17

16.

"You know, I've been thinking lots lately about all the
insurance I used to carry when times were better. Why, when I was
working steady and making top wages, I carried five insurances and
belonged to the K.C. order too. Now, I've had to drop all but two
of those insurances, but I still keep up my K.C. dues. If I had all
the money now that I've paid out on the insurances that I've had to
drop I'd be on easy street.

"I calls myself owning two houses; this four-room house
that we live in, the two-room house next door where my married son
lives, and the vacant lot next to that. Taxes are so high and hard
to raise money for, that sometimes I think I'll just let the tax man
sell my property and give me what's left after he takes out for past-
due taxes. If ever I do get out of debt I don't intend to let my-
self get into this sort of fix again.

"When there's some big election for bonds or something else
special and a certain amount of votes are needed to carry it, people
make a beaten path to our door trying to get us to vote their way,
but if we do like they want us to, what good does it do us? It don't
do colored folks no good a t'all. Do you see that rough street out
there? There ain't been no work of any kind done on it in two years.
We can vote in the Presidential elections, but just to tell you the
plain truth, I don't pay no attention any more to those things for
there's nothing the colored folks can do to make things any different.
The white people are going to run things like they want to anyway.
Would you believe it if I told you city water is not provided for this
thickly settled section of Lickskillet? A man on the hill paid $40

1874