“I must tell you of a whipping I got while I belonged to Mr. Milton Bourne, that I did not deserve, and if I had the time to go over again, I would whip the negro who caused me to get it. There was a still house on Red River, not far from Mr. Sugg Fort’s mill, it was long before Mr. Fort owned the mill; Mr. Joe Wimberly owned and operated the still house. In that day and time, the best people of the land made whiskey; it was pure, honest whiskey, and did not make those who drank it do mean things, like the whiskey of today. Mr. Bourne had hired me to Mr. Wimberly to work in the still house, with a lot of other boys, about my age--along about nineteen and twenty years old. We were a lively set of youngsters, and laid a plan to steal a widow woman’s chickens one night and have a chicken fry. We took a solemn pledge just before we started, that we would never tell on each other, if the old lady suspicioned us. Well we stole them, and one of the boys, Bob Herndon, who had been raised to help his mammy about the kitchen, was a pretty good cook, and he fried them. I think it was the best fried chicken I ever put in my mouth. A day or two went by, the still house shut down, and they put me to work in the field. Corn was knee high, I was chopping out bushes in a field near the river, when I saw Mr. Wimberly’s overseer come stepping down the turn row like he was mad as a hornet. I knew him so well, I could tell when he was mad, as far as I could see him. My heart began to beat pretty fast, as he asked about the chickens. I told him I did not know a thing about them, but when he began to tell things that really took place, I knew some one had given us away. He got out his rope and tied me to a hickory sapling, and said: ‘Now John, I’m going to give you a little dressing off for this, Bob Herndon has let the cat out of the wallet; of course he is the biggest rascal of the gang.’ Every now and then he’d stop, and ask me if I was ready to own up, but he soon found I was not, and turned me loose to chopping bushes out of the corn again. About twenty years after that, I met that same overseer at the mill one rainy day; he was older, and I reckon his heart had softened, and we laughed and talked over that chicken fry, and what it cost me. It was the first and last dishonorable scrape I ever got into.” [Illustration: Uncle John McGowan, the great Broom Maker.]