My Remembers

In 1929, near Plano, Texas, fifteen-and-a-half-pound Eddie Stimpson, Jr., was born to a nineteen-year-old father and a fifteen-year-old mother. The boy, his two sisters, and mother all grew up together, living lives void of luxuries, but full of country pleasures.

The details of ordinary family life and community survival include descriptions of cooking, farming, gambling, visiting, playing, doctoring, hunting, bootlegging, and picking cotton, as well as going to school, to church, to funerals, to weddings, to Juneteenth celebrations. Using simple folk speech and spelling patterns, Sarge good-naturedly reveals what life was like for a black family during the Depression.

This book will be of extra-ordinary value to folklorists, historians, sociologists, and anyone who enjoys good story-telling.