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Another version of "Maria Gonzales, Florida Squatter," with the same title, can be found on pages 13097-13105,
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Mrs. Texas Morgan FL-11 Venus, Florida 12/7/38 Barbara Berry Darsey
MARIA GONZALES FLORIDA SQUATTER
Maria came across the yard with an apron full of vegetables which she dumped upon the back steps; then, as several little pigs and a few chickens came forward to investigate, she called to one of the group of five or six children following at her heels: "Teeny, take them collards an turnips right on to the kitchen."
Dusting her hands upon her apron she came to the gate which was firmly fastened with several strands of barbed wire and proceeded to open it. "Won't you come in," she said shyly, "my house ain't very tidy and you must 'scuse the looks of things. Seems like I'm so busy all the time with my garden an the younguns, I don't have time to clean up much."
We then went up the steps and across the rickety porch into the front room where we stood and talked for a while. "Them chairs ain't very strong, but you can set on this bed. I know this spread looks kinder dirty fer the younguns will waller on it."
Maria said she was born in Florida in a nearby county, but she was not sure whether it was Hardee or De Soto, about forty-two years ago. She thought she might be of Spanish
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lineage but was not sure of that as she had never heard her parents discuss their ancestry, and all of her grandparents died before she was born. "Sometimes people ask me if I am Spanish because I am so dark of skin an have such big dark eyes, they always tell me, but I don't know, an what difference would it make anyway, I'd just be right on livin' like I am now.
"I was the fifth of seven chillens, and was raised on a farm and I learnt to do most all the kinds of farm work just as good as a man could. I never went to school much fer I didn't like it and my Pa he wanted me to work on the farm most of the time.
"John and I got married about twenty years ago and my oldest boy, Jim, he's nineteen now. John came here from a place called Carolina. No ma'am, I don't know if it was North or South. Carolina is all I ever heard him say. He was a farmer too and we started in to farm on a little patch of my Pa's farm but we didn't do so well.
"Seemed like John just didn't take to the ways here and he was kinda queer and never would listen to nobody. My family didn't like it much the way he acted but we stayed on there about two years, then John got real mad with my Pa and he moved us over here only we lived way out in the woods near a swamp then. I didn't mind livin'
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out there, I liked it fer there didn't nobody bother us, we lived so far out. After you left the hard road you had to travel the grade for a long ways and then walk through a patch of weeds for nigh on a mile, so didn't many people come to visit us. I never was much to visit anyway, seems like."
Maria looked around her little rude poorly furnished room and sighed. "This here little house, it's much better than what we had out yonder. John, he always was queer and he said we didn't need no house so he built us a shelter of palmetto leaves and put a floor in it and we lived there. After a while he fenced it all round and got some pigs and chickens and we had em all right there with us. Once a man said he would give John lumber for a house but that made John awful mad and he wouldn't have it. He said he had always lived just like we was then and he didn't want to change."
A look of fear came into her dark eyes as she peered about the room: "We lived there for a long long time an' it hasn't been but most four years we been a livin' here now. John he kinder went out his head an' took his shot gun an' said he was agoin to kill us all, so I got the younguns together--thet littler one was just a tiny baby then--an' we ran into the woods an' hid from him all day.
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We could hear him a-rantin an' a-cussin an' sometimes asinging gospel songs an' we sure was scared. Come sundown we made our way to a neighbor on another farm about seven miles off an we all stayed there for the night. The nex day we got to town an' folks there looked after us. They got Jim a place to work on a poultry farm an they fixed up this old place fer us an' here we been ever since."
Maria paused as if looking back to the shelter in the swamp that was her home for so long. "Most of these younguns was born way out there. I never had no doctor tend me, just a nigger woman most the time, but there was times when there wasn't no one there with me but John. When he went crazy I had to grab the little baby out the bed an' run with it in my arms."
She went on to say that the family had never had much medical care. While they were "on the relief" a nurse went to see her and then came again and said the whole family must be treated for worms. That made John mad too but the nurse was firm and even came out to give the treatments. Then John's eyes got so bad he could hardly see to work so they were treated and glasses fitted. The children are rarely ill and castor oil is about all they ever take.
"John went an' lost his mind over thinkin' too much
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