Subject:Tumbler
Entries
Entry 618
In the beginning of it - she was a woman she loved long hair and it was a man setting there and she was combing her hair. And he said, "Hattie, ah tell you how you to do to make yore hair grow." And she said, "Well, tell me." He say, "Well, when you git through combing yore hair tonight, '' says, "leave it out there on de table and when de wind blows [it] away, finally, [he said] dirt would [will] settle on it and dat hair begin to take root, and when it takes root chure hair will grow." Well, she did it as he told her, and fin'lly she begin tuh git to de place she couldn't stay home - night neither day until she got to the place where she did not pay her children no mind. And she got tuh tellin' some man [root doctor] about it. Co'se he knowed these things and he told her, says, "Well, he jes' got chure hair buried," and he said, "if you give me" - ah don't know how much de money was - but anyways she paid him something. But he had something - about fifty cents or twenty-five cents in one these old-fashioned glasses they call tumblers - got a rocking bottom to it. Well, he put the money in that glass and placed about a handful of water in it and he went up to [and then under] this house and every time he would move, the silver [would move] in the glass. He moved until he found it and when he found it, it was buried in a little box in the shape of a coffin. And what he did with that, now ah can't tell. Ah was a chile but ah kin remember them things. [I failed to ask for obvious details here, the action being based upon the boiling-silver rites in this margin-title. When the proper time arrived the Water was poured from the tumbler and the tumbler shaken - the jingling silver publicly announced a discovery.]
(How long ago was that time - thirty years?)
Been longer than that - been about thirty-five years.
(Where did that happen, here in Alabama?)
Over in Louisiana.
(What part of Louisiana?)
Delta, Louisiana.