Could you give me your full name, please?

George A. Marshall

Thank you. And, when were you born?

1924

Were you born in Cherokee County?

Yes.

Were you born at home? Or were you born in a hospital?

At home.

At home? O.K. Did your mom have a midwife?

Yes.

Oh, that's cool! How many brothers and sisters do you have?

I have three brothers and I have a sister.

Were you the youngest or the oldest?

I'm the baby.

You're the baby? Were your parents born in Cherokee county?

No, my parents were born in Arkansas.

What is your earliest memory?

Earliest memory... I can remember when I was three years old.

Can you really?

I sure can. I rolled my mamma's cigarettes. There was a sawmill town just the other side of Brushy Creek just the other side of Frankston. And I can remember I'd go over every Monday to have breakfast with my uncle and my aunt. And I was three years old, believe it or not, and I went there all on my own. And I'd get back and my mother'd say, "You gonna roll my cigarettes?" And I'd roll her a Prince Albert Cigarette.

Where did you go to school?

Frankston and Bullard.

What were schools like? Were they different than they are now?

 Very. Very.

Really? Can you describe that to me?

Yeah, back then, your teacher could whip you and get by with it. You see, now they can't. And I've had my part of it.

How did you get to school, did you walk or...

Well, I had walked as high as four and a half miles to school.

Wow.

I sure did, from Lake Palestine to Geebo [sp]. Then I caught a school bus from Geebo [sp] to Bullard. And that was a four and a half-mile walk, there and back.

What time did you have to get up in the morning in order to get there on time?

Four o'clock. Carried my lunch in a syrup bucket. You know what a syrup bucket is? It's a metal bucket with a handle on it. And you packed you a lunch in it and you carried it to school with you, along with your book satchel.

What kind of school supplies were you required to bring?

Well, just all your readin' books, ‘rithmetic, history, geography... Just like you do now, but y'all have better opportunities than we did.

Right. I have old speller books from my great-grandmother. Did you have different classes? Do you think they were easier or more difficult?

Well…our classes was different than y'all's. We may have three classes in one room. You know what I'm talking about?

Different grades, you mean?

Uh, huh, right. Maybe 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, then 4th and 5th. The higher you'd get, the less you'd have [in the same room].

Was that because people'd have to spend time working?

It was 'cause of the schoolteachers. Now you've got teachers for every subject.

I've read where the younger people sit at the front of class and the older ones sat at the back of the class. Was it the same way?

Well, naw, back then the meaner kids set at the front.

Really?

Uh, huh. Them ones that was kinda unruly, like myself. I had to sit at the front of the class.

Were your classrooms big ol' one room...

Yes. One big classroom. Maybe twenty four students in one room.

Did you have a wood heater?

Coal. In Bullard we had a big ol' coal heater, and it would just tickle us to death when the teacher'd say, "G.A., you go out and get the coal for the heater." And I'd miss so much book work!

What did y'all do for lunch? Did y'all play and...

Yes, we’d have what we called recess. And we would go out and we’d practice ball. And we’d go out and sit under the mock-orange tree. You know what a mock-orange tree is?

Yes sir.

Ok, and we’d chunk mock-oranges at the girls. And hope they’d catch 'em.

So, is that the kind of games that you’d play?

Uh, huh, that and Wolfie. Do you know what Wolfie is?

No sir.

Well, it’s where we’d all line up and hold hand to hand and holler "Wolfie" and then this other class would come and see if they could break through.

Oh, yeah, we call that "Red Rover".

Yeah, you call it "Red Rover," we called it "Wolfie."

What was your favorite of all your classes?

Sports.

What kind of sports did you play?

Baseball. And believe it or not, I was real good.

Where did you live as a child?

As a child? You know where Frankston is? You know where you cross the Neches River bridge? Out where the spring is on the other side of the river bridge, up on top of that little hill, that was our farm on both sides of the road.

Really? What was the first house that you remember living in?

Brushy Creek. That was when I was three years old.

Do you remember what it looked like?

Oh, yeah. It was a big house, and it faced south. And it had two bedrooms on one side and two bedrooms on the other side and a hall right straight through the middle of it. All houses back then had a hall.

Kind of a dog run, sort of?

Yeah! And always had a kitchen. And we didn’t have the dinin’ tables like this. We just had a big long table with benches on either side. Back then most people had big families. And you just set on the bench. And the mother would always serve the kids and the daddy, then she’d eat.

My grandmother lives in a really old house with high ceilings.

Ours was too.

Yours was too?

Twelve foot.

Wasn’t that to keep it cool in the summer time?

Yeah.

Didn’t that keep it too cold in the wintertime?

Yes, but we’d heat it with wood. We had fireplaces and wood heaters. The poor people had to use wood, and the kind’a upperclass people, they could use coal if they had the right kind’a heater.

Did you have electricity in that house?

No, back then there wasn’t no electricity. We had a wind-up telephone!

Oh, cool! Could you describe that for me?

You just reach up and you take that thing off the receiver and you just wind it.

Wow, and that’s how you got your connection?

Yeah, you didn’t have as…you couldn’t get as many people on the phone then as you can now.

Did you have to call the operator to make a call?

Umm hmm.

Did you know the operator personally? Did you know her name?

Well, no. But my aunt back in the early 40’s, my aunt Nora Williams, she was chief operator here in Jacksonville. And she was chief operator in Sulfur Springs.

That was too complicated. I don’t think that I could handle that stuff.

Yeah, that was strictly push-button stuff. And she would have twelve operators lined up on stools, and they would set there and punch buttons to put your calls through. It wasn’t like dialin’ numbers. Back then you would dial the office here and they would dial your number for you…

What kind of chores did you have to do? What was your daily responsibility?

When I was a kid?

Yes, sir.

Well, we would go to school first thing. We had to walk that distance. Then we had to go to school, and you’d better make the grade. Ok, and if you got a whipping at school, then you got one when you got home. It was according to circumstances. But then when you got home, we went out and we chopped firewood. Then we would cut stovewood for mother to cook with.

What’s the difference?

Well, firewood was to burn in the fireplace…

Well, I mean, was the firewood bigger or something?

Oh, yes. Like this [measuring with hands] that’s a fireplace, and we would cut wood for that. We had the wood cut, but we had to split it for size for this. Now cookstove was just a big ol’ stove that went in the kitchen with eyes on it. You cooked with pine in the stove. And that’s what mother cooked with. Now there’s a difference between firewood and cookwood. Well, anyhow, that was our chore, to get that together and bring it in the house so mother wouldn’t have to go to the woodpile the next morning. And then we went to the barn, and we’d feed the livestock that we’d plowed with all that day. And then we’d come back by, and you’d carry your milk bucket with you so after you’d got through feeding the livestock, you’d come back by the barn, then you’d milk the cows. So your mother…so we could have milk to drink. Then she’d sit there with an old churn and churn the butter. And then the last to eat was us, and then the cats was next. We had to feed the cats and the dog, because the dog would look after your house while you’s in the field workin’. Back then we didn’t know what a lock was on the door. People just didn’t mess with your property when you’s not at home. But now I’d be skeered to go off and leave just one door open, let alone unlocked. You’d get back and you’d be, you wouldn’t have anything left in your house. But back then, you didn’t have that to worry about.

When you were milking the cow, did it take a long time? ‘Cause I’ve always watched movies, but I’ve never got to do it myself.

Well, it was according to how big the cow’s bag was. And how much milk she was givin'. My cow would give two gallons of milk.

Every time you sat down to milk her?

Twice a day. But, now, you had to remember the cats too.

So they got milk too?

Oh, the kittens? They would follow us to the barn, and I would sit there like this [gesturing]. And I’d have my milk bucket down here and I’d be milking, and the little kitty would be sitting there about as far as that TV, and I’d do this [squeezing motion] and hit that cat right between the eyes, and they’d never miss a drop. They’d never miss it. It was fun…we had fun growing up. We had fun with our children.

But I remember raising my family. If I told one of my kids, "Go out there and feed the cats"- They’d say "Huh? Can you do that? I got my bookwork to do. I got my homework to do." It’s a different ball game all together. You better be thankful that you are living in these days and times.

Yeah, it’s a lot easier, I know. When you went shopping for your groceries or your clothing and stuff, where did you get that?

 Ah, J.B.Whitesides in Frankston. That was the clothing store, J.B. Whitesides.

So it was kinda like, I’m comparing everything I am thinking to stuff I have seen in movies, because I never have been able to experience this first hand so…

Yeah, well, if you got a pair of tennis shoes and a pair of overalls in a year’s time, you were lucky. Yeah.

Do you remember what was your favorite thing to do out of all the things you did in a day? What was your favorite thing to do?

As a kid growing up?

Yes, sir.

[It] was going up and riding the bull calf that was the son of the cow that I milked. We always rode the calves.

What did you do for entertainment? Like when your chores were done and you were going to sit around, what did y’all do?

Did you ever hear of a Flying Jenny?

No, I don’t think so.

OK, a Flying Jenny is when you go out in the woods and you cut a tree down… oh, at least as big as around as my leg here. OK, you cut that tree down, and you cut it in a slope and then the tree itself, you trim it with an old hacksaw and a handsaw and you cut the end off it and you bore a hole through there. And then you take an old kingpin out of a wagon and you put it through this [hole] into that stump. OK, and you got this big log on that stump and you put axle grease on that stump and make it slick. And you put a person on this end, and then you put a person on that end. And you get the Flying Jenny to flying and it was tilted and the more it went , the faster it got, and the faster it got, the sicker you got. So, finally, you just fall off. But that was our favorite thing, was the Flying Jenny.

So, what else did y’all do during the summertime when there was no school?

As soon as we got our crops gathered, we would go to the bottom and we would cut wood for the winter, and we would cut wood for the fireplace and for the cooking stove. And then we would have to gather corn. We would have to pick cotton, and we would have to strip sugar cane to make syrup.

That sounds like a lot of fun.

Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

I help my Grandpa pick corn. I like doing that…shucking corn and stuff.

Yeah, gathering corn, yeah.

Yeah, well, we sit there. Sometimes he already has it gathered.

See, after we would gather corn…you know what a rub board is? No?

A washboard?

Like they used to wash clothes on. Well, that is what we used to shell our corn with. And we would shell that corn, and we would go to the grist mill and we would grind all of that corn into cornmeal that mother would cook. Make chicken and dressing, make cornbread and stuff like that. Back then, when I was growing up, all that my mother and daddy had to worry about to make groceries was only staple goods. That is like salt, sugar, baking powder, and stuff like that. We grew the rest of it. We had our own beef, our own bacon. We raised everything.

So, you made your own ribbon cane?

Ribbon cane syrup? Yeah, my daddy would cook that syrup, yeah.

How did you do that?

Oh, that is a long story.

Really?

First thing you would have to have is a vat. But you built a big fire under it. Then, you would have a big cooking thing on top. Then you had a grist mill and you had mules that would pull this thing around and around and around. Then, you would stick this sugar cane in there and that would squeeze that cane juice out.  Then that juice would go into a barrel and you'd take that juice and pour it into the vat and you would sit there and cook an’ stir, cook an’ stir, until it come into syrup. And then when you thought it was syrup, you’d take that bung out of the end and you would put gallon buckets down there. Now, I told you I carried my lunch to school [in a syrup bucket].  And then we’d catch that [in the gallon buckets] and then we would sell it. What you didn’t sell…Daddy always kept enough back for the kids and for the family for the winter, and then he would sell the rest of it. And that was the way we had of getting by those days.
 

Do you remember what your first job was, and do you remember how much it paid?

Yes, picking cotton. No, plowing. Fifty cents a day and carried my own lunch.

You took your own lunch, and you would plow someone’s field?

I would plow from sun up to sun down and when you would get through with that day’s work, you would come back by Mr. Ellis’ house. That was our landlord. We called him ‘Landlord.’ He was the one owned the farm, and we were the ones farming his land. He furnished the mules and everything. OK, so we would go out and plow cotton all day and when our day’s work was done, we would back by his house and he would give us 50 cents. That was good money.

I am sure it was. When you got older, did y’all get to go to the movies ever?

Yes, all of my brothers and sisters loved movies, but I loved playing ball. I would go up to the park in Frankston and I would play Keeps. Do you know what Keeps is?

No sir. Oh! When you play for marbles and you get to keep the ones that you…

Yeah, that’s the one.

OK, I have heard of that.

Yeah, and I would always come home with a bucket full of them.

You must have been pretty good, huh?

I was.

Did you listen to the radio?

Yes, the Grand Ole Opry. Yes, the first radio we had, was the first radio in our neighborhood. 1936…it was a Silvertone radio by Sears and Roebuck, and my daddy gave two little pigs—they called them shoats then—gave two shoats and six chickens for that radio. And we had the first radio in our neighborhood. And we would listen to the Grand Ole Opry on a Saturday night.

Did you ever listen to shows like the Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, and stuff like that?

Yeah, and Roy Acuff and The Texas Rangers and all that stuff.

What was your favorite show?

The Grand Ole Opry! Yeah.

When y’all…Did y’all ever get together as teenagers, like a whole bunch of teenagers, get together and do stuff?

Ah, yes, yes. That river bridge over here between here and Frankston. You know where the Trinity River Bridge is? They’ is a road that lays off to the right and we would go underneath there, and we would have all kinds of parties. We would have Easter egg hunts....Well, we would have people from Pittsburgh and Paducah, Texas. We’d have all of my mother’s brothers and sisters from everywhere and we always gathered under that river bridge. At least three times a year. Because they always came here and because there was more of us than there was of them. They always came here.

Do you remember when you first got to start dating?

Started dating? Yes, I sure do!

What did y’all used to do to go on dates?

Alright. The lady that I dated, she lived in Neches, Texas. And I was in school at Bullard. We both graduated. I graduated the year before her. So, I would drive from Bullard to Neches to pick up Dorothy Jean, and we would drive to Frankston to the theater to go to the show. Do Rialto Theater. Ok, then I would always have to buy her a hamburger on the way back to Neches. So, we would stop out here on the Palestine Highway, at the old Eat a Bite Café. I would buy Dorothy Jean a hamburger, and then I would carry her home. Her mother told her...see, I was the only kid I had an old ’33 Chevrolet and I was the only boy that lived in Neches that was 17 and had my own car. I wore khaki britches and a white shirt with my cuff rolled up and I was a boy about town. And my mother-in-law told my wife, she said, "You will never get in the car with that little devil going there." And I wound up marrying her.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Do you remember the Great Depression?

Do I ever! Yeah, you know what we called the armadillo? The Hoover Hog. Yeah,....President Hoover, he was the one that plunged us into the Depression. But, anything like wild game like armadillos, possums, coons, squirrels, rabbits…man, that was meat on the table, yeah.

Do you remember war rationing? Do you remember that sort of thing? My grandmother would always used to tell me stories about how they got little bits of sugar and stuff.

 Well, I guess I do. When I first got my furlough out of the army, I couldn’t even buy gasoline. Couldn’t buy tires for my car. Mr. Roundtree that owned the service station in town, he knew that I was in the army and he would kinda fudge it a little bit and he let me have gasoline. And ah, he let me have a tire if I needed it real bad to go out on my date. To carry Dorothy Jean to the show.

So that was how it affected Cherokee County? They could not sell gasoline as often?

No, just so much to a person. Had to have a ration stamp, had to get it strictly by stamps, gas and tires.

So, you could only get a couple of gallons or so?

Couple of gallons that would be good. That would get you to Neches and back.

So, what do you remember about WWII?

World War II…Ok, I volunteered for the service in 1942. I wanted to go early. I wanted to get into battle. So I was 17 on the Saturday when I went to Palestine and tried to get in the service, and they would not take me, said I was not 18 until Sunday. And I said that is fine, said I’d come back Monday, so I went back to Palestine on Monday and I volunteered for the service. And they wanted to know what branch of the service I wanted, and I told them I wanted the Horse Cavalry. So, they sent me to El Paso for the Horse Cavalry. And they put me in the Horse Cavalry, but then the Japanese tore loose over yonder and they sent me with the First Cavalry Division overseas. But I had not been in it long enough to be in the horses, so they put me in the tank division. You know what a tank is?

Yes, sir.

Ok, so I stayed in El Paso for three months and learned how to drive a tank. And they shipped us up there to Paris, Texas, Camp Maxey. And then from there we went to New York and from there we went to England. And the sixth day of June, during the Invasion of Normandy [D-Day], I was on the first wave as a tank driver for General Patton. And I made morning.  And I was wounded the first time on the sixth day of June…No, the second day of the invasion [7th of June].  The second day of August, I was shot the first time. And then they picked me up and flew me back to England. And got me well, and then they shipped me back over there by a C-47 transport airplane and gave me a new tank, and I rejoined my group. And I went on through Normandy. I went through the Battle of the Bulge, and the Sigfried Line, and that is where I got wounded the last time. Real bad, so I don’t want to talk about that no more.

That’s alright. What do you remember most about the 50’s?

The fifties?

Yes, sir.

I worked at S&K Church Furniture Company as Installation Superintendent, and we installed church furniture all over the United States, Canada, and Alaska. And I flew over there. Yeah, the truck would take it and drop it off at these different places, and I would take flights out of Dallas and what is supposed to be Love Field now, and I would catch a plane to the biggest town to where this church furniture …where these churches were and then I would get me a Hertz Rent-a-car Cadillac and I would go here and there installing that church furniture.

Do you remember, I know when some people hear some tragic news, they can remember exactly what they were doing. Do you remember where you were or what you were doing when you heard that John F. Kennedy was assassinated?

 Yes! Very well. I was in Dallas, and you know where his convoy went under that overpass? I was sitting on that overpass. Me and Wayne Tanyer, my helper. We had gone up to check on a new trailer for S&K Church Furniture Co., and we were sitting in my station wagon, because the company bought me a new station wagon every year. And I was settin’ on that overpass with the radio on, and I said to Wayne, I said, "Look at all that traffic helt up!" He said, "Well, that’s the president’s convoy." And we looked and we saw this convertible with him and his wife and Johnson in it. And they came up under, I mean just like a bullet, under this overpass. Well, he had just been shot, just to my left. Yeah, just to my left. We were just right there when that all happened. Right there, yep. And then, before we got off the overpass, the radio said that he had passed away. We was helt up there about three hours. Yeah, and there is a policeman right here in Jacksonville, he is retired from the force now, that went up. He heard about the news he came up and helped work that deal. Why, he is the one that dug that bullet out of that tree. Right there where the president got shot. One they evidently missed. Right here!

Do you remember watching the first man walk on the moon? Did you watch that on television?

 I sure do. And somewhere here I got that book. I am saving it for my great-grandkids. But I got the pictures and all of it. I remember ever bit of it.

Do you really?

I sure do. Uh, what was it, "A big step…"?

"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind".

Leap for mankind, that is right.

That is pretty neat.

Yep, yep.

Well, if you could give me one piece of advice before I leave high school, what would it be?

I would choose a college, now I am kinda an ol’ fogey, ok? But I would choose a college where there is nothing but girls going to college. At this particular college, pick you a subject that you can really think…no, I’m going to rephrase it. That you really know that is what you want to do, and I would study hard and make Momma and Daddy happy.

Thank you so much, you have been so helpful to me, you really have.

It’s been a pleasure.