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JOHN EGERTON:

You were born in '22.

HAROLD FLEMING:

Yes. I grew up in Atlanta and aside from the time I spent at the homeplace, I lived in Atlanta until I went off to college.

JOHN EGERTON:

What was the homeplace in Elberton?

HAROLD FLEMING:

It was the old homeplace where my great-grandmother and great-grandfather brought up the whole family including my grandfather. My bachelor great-uncle devoted his life to taking care of his mother in her old age and he kept the place after she died. He lived there alone until the Depression came along. Everybody else had gone. My mother grew up there. Her mother died when she was tiny, when she was born, actually. She grew up on the place and was raised by her grandmother. So, that was the old homeplace, but we had family all around there. Her father, my grandfather, was an upstanding citizen of Elberton. He was the justice of the peace.

JOHN EGERTON:

You didn't live there, you just went there summers and that kind of thing?

HAROLD FLEMING:

Yes, up until then. And what happened is that we went there for a summer and we didn't leave because of the Depression. Because our father couldn't support us. we never talked about it with Uncle Willie. It was just one of those things, very southern.

JOHN EGERTON:

How many in your family?

HAROLD FLEMING:

Just my mother, my brother and I. There was Aunt Jessie who married a very nice man and lived twelve miles away. Family was all around there, cousins, aunts, uncles and whatnot.

JOHN EGERTON:

How long did you stay there?

HAROLD FLEMING:

It was two or three years. I don't quite have the months straight as to when I went there. It was probably two and a half years.