When were you born?

I was born in 1918, in Lone Oak Community in Cherokee County.

Were you born at home or in a hospital?

At home.

How many brothers and sisters were in your family?

I've got five, or I had five, but I just have a sister living.

Are you the youngest or oldest child?

Well, my mother and daddy had three children in Cherokee County, I was the youngest of the children.

Were your parents born in Cherokee County?

My mother was, my father was born in Alabama.

What is your earliest memory?

My little cousin, just months younger than me, chasing me in the field with a stick, scaring me to death.

Where did you go to school?

I went to school in Dallas.

How did you get to school?

We walked, sometimes up a long railroad track that averaged a mile or two miles long.

What school supplies were you required to bring?

Oh, like always, they furnished the school books that they taught out of and we had to have a pencil and a tablet.

What did you wear to school?

I wore dresses. All the girls wore dresses.

What did the classrooms look like?

The Dallas (classrooms) were nice, very nice. We had each subject taught in a class, not all mixed subjects mixed in one class.

What games did you play at recess?

Just, oh, basketball. Of course I didn’t play much, I liked the talking to my friends.

What classes did you have? What was your favorite?

Well I had, I guess I liked art. We would draw pictures, or maybe they’d have somebody set up at the front of the class and we would draw them, and we’d send them to New York to check and then they’d send it back.

Where did you live as a child?

In Dallas, East Dallas.

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

The first house daddy found, we lived in a hotel down in the city of Dallas, and we would look down and we were so high that people looked like midgets, and then we got us part of a house, we rented part.

Did you have chores? What kind of chores?

Mrs. Young: When I went home I would get the kitchen or the washtub, I was so little that mom sat a bench down on the ground and I had to rub clothes out, especially the baby clothes.

Where did you go to shop for groceries and clothes?

My daddy used to take us children down to Devell’s, and get our secondhand shoes for us and then when they were totally worn out, we would put pasteboard in them to cover the holes so we wouldn’t have to wear wet shoes all the time if it was rainy and cold out. Mom made all of our clothes.

What is the earliest kind of car you remember?

Well daddy had a car: he was a roofer and when they would have storms he would take some men with him, and they’d fix-- it seems like we didn’t have a lot of money, but he made money. The car, I can’t recall, but it was an old one back in the 1920’s.

What was your favorite thing to do as a child?

We would just get in the sand and play in the sand, and we’d take our shoes off and maybe we were barefooted anyway and we’d build up, we’d take the sand and rake it up places in the yard, and build us castles, we’d have sand castles.

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

I babysat for a dollar a day. I walked a mile to keep those children, when I was about sixteen.

Did you go to the movies?

When I was a child at home I saw two movies, one was the King of Kings [1927, silent film] and the other was Noah’s Ark [1929, silent film].

What did it cost to get into the movies?

Ten cents.

What was your favorite television or radio show when you were a child?

Ma Perkins, radio.

What kind of music did you listen as a teenager?

Whatever was fit to have on the radio. I don’t know of any particular ones. It wouldn’t be anything like the honky tonk or rock and all that.

When did you first start dating?

When I seventeen.

Where did you go on dates?

Daddy would let me go to the movies, once in a while, and then the boy I was with (and eventually married) wanted to start going to the honky tonk places and I said no that I wasn’t going to go. I knew the words were terrible, and I said that we had a lot of entertainment at the church--the people were so good with their picnics and all.

What did you remember about the Great Depression?

Well, just everybody would borrow a dollar from their neighbor. There just wasn’t any money, it was hard times, and they (the men) would work on the WPA. It (the WPA) was an organization and they’d get out and do most everything; raking and going about their business.

What do you remember about World War II?

Well my husband went into World War II, and we went through the whole thing. It was a terrible thing. We would keep families in our home down in Victoria, so they could see their boys get their wings to fly out overseas to fight.

Do you remember when you first heard about Pearl Harbor?

I was crying. I heard it and I went to cry and I called my husband. It was a terrible day for me. I had a baby and a little girl, she was about, oh I imagine about five. It was very sad.

If you could give one piece of advice before I leave high school what would it be?

Think twice before you make your decisions.