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-5-
done all right, but the corn jest wouldn't grow. So I tuk to workin out
on farms fer other folks around here, and I found out for myself jest what
to plant and how to raise it best. I kinda figured I'd like to be a good
farmer like I use to be back in Alabama. But it didn't do no good. This
Florida land ain't like land in other places, and when you larn to farm
it, you jest got to start from the beginnin and do it all over agin. Well,
that's what happened to me. Even when I'd larned folks said my land was
new and sour, so I planted cow-pens for a crop, to sweeten the land.
While this was goin on I still hired out to other folks and managed some-
how to live and take care of my family. But this takin care of them
wasn't nothin like I had expected to give them.

"Well mam, along about '33 I got $50 unexpected like. It come from
some work I had done in Alabama, and had left there with it a-owin to me.
So with things goin so bad in the farmin, I reckoned I'd take that money
and start a little store right here. I got enough lumber, the rough kind,
to build that little shack you see over there. I had to go more in debt
for it, but was the onliest way. The lumber man, he knowed I was tryin
my best to make livin, so he was willin to help me.

"I used most all of that $50 for groceries, and was sure glad even
though I didn't got to sell many. It jest meant that I could get my feed
for my family wholesale, and that was cheaper livin. But, with what I did
sell, and waht I made with other work, I managed to stock up agin and keep
a-goin. Anne tended the store times when I was hirin out.

"I don't take much in the store and never have, but it helps us and
gives us a chancet to give the children some of the proper food they need,
like milk. Sometimes the milk is the canned kind, but they get it, and
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