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all the time so he could rest his ox team a few minutes and get himself a drink of water as the water in the spring was always like ice water in the summer but in the winter it was warm. Anyway that day he started a conversation with me, he asked me if I loved him and I said of course I do because my daddy says we're to love every body so then he said well if you love me would you be my little sweetheart? I said no, sir; you've got a wife and a bunch of children and my daddy says it's not right to flirt with a married man and with that, I broke and ran to the house as fast as I could and he took off too up the road. So Stella said Pearl what in the world is the matter with you? I told her nothing but she said I know better, you're as white as a ghost so then I told her this man wanted me to be his sweetheart an she was so angry she said just wait till brother Jay comes, he'll take care of him, because everybody knew this was a woman's man. Any way when Jay came he made me tell him everything this man had said to me so he studied a little bit and then said Sis; if you meet him anywhere just don't even look at him, just ignore him and then if he ever says anything out of the way, I'll take it up. But I never spoke to him again until I was fifteen years old and when he talked to me at the spring that day I was only twelve and just as ignorant as they made them. My brother Jerome told me one day he'd like to take me to the City but he said he knew the geese would follow us all over town. I asked him why and he said because you're so green. Well now you know why I felt that God had his hand on me.
Another time I had gone out across the field to the new highway to get the mail as that's where our mail box was. So a young man that was known to be a laddies man came along riding a beautiful Bay and I told him he had a lovely horse and he insisted on me taking a ride with him but I made excuses as I had heard he was a regular flirt. Although I was tempted to get in the saddle but something kept telling me not too. I could have saddled my daddy's Bay Stallion any time and take a ride. I was sixteen at that time.
One Saturday night they had a big supper at the Woodman Hall at Napoleon, had all kinds of food and three five gallon freezers of home made ice cream so the place was so crowded you could hardly get around and not an empty set to be had so a young fellow from Logtown came over to me and wanted to treat me but I thanked him and told
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