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Alabama 4

He said: "J. E. Williams didn't own a foot of the timber! Yeah,
there was a good deal of timber, but he didn't own a foot, and I had ny
whole family up here. So I had to get out and buy up a section of timber
and go to work. I couldn't do anything else." He paused. "Later on I
worked for J. W. Rogers in Vina there."

Now, he launched back to earlier days with the ease that years give;
things seemed to be scrambled in his mind: sensations, experiences, hates
scattered through many years were all one connected memory—but they all
made sense to him. He untied the bundle of experiences without a fumble.

"My father was a sawmill man. I was born in Texas, and raised in
Calhoun County. All my people are in Calhoun County. I go back there some.
And I'm going back again pretty soon. They're buried out there—my people."
His voice was the same in discussing his old home county, but a close
attention to the tone brought out the softness of a sentiment; attention
to his eyes showed there was a film come over them. And the creases down
the lean scrawny jaw moved ever so little. Perhaps his voice was lower, too.
"I married my wife when I was in my thirties. She's a Ferguson, from
Burleson."

He went back to eerlier days, and he was in Texas. "I helped to run
telephone lines in Texas, and when we got that finished, I went back over
the same lines and put up the poles and wire for a postal telegraph line.
Boy, I was free and easy them days. I had money, but I could take seven
hundred dollars to town and to the saloon on Saturdays, and spend it every
bit! I could have been a rich man, a millionaire right now ..." He is a
scrawny fellow, and would have looked funny in one of those long, slooping
limousines—he is a banty-rooster of a man. "I had the money once in
pocket. I was working on that telephone line. A fellow in a saloon tried to
sell me a house with five acres of land. It was a big house, four rooms,
16 X 16. He wanted to sell the house—out there in Texas—for $45, and I

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