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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 380
The sawmill was on a side road close to the house. It was about a half-mile on down the hill to the house |J.B. Harris House]. That was the old |slave] quarters road. It goes all the way back down to the river. Walter Joiner continued: People brought corn to him |Sam Sr.], too. If you didn't want to wait for your corn to be ground, he'd weigh yours and give you meal (a percentage) from what was already ground. He used a scoop about the size of a gallon bucket and put it in a bag. Some scoops had a curved grip. The box was waist high, so it wasn't necessary to bend. Sam had a big shed where he worked close to the big house |J.B. Harris/Lee house]. It had one big room and a little kitchen leaned off. It was made of rough slab lumber (with saw marks, second cut) about 1 x 12 with 1 by 4's to cover the cracks. Board and batten. Blacks kept to themselves, but Sam Harris had more communication with people than anyone else because he had so much equipment. Sam had a combine and a hay bailer. When he did the hay, he'd bring the bailer up, take the wheels off and block it so it was stationary. The hay would feed into the hopper. Lay the hay on a slide. You have to shock the hay on a pole so it will dry out before you bale it or it will mold. The hay was cut flat with the 16-foot wide hay rake. You'd pull it up and stack it around a framed |braced] 8-ft. long pole in the ground, using the slide or runner. When you got done it was a three-sided pyramid. The hay would stay like that until spring without rotting. Sometimes when you stacked up hay like that you put logs around it. The cows would eat so much, they'd eat a hole in it. Some people paid him by the bale to do their hay. His bales were heavy, maybe 100 pounds. Sam grew sweet potatoes. He got me into growing them. He had them in the basement of the big house. Many people who had household slaves, they stayed in the basement. The big house had a basement and a brick floor, like the old house on Adams Avenue. The bars are still on the windows. Sam started me growing sweet potatoes. He'd take them by the truckload to the commodities exchange. He'd take some of mine. Sam planted peas and sorghum, too. |Here Joiner talked about taking the sorghum to Dave Barley.] Old man Sam would help anybody who was trying to do. During the time I stayed in town to go to school, I'd go home |mother, Parthenia Joiner Horton, Parcels F-251 and Parcel F-253] to work on weekends. He never 380 - (4413)