Agnes's $5 hatchet, her husband joins the work, and a horse for tomato gravy

So they left, and they wouldn't take no money or not. They says, all right, Agnes, when you get your cabin built, we'll come and look it over. So they went home. So next day, I had my little new hatchet.

I paid $5 for a beautiful little hatchet. I took it, and I was going to go in the woods and start peeling the logs. And my husband said, where the heck you think of gold with an axe? Where did you get that axe?

I said, well, I bought it. I said, Charlie and Aliyo went and they cut the logs last night. So the trees. So I'm going to go there this morning, and I'll do all I can. And when I get too tired, I'll go home.

And finally, I'll have them all peeled. Well, how many did you just cut? Well, it's 18 or 20. I don't know exactly. So he said, well, I'll have to go and sharpen my axe. And I've got to go with you to find out so you don't build on somebody else's land.

Well, I thought that was kind of cute. So he wasn't going to have nothing to do with that work with a cabin or nothing. So he went and he shopped his axe and some kind of a draw knife.

And we went to work and walked up there, just for a little ways. And he says, well, the trees. So I showed him. So I brought him a bottle of beer with me and he smoked a pipe on the stump.

And he says, well, let's go get after it. Well, I was surprised that he was willing to work, too, you know. He worked with me, and we'd done four logs, four trees, skin them, by noon. Then we went home, and after, we didn't go to storm.

And we kept on doing it for several days, and first thing, you know, we had all of them peeled. So he says, oh, there ain't going to be enough. Well, I said, I don't know. I don't want too big of a building.

Just someplace where I can have. a little window and a door and a little rock are sitting between the door jams and watch the scenery from it well i figured to say eight by six feet or something like that little cubby thing instead of that well he says i'll measure this and say why it's no use of making a little dinky thing like that and first thing you know he was interested enough that he started measuring and he was putting ditches around where the main log's going to be, and he went and he hauled some sand so deep, six or eight inches deep into these

trenches, and then he got himself some big, big cement bricks, and he put them in there and level them off and all that, and he kept on it day by day, and first thing, you know, he had all set ready for the first logs.

Well, they were in the woods, you know, and so he says, how are going to get these logs? Well, you know, the trees were places too close together and all that. He couldn't go there with his little tractor.

And so finally I got a bright idea who's got a horse, and Louis Gillick had a horse, in fact, two horses. And so I seen him Sunday, like at church, and I asked him, I said, do you suppose I could borrow your horse for a day?

With the harness on it, I can go and drag them locks for my husband to the little hill where I'm going to have the cabin. He said, I tell you what, you go and make me a tomato gravy like my mother used to make and some dumplings, and I will haul all them logs myself with a horse.

I says, well, that's easy. So I made him a good dinner, and he hauled the hallogs. There was 18 or 20. Well, anyhow, he put him right on the spot where the neighbor bulldozed and where my job had everything ready.