Introduction

These stories by Hazel Juanita Winters Collins will take you back to a horse-and-buggy time, the early automobile, prerefrigeration, moonshine, and the one-room schoolhouse. For this was the time of Ms. Collins's youth, a time when she was between the ages of five and thirteen, the period 1924 to 1932.

Recollections and People

From recollections in her mature years, we learn about the many people she knew and grew up with on her parents' plantation farm in South Georgia—parents Ruth and Clower; sisters Claudene and Sarah; black Irish aunt Min; a specially gifted child named Angel; uncles Clarence and Willis; cousins Epp, Ellick, Junior, and Frances; and the many black people she loved and admired, including Isabella and Allen, Uncle Gus and Aunt Mary, Mousie, Ed, Sugar, Alice, Lizzer, and Uncle Alp.

The Bruce Family and the Creek House

Then there were the Bruces, who arrived from New York City. Like Uncle Gus and Aunt Mary before them, and Mousie and Ed later, they took up residence at the Creek House. For the year they were there, sons Ben, Bo, and Boaz got into so much trouble for their lack of knowledge about undomesticated animals, it might have spelled their doom.