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.
Entry 411
(Suppose you and I are going out to hunt this buried money - well, you tell me all about it.) Well, ah'm goin' tell yuh. Ah lived in a place once up in Georgia that they told me there was some money buried, an' dere was a old bachelor, dey said that run de salt mill dere had buried his money. An' we went out to dig dis money an' we found - well, dey claimed dat it was. Sound [we sounded] down dere, sound like money - ah mean like a can or pot or something. We went to digging at it. An' it had - was growed up a little tree, a little hickory tree right where it was. We dug up dat tree - it was in de wintertime, cold up [had turned cold]. We dug up dat tree - it was solid, good an' solid, little hickory, an' a little ole rattlesnake run in de hole. So we came out of it an' went an' tole de white folks about it. Dey went there - dey got instruments an' went dere an' dey said dat it was something come like a big bull; looked like it goin' jump right in de hole on 'em. They run out. They went then an' sot little tumblers of whiskey around, filled 'em fulla whiskey, an' they digged then, an' dey tole me "cause ah'd known about it - it was much as one man could roll away on a wheel- barrow. They knowed de gentlemen an' knowed whut kind of whiskey he liked [see Spirits and alcohol, in Index]. (You were telling me something about killing a dog. You started to tell me about killing a dog.) Well, they tells me that yo' kill a dog or snake or something an' bury with that money, an' it will take care of it.
(That's to guard the money?)
Dat's tuh guard de money - or a man or anything lak dat.
Entry 8426
Ah take de photograph an' put it ovah a tumblah of.watah an' set it undah de edge of mah bed, de watah an' de pichure undah de bed. "In de Name of de Fathah, de Son an' de Holy Ghost, ah want chew tuh love me."
(You - how often do you do that?)
Fo' nine nights.
(You say that once for nine nights?)
Yes sir.