. See, and Bullard 3
going shopping, pick, around for different folks, you know, and we just raise some money.
And I put did money in the bank, I did. Yeah. See, I had a wife was down. She was down and I just ___ taking care of her and ____ the farm. The others look at me, say “he, he’s getting by”. But they didn’t have the money as I had. See, well, they finally got used to it. When they got used to it, they all left.
I said well, “Goodbye”. All of y’all can go on away from the farm, now I’ll still stay on the farm. I say, “I got to stay here. I don’t know to where, where to go. Because, I’m making a living. I’m putting money in the bank and y’all don’t know it.” [Chuckles] Yes, sir, what I told them, “I’m putting money in the bank and y’all don’t know it. Y’alls going to town. Where you gonna work? You got to go back to the farm ____. And so, I just want to stay out here on the farm. I’m making me a good, independent living.” And that’s what I did.
See. Well, they all left. But I still stayed out there. See, out there, ‘bout three years out there by myself, batched out there, and stayed out there right in that house. You’ve seen that house where I used to stay.
G: Yeah.
B: Stayed out there about three year. Finally, I got in touch with this woman here now and we’ve been married since ’63. Bullard 4
G: Hm-mm.
B: [Sigh]
G: Hmmm.
B: Where was, ah, ______ , they didn’t know what to do. They just make money, just, go and take it all and just throw it all away for ____. They don’t know no better.
G: Hm-mm.
B: So, I used to set down and tell them, I said, “Listen, well, you ____ and your barn now full of corn, then you go to town and tell the man to come out here and you sell him twenty bushels of corn.” I say, “You think about it in the winter time. You have a little settlement from your crop and that now, you get that corn out of the barn there. Well, I’ll sell you twenty bushels. Corn, brought a little bit more than _________, you see. I say, “And that just some money you picked up.” See.
I tried to get them interested in, in, in trying to get a dollar ______, but they didn’t want that. That was too slow ____. But I didn’t give up. I still went _____. But when they begin to sell that corn, out there, well, you know one thing, you stayed here on this farm and raising this corn, that was a big help. Well I say, “I know it. I know it.” When you sell it, sometimes them people out there will go and sell fifty dollars worth of corn, in December, and some _______, you see. Well, that was a whole lot of money back then. When _________ all gone, they _____ and get someBullard 5
corn and sell it. You get as much as fifty dollars. They were independent.
G: Do they still grow their, their gardens and stuff out there?
B: Few of them did.
G: Yeah. What, um, what kind of things did, ah, did the sharecroppers that were working out there, what kind of, ah, efforts did they make toward growing gardens? Did most of them raise gardens?
B: About ah, I think about a fourth of them raised gardens. The rest of them would have nothing, just go out and beg.
G: How come they didn’t raise gardens?
B: Just too lazy. Just absolutely just too lazy. I used to get out there and talk to them and beg them to raise a garden. And, ah, they wouldn’t do it. And one little thing that what happened to me, out there on the farm, Mr. _____.
I tell, you got this, what I tell you about Mr. Anderson give my brother-in-law some potato slips? And, ah, he told me, say “I give you five hundred potato slips for to set out there on little old Bermuda grass place out there.”
And, and see, Mr. Anderson left, he said “brother,” that was my brother-in-law, he said “brother, you know these potato slips? Take ‘em and set ‘em out on there on that little spot out there in my field.” And, ah, I said “All right.” And I went ahead and set them out. Bullard 6
Now I set ‘em out and when I got, when I had them potatoes raised, I had so much ___________________. There were so many potatoes. And there were four hundred and eighty-five slips.
See, he bought the slips for the hands. And he come _______ and brought them out there and said “Here’s a, now all y’all want some potato slips, I’ll let you have them.” He didn’t _____, ‘cause I had my slips. See, I had a ___, ________ my potatoes out.
G: Yeah.
B: I had my slips already. I done set me a big patch out.
But, the hands that didn’t have them, he bring them a little help. But he had a, just about, just a few of them would get them, was interested in a potato patch. The rest of them didn’t want them.
________big old truck patch. And I go ‘round to his house and he’d give me some greens, he’d give me some peas. And that’d give me something to set out _________ somebody.
G: Yeah.
B: And you know, at first he’d give you some one time, but he didn’t want to continue to give you some three times. But he knew _____. He may not say nothing, but he ____________. I wish you’d do so and so.
G: Yeah. It looks like we’re going to get some interference from that train for a little bit. Well, what did, ah, Mr. Anderson do otherwise, to encourage them to Bullard 7
have a farm? Did he provide them all the seeds they wanted of various kinds?
B: He ________
G: For the garden.
B: He’s go buy the seed. Buy the seed and let ‘em, and, let ‘em have them. But he’d, you know, he’d charge ‘em for them.
G: Yeah.
B: That’s on their account, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: Like if you had twenty hand there, well, if one needed five dollar worth of seeds, well, he’d just go get ‘em, any seed. Carry them in the car to them. He was just, he was just that, on his farm. Have the stuff and carry it around. Some of them would get ‘em, some of them wouldn’t. Some of them would get ‘em and never even plow.
G: Hm-mm.
B: Some take seed ______.
G: What about the, ah, what about cows, did most of them have cows, or some of them?
B: No, sir. No, sir. No, sir. Out there on the farm, maybe, if you, if there was twenty hands out there, well maybe five folks had cows. The rest of them ain’t got no cows. No food, no cows.
G: Why? Just too lazy, or, again? Or just didn’t have the money to buy a cow, or what?Bullard 8
B: Yes, sir. _________ I don’t know the man out there, it paid him a thousand dollars. Carried a thousand dollars out of his crock and he come to my house here the other day and got a mule. Thousand dollars..
G: Yeah.
B: He’d go buy a car, but he wouldn’t buy, buy, he wouldn’t buy a cow. _____ no money, no cow.
G: Yeah.
B: See, and he _____ a little pasture for a cow to run in. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t have just a few of them. It wasn’t many had of them a cow, cows out there on the farm. I had as high as seven, no nine! I had as high as nine and every one you could milk. _____________ get out there and bred ‘em and milk ‘em.
G: Hm-mm.
B: That’s a different hand for milking. Yes. ‘Course I could see _______ a cow.
G: Yeah.
B: But they couldn’t.
G: Yeah.
B: Well, it wasn’t _________, __________ had them one in Devine.
G: Yeah. Who was responsible for keeping up the little houses that the sharecroppers lived in?
B: The man what owned the land. They kept, they kept the houses up. If a window, if somebody’s children come by Bullard 9
there and knocked a window pane out, he’d let it stay out until he got ready. When he got ready, he’d go there and put a new window back in there. He’d tell them, he’d say “Now listen, don’t you-all let them children knock them window panes and things out.” That’s why a long time ago they put, had wooden windows because the children would just go out there and knock them out, but down through the years, you see, well, there’s a new way we get.
G: Yeah.
B: We put windows in there. Had to put little curtains up. They even tell us, say “Now listen, we put these windows, windows, windows in there, well you-all put shades up.” He tell them that, “Put shades up there. Make your house look good.” Some few of them did.
G: Yeah.
B: Some few of the just do nothing.
G: Well, did they ever paint the houses?
B: Yes, sir. ‘Bout every five years, Mr. Allen would paint his houses.
G: Well, white?
B: He painted his’n white.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes. And border round with a different color, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: And then, finally when all the hands left the farm there, the last painting, well they painted them yellow. Bullard 10
G: Uh-huh.
B: Yes. Then border round, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, but his own original paint was white. White houses with different color border paint, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: I thought, I thought out there on different farms, there was different paint, you see. And they all was painted pretty. It looked like a town when I first come to this country in 1927.
G: Yeah.
B: People ________ then.
G: Lot of folks, huh?
B: Oh, man, yes! Out there on Saturday, you couldn’t get on them streets there were so many folks.
G: Hm-mm.
B: It wasn’t because some of the people didn’t try to help me. They helped me. They taught me a lesson and I lived by the lesson. And I told, ah, my brother, that brother moved over there. He said, “Well, I can stay here one year, but I got to go back to _________ where they got tractors and things to plow.” I said, “Well, I can stay here. You don’t work, see.” I say, “You supposed to stay in the field until the bell rings, and the folks in the house, long time before the bell rings.” And it didn’t make no difference about the boss coming out raising sand. Next day or two, gonna do theBullard 11
same thing.
G: Well, did you every have any kind of contest to see who had the neatest house? Who kept the nicest house?
B: Well, he didn’t, say, have a contest, but he’d do this. The one what had the prettiest house, you’d, and decorated and flowers and things around there, he’d ring the, good watermelon patch and good garden, you’d see him drive the car up and stop around there and tell ‘em to give me some of these flowers. Or give me a, give me a, give me a watermelon. No, bring me a watermelon to your house, see.
But now, the flowers, he’d, he’d come to my house, he’d tell my wife ‘Ah, Eugene, everybody come on in, cut me some of these here flowers’. Well, she’d go out there and cut him some flowers. Well, when he gonna carry them flowers on home. See.
G: Yeah.
B: Tell his wife about ‘em. And the first thing, you know, his wife gonna be out, out there and get flowers. Well, Mr. _______ used to come here and up the bottom up there and his mama and all of them and just cut so many flowers. And they’d, they’d have a party and come out here and get flowers. See. That’s the way, way, way they recognize a fellow what’d doing something though, you know and keeping neat his house around there. They’d have the folks out there. Now a fellow by the name Rob Douglas, he raised a big water, he raised a big water, watermelon. Had aBullard 12
watermelon one time about that long. See, he said, “Mr. Allison, I got a big water, big watermelon, some watermelon there I want to give you some of.” So, he told one of his men would drive tractor, I mean truck, say, “you go to Rob Douglas there and get a watermelon and bring it to the house.” So he went on and got it and carried the watermelon. And, ah, he wasn’t thinking about the man don’t get, didn’t want no money. He was just carrying him the watermelon, carried the watermelon on home. And when the truck driver come on back, he sent him some money there.
He said, “I didn’t want no money! I carried, I give the watermelon to Mr. Allison.”
G: Hm-mm.
B: He said “No, you can’t raise them watermelon and give them to me. He gave me that money.”
Well, when he seen him, he told him, he say “Well, I, I sure thank you for that money all right, now.” He say, “But now, I wish you’d take this money back. ‘Cause I raised that watermelon on your land and used your mules and everything.” Say, “All I bought, is bought the seed. And plant the watermelon.” And say, “Now, I think you’re entitled to that watermelon.”
“No, ___, you have it.” Well, say, “Well, if you don’t want to, I don’t, I want you to have it because if you raise watermelon, then you tell the other hands about it. Maybe they’ll go to raise some watermelon.”Bullard 13
G: Hoo.
B: But you, some would want to do it and some wouldn’t.
G: Yeah. Well, what kind of, ah, sharecropping situation out there.. Ah, did the folks eat as well and live as well as they did when you were growing up?
B: They, they et better. They ate better. Because the land around there ________. The land would furnish them so much more money. And they’d just go to town and buy what they want to buy, you see. ‘Cause they had the money. He’d go and give them a check for about eight months in the year. Well, he had money to go buy stuff with.
G: Yeah.
B: See. If he just take care of that money, he put that money in the bank, see. The first, two, three years I stayed here, well I’d go on and draw a little pension and, say, and commence putting money in the bank. [Chuckles]
But, yes sir, putting money in the bank, off my pension. And then I wasn’t used to picking cotton and it paid me for picking cotton. I wasn’t used to that.
G: Yeah.
B: And see, I just go out there, when I go picking cotton, I picked cotton like this week, well, next week, I’m putting money in the bank. See. But the rest of them, they just throw it, biggest ___ would just throw it away.
G: Yeah. What kind of Juneteenth celebrations did you have out on the plantation there?Bullard 14
B: On all these big plantations, nineteenth of June, the, the man would go to the barn, go out there say, “Listen, now y’all get..” See, Mr. ____ had two big ____, ____ way down in _____ and up there..
G: Yeah.
B: .._____ there and then down there where I lived. He’d go to work and he’d put, down there where I used to live and up there along the road, he’d put them together.
“Y’all get four hogs out of that lot. Big hogs, fat, and barbeque ‘em.”
And I was one that go and help him barbeque them hogs. And the last barbeque I went to, they had me working on the, on a bridge. And them folks was acting like they wasn’t, ah, getting enough ___ ____. And one man used these words, telling Mr. Anderson “My ____.” And I corrected him, while he was talking.
It just made me so mad, ‘til I just, I said, “Now Mr. Anderson, Mr. Sam, now you know good and well that they past by me and I cut off a bunch of meat and put it in your pan there, ‘cause your wife is blind. And I cut off some ham and rib and put it in that pan there for you to carry home to your wife. Now I don’t know about those women didn’t give your wife no cake and this thing and that, but I know I give you plenty of meat ‘cause I was the man that was cutting that meat up.”
He told, “Well, they done pretty good, but they didn’t Bullard 15
give my wife, she was blind, she couldn’t see..”
And I was the man that cutting the meat up.
G: Hm-mm.
B: And I just give it to him, I say “I know you got meat ‘cause I cut it. And I cut you good meat. I give you ribs and ham off of that hog. But now I don’t know about you getting this cake. See, ‘cause I wasn’t over there. I was over here with this meat.” _____
And I told, I told, ah, a white fella what was working on the bridge, I said “Next time they have a _____, I gonna help them cook that meat, but I ain’t gonna even be up there when they’re dividing it around. Them folks would run their Sunday soul to torment.” I say, “The man would give them the meat and then they’ll, somebody’d be tattling say, we, ‘so-and-so got all the meat and the other one didn’t do that’ and all like that.” See, that’s all they know, just tattling on one another. Yes, sir. The biggest ____.
G: Yeah. Well, on, on, ah, on Juneteenth then, they had a big celebration there.
B: Well, on, on, on Juneteenth, well, like the people was out on the _____, everybody wasn’t on these big plantations, see, they was, ah, different from the Brazos bottom folks.
G: Yeah.
B: You see, them folks out on _____, what had their own stuff, they was different.
G: Yeah.Bullard 16
B: They had a different mind. They had their dinners and all like that together. And, ah, but the Brazos bottom folk, they all stayed together. See.
G: Well, did the Brazos bottom folk celebrate Juneteenth, ah, pretty, pretty well?
B: Well, you see, see they’d go to the plantation dinner and get all like that, then that, after the dinner’s over with, they’d go to these other dinners, you see.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Then they’d go to these other dinners.
G: Well, besides eating, what else did they do? Did they have dances?
B: No, sir. Not on the plantation, they didn’t. No, sir. Not on the plantation, they didn’t. They just have a dinner and then when they get through eating dinner, they just get all their meat and go to talking about this one got more than the other. [Laughs]
G: [Laughs]
B: Like that.
G: Started to gossiping, huh?
B: Start to gossip.
G: Well, what about the, did they have dances?
B: They had dances in, in, in town, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: Yes, but not out on the farm.Bullard 17
G: Well, did the plantation people come in to go to the dances?
B: Yes, sir, they’d go. Yes, sir. Yes, sir, they’d go right out just as soon as dinner, they’d quit and they’d go on to Rockville and _____ and round, like that, you know. Where they have them big dinners, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: ____ and stuff like that.
[Pause]
G: OK, let’s take, ah, a typical day when you are plowing as a sharecropper. OK, you’re out on that Anderson plantation and you’re a Black sharecropper. What would your day be like? What would you do from the time you got up, what time would you get up, all the way through a day’s work?
B: Well, they rung the bell about sun up and some of them people would, ah, they come on to the lot at least twenty minutes after the bell rang. They’d all be to the lot and get their mules for plowing, you know. Then they’d go back home and some of them would stay a hour at home, with their mules, just stand there at the gate. See, Mr. Allen wouldn’t come out until about 8:30. Well, they stay, they stay at their house until after 8 o’clock.
And, ah, that mule just stand up there. That mule isn’t going nowhere, just drive up there and get on him. He may feed up there, but he ain’t going back to the lot. He Bullard 18
ain’t going nowhere else. He just there until about 8, knowing Mr. Allen ain’t coming out until about 8:30.
And about time they to the field and hitch up, then Mr. Allen would come out. Well, he’d last, say an hour, I know good and well. I seen him there hitching up. He wouldn’t sit out all the time. Just let ‘em alone. Well, if they quit and started back to the house at 10 o’clock and he come back through the field and they started back to the house, taking off and the bell ain’t rang, he’d.. Some days he’d raise sand with ‘em. Make ‘em hitch up. And tell ‘em let their mules stay in that field until the bell rang.
But, my method of work, I went when they rang the bell, I done ‘et my breakfast. __________ I done et my breakfast. I get my mules and go on back by my house and go on to the fields. I wouldn’t stop. My water was already on the, the jug was already on my mules. And I’d go on to the field and hitch up and go to plowing. When the bell, rang, I take out and go back to the house.
That’s where I told you about, ah, that man was working forty-two and a half acres. And I was working forty acres, forty-two acres; he worked a half acre more than me. And he had two ____ and I stayed in the big house. I said if the man say something to me about it. I said, well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll move. That’s what I’ll do. There won’t be an argument, I won’t even be mad at him. I’ll just move. Bullard 19
Of course, every time they have some work to do, I’m out here. And I’m always on that payroll. What all they got to do, digging post-holes. _____, breaking through a rock, I’m out there taking a pick. I’m not gonna say it’s too hard.
G: Yeah.
B: I went on. And I say, and whatever be done, hard work, I stay out there and do it. And don’t groan.
G: How much time did you take off for lunch?
B: We take off one hour.
G: One hour.
B: Well, in other words, they rang the bell at 11:30. See, they rung the bell at 11:30.
G: Mm-hm.
B: See, that’s for the people to get to the house. They had thirty minutes to get to the house and then the bell ain’t gonna ring until 1 o’clock. Go back to the field.
G: Yeah.
B: And he wouldn’t allow nobody to go in the lot and catch their mules before 1 o’clock. You had to wait until that man what rang that bell. The mules have so many, until 1 o’clock. See. Yeah.
G: And how late would you work?
B: Well, they supposed to work ‘til sundown. And that, when, in 1932, they supposed to work ‘til sundown. But they just quit whenever they felt like it. Bullard 20
G: Yeah.
B: ‘Cause all they wanted the boss to do is pass back through in his car, going back to town, and they coming on out behind, going on to the house.
G: Mm-hm.
B: Yes, sir. Yes, they coming on out behind going to the house. See, that what, that what I could gain on the folks, you see. I’d get up and get my mules and leave, leave the lot there, little after 7 o’clock. Well before, maybe 7:30, I’m hitching up down in the field. Well this man was setting there until 8 o’clock before he left to go to the field. I’d be plowing _____ rows before he get there.
G: Yeah.
B: And later when he quit, I’m still plowing. And always, until I found out one day, that ___ man what tend to the mules and he died and got another man to see after the mules and he wasn’t putting out enough feed in the lot there. Well, my mules began to get poor. And, I went to the trough there and looked and they done et about all the corn up. And I said, ‘Bill, my mules is weakening because they ain’t getting enough corn.’ Well, then I had to quit a little bit earlier, you know, so my mules get a little something to eat.
Now I ease around to that man, told him, I said, “Listen, my mules weakened that day a little bit. They ain’t getting enough something to eat. They getting plenty Bullard 21
hay, but they ain’t getting enough corn.” So, he began to try to put out a little bit more, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: So now I like staying in the field and plowing, I like to get through. ‘Cause, of course, when I go out there to plow, I want to hurry up and get through. And I want to put in all the time I can in a day’s time. But, now if I’ve got to quit at 4 o’clock to bring the mules in, well, see, so my mules get something to eat. That’s ‘cause, I eat a plenty something to eat and I want them mules to have plenty.
G: Yeah.
B: ‘Cause I punish my mules. And I work good mules. I don’t work them mules what you got to drag a ton of plow around. I get the only mules that’s drag that plow around and go. See. Good mules.
G: Yeah.
B: See, some mules just drag around and you can’t even get your plow around and the mules drag and stop and all like that. Get out there, them mules.
G: [chuckles] Well, how did, did you have your mules marked some way where you knew which ones you were going to use?
B: No, sir. If, if I put, well, you know mules is different.
G: Mm-hm.
B: When you get used to them, and ah, you can put one Bullard 22
hundred mules in a lot there and you can go out there and everybody be working them a day or two, and everybody will know his mules.
G: Yeah.
B: Everybody will know his mules.
G: How many hours a day did you work the mules?
B: Well, they, they rang the bell about 7 o’clock and you catch the mules and you supposed, supposed stay out there until sundown, but they weren’t, didn’t nobody stay there until sundown. ‘Course, I didn’t even stay out there until sundown. I stayed pretty late, but..
G: Yeah.
B: ..but, I come in little before sundown.
G: The mules got a pretty good workout.
B: Oh, Lord!
G: Well, now these, these, ah, plows, what kind of plows did you use?
B: Turning plows.
G: Just all turning plows.
B: Turning..
G: ..plows.
B: Turning plows for to dig the land up with. And then you had, ah, little busters for to pull the stalks, you see. And..
Unknown female: You had cultivators.
B: Cult.., had walking cultivators. Walking, walking Bullard 23
cultivators, that what..
G: Yeah.
B: That’s what, that’s what they had up and down this bottom, walking cultivators.
But man, in a day’s time you get out there with that plow and when 4:30 and 5 o’clock come and that mule would start moving you, oh, from 1 o’clock until 4:30, you might near want to go home.
G: [chuckles] Yeah, I imagine.
B: Yes, sir.
G: Which plow was the hardest to work? They tell me that some of them pull down into the ground and you had to hold them up.
B: Well, they, they had, some the majority of stalks, and like that was kind you had to kind hold them up, but.. Up and down the farm where I lived all they had them plows you could set.. ‘Cause how you, some folks can’t set a plow.
G: Yeah.
B: See. Some folks can’t, couldn’t set a cultivator. I seen a man, man once who was raised _____ all of his life. So one day, I went to the field out there, I said “Listen, you got that cultivator set there. Why you set that ____ flat? And plow all that ____. You set it on the point that way, well, it just your point digging and all that grass here on the sides here, it looks, it makes more of your grass growing.” I said, “But set it flat, where it haul it, Bullard 24
when that sweep has, a fourteen-inch sweep, why that sweep will cut fourteen inches and kill all that stuff.”
G: Yeah.
B: And so, he decides to let him set his cultivator for him one day. And I set his cultivator. And I said, “Now, you just watch. From this row on,” I said, “Cut it from this row on, you plow on this way and this all back here.” I say, “You seen in a day or two, that grass there on the side where that sweep’s always been cutting, that grass right on the side there, you’ll just have a little strip, just about like that. About four inches will be cut and the rest of the stuff there, grass just be, it come on out and the dew will bring on out and that grass just growing, just ____ out of the field.”
G: Mm-hm.
B: So, ah, he went on. When he plowed over, he said, “You know one thing where you set my cultivator, I believe my cotton even looks better.”
I said, “I know it do.”
G: Hm-mm.
B: Say, “I know it do.” Because you cut a ____ and, ah, he said “Well, from now on I’m going to set my cultivator like you showed me.”
I said, “Well, if you do, your crop will do better and your folks can chop cotton better.”
G: Mm-hm.Bullard 25
B: See. I say, “Now you watch me.” I say, if, ah, the ground is, come a big rain and the grass just come up there just as thick as it can be, and I’ll go and ask the boss man, I say, “Now listen, my crop is about to run away,” and I say, “Now, I’m going to have to plow like the ____ plow. But I tell you what I’d druther have, I druther have me a twenty-six inch sweep.”
G: Hm-mm.
B: To give a _____. And a twenty-six inch sweep and run it flat down them middles. See if you can clean that middle..
G: Yeah.
B: .. you can take care that row.
G: Yeah. The rest of it’s a lot easier.
B: Yes, sir.
G: No doubt about that.
B: You can just have a clean middle. And I say, you just run that middle. And then when you get a cultivator, you get you two, two sweeps, two fourteen-inch sweeps and set ‘em flat. And go on ‘round that cotton there and just pull that ____ right up on there, just like that.
G: Mm-mm.
B: And I say, man when you wrap that cotton up that a-way, and that grass is gonna cover up. That grass will smother out and die. And your cotton is going to grow on.
G: Mm-mm.Bullard 26
B: And I say, then your folks can chop. You go out there to chop, he won’t have to be chopping the middle and the row, too. He go out there and just chop what’s on the ____ ‘cause he’s got everything else in the middle clean.
G: [chuckles]
B: That what the big sweep’s done.
G: Yeah.
B: So that happened one day. I working some, ah, alfalfa land, had alfalfa up six, seven years. We broke it up, and man, that grass had been there seven, eight, about seven years you see. You just think about that, we’d had plenty rain that year. And, they all laughed at me, say, “He got that old alfalfa land now.” They didn’t even want it, “It’s going to get, going to run away with him.”
I said, “No, it ain’t going to run away with me.” You see ‘cause that grass growing up there, I’m going to get me a twenty-six inch sweep. And go through the middle there and kill that grass. And then go on and get my mules and a fourteen-inch sweep and get that cultivator and set it flat right there in the middle, in the, in the turn row and set that cultivator and just set it down like that. Then when, ah, the mules start to pull me up, see it’ll slip down to the ground just a little bit, you know.
G: Yeah.
B: And, man, I’d go on down that row. ‘Bout that big. Well, I started ________ there, nothing that big, just like Bullard 27
that. And go on to the end what left me that-away. What those folks going to do, nothing but chop?
G: Yeah.
B: Well I got that grass smothered out. Shucks.
G: How much could a man and a good pair of mules plow with a turning plow in a day’s time? On average.
B: Well, with a turning plow, he might, he might cover four acres. That’s average ______ to the bed, you see.
G: Well, how many hours would that take him?
B: Well, I say, if he plows four acres, bedded up four acres in a day’s time..
G: Yeah.
B: Well..
G: And a day’s time would run from about 8, say about 8 in the morning until 5 or 6 in the evening..
B: Yes, sir.
G: ..minus one hour, so you’re talking about 8 or 9 hours work.
B: Yes, sir.
G: Mm-hm.
B: But you have to be working to get that.
G: Yeah.
B: And, ah..
G: You have to have good mules to do it, I bet, suspect.
B: I had, I had a piece of land that was ________ just one time. Now it was working. It was government-____ land. And Bullard 28
I went out there with a pair of mules, two or three different times. And plowed it in a day’s time. But if you went out there in the morning, when the sun rise, on a piece of land what the government ____, you know.
G: Hm-mm.
B: And say it was ten acres. You go out there this morning and start to plowing. And it was a cool day, you know, not too hot. Because see if it was hot day, you know, that would slow your mules down.
G: Yeah.
B: But just have a ordinary day, what it won’t keep your mules out. You plow it today and then two weeks from now, maybe a week from now, you got to go back over it. And you start there in the morning and you go to begging them mules. Talking to them and begging them to get over that land with a riding cultivator. I ain’t talking about a walking, a riding cultivator. And some time that you be there when the sun go down before you can plow that last row, with that same pair of mules.
G: Huh.
B: Yes, sir. And I went out there, started plowing on that land there some time and just knock it out before sundown. And then the next day, I’d go out there and I’d get after them mules, “Come on, mules,” and couldn’t hardly make it.
G: Hm-mm.
B: See. Just sometimes you can just do more work some Bullard 29
days than you can others.
G: Yeah.
B: That’s just way ‘tis with animals and human, too.
G: You bet.
B: Yes, sir.
G: Well, how much, how much in a, in a same kind of a day you’d get in plowing, how much could you cultivate with sweeps? Was it a lot faster?
B: No, sir, it wasn’t no, it wasn’t as fast. When, when you walk it, you ain’t gonna, you ain’t gonna feel like, you ain’t gonna walk as fast as you would if you got a riding cultivator.
G: Yeah.
B: ‘Cause when you get turn down there and going down them rows, all like that, and these here, these here knees is going to get tired and all of you is going to get tired with that walking outfit. But you keep on.
G: [chuckles]
B: But you ain’t gonna plow as much in a day’s time with a walking cultivator..
G: Yeah.
B: ..as you would with a riding.
G: Hm-mm.
B: ‘Cause when you ride and them mules just goin’ on, you riding, but when you out there walkin’ with them mules, you ain’t gonna plow as much with a walking cultivator..Bullard 30
G: Yeah.
B: ..as you do with a riding cultivator.
G: How much, how much cotton could a good man with a hoe chop in a day? How many acres?
B: He had to be an over-average chopper to chop three acres. Yes, he got to be an over-average chopper to chop three acres.
G: Hm-mm.
B: And it’s got to be a shore-enough plow hand and a shore-enough chopper. ‘Cause if that man is the least little bit bad, you got to do a whole lot of cuttin’ weeds and a different things there and cut it and cut you down.
G: Well, how often did you have to chop it?
B: Well, ___ this here ____, they’d chop it four and five times.
G: Four and five times a year, huh?
B: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, they’d go over it four and five times. Yes, sir.
Now some people would say, I can plow as much with a walking cultivator as I can with a riding cultivator. But I told them, “No, no. Nobody..you can plow more with a riding cultivator than you would with a walking cultivator.” ‘Cause you’re walking with them mules.
G: Yeah.
B: Them mules can go faster with a walking cultivator, but you gonna get tired of following that cultivator.Bullard 31
G: Uh-huh.
B: [Laughs] ‘Cause you’re down there walking with them mules.
G: Yeah.
B: And you gonna have, have pity on yourself and that’s gonna slow down. And you ain’t gonna plow as much with that walking cultivator, cause.. I was about as, about as eager as them persons down there in the bottom about working, but I couldn’t plow as much with a walking cultivator...as I could with a riding.
G: Hm-mm.
B: ‘Cause I was walking. Every row, every time I.. and them rows is long and you, ‘bout as long as from that man’s house that road yonder, and you got to walk down there. Every time you make a row, you walk on down there and walking back. You, them legs gonna get tired.
G: Hm-mm.
B: Yes, sir. They gonna get tired.
G: OK, now when did they start using tractors down there on the plantation? About what year did the tractors start coming in and start replacing the mules?
B: In ’50.
G: In ’50?
B: In ’50.. ’59. ’59.
G: Did they, did they, did the sharecroppers ever use tractors? Or did the tractors come after sharecroppers?Bullard 32
B: Well, the tractors come, come down there. They worked, ah, the tractors with plow a year or two. See, tractors would go out there and plow different sharecroppers crop, you know and all they had to do is go and, ah, chop their land, see. See, these farmers tried their best to stay with the farmers, sharecroppers. When they done away with the mules, some of them, long in ’59, they bought, they give a ‘cropper so many acres of land. And then the tractor would break it up and everything and they’d still issue him a check just like they had. And they’d go on a work and the tractor would do all the work, you see.
G: Hm-mm.
B: All the plowing. And then they brought a squabble little. Some of the tractor driver would, he’d dislike me, you know, well, he wouldn’t plow my cotton as good, he’d just mess it up, you know. And that just brought little squabbles. And some of hands just wouldn’t chop like they ought to chop. See.
I remember one time, a white fellow was, I was riding with him, up there on the farm. And he say, “You know one thing, Eugene,” say, “If, ah, that man there would whup one of them children, and, ah, make him chop it good, it’d be all right. Ain’t no child’s row.” He say, “Well it is, that man, now when you, just don’t say nothing,” and we passed on by. We go on up the turn row, “Now, you watch, when you get up there. He got four little children out there chopping.” Bullard 33
And I say, “You just get off the row, get off and watch his row. And just off and walk down his row and look and see why, he’s leavin’ that Johnson grass.” He say, “You reckon?” And I say, “No reckon about it. I know it.”
So we drove on down there and he stopped and got off and commenced to talkin’ to him, “Well, your cotton’s lookin’ pretty good.” Walked right down his row, looking, when he chopped it. He say, he say, “How come you leave this grass?” He say, “Well, we growin’ so fast, we be back here next week and we’ll chop it then. Get that clean.”
Well we drove off, I said “Who row was that?”
He said, “You sure did tell me the truth.”
I said, “I know who chopped that bad row.” I say, “It’s a whole lot easier men and women, too. If you watch them in the field and they chop a bad row and it shows.” Say, “I follow hands enough and I know.”
I say, “I tell you..” I commenced telling about some more hands, some more people there, men especially. I said, “Now, ______, he go fast.” I said, “But he ain’t choppin’ no row. He leavin’ grass.”
G: Hm-mm.
B: I say, “He leavin’ grass.”
END OF TAPE 3
SIDE 1Bullard 34
BEGINNING OF TAPE 3
SIDE 2
G: OK.
B: All of them what want to chop for me and is going to go to my field and do what I say do, I’m gonna hire them to go to my field and chop. And I say, this ____ this word to me, a whole lot of time, “If the boss wants his cotton chopped, he ought to get his wife and childrens to go out there and chop.”
I say, “Now, I agree with all of that.” I say, “Now,” and I’d answer you like this, “That’s why he got all of you out here to chop because he don’t have to send his wife and childrens out here to chop. Now I’m asking ya’ll to go out to my fields and chop. My wife ain’t able to chop. And if she was able to chop, I’d hire somebody to chop for her just the same. And go and chop and pay you for to chop so she could out of that sun and go back to the house. And she want to go, get through chopping and she want to go somewhere else and chop for some of ya’ll and make us some money, it’s all right with me.” I said, “But if she want to go sit down, she can go sit down.” And I say now, “All of ya’ll what want the money, ain’t gonna take my word.” I say, “Now, ya’ll go and chop for me until dinner and my wife, she ain’t gonna be out there, but I’m gonna get the money from her at dinner time and pay all of ya’ll off.” Bullard 35
I say, “She got the money to pay it.” See, always bragged on my wife.
G: Yeah.
B: And if you gonna fall out with me, you gonna get a miserable wife.
G: [Laughs]
B: I told a bunch of people one say, I say now, “Ain’t nothing to the skill. It might be a white man, but he can have a _____ heart.” I say, “But, me, I think just as much of my wife as a white man think of his.”
G: Yeah, no doubt about that.
B: Yes, sir. Think just as much of her. And I look out for her convenience, just like I do, just like a white man do for his. Ain’t no difference in the skill in the way of thinking,________. See. They looked at me real funny.
I say, “What keeps me down on the _____. I’ve got a wife see, keeping me down. That what kept me down. And I’ve told ya’ll too many times, that’s my wife. That’s not Mr. Anderson’s wife, that’s mine. And I ____ look out for her. See.”
Well, they’d go to work and just raise sand. All you want to do so and so. Don’t throw your money away. Save your money. ‘Cause one day is gonna come a rain and you don’t feel like workin’. Well, if you got some money of your own, you’re all right. But just stay on the ____ list.
Man’ll respect you if you get to the place where you Bullard 36
act, where you make him respect you by being independent.
G: Did many of them believe what you said?
B: Yeah, eventually some of them begin to think, think about it. Yes, sir. Eventually some of them begin to think about it. But they, it took a long time before they could believe me.
G: Yeah.
B: I, I told the people through the years, I say, “Listen. Don’t get yourself shaped up for to go out yonder and buy an old used car. Get yourself shaped up to buy you, when you get ready to buy a car, go buy you a new car. Then when you want to, for a certain amount a time, they gonna stay behind it, they gonna check up on the car and tighten up on your car and all like that. All what you bought the car fer.”
I say, “But when you buy these old used car, they get the pieces and you just got to run this place and you just paying too much money out.” But they, they, people couldn’t even see that. They said, they said, saved all that money and so.. But eventually, they finally, they’ll see it.
I begged my little boy, my little grand-boy, I begged him not to buy that old gas.., my grand-boy’s car out there. I begged him not to buy that car. Tried to show him a place, I said, “Now, I ain’t trying to show you a place where to get the old car what I got. Save your money and buy you a new one.” That’s what I tried to get him to do.
G: He ignored you, didn’t go for that, huh?Bullard 37
B: No, sir. He didn’t go for that. But that’s the route I wanted him to go. See. That’s the route I talked, used to talk to him all the time about. Go the route where you get some other than you to wear it out yourself.
G: It’s a lot more fun to wear your own out.
B: Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
G: Try to fight somebody else’s worn-out vehicle. I know, I’ve been that route.
B: Sure.
G: Myself.
B: Yes, sir.
G: Well, what, ah, how many people did you have working under your, ah, when you were out there as kind of a boss man for Mr., Mr. Anderson? How many, ah, men did you have working under, families did you have working out there?
B: Out there on that farm out there?
G: Yeah.
B: About twenty-five.
G: About twenty-five families?
B: Yes, about twenty-five families.
G: And how many acres did he have on that plantation out there?
B: I don’t know just exac