When were you born?

I was born on Sunday morning at 8:00, January 1, 1913 in Cherokee County.

Were you born at home or in a hospital?

At home.

How many brothers and sisters were in your family?

We had five boys and five girls in our family. One girl and one boy died when we were babies. My mother and father raised eight children to be grown. They raised four girls and four boys.

Are you the youngest or the oldest child?

No, I wasn’t the youngest or the oldest. I was the fourth child.

Were you parents born in Cherokee County?

Yes my parents were born in Cherokee County.

Were your grandparents born in Cherokee County?

That I am not positive about right now, but I think so.

What is your earliest memory?

My earliest memory? I was very ill, in fact I was blind, and my father bought me a doll and this doll was in a box. I remember us taking the doll out of the box, and I was going to kiss the doll, but I kissed the box instead. I remember my mother crying, because I couldn’t see.

Where did you go to school?

I started school at Iron Hill, which was in Cherokee County.

How did you get to school?

Walked.

What kind of school supplies were you required to bring?

A big sheet tablet, which was yellow paper and a pencil. I had eight map colors. They were colored pencils, and I am not sure that they were required or that my mother and father just bought them for me. I had some little scissors.

What kind of clothes did you wear to school?

Homemade dresses, and when it was cold we wore longhandles [underwear], and we had cotton stockings that came up above our knees, and we had high top shoes.

What did the classrooms look like?

The classrooms were very plain. Basically there was four walls and two walls were practically all windows, and we had a blackboard that reached across one wall, and I don’t remember any pictures, but my teacher usually made some paper roses and kept them in the classroom.

Did the school have air conditioning?

Oh no!

How was it heated in the winter?

It was heated from a big, big stove in the corner of the classroom, and there was wood, and the children would have to go to the wood pile and bring in the wood, and the teachers made the fires after they got to school.

What did students do for lunch?

We brought our lunch from home. We wrapped it in a newspaper or a grocery bag, and it consisted of a biscuit and some type of meat. Maybe a piece of bacon or maybe a sausage or maybe a piece of ham, which had been home grown and home cured. Then we would have baked potatoes. Also, my mother would make a chocolate cake and we would have a piece of cake, and that was our main meal.

What games did you play at recess?

The younger children played Ring Around the Rosy, Rock the Sticks, and Little White House on the Hill. The older children played basketball, and they never went to other schools to play. They just played at recess.

What was you favorite class?

I loved all of my classes. I suspect geography was [my favorite], because I loved to draw and color the maps. That is the reason I had the colored pencils.

Where did you live as a child?

In the country.

What were the roads like?

Very rough! The men, when they lay back their crops, they would work on the roads. They didn’t have a road commissioner to work on the roads like we do now, and in the wintertime the roads would get wet and we would always get stuck. They were very muddy and rough.

What did the first house you remember living in look like?

I remember the first house that I was born in. It was a big frame house, and it had one, two, three, four, five rooms. A big kitchen, and a hall. It had two porches and shingles that my father had split.

Did you have electricity?

No. We didn’t have electricity. My mother didn’t have electricity in her home until 1945. I was already married when we got electricity in our home. I remember that she was so happy, because our Christmas tree had lights on it.

Did you have chores?

Did we ever have chores! Yes we did! Before we went to school we got up and milked the cows and strained the milk. We washed the breakfast dishes, and we made up the beds.

Where did you go to shop for groceries or clothes?

When we were children, children didn’t go to town. Our father did most of the grocery shopping, and occasionally our mother would get to go to town, and she would buy material. She made our clothes. She ordered a lot of the material from the Sears Catalog.

What is the earliest kind of car you remember?

Well it was a Ford. My grandparents came to see us, and they had three children at about the age of us older children, and my father had up a syrup mill. We went to the watermelon patch and got some watermelons. We ate them, and our aunts and grandparents wanted to see how the syrup mill worked, so my brother was feeding watermelon rinds into the syrup mill and got his hand mashed real badly. I remember they carried my brother to the doctor in this Ford car. It did not have any glass windows. You put up canvas curtains when it was wintertime to make it warmer. The canvas snapped to the outside of the car.

What was your favorite thing to do as a child?

I liked to read, and I liked to sew. I made a quilt top when I was five years old. My mother cut out the blocks for me and I sewed them together. I was so happy with my quilt. In later years our house burned and my quilt burned with it.

Did you have television?

No we did not. My parents got television right after they got electricity. My father bought the first radio that was sold in Rusk. When I was married my husband bought the second television that was sold in Troup.

What did you do during the summers?

Well being an older child, I had to take care of the babies. I would rock them and watch them while my mother worked. I would also help her in the house with the cooking. I remember when my mother had a baby, they would keep the mothers in the bed for ten days. I could remember cooking when I was about six years old. I was standing on a box and my mother would tell me how much meal and how much of the ingredients to put in there. I would stir it up and put it in the oven when I was very young.

What was your first job, and how much did it pay?

My first job was teaching school, and it paid seventy dollars a month. It was at Iron Hill. I taught school where I went to school as a child.

Did you go to the movies?

Oh no honey! We didn’t even know what the movies was. Now sometimes we would go to a medicine show at Ponta. We would go at night in a wagon to the medicine show.  And they always carried us to the fair if it was in Cherokee County. They tried to see that we got to the fair. We could ride one ride and we had to go into all the booths at the fair. It was quite an educational trip.

When you first got radio, what was your favorite show?

The one I remember most was the Grand Ole Opry. It came on Saturday night. Then at noon time there was a Christian program. They had singing and preaching. My mother and daddy would always see that when we ate are lunch we would listen to all this around the radio. There was a lady who sung on the radio and her name was Ethel Glenn. I remember my mother thought that she could sing so good. And when she had her next child she named her Ethel Glen in honor of this lady who sung on the radio.

Did people tell you ghost stories or scary stories when you were a child?

My father was a great storyteller. He would tell us stories, and some of his stories were scary to us children. My mother would tell us Bible stories.

What kind of music did you like to listen to?

As I said previously we listened to the Grand Ole Opry, which was music. And later my father bought us a piano. It was a Kimball piano. Two or three of us girls could play, but not very well. We would gather around that piano, and sing church songs. It got to where a lot of people would come and we would sing and have a good time. Then they had a regular singing at Gallatin, which was about five miles from where we lived. Every Friday night we would go up to Gallatin and sing. I am sure that we made beaucoups of mistakes, but we had fun and enjoyed it. Back then it scared me when I missed a note. I would almost cry--and now it scares me if I hit a note right [laughing].

When did you first start dating?

My parents didn’t allow us girls to date until we were about eighteen years old.

Where did you go on dates?

We would go to the front room and play the piano. We would sit on the piano stool together. That was the biggest part of our going.

What do you remember about the Great Depression?

I didn’t know it was happening. We had plenty of food that was raised on our place. My mother was good with food. She was a great cook, and she knew how to take care of food. She knew how to can it and how to preserve it and how not to let it spoil. My daddy made us the first cooler I ever saw. He had three square pieces of planks, and four two-by-fours. He rolled those planks on the two-by-fours. Then my mother would make a great big sheet and put it around that cooler. On top we had a big pan of water, and we put the ends of that sheet into that water and the water would drip down and keep that sheet wet and the wind would blow through it and keep the food cool inside.

What do you remember about World War I when you were young?

All I remember about World War I was that my daddy had a half brother and we called him Uncle Alvin. And Uncle Alvin had to go to the war, so we went to Ponta and saw him off to the war. I remember my mother crying, because Uncle Alvin had to go to the war. Also, a lot of times we didn’t have biscuits; we had hot cornbread instead. Our mother told us that we were sending our flour to Uncle Alvin. We were all willing to eat corn bread so Uncle Alvin could have our flour. I remember when the war was over a man of the name of Mr. Rebuke came by our place and told us that the war was over. It was on bright sunshiny day, and our mother took us down to the field where my daddy was plowing. Every step of the way she way hollering, "Joe, the war is over, the war is over." My daddy stopped his plow and sat down and said, "Thank the Lord." I remember we went back to Ponta to the train to pick up Uncle Alvin, and my mother cried again. I remember very plainly thinking I wish she would make up her mind. She cried when he left, and she cried when he come back. Why can’t she just make up her mind? Does she want him to leave or does she want him to stay?

Do you remember when you first heard about Pearl Harbor (World War II)?

Oh, indeed I do! I was teaching in Livingston school and I stopped at a filling station. See, cars didn’t have radios in my day. I was getting some gasoline and they told us while we were getting some gasoline. Oh it was about 5:00 in the afternoon, and someone came outside and told us about Pearl Harbor.

What else do you remember about World War II?

[I remember] we had blackouts. I remember one or two blackouts that we had. That meant that you couldn’t have any lights on at all, and we had to all be in the house. We had to be very quiet. We had different men appointed to go around and check and see that we all were having a blackout. If we didn’t we had to pay a fine.

Do you remember anything about war rations?

The rationing like sugar?

Yes ma’am.

Yes I do. We had coupon books, and we had to have a coupon before we were eligible to buy sugar, shoes, and shortening. But my mother and daddy rendered out the lard from their hogs. So they gave away their coupons to the neighbors so they could buy the things they needed.

What do you remember most about the fifties?

I was teaching and going to school. I had gotten married in ‘42. So I was busy establishing my home during that time.

What do you remember about the Cold War?

I remember we were taught to look on the Russians as enemies, and as no good. But we learned later of course that they were people just like we were.

Do you remember what you were doing when you heard that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated?

I remember exactly what I was doing. I was in Houston teaching at a school named East Houston, and at that time we teachers had to go out and load the buses. We watched the children get on the bus. There was fourteen buses that came to that school, and we had a post for each bus. The children would line up behind these posts and us teachers would see that there was no pushing and shoving. Our principal Mr. Murdock came down the row and told us that our president had been shot.

Do you remember what you were doing when man first walked on the moon?

I was listening to him, honey. We had a television at that time, and I thought that was the most wonderful thing that ever happened. I remember that he was reading, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." That is [a passage] from Genesis in the Bible. I remember when he got off he said that "this is a small step for man, and a big step for mankind." I thought it was very great. I remember the blastoff. I was in the same building when they had the blast off. Our principal let us come into the auditorium and listen to it on the big TV.

If you could give me one piece of advice before I leave High School what would it be?

"So live in youth that you don’t have to blush in old age." That means live a clean life while you are young so you won’t be embarrassed when you are older.