When interviewed, Lulu Scott was living at 800 North California Street in Indianapolis. According to the fieldworker, she was “an elderly woman who refused to give her age, being very positive on that score. [She] has been a cook for years, is very garrulous, but was not definite concerning her early home. Her hair is kept dyed, and although she remembers things from far back she evidently overlooks the fact that such reminiscing rather establishes her age, which I judge to be at least seventy, if not more. Her complexion is dark; and she appears to be well preserved for one of her apparent years. She enjoys reminiscing and relates things in the most dramatic manner. She claims to be related to every person in the Norwood section but refuses ‘to go runnin’ out there ‘cause they don’t come runnin’ over here to see me, so I just quit now.’ Coming originally from Kentucky, she has lived in this city more years than she would confess, but a guess based on her conversation would place the date around thirty years or more. She is deeply religious and recalls with great pleasure that a bishop of her church once shook hands and chatted with her a moment.” Lulu tells a lot about folklore and folklife in her narrative:
We was born about forty miles from Lexington, Kentucky, me and the others, eleven children altogether—about six and five, don t exactly remember which. [She did not recall the number of boys and the number of girls in her family.] Patrick Dood and Harriet—that’s a pretty name, Harriet—they was my folks, my mother and father. They was slaves, but the children ain’t never served, ain’t never served, not nary lick they ever served. My father could read and write; dont know how he learn nor who teach him, but he know.
We lived on the plantation before the war. Then ‘long come emancipation, and we moved off somewheres, and my father bought a farm, and we lived on that. We raised everything we used. Had hogs and chickens and geese and ducks and turkeys. And we kept the feathers from them for pillows. Little ol’ frame house, didn’t have but two doors and two windows and four rooms. The children fell asleep on the floor, like children will do, and my mother’d go roun’ gatherin’ ’em up and put ’em to bed. She laid some at the head and some at the foot of the bed. Five or six’d sleep in the bed, and she’d lay some at the head and some at the foot.
The children would go barefooted in the summer, but again fall would come, we’d get shoes. They’d send off in the fall for shoes for us, for winter shoes. My daddy’d get a fine pair of boots for ninety-eight cents, and reckon my mother pay roun’ about the same for hers. A dressmaker’d come twice a year and make clothes for us. We’d come down the pike to meet her, a-swingin’ on her, pesterin’ her, carryin’ bundles for her. All the suits for the little boys was made from the same cloth, all the suits just alike. All the scarfs, mittens, stockin’s, socks, caps, and such like my mother’d knit. She knit everything; wasn’t no store to be a-runnin’ to ever’ minute.
Potatoes and carrots and cabbage and apples’d be buried in the ground, but the apples’d sometime have a groun’y taste, so sometimes we wouldn’t bury them. And we’d make a keg of sauerkraut; many’s the hour I spent makin’ sauerkraut. Why, just makin’ it, like you make all sauerkraut.
Don’t never sweep no dirt out’n doors after dark, and don’t you empty no ashes after dark, neither, and when bosses kicked and neighed after dark, and late at night you know spirits was at ’em. They can see spirits the same as I can. ‘Course I can see spirits. Seed one just before Christmas. I seed this’n and knowed they was something I done forgot to do, something she want me to do before she died. Like as not I done forgot to do it, and she done come back to see. I looked up from my work and see this person a-standin’ by a table, head on one side like, and wearin’ a blouse and skirt—just a-standin’ there. And I quick turn my head and look off and look back, and she’s done gone. That’s the way to do. If you see a spirit and dont want to see it, just turn your head quick and back, and it’ll be gone.
And back in those days, didn’t have no almanac; we read the elements. We told rain by the moon and weather by the moon and by when the moon was goin’ to change. Didn’t’ use no almanac—we could just go out and look up and tell just what the weather goin’ be, tell by the elements.
Christmastime we’d hang up our stockin’s and get a glass-headed doll. And we’d have black cake and plum puddin’. Black cake was like fruitcake except it didn’t have no raisins or nothin’ in it. We had turkey, chitlins, and everything—cook enough to last a week. And we’d go to church—the children in front and ol’ folks behind.
A child born with a veil over its face, it can see spirits plain as day. They can just walk down the street and see ’em; they just step out the way and walk ‘round ’em. You just watch, you’ll see it happen time and again. ‘Course they hardly ever say nothin’ ‘bout it, but that’s just what they doin’—gettin’ out of the way some spirit, and if you wasn’t born with a veil, you can see spirits by lookin’ over the left shoulder of anybody who was born with a veil.
A copper ring worn on the left ankle’ll keep off rheumatism, and a little bag of asafetida worn roun’ your neck on a string’ll keep off certain diseases. They say, too, that a string tied to your ankle or wrist’ll keep you from crampin’ in water.
And when you got sick folks in the’ house and you hear a dog howlin’ and carryin’ on, just get ready to give up that person ‘cause it’s a sure sign they’ll die. If you never had rats in your house and one comes and gnaws and gnaws and can’t catch ’em, it’s a sure sign of death. Just like when you hear knockin’ and you can’t find it, it’s death knocks.
And mark it down. When sick folks that been very low get suddenly better and want to eat a lot, just mark it down; it’s death wantin’ to be fed.