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"Mostly vegetables from my daddy's garden," answered Esther.  "I had been doin' it for so long I didn't think about it twice until after the Depression and they passed all them laws."

"Laws?"

"Well, they got themselves a new chief of police is what they did and he was hell bent on settin' things right between black folk and white folk, if you know what I mean," said Jeremias.

"Watch your language, Mr. Jefferson," ordered Esther.

"Sorry," he said.

"He didn't bother you, Mr. Jefferson?" I asked.

"I supplied his eggs," he said with a chuckle.  "He liked them double-yolked eggs and that's a fact.  He would make the best fried egg sandwiches in the state of Alabama with them double-yolked."

"Well, he had been right nasty to me the last week and I didn't want to get near that town," said Esther.  "He said he would throw me in jail.  I begged my daddy not to send me into Birmingham again, but he didn't have nobody else to sell the things, so I got all the way to that spot where I first met Jeremias and I just couldn't go no farther."

"I felt sorry for the fat girl sittin' there cryin' like that," said Jeremias.

At the word fat, Esther slapped her husband on his arm, but too quickly for me to focus my camera.

“I was too fast for you, wadn't I, Missy,” said Esther.  “I will be more than happy to do it again so you can get your pitcher.”

The woman and I exchanged conspiratorial glances.

"Well, darlin', I could see right off that you had a good heart," he apologized to his wife.  "I was a trustin' soul back then, don't you know."  He rolled his eyes.  "If only I had known then what I know now."

Jeremias immediately covered his head in a playful shield from an expected attack from his wife, but none come.

He continued, "I told her, Listen, girl, I know what you can do.  Give me your sacks, and I'll put them in amongst my eggs where no one will know.  Everybody knows Jeremias and won't nobody mess with my eggs.  You can tell me where to take your stuff or where I should meet you, and then you follow me a long ways off so that no one will think there's anything going on betwixt us."

"I, of course, accepted without protests."  The old woman winked at the younger again, then leaned closer to me and held up a flat hand to hide her mouth from her husband's view, then she whispered, "He was kinda cute."

We women giggled.

"What did you say to him?" I asked.

"I just looked at him pitifully and said Would you?"  She fluttered her eye lashes.  "That would be more than I could have hoped for.  Then I handed over my sacks and Jeremias hid them so good that not even a hawk's eye would have detected anything.  Then I asked him if I should pull or help push the cart."

"You sure did," Jeremias confirmed.  "At the time it never occurred to me that you would help, but it sure helped I'll tell you."