"Nowadays, when you all want a nice wool dress, all you got to do is go to the store and get it", Aunt Sally commented, when asked to tell about their clothing.
"When I was growin’ up an’ wanted a nice wool dress, we would shear the sheep, wash the wool, card it, spin it and weave it. If we wanted it striped, we used two threads. We would color one by using herbs or barks. Sometimes we had it carded at a mill, an’ sometimes we carded it ourselves. But when we did it, the threads were short, which caused us to have to tie the thread often, makin’ too many knots in the dress. I have gathered the wool off the fences where it had been caught off the sheep, an’ washed it, an’ used it to make mittens.
"Yes’m. I worked in the fields, and I worked hard too. Plantin’ and harvestin’ in those days was really work. They used oxen to break up the ground for corn, an’ for plowin’ it too. They hoed the corn with a hoe, and cut the stalks with a hoe and shocked ’em. They cut the grain with the cradle and bound it with their hands, and shocked it. They threshed the grain with a hickory stick. Beating it out.
"I carried water for the field hands. I’ve carried three big buckets of water from one field to another, from one place to another; one in each hand and one balanced on my head.
"Yes’m. Some masters was good an’ some was bad. My mama’s master whipped his slaves for pastime. My master was not so bad as some was to their slaves. I’ve had many a whippin’, some I deserved, an’ some I got for being blamed for doin’ things the master’s children did. My master whipped his slaves with a cat-o’-nine-tails. He’d say to me, ’You ain’t had a curryin’ down for some time. Come here!!!’ Then he whipped me with the cat. The cat was made of nine strips of leather fastened onto the end of a whip. Lots of times when he hit me, the cat left nine stripes of blood on my back. Yes ma’am."
Aunt Sally brooded over the whipping memories, then under the influence of a brighter thought continued:—
"I belong to the African Methodist Episcopal Church, an’ I ain’t never cussed but once in my life, an’ that was one time I nearly got two whippin’s for somethin’ I didn’t do. Some of master’s kin folks had a weddin’, an’ we walked to the church, an’ somebody kicked dust on the bride’s clothes, an’ I got blamed but I ain’t never kicked it. The master’s daughter Puss, she kicked it. Ole mistress she whipped me. Yes’m, she whipped me. It was the worst whippin’ I ever got. The worst whippin’ in my whole life, an’ I still got the marks on my body. Yes’m. I got ’em yet.