Fishing in the Morning, Gardening by the Moon
William Richardson
William Richardson: If you were able-bodied you worked, and
if you didn't, it just . . . it was a social stigma not to work.
Nobody respected anybody who didn't work, doing something. My
grandfather would say, "We're going fishing in the morning." That
meant he'd pick me up at four and we were going to fish until
six-thirty and then we'd be at work by seven.
Jen Cramer: I got to ask this, was anyone gardening by the
moon by any chance?
Richardson: The Farmer's Almanac is one of best predictors of
the weather there is. Been accurate more than weather forecasters
are in the last couple of years. Yeah, people look at that. And you
had the old things, too. The African Americans would like to fish
along the creeks, and when the ground was warm enough to plant
cotton, they would be able to sit on the ground. And that was the
old wives tale: if the African Americans were sitting on the ground,
then the ground is warm enough to plant cotton.