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and move because every man in this part of the country nearly worked for the Westons. They owned a big saw mill, workshop and store so if they caught any one buying anywhere else they'd fire them. They were paying 500 to 750 a day. Hard labor. Going back to where I was telling about my mothers death, the Logtown people asked if he'd mind if they (my daddy I mean) bought her tombstone so he told them no; if that's what they wanted to do. So they did, but the one who engraved the name, date and etc. made a mistake with her name. Her name was Orstella Hannah (Atkins) Daniels and they put OhStella. I got Ray Smith, our song director, to sing the song my mother used to sing so much when busy around the house. (Let the Lower Lights Be Burning). It's a funny thing, I never remembered one thing about my mother but still when I think about her and about all the good things they said she did and even when I am writing about her I fill up sometimes. If you know what I mean.
Our neighbors were so good to me when I was back home staying with my daddy. You see after I got out of school in Napoleon I had been living with Emma & Jahue as I had said before, I was eight and a half years old. So then when my daddy hired a woman in Gainesville to keep me so I could go to school and be with he and brother Jerome on weekends. I suppose he must have missed that bad little girl. Then when I become nine, I started cooking for him as Jerome had gone to work on a gravel boat (a barge) on the Tom Big B. River near Mobile, Ala. So it was up to me to do the cooking. I'd cook the best beans, "white" because my daddy wouldn't each any other kind. I'd put a cup full of beans in a big ten quart granite pot and fill the pot nearly to the top with water and boil all day before they'd get tender enough to eat. Never put any meat, grease or salt in them and we'd have to have a soup dish to eat them in and my daddy would go to Logtown twice a week and get home made bread, enough to last all week. And my daddy would say I gollies, my daughter you're going to make a cook after all and then I'd strut like a peacock. I thought I'd did a wonderful job. The bad part was that I don't suppose he had ever cooked a meal in his life because he never had too. His second wife was a grand cook too. She could beat the fellow that killed himself making buttermilk biscuits. But who couldn't? With worlds of home made butter, buttermilk, clabber, thick cream, cottage cheese, cream cheese and all the rich milk anyone could drink. I never tasted coffee until I was fifteen years old. I'm sure none of
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