We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
426 S«
George Franklin lived down the road a piece and he had three boys. Two of them were good workers, but the youngest, Harlie, might have been born with a banjo around his neck and a tune in his feet. He was tall and good to look at and there was a blue devil in his eyes that made sparks in them when he was tickled about something and he was tickled most of the time. His mouth got along with his eyes fine, always laughing and making a happy racket. He loved a frolic better than most and when it came to dancing, I swan he could dance all night on a looking glass without leaving a crack, he was that light on his feet.
But he was fiddle'footed. From the time he was just a tad, he used to go off on long stretches and stay, then he'd come home and lay around for a spell, resting up for another jaunt. His pa used to get right put out at him and when he started sparking Clacy Jo Childress, Hake Childress put his foot down and run him off the place.
It was April when Hake gave Harlie his walking papers, and I know the very day Clacy Jo met the boy for the last time. Or I think I know. Jess was going down to the store to buy a piece of fat back to cook mus' tard greens with, and I went along be' cause I'd heard that uncle Purd, the store keeper had brought on a piece of black sateen and I needed a black dress for church meeting and funerals and things.
I got four yards of goods and we bought a pair of tan slippers for Lessie Lou, our oldest girl, who was going on fourteen and getting old enough to
•nq October, 1950
start sparking and Jess and I were walking along talking, when we came 1 to the wild plum thicket the other side of the Childress place. The trees were all in bloom and it was a pretty sight, sure as the world, with the sprays of white waving in the breeze and honey bees buzzing around, mak' ing a lazy sound. The air was sweet i and there wasn't a cloud, with the sky like a deep blue bowl, turned upside down, and the sun like a yellow apple, hanging inside.
It took me back to the time Jess and I were wed, on just such a day, and I was studying on mentioning it to Jess, when all of a sudden, who should come out of that thicket but Harlie, walking like there was sweet music in his feet. He walked out not ten feet ahead of us and never saw us at all. The blue devils that lived in his eyes were not even home, he looked that happy. <A
He went on down the road and Jess and I just looked at each other, trying to figure out his strange actions. Pretty soon Harlie started to sing and we could hear him till he got almost home. The song had a lonesomeness to it, like he was saying good bye. It was that old one about
"I work six hosses in my team and I pull my leaders blind,
And all the song that I can sing, is I wish that girl was mine. O' that girl, that perty little girl, The girl I left behind me, O' that girl, that perty little girl, The girl I left behind me."
That was the last we ever saw of Harlie. He was killed by a freight train out of Ashland about a month later. " 1