When I was your age we didn't have a lot of fancy stuff. There'd be 150 of us out in the fields shucking snap beans starting at sunup. We'd be out of bed with a spoonful of grits for breakfast and work til two o'clock, only back then we called that "noon" on account-a noon lasted from 11 in the morning til 2 in the afternoon. Not like you kids today. And then it'd be 108 degrees and at two o'clock we'd get a sip of water, but only if it happened to rain the night before and there was any left in the bucket, and then we'd go back out into the fields til the sun went down. And back then the sun didn't go down most times til nigh on to midnight. Fourteen years I worked shucking snap beans, six days a week, and every other day if'n we was lucky we'd get called in by the foreman for payday and we'd each get a quarter if we worked hard enough. Once a fellah next to me had a hole in his pocket and dropped his quarter and spent a week on his hands and knees tryin' to find it. Maybe a quarter don't sound like much to you kids today, out workin' with all your vacation pay and sick time, but back then we was glad to get it. We didn't have no sick pay back then. If'n a man got sick he leaned on his buddies or we propped him up and gave him a bucket of snap beans. One fellah died out there in the fields and we didn't find him for two whole days, out there propped up against a scarecrow with a bucketful of unshucked snap beans and a family of crows livin' in his head. That's just how it was back then.

We didn't have none of this fancy food ya'll got nowadays. We couldn't just drive up to a MAC-Donald's and get us a hamburger. We had grits and snap beans and moonshine sometimes, maybe on Thanksgiving, but mostly we had nothing but bugs and grass and rainwater from a bucket out in the yard. But we liked it! We didn't get to eat every day, either, unless you were one of the rich kids down by the holler.

Our womenfolk didn't go gettin' pregnant all the time and raisin' our kids up with no daddys. No, sir! Back in my day if a girl got herself in a family way, she got shipped off for a few months with the stomach flu and brought the baby back home and raised it up as her sister. We had morals and values back then. When I was your age we didn't have no garages or mechanics to take our cars to when they broke down. If you had a car part break you had to go down to the junkyard and make yourself a new part using junk left over from other cars.

We didn't take no charity. Hard work. That's just how it was. I lost my Adeline nigh on to 40 years ago in childbirth, and still when the Magnolias bloom and the horses start to foal I can see her standin' out there by the ol' picket fence.

You kids today think you got it rough. Why, when I was your age we had to walk 25 miles to school every day in our bloody bare feet and it was uphill both ways. We didn't complain. We didn't have no fancy new-fangled bunk beds, neither. I had six brothers and three sisters and we slept in one big hardwood bed til we was 13 years old and got to be marryin' age. We married who they told us to marry, too, and we didn't have none of this divorcing and separating nonsense like you see today. You got married once and that was just how it was and you made the most of it, even if you was miserable for 50 years you stayed miserable and you liked it.

Yes, sir, you kids today got it easy with your CDs and your TVs and your VCRs! We didn't have any of your fancy cars and highways and lesbians and digital computerized internets and cell phones. I oughta whup your ass, boy.