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Life Histories

Walter Rowland - Arkansas
June, 1939

Ain't Got No Screens

They were seated on the front porch of a three-room, unpainted shack.
She, a portly Negress, was comfortably anchored in a swing behind a veil of
honeysuckle vines. He was draped languidly about a tilted, cane-bottom chair,
one leg of which was perilously near a gaping hole in the floor.

"Come in, suh," he unwrapped himself from his chair, and hastily brought
another, which he placed safely away from the hole. "Dat noon breeze comes
thoo hyar. Hit's fine, too, dese hot days.

"No, suh, I ain't been to de fiel' dis mornin', jus' puckerin' aroun' de
house a bit; hit's mos' too wet to work in de fiel' -- little mo' rain and dey
won't be no cotton, though they ain' been near de rain we had de year of de
Big Flood--

"What year was de Big Flood, honey? It was de yeah after we come up fum
Mississippi-- must've been twenty-seb'm. And rain! Dey wuz fifteen families on
ouah place; de landlord got his stuff out to high land, and he never left nothin'
to hep us git out cepn' two ole pieces of wagins and a no 'count team of mules
dat would'n pull more'n fo' men.

"Time hit come my turn, water wuz up to de wagin bed, and I couldn' see
de road, though I knowed whare it was; but you know, long's I been on de farm
I cain't drive a team tell yet, and I got 'em too fur to one side, 'tween two
dreens, en de wagin tumpled over in de deep water, en we lost practick'ly all
we 'cumulated, furniture en all.

"I give up de bottoms den; hit's better land, but I got to be where I kn

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