 My name is Howard Durie. Howard Frederick Durie. I was born in 1889, and I'm 82 years old. I've never gained anything in my life to mount anything. Born poor, I'm state poor. I can cook most anything. I don't cook much except fry something. I live on fried goods most of the time. I don't eat like some people, some people eat like a damn pig, but I don't. I just eat along ordinarily. When we were little kids at home, we didn't have much to eat. Daddy and I, we used to go to the mountains, cut wood, picked a sense of cord. Of course, that bought a lot of corn meals at that time. And we lived on corn. That was what we lived on. Some people would starve to death on what I eat. You don't buy too much stuff. It won't really need it. We'd be tired. That's the one reason why I don't have a telephone. That's right. About ten dollars a month, I can eat somewhere else. Other people tell me I ought to have one. I live near alone. Well, maybe I should, but I don't. And you're going to shun my belly for a telephone. But I do my dishes once a day. I learned that back when I was painting. Right after my wife died. I'd come home here every night and I'd be tired as a devil. I didn't want to do anything, you know. Well, I just quit washing dishes in the evening. I switched over from the morning after I'd done my breakfast to wash up everything. That's the day. Most dishes once a week, once a day. I feel pretty good outside of my throat. I've had extra help. Extra, extraordinary. I can thank the good Lord for that. I feel good enough right now to go out here and solve a little bit of doing anything. I just can't go. I get started and I'm done stopping. All I can say is this. Kids are trying to tear down more everything we've built up in the last hundred years. Trying to tear it all down. They're just trying to take care of it. Some of the stroke problems are just like everything else. It's like blowing the hell out of everything. You can't figure out what in the devil they'd be thinking about. Taking the damn drugs or doing the hell out of everything. It don't make good sense. One of our biggest troubles is we've got too many old people in the Congress. There's a bunch down there that ought to come out of that. It ain't that too damn long. This place was a damn wilderness when I bought it. This whole hill up here was nothing but fresh. I dug them out the hard way. Yes, sir. This is the place where I got stooped shoulders on. Done grubbing trees. Grubbing birds. Now it's starting to grow back up again since I ain't able to work it. If I could keep on working, it'd be all right. But I can't keep it clean and I don't want to stay around here until it all grow up. Don't drive near as much as I used to. I used to be going two or three times a day every week and going on Sunday. I ain't been away on Sunday. I don't know how long. Except I can go to church. I don't like to stay away from home too much. It can make me older and get to more sick too. Sick too home. I ain't been away about three times since my wife died last night. I was on the door. These damn young boys driving around here at night, they don't care where they drive or they run into them. Where he goes for a license. My age now, if anything happens, they're going to take him away from me. I'd better just play low. People claim they never have a word with their wife, but I believe that's a lie. Most people have this argument. I know we used to argue. I'm serious a little bit like I am. She just kept working all the time. I don't know how to get to the house when it's kids. She would never sick too much. Just to get old and more out of gas, I don't know. I was a wonderful woman. I had to be with her together 52 years. There was a little bit of old saying that when you get old, nobody wants you. That's the truth. Nobody never bothers you after you get old. I got a son, the only son of God. He don't know I'm living or dead. He comes out about once or twice every two years. Without this summer once, I stopped and talked a few words to me. I got in the truck and went on. I knew people would worry about dying. I never worry about it. I don't ever think about it. In my age, I very seldom ever think about it. I don't fear it, but that's the thing we're all going to do. I don't fear it, but I do. You've got to do it, so you just might as well make up your mind. But with it, I made my mind up about six, seven years ago. I'm ready. Around here, and everything's quiet, nobody about it. He will do it all. He stays up and sleeps very long at the time, though. He'll wake up. He can't help but fall asleep.