Full Text of the Excerpt

EDDIE McCOY:

Did you have a boyfriend when you was coming up as a kid?

LOUISE POINTER MORTON:

Oh, no. We children back yonder didn't know nothing about no boyfriends. We would get together and play and we were eleven and twelve years old and didn't know nothing but play. Didn't have no boyfriend. I didn't get no boyfriend, kiss no boyfriend til I was way on up yonder seventeen or eighteen years old. No, Lord. Uh-uh. And then my sister—. My sister, Hettie, was older than I was and she had a boyfriend. Well, Mama let me go in the room and sit with her, you know. Them old people didn't let no girls by theirselves with no boys. Oh, no.

EDDIE McCOY:

They didn't?

LOUISE POINTER MORTON:

No, no. My sister, Hettie, her boyfriend would come. My mama—I was the next to her, the girl, you know—let me go in there and sit. And that way I learned a whole lot just sitting up listening to them talk. And then after awhile, the one what come and see my sister, Hettie—well, this man where I married was a friend of his. And so, when he got big enough and all, you know, he asked him, "You see Louise?" He would go back and tell him, you know, "I'm going up there." So he started to coming. Well, my mama and daddy liked them cause my boyfriend's daddy had land and a home just like my mama and daddy. And this boy come to see me and I fell in love with him. I married him. I married the twenty—Lord, if I had my pocketbook with me—. I married the twenty-first of February, nineteen and thirty-four. Me and him went to South Boston and married in South Boston.

EDDIE McCOY:

Where was your husband from?

LOUISE POINTER MORTON:

He was about five or six miles from me. He lived back down towards Davis Chapel. And his name was Roy Morton.

EDDIE McCOY:

What was his daddy's name?

LOUISE POINTER MORTON:

His daddy's name was Jack Morton. His mama's name was Nettie [Umstead] Morton. And they was fine people. And yeah, I married him. That was the only man that I ever see or loved [in my life] and let me tell you. You talking about smart—he was so smart. Whoo, me and him worked together. And I got a home up yonder—[at] home, right now, [been there]. He's been dead thirty—I think I counted up thirty-seven years. He died the seventh day of December, nineteen and fifty-seven. And I'm at the same place now. We had bought us a place. Me and him worked together and bought it and paid for it before we moved where I am now.

EDDIE McCOY:

What did y'all do about stuff? Did y'all come to town and buy food? Or did you raise everything?

LOUISE POINTER MORTON:

We raised everything. Had a garden in the summertime and cane and . And we had our meat. We had everything. We had wheat. Thrash it, that was our flour. Had corn we'd carry to the corn mill, that was our meal. What time is it? I don't want to miss my lunch in here talking to you [laughter] .