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"Sam says the best he can recollect is he was about ten years old when he first started to fishing. He is sixty now. So that means he's been fishing fifty years. The way he started was this. Ransom Lynn, Sam's pa, owned this place on the river. I'll tell you about Ransom later on. He owned this house we live in now, only we have added two rooms and a porch and a lots of other things.

"Mr. George Vaughn had a little one-room house further down on the river. You'member him? He's been dead now 'bout twenty years. Well he is the man that learnt Sam to fish and swim. At first Sam said he used to follow him about just like a little puppy; would get up before day and go with him in his batteau a-fishing. In them days they used to seine in the Chewalla Creek; it's ag'in' the law now. Mr. Vaughn learnt him how to set out traps and lines; he learnt him everything there is about fishing. He makes good money at it. Mr. Vaughn learnt all the older white men in Eufaula to swim and Sam learnt all the niggers. Whenever anybody ever fell in the river or jumped in to kill themselves Sam and Mr. Vaughn would always do the diving to find the bodies. Since Mr. Vaughn has been dead, Sam's been doing it and many a body has he found. Folks don't drown themselves like they used to, though, I am glad to say.

"In Sam's young days -- he don't do it now -- he used to swim across the Chattahoochee right here at the wharf four and five times without stopping, and they says its third to the swiftest river in the world; and its terrible wide. They call him the 'river rat.' When he was a young man he lived on the river, slept in a tent, camped there. I thought it was awful but he would do it. Now, he is not

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