ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 12, 1997 TAG: 9701110009
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
"A heap of the bothering"
Marietta Holley, Franklin County, March 1940.
When she was interviewed, Marietta was still living on her farm with her mother and taking part in work-training classes sponsored by the New Deal's National Youth Administration.
"I get powerful lonesome at home with nobody but old folks and babies. Our house is so far from the highway and the road is so muddy in winter that nobody can come to see you. There is not much you can do and the days get long, even when you know they are short.
"We go to preaching once a month on Sundays. The church is about a mile from our house. The preacher is a young man, and all the girls are crazy about him, but I think he has a sure enough girl way off somewhere ...
"We try to raise most everything to eat on the farm, but looks like we don't have much success. Our tobacco never brings in much more than enough to pay fertilizer bills .
"Our corn never is as good as that growing in the fields right next to it, and looks like crows skip all the other crops to get to ours. Bugs are worse on our potatoes, and weevils is worse on our beans. Hawks always find our young chickens before they do anybody else's, and when our sow has pigs there are always more runts than any other litters .
"Our fences rot down quicker, and our cows go dry quicker than any you ever saw. I been begging my mother to move to town and sell the place, but she has got used to the country and thinks she couldn't do without her cows and pigs. I sure could, for I never did like to milk, or churn, or tote slop to hogs, and that's what you always got to be doing in the country ...
"We got some powerful good bottom land on the place, that is, a small stretch of it. But every time we plant it the floods get it, and when we plant the upper land it gets too dry. There is always something to bother about, and I think a heap of bothering is the kind there is no use of having. Mother is used to it though, and maybe she couldn't live without being worried about something. But I can't help thinking we would be better off in town, and I keep on harping on it and maybe I can get her to listen some of these days."
"Not one drop of sweat, not one penny"
W.D. Deal, Alleghany County, June 1939.
Deal was in his 60s when an interviewer talked with him at his shoe-repair shop in Covington. He died in 1952.
"For 30 years I mined coal in Fayette County, West Virginia. You made good money there. I put my youth and my strength in it and when I got to be around 45, what did they do? Threw me out with those radical physical examinations. They ain't nothin' but for to throw men out what knows coal-mining, and put boys in. Not young Men but Boys, what ain't got no judgment about takin' keer of themselves or the fellows they work alongside of. . . .
"They want ignunt folks from the mountains! They turn off the experienced men and put those in their places."
"Are you talking about unions and scabs?" the interviewer interrupted. "You talk like you were a union man."
"Would you be, if you found your working conditions were bettered where a lot of workers hung together, or would you rather have poor conditions? Take the ignunt ones fur instance. They don't join. They ain't got 'nuf education to count the weight, and what happens: they dig two thousand, two hundred and forty pounds of coal - a long ton. The operators pay by short tons. There's two-hundred and forty pounds mined and the miner not paid for it before the days of the unions. The difference between the long and short ton cost the owner not one drop of sweat, not one penny all to the good of everybody but the man who dug it out. Nary a cent for him! If it hadn't been for the union in the coal mines, there would never have been any safety. Lives weren't worth nothin' at all. Throw 'um in the scrap heap! Plenty more to come work for us!
"When the company threw me out of Fayette mines, I looked for work goin' from one mine to another for more 'n a year. And to every mine I went, they didn't need no more workers. And right along behind me would come a boy and be took on then and there. I got tired lookin' for work an' I seen the coal comp'nies weren't goin' to take on no men 45 years old. So I says to myself, I'll go in a business of my own.
"My daddy was a shoemaker an' I knowed somethin' 'bout it from the time I was a boy, so I started mendin'. The first shop I opened was at White Sulphur Springs. Trade was good in the summer season, ridin' boots an' all that. But the winter season wa'n't nothin', three months out of a year that was all! So I come over here where there were a lot of mills and factories and enough people to give me work the year 'round. You've got to have 'um come in steady for this business. Then my brother come over and opened his shop downtown."
Two small girls came into his shop and spoke to him quietly. "All you want," he told them. "Over there in that pasteboard box."
"I knew you'd give 'um to us," one of them said, smiling.
"They want the old rubber heels I take off," he explained. "They play hopscotch with 'um. They're my pals!
"Their ma's dead and he's got what he calls a housekeeper. She don't pay no 'tention to the chillum to make their clothes fit 'um. They're real purty, when they're clean. Smart 'ums, too, at school or they would be if they if they got 'nuff to eat. Their Pa gets good money at the mill, but he puts it some'ers else than on his chillun. He can't think he is goin' to Heaven with it, not him. Little Nancy and Virginia come around here a lot of the time." He paused. "Ef you're not happy when you're young you'll never be."
"I've had a time"
Josephine Wright, Alleghany County, June 1939.
The Craig County native raised seven girls and three boys, though she lost one of her daughters to tuberculosis.
"I was born in Craig County on Barbour's Creek and lived there on a little farm with my parents until I was married. I was young, only twenty, I didn't know what I was goin' into." She gave a hearty laugh.
"I never had any chance to do anything better at home. Papa didn't believe in spending much time in going to school. He thought that if we learnt to read, write, and figure a little, that was all we needed. He would never buy me a geography or grammar. He said there was no sense in studying such foolishness. I did want to go to school and study the same books that some of the other scholars had, but he wouldn't hear to it. I have tried to do a better part by my own youngin's, but they don't seem to care. I never got a single one of mine to finish high school. . . .
"I've sure had some time raising my family. If either of my girls had to work and get along like I've had to, they'd think they couldn't do it, but a feller don't know what all he can do, 'til he has to. When I was first married and before, I thought I could get along just like my mama and papa did. They always had plenty to go on and we never had to worry about anything. But I've had a time to make ends meet, and God knows it hain't been because I hain't worked and tried to save and manage so's we would have something"
"I wish to God I could go back to them day"
Benjamin Christopher Thacker, Roanoke, August 1939.
Thacker was born in 1860 in Bedford County. He and his wife, Leona Pearl Wood Thacker, had eight surviving children when an interviewer talked with him at their home on Albemarle Avenue in Southeast Roanoke.
"My mother died when my sister Harriet was born, Nov. 10, 1868. She was 43 years of age." He broke down. "I wish I could put my arms around her now, and tell her how I've missed her through all these long years.
"I never was any of these tomcats to run around, never got into any trouble in my life. I am a whole lot older than my wife. I knowed [when] my wife's mother got married, I went to the [wedding]. I didn't think they would raise a girl for me."
He described how folks amused themselves when he was young.
"Well, we always danced when we got together. I always was a great hand at dancing. My brother Jim could outplay anybody on the banjo and several of the boys played fiddles, and I'll tell you we had a good time in them days. We danced the square dance. You couldn't er got a girl to dance like they dance now. Excuse me, but I call it the hugging dance. In my day and time the girls wouldn't have put up with it, no indeed, Lord a mercy! I don't reckon there is enough money in Roanoke to get my wife to put on one of those bathing suits. Even the churches are different, too much style and pride in 'em now. People used to get happy and shout. If anybody shouted in church now they'd call the police. I wish to God I could go back to them days. If a man got sick his neighbors would go and cut his wheat. When my father killed a beef he'd send all his neighbors a roast.
"We would have apple and peach peelings, at night generally. Everybody went early, for we would be invited to supper, you know, then all hands would get busy and peel. The corn shuckings were great times too. One of the men would stand on top of the big pile and lead the singing. You know there was always some apple brandy on hand, but nobody got drunk. I wish I could remember some of the songs we used to sing, but my God!, it's been so long. Let's see, 'Shuck away, shuck away, we'll shuck this corn, if it takes till day.' Maybe I can think of some of the old songs, if you can come to see me again sometime."
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