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after dark. Do you suppose the Lord will ever forgive me for all those yarns? Well, that wasn't exactly a story because I never saw them nor I never hunted them either.
My daddy named me Eva Pearl after the Pearl River and the Eva was for his first old girlfriend. I gave her picture to my oldest granddaughter who had dark red hair just like hers. Eva Perdy was her name and she was real tall, well built, fair complexion, dark grey eyes, so my dad said and her hair was real thick and hung way down below her knees. I never heard my daddy call me by name a day in his life. It was always daughter. I was born in Nicholson, Miss, six months after my family came South. The morning I was born my daddy walked down across the railroad track down to the Pearl river which was only a little distance from Henry Eggerts place and when he came back he said to my mother, Stella (her name was OrStella but everyone called her Stella) if you haven't decided on a name for the baby yet, lets name her for the Pearl River so my mother agreed, so my father said then how would the name Eva go with Pearl? And she agreed again, so when I was about seven or eight years old Emma said Pearl; you were really given the right name because you're as rough and rowdy as the Pearl river ever was at it's worst. You see - my father had never seen a real river like that before with the beautiful high banks and curves also lovely trees growing on the bank. He said in Minnesota what they called a river was only about four feet wide with a small shallow stream of water. That's where the Mississippi river starts and that's how small the mouth of it is. I have already written in the first part of this diary about having to find another place to live so my daddy was real lucky he found a nice home out about three miles from Picayune, Miss on a big farm. He never had any rent to pay as the man said the house was vacant and he'd be glad for someone to live there to watch out of it. So that's where we lived until my daddy found the old Tulma Holliman place. While still at the Telley Place, he farmed for folks, mostly plowed, cultivated their fields, hauled in hay. After my oldest brother Jay was seventeen he helped to cut and haul it in. I don't know just how long we were there, maybe a year, when he found the Holliman place. Eighty acres with a two story building on and I've already told you about the fields already being fenced. I won't go into that again. Years later my father bought six acres more so as to have twelve acres a piece for each child. When he bought the place a family of four were living there. Their names was Andy Bennett and they had two little girls close to
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