“OUR DAILY BREAD”
James Hart, prolific screenwriter and novelist with successful movies such as HOOK, TUCK EVERLASTING, SAHARA and CONTACT, will present a script written by him and the 8th Grade Students he worked with that incorporates transcripts from the Elders through the characters created and brought to life by the 8th Grade Students in a play called, “Our Daily Bread.”
Here are excerpts from the Play:
Meverlean Moore (Bossier Parish):
“When they had malarial fever, they would get leaves off the peach trees and wrap them up with the peach tree leaves until they fever go down. That’s what Mama used on her head for migraine headaches. She’d put it in a cloth and wrap it around her head. Cause her migraines were so bad she couldn’t go to school, so bad she couldn’t hardly see. ”
Gypsy Boston (Caddo Parish):
“I am the last of the front porch generation. Where people would sit on the front porch in the cool of the evening and talk about the day’s events. The children would sit on the steps and watch the fire-flies flying over the fields and listen to all the stories that the old people told.”
Louis Pittman (Caddo Parish):
“We had to work. You work a farm, you go to work at daylight and you work until dinner. There was no such thing as fifteen-twenty break like they have now. We would take an hour off for dinner and go back and work ‘til sundown. Then you’d come in and feed the mules and hogs. I told daddy one day, “I’m hungry. I need to go eat.” He said, “That mule’s hungry too and if it weren’t for that mule, you wouldn’t have anything on that table to eat.”
Johnnie Evans (Desoto Parish):
“Back in those days Negros couldn’t go to school. But sometimes the plantation owner would say, “Let him get an education because a literate worker is more use to me than an illiterate worker.” I picked cotton for plantation owners who could not read. I would weigh for them and tell them how much they owed. They could do the sum if it was an even number, like 100 pounds but not if it was 206, 207 pounds. I could figure it out.”
King David Swayzer (Franklin Parish):
“We ate what we raised. We had a garden, a big garden. When I got up some size, we had a big garden, and we raised whatever you could raise in a garden. We didn’t buy no Irish potatoes, we didn’t buy no peas; we might have bought some to plant, that’s all. What little food we bought we had to go to Wisner to get it on the wagon. And the whole place went on one wagon, and you’d be gone a half a day or more. Get the food and load it on the wagon out of the store. And haul it back home and everybody get their groceries out of the wagon.”
Preston Steadman (Natchitoches Parish):
“As far as I am concerned, we had as much to eat and good food from there, from 1929 to 1941 we never was hungry, but I did know a few people that was hungry. I felt so sorry for ‘em. I went home, I told my mother how hungry they were. She just liked to cry and I said, “That’s the most terriblest the way they do it.” I told them to come and eat breakfast, and we fed ‘em cornbread, flapjacks and syrup.”
Norine Shirley (Sabine Parish):
“I remember we did not have a lot of clothes. Children had to take hand me downs from one to another. When one outgrew the clothes, the next one got it, and by the time the last one got it, it was rags. We had a lady, Mrs. Britain. I’ll never forget the name. Oh she came in and brought a big box of clothes and we so thrilled over those clothes. She knew about our sizes and she went around and got clothes and she would give us those clothes. We were thrilled to death.”
Maggie Thornton (Webster Parish):
“Wanna know why they call me Sugar? Cause when I was a baby, momma had to work in the field…she didn’t have no body to stay with me….she’d get little bitty ole clean rags and put a spoon full of sugar in there and a bunch of butter and tie it around with a string. I’d suck when I’d get hungry and I’d suck the sugar out of there and that’s how come they’d call me Sugar.”
Carrie Thornton (Webster Parish):
“We’d pull a pine tree down and ride it, ride it like a horse. Yeah, that’s what we’d play.”
Rosie Thornton (Webster Parish):
“I treat ‘em like I want to be treated…do all I can and all I can do. Pray for ‘em, give them my best respect…uh hum. Help them in the name of the Lord….do just what I can do and all I can do.”
