I lived on  Lookout Mountain and Daddy was working in Atlanta one hundred miles away.  He came home on the weekends.  One Sunday we went to see his parents who lived on Sand Mountain.  We were talking about sewing and feed sacks, etc.  Ma Frasier said why didn’t me and those lazy gals make quilts out of the bags.  I didn’t want to tell her that H.N. did not want me making quilts so I lied and told her my old treadle Singer wouldn’t sew. 

            The next morning when H.N. left he said, “Mama, here’s the money you’ll need for the week and here’s the $75.00 for the car payment.  Will you get a money order from the mail man and send it?”  He laid the money on the table in two piles.  The kids all left for school and here drove this eager beaver in a new car. 

            He was really a con artist and Ma Frasier was open game for all con people…so was I.  Anyway he said my mother-in-law had sent him over there to fix the machine.  I said it didn’t need fixing; but he asked about each kid by name and wanted to see the machine.  He saw the money on the table and he fixed that machine…$75.00 worth.  I’d only given ten dollars for it when it was new.  I not only gave him the $75.00, I made him a roast beef sandwich and gave him a glass of milk.  He left saying he would be back on the weekend bringing an electric machine and he’d knock the $75.00 off the $125.00 for the new machine.

           That night Daddy dreamed that we lived in a nice two-story house with the lawn going down to a river.  He was away and when he got home for the weekend I had the most beautiful white buffalo he’d ever dreamed of on the lawn. 

           Of-course when he came home on the weekend seven kids met him saying, “Mama gave the car money to the sewing machine man”.  And he made me mad and so sad I cried by saying, “So if Mama’s happy, I’m happy”.

           But from that day if we were undecided about something one of us would say, “White Buffalo?”  And I still say that.  No person living can con me into anything.  I can smell them coming.

 Louise Weir Frasier
January 1, 1992