Life Is So Good: Chapters 1–5

I don’t know if it was pride from Father’s words or the pleasure from a piece of hard candy that beckoned, but I felt so good I thought I would burst.

We had potatoes and carrots buried in the straw and salt pork hangin’ from the rafters.

When I commenced to eat, he started talking.

I was partial to the general store, but I liked to walk by the livery stable too.

I was partial to the general store, but I liked to walk by the livery stable too. Once a man gave me two bits to rub down and watch his horse for the afternoon.

As I picked up a piece of peppermint, I heard a commotion from the street.

He scowled and sent them a message that gave me a chill on a hot day.

Pete had been twisting and screaming all get-out, but those men seemed to double their strength when they seen the lynching rope coming.

Up by the post office, the old oak tree, the Confederate Tree, they called it, was going to be a gallows.

One of them tried to throw it over a big limb, but it fell short. It kept falling short. Some in the crowd jeered as if it were a contest at the county fair.

I looked down at the boardwalk. I saw the gouges and grooves worn over time. I focused on one rough spot that almost had the shape of a half-moon.

“I swear to God it wasn’t me. Have mercy, you’ve got the wrong man. I didn't touch her.”

Norris was a squat man but he was powerful and broad across the shoulders.

I watched Norris and saw that all the bluster was gone.

While lots of white folks would buy moonshine from Norris, you could tell that at the same time everyone thought he was shiftless and no account.

When I heard the whip snap and the buckboard lurch forward, I looked back.

I would pull out a handful of cotton from the bale.

Under terms of our defeat, according to President Lincoln, slavery is abolished.

If you decide to stay and work, you will be paid wages as free men.

They stayed behind their fortifications of logs and mounds of earth.

But we could lift up a log and take some grub worms and do quite fine too.

There was a back eddy from where the water came around the big tree roots and such hanging down.

Even in the dark, I couldn’t help but know when I was getting close: There was more hogs than a person could ever count, and the racket they made was something terrible.

I couldn’t hear a word, but Papa was talking and gesticulating with his arms.

He had a bad time on that eighty acres. Besides, he’s got plenty of land where his home sits and he don't need the aggravation.

Generally, I would do the morning chores early so as to be out in the field at first light. Within minutes of swinging that old machete, the morning chill would leave my body.

As we worked, cane juice would run down a trough into a barrel.

But I think it was parched corn that I liked the most. Just put those ears in hot water and scrape the kernels right off the cob.

It was nice to eat fresh corn and just pick it as we needed it. But we always harvested a good amount for the mule and the pigs and some to set aside for seeds for next year.

Wasn’t never that hard to start with, but when that sack starts getting full, it is heavy. I would start off carrying the sack and pretty soon it was a burden just to drag it with me.

He said that if I was ever disposed to your doing some work at his place, he could always use you there.

The homestead is still there, but I am the only one still alive that has memories of living there.

At the same time, for all his reading, he didn’t even know what chitlins is. I had to tell him. He didn’t even know how to slaughter a hog. I had to tell him how to do that too. So, at the same time, I know about some things he is ignorant of.

I’ve never spent much time philosophizing and such, but I do wonder, “Why am I still here and so healthy too? And why is it that after all these years everybody wants to listen to what I have to say now?”

All the pictures, at the fire hall, the school yard, the grange, and the rodeo, only had white people in them.

They [J. T. Williams and his son, Gilbert] were testifying at the habeas corpus hearing of Ivory Clay, a negro, charged by complaint with the murder.

I had never really talked to any other white folks about such things as the Klan and so I watched to gauge Richard’s reaction.

My cousins and I would help take out the entrails. Nowadays some people throw them away. We would take the liver, and the kidneys, and the heart, and some intestines, rinse off the blood real good, and give them to Mama or Aunt Mary. They would boil that till it was hard. Then they would melt some lard down in a big skillet and fry it up good. That’s what chitlins is.

They weren't as prosperous, though. We had glass in our windows and their barn wasn’t the size of ours neither.

You are colored and you always need to take heed of that. It’s when you don’t take heed that you be asking for trouble.