Will Hicks
From:
More Arkansas
EX-SLAVES
Interviewer: Pernella Anderson
[HW: Hicks, Will]
"I was born in Farmerville, La., I don't know what year. I was about
three or four years at surrender. I lived with my mother and father. The
first work I ever did was plow. I did not work very hard at no time but
what ever there was to do I went on and got through with it. All of our
work was muscle work. There were no cultivators.
"I stayed at home with my father and mother until I was 32 years of age.
I was thirty years old when papa died and mother lived two years longer.
About a month after mother died I married. We lived in a real good
house. My father bought it after slavery time. We had good furniture
that was bought from the hardware. The first stove that we used we
bought it and father bought it just after surrender. Never used a
homemade broom in my life. Now, Ma just naturally liked ash cakes so she
always cooked them in the fireplace. We wore all homespun clothes, and
we wore the big bill baily hats. We chaps went barefooted until I was 16
years old then I bought my first pair of shoes. They were brass toe
progans. I never been in the school house a day in my life. Can't read
neither write nor figure. I went to church. Our first preacher was name
Prince Jones. The biggest games I played was ball and card. I was one of
the best dancers. We danced the old juland dance, swing your partner,
promonate. Danced by fiddling. The fiddlers could beat the fiddlers of
today. Get your partners, swing them to the left and to the right, hands
up four, swing corners, right hands up four promonate all around all the
way, git your partners boys. I shoot dice, drink, I got drunk and broke
up church one Sunday night. Me and sister broke up a dinner once because
we got drunk. Whiskey been in circulation a long time. There have been
bad people ever since I been in the world."
--Will Hicks.
Next:
Bert Higgins
Previous:
Phillis Hicks
Informational
