Voices of the Ozarks

Want to subscribe to Voices of the Ozarks in your podcast app? Just copy this link: http://ozarkregional.org/blog/?feed=podcast, then paste it into your podcast app’s add a feed field. You can also click the podcast icon on the sidebar to subscribe in Apple Podcasts.

Today we are interviewing John Mertens, former director of Ozark Regional Library, interviewed by John Jones.

First, some background on you.

Where are you from?

What did you do before coming to the Arcadia Valley and so forth?

Yeah.

Okay, I grew up, partially grew up in Wisconsin.

My family, when I was very young, lived in Wisconsin.

I lived there until I was 12 years old, had an unfortunate situation.

My father was an excellent businessman.

He worked hard, worked long hours.

He owned a clothing store in Dodgeville, Wisconsin.

That’s the home of the Land’s End, their main place of business is Dodgeville, Wisconsin.

But my father died at age 44 of a heart attack, and so that was the end of his business.

My mother sold the business and so we were sort of out of a place to live.

So we moved to Fulton, Missouri.

Of course, between Jefferson City and Columbia, and that’s where I was born, in Fulton, Missouri.

I have a twin brother, and he’s living in Bowling Green, Missouri.

We sometimes don’t have much contact, being that far away, but I’m going to see him this coming Sunday, so looking forward to that.

I lived in Fulton, Missouri, partially through my college years, from sixth grade on through most of my college, and I don’t know, Fulton was a great place to grow up for a kid back then.

I’m talking about the late fifties, early sixties, and living in Fulton, good grief, I was close to half a dozen different colleges and universities, I had my choice of a lot of places to go to school.

The main college that I went to was Lincoln University, and of course that was Missouri’s black university, I guess it still is, but what a pleasure it was to go to Lincoln University.

You know, I’d spent time in, like at University of Missouri in Columbia, and a lot of the courses at the University of Missouri in Columbia were taught by graduate students, who left a lot to be desired as teachers.

When I got to Lincoln University, all the courses were taught by PhD professors, and it was so enjoyable to the professors with doctor’s degrees, what wonderful teachers they were, and I really enjoyed that, I enjoyed being taught by PhD professors.

Same thing about Lincoln University, and some of the other schools back then, fifteen hours a semester, you could take fifteen hours at Lincoln University for sixty dollars a semester, that was the cost of fifteen hours of college education back then, a whole semester.

But very soon, the price went up to seventy-five dollars a semester, and three years later, when I graduated from Lincoln University, tuition had gone up to a hundred dollars a semester, and I had just gotten out of the Army when I went to school at Lincoln University, and I had the advantage of the military paying for my education, and for five years, I received money from the military for my education, five years of college, through master’s degree, and the total cost of my college education was five thousand five hundred dollars for five years, eleven hundred dollars a year got me through college, and that’s the thing I appreciate most about my military experience, was that it paid for my education, and I of course graduated from Lincoln University with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, and from there I went on to the University of Missouri in Columbia and received my master’s degree in library science, so that’s my background, and had a wonderful time growing up, and really enjoyed my college education, so while, also while I was in the military stationed in Germany, this was about the time, nineteen sixty-five about that time period, they were sending everybody to Vietnam, and so I ended up in Germany, which was a wonderful situation, I was stationed in Germany for two years, and I spent more than six weeks touring Europe, that was my military experience, grand tour of Europe, gosh I went to Italy, the best food, I was in Europe sixty years ago, and the best food was in Italy, I bet it’s still the best, and so I spent time in Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, England, so and as I traveled Europe I spent about a week in the major cities, Rome, Bern, Switzerland, Paris, France, the Rhine River in Germany, London, in England, so those were wonderful moments in my military assignment, and I ended there, so what brought you to Ozark Regional Library, well I had worked in high school, I had worked in public libraries, and public libraries were something that I was interested in, and I came to Ozark Regional Library because I found out the position was open for director of Ozark Regional Library, and it was a promotion from my previous employment, and of course an increase in salary, so I was very happy to come to Ozark Regional Library, and so that’s mainly why I’m here.

What was the library system like when you arrived, were there any surprising things about it, either good or bad?

Well I was very pleased with the library system when I arrived at Ozark Regional Library, of course things were pretty traditional as far as library service, books were checked out with signing your name on a library card, and the book being stamped with a date due, and do you remember what the fine was back then, was it a penny a day or two pennies?

The lowest I remember was two cents a day.

I guess when I started a library fine was two cents a day, and I’d never changed it for 35 years that I was here, it was two cents a day, and of course deliveries were made to the seven branch libraries that were part of Ozark Regional Library, and of course the headquarters library was in Ironton, and seven branch libraries were in St.

Genevieve, Fredericktown, Annapolis, Viburnum, Steeleville, Cuba, and Bourbon, and we had regular delivery of books to those branches, and any special book that was requested by a patron, they were delivered to each branch with vehicles that the library owned, and also at that time the Ozark Regional Library had bookmobile service to area schools, and we had a monthly schedule and we had an old bookmobile then, and a day on the bookmobile involved putting a quart of oil in the bookmobile, because it would use oil, and putting in antifreeze, the bookmobile leaked antifreeze, so we had to be sure that the bookmobile was topped off, the radiator was topped off, and the engine, so that was very important, and if you didn’t do those things, the bookmobile didn’t go.

I was very pleased with our staff, and I tried, did my best to support staff, and believe it or not, what the staff wanted most were the little supplies that the library used, you know, date due slips, and cards for the patrons to sign, and pencils, and date due stamps, and just little things like that, and of course supplies, cleaning supplies, if I kept the branch libraries supplied with those items like that, things ran well.

So I enjoyed meeting all the, our people working at the various libraries, and thought that they all worked hard, and did their jobs admirably, and what a delight it was to work with the workers at the library, and the branches, and I paid special attention to the making sure that there were back up people to cover sick leaves, and vacations, and I know that the branch librarians appreciated the effort that the regional library made to have extra staff available that they were called for.

What changes did you make to the library system once you got here?

Well basically I kept the buildings, the library had eight buildings, and vehicles also, so I kept the buildings in good repair, if problems with buildings were reported to me, I made sure to get on fixing problems right away, especially you know, heating, air conditioning, plumbing, that stuff has to be addressed immediately to keep people happy, and also changes that were made.

After being here for a few years, I started improving library buildings, adding, well modernizing buildings, building new buildings, and improving equipment, things like that.

Well building improvements, I was lucky enough to be involved with some new buildings, and repairs to existing buildings, and some of the new buildings at Ozark Regional Library built, we built a new building in Ironton, and I’ve always been amazed by the building in Ironton, amazed mainly, this building is almost 8,000 square feet, I think 7,700, and it cost $26.41 a square foot, and you know, most buildings today are at least $100, I don’t know, $150 a square foot, so it was built very inexpensively, and it was built to national specifications, national building specifications, you know, there were no, at the time, 1984, there were, whatever the national building code was, has been applied to this building, and there was no requirement that this building be built, that’s stout, stoutly, but this was built to national, to the national building code, and probably the only thing it doesn’t have are sprinklers, sprinkler system, it’s got everything else, and of course that was in 1984, I don’t know what improvements have been made to the national building code since then, I’m sure, a lot, and it was built to the handicapped code back then, and so anything that the library built that was new was built to the national building code.

What was amazing to me, as director of the library, I told the board that we could build a new library here in Ironton.

I said build this new library, and I think something like ten months later we moved in, we moved into this building, and any other building that I had the privilege to work on took three years, we built a new building in Steelville, that took three years of planning and getting the financing, and of course also had the privilege and pleasure of building a new building in St.

Genevieve, and what amazed me about the building in St.

Genevieve, of course the building there is owned by the county commission, but I worked with the architects and interior designers that built that building, what was it, the building, John, the senior the St.

Genevieve County Community Center, yeah, that was built by an architectural firm in St.

Louis, and of course they worked with me planning the library that was going to be in the community center, and it was really interesting, those architects, they worked all over the world, it was a St.

Louis architectural firm, and they had a lot of experience with building internationally, they had all kinds of, they had interior designers that worked with the planning, and there were things that were added to that building that were really unusual, and the, I don’t know, the interior, the architectural firm had interior designers and they paid special attention to color, equipment, and things like that, so it was really an unusual experience to plan that building in St.

Genevieve, learned some things that I wasn’t expecting to with that building, and all of the, those were the new buildings, and then all of the other buildings that the Ozark Regional Library had were modernized and updated and made to look very nice, so I was pleased to work with all of the buildings in Ozark Regional Library and improve them all to a certain degree, which I was very pleased to do.

And which library developments are you most proud of?

Well, the, I’m most proud of the improvement to the buildings, the library buildings that we’ve made throughout the time I was here.

I guess the Bookmobile was a pretty big achievement also, and the providing computers and internet service for our patrons, that was a pretty big, pretty big item, and one that was expensive, with the expense of computers, and probably, maybe I would consider that that was probably computers, and internet access was something the patrons were looking forward to the most, so I guess those were some of my proudest achievements.

Through your time here, were there any library goals that you would have liked to have met?

Future goals for Ozark Regional Library, I sort of left that to the people that would follow me.

I thought that the people that followed me had graduated more recently from library school, and that they would have better ideas and better goals that I would have, so that was time for me to leave.

You came to making any future improvements to Ozark Regional Library, and I’d like to, this is a comment, I had wonderful, a wonderful time working with the library board.

They were always very supportive, and wishing to make improvements to the library, and I can’t thank them enough for what our library board did for this library.

Want to subscribe to Voices of the Ozarks in your podcast app? Just copy this link: http://ozarkregional.org/blog/?feed=podcast, then paste it into your podcast app’s add a feed field. You can also click the podcast icon on the sidebar to subscribe in Apple Podcasts.

Wilma Reed.

I was born March the 3rd, 1932.

I was born at Juliet, Missouri.

Who were your parents?

Clarence and Caroline Fireball.

What about grandparents?

My grandparents on my dad’s side was Emerson and Tampa.

T-E-M-P-A. Fireball.

And then my mother’s side was Noah and Talitha.

I don’t know how to spell that.

Young.

And what do you remember about growing up in Juliet?

Well, it was very, very country, you know.

And my first remembrance was, you know, of course, everybody lived out in the country, you know, and all that.

But we lived in a place and I didn’t ever know it that then.

And I don’t know if people called that then, but in the later years, they called it Fireball Haller, you know.

And, of course, we walked to school all the time.

And it was a little house that wasn’t very big.

And there was a barn and then a wonderful spring that we got our water from.

And it was just so good.

And back then, a lot of people, and we did, other people did too, but they had what they called a spring house because we didn’t have refrigerators and all of that.

So my dad built that.

And this spring was really, it was really a strong spring, you know, a lot of water.

And there was a little creek or a little area of water that runs in the spring.

And dad built that spring house over that water and put a door on it.

And so that’s where we, when we take our milk, we had the old stone jars, you know, like that, you know what that’s like.

And we’d put the milk in that and set that down in that water and it would come running about like it run all the time.

And it was very cold.

And that’s where we kept our milk and butter.

And sometimes if my mom would do a chicken to have for Sunday while she’d dress it out and put it there and put it in a container, cover it and take it over there and put it in that cold water, you know.

And then that creek run all the way down and it would, it went into, which was quite a long ways, but it went way down to where it run in the San Francis River.

Of course, it got much bigger than that because, you know, it started up there.

There was a creek there.

And then this, this water from the spring run into the bigger creek, you know, cause it was a creek that was ready.

And then the spring run into that and stuff.

So when you say you had a spring, did it just bubble up out of the ground?

Well, the way this one was, uh, yes, yes.

Like there was a, up behind it was a little, not a mountain or anything, but little hill, you know, it’s kind of like that.

And it kind of went across and this was kind of a little build up behind that spring.

And the spring just was there, you know, and it started its way down, you know, into the other spring, the one that had come way down from the hills and went all the way down to the big river and all of that.

But anyway, yes, it was, I don’t know how long it had been there.

It was there when we was there and stuff and all, but anyway, it was very, very good.

Now I’ll tell this little, little story.

Of course, you know, we, we never did, maybe our ice cream was mostly in the winter when it snowed and we’d go get, you know, make it as nice, but this, this is another part from the spring.

Like I said, we took their, the milk over there and you know, cream rises on milk, you know, just like that.

Well, we never did.

Of course, mom, she made us cookies and sardum cakes and stuff, but anyway, and I was the one that had done this.

And me and my brother that’s next to me, whenever we have blackberries, we always pick blackberries, you know, mom made a lot of jelly and canned blackberries and stuff.

So we’d pick us some blackberries and I would go over there and get some of that cream off of that milk, bring it back and I would get some sugar out of the house and we had us a little ice cream with berries and cream.

But anyway, and so that’s kind of the story on the spring, you know, and stuff.

How many were in your family?

Well, at that time, not in the whole, I’ll just tell you this and then, and then right at the time we were talking about, but the whole family, there was, there was 12 and I’m the oldest of the family, but the last little boy, you know, didn’t survive when he was born and stuff, but there was 11 living and there’s, they’re all, we’re all still here except one brother that passed away.

But at that time when we lived up there, there was, when we lived up there two different times, we lived there when I was really small and there was about probably four of us at that time and then we had moved in another place and then we moved back there and back when we moved back there, there was quite a few more, you know, and stuff and all, let’s see, there was probably, at one time there was six when we were living there and stuff.

But anyway, that’s kind of about that time, like I said, and we bought, we walked back and forth to school, which was quite a ways.

We went all over that hill and down to over, what it would like, the sea highway that goes through there now over that way, you know, and stuff, but it was, it was a highway, it was a school, a duet school and we walked that, you know, and whenever I first started the school and then the next year, my brother, he was, he was two years younger than I am, you know, brother next to me and so they didn’t want me to go by myself, so I don’t think he was really age-wise to go yet, but they let him go with me to walk with me until it started getting cooler weather and he didn’t do that anymore, but I still don’t know how we survived it because it was a long ways over there, you know, and stuff and, and all.

So you were five?

No, like, no, you had these six to start, but my brother was five, but they let him go just a little bit when school started in September.

See, it used to start much later than it does now, you know, and all.

For just to walk with me, you know, for company, go over there and stuff, but he didn’t go over, it started getting a little cooler weather-wise, you know, and back then it wouldn’t have been long because, you know, it’s different what time-wise, like it is now and stuff, but, but anyway, we managed.

You know, it’s awfully young to be walking the school.

It was, you know, I have one son and I, I couldn’t, I couldn’t have done that, I couldn’t have sent him out, but that’s just the way people lived, you know, all the whole family’s, you know, and some of them had, at that, at that time, had maybe a couple of brothers or sisters that went with them, you know, stuff, maybe, whatever.

But you were the oldest.

I was the oldest, so that’s where it was.

You had no cousins or any other neighbors?

We did, I did have cousins, but, but they, they weren’t a long ways away, but they were a good little way as far as what we’re talking about, you know, and all.

There was a family that, their name was Club, and they lived good long ways down, but they went to the same school, you know.

So when it got a little bit older, why we walked down to where we connected with them at this other roadway, you know, and, and they were much older than we were, you know, and, and I remember this, one of the boys, I’m not sure his name, I know one of them was named Charles, but the other one was older.

Anyway, he was tall, thin person, and he put my brother up on his shoulders, right on his shoulders.

Anyway, that’s kind of, kind of school.

Yeah, it was a different time.

Yeah.

And the old school houses were so cold, I tell you, they were, because they had a big old, well, it was, I don’t know if you got, it was a big stove, it’s a big thing, and it had a metal thing around it, you know, and it was in the back of the school.

Well, the teacher had to go there early in the morning and build that fire, you know, and I remember when, when I got there, I was just nearly frozen.

I didn’t get warm until about noontime, you know, and stuff, but, but we were all in the same position as for us, because everybody had to walk, you know, all the kids had to walk, so we was all cold when we got there.

What kind of outside clothing did you have, like boots or wool coats?

No, no.

Cotton?

No, we just had, well, what I had, and I can, I can remember, I can feel it like today, and I didn’t like them things because they looked terrible, but, but these socks we had, and they come up, you pull up above your knees, and I don’t know if you’ve ever heard, ever heard this, I know you’ve heard the, you know, the word and what I mean, but we’d have garters, they’d make us garters out of a piece of elastic, you know, that’s two stitched together, and you put that on and that held your sock up, because they weren’t, they weren’t like they are now, that they would kind of stay up on their own, you know, they’d just fall down if you didn’t have a garter, you know.

Were they wool or cotton?

They were just cotton, just cotton.

And what kind of shoes?

Just plain little old lace-up shoes, you know, I never did have a pair of boots whenever I was a kid, my brothers probably did in later life, they probably did, but I never did have, and stuff, and I didn’t, I think I was probably about maybe nine or ten years old, and I can remember it to today, and all I ever had to wear was a little short jacket, that’s all I had, and of course back then the girls just wore little cotton dresses, you know, they wasn’t, nobody wore any pants or anything like that, legors, anything, it’s just little cotton dresses, and I just had this little short coat, and finally I was about that age, and my dad, he, I can, I can see it yet, I don’t remember who he was working at, but anyway, we had to be some, had to be in a town somewhere, some place where they could buy that, and he brought me a blue coat, and it come down below my knees, and it was a heavy coat, oh it was so good, it just, it felt so good, you know, and stuff, you don’t forget things like that, yeah.

And scar, did you have a little scar?

No, no, I didn’t have scar.

Your hat?

I might have had a little pull-down cap at some time, but you know, I don’t, I don’t remember it, you know, but I might have, I might have had one.

Well now sometimes for Christmas, of course we didn’t get much for Christmas, because you know, there wasn’t much money, but sometimes we’d get gloves for Christmas, and sometimes probably the caps I’m talking about, you know, I do remember the gloves, I don’t remember the cap, you know, but, but you know, back then they, they give you the, they had to have fruit, and you’d get some, an apple and an orange, you know, and we’d hang our socks some more, you know, and we’d get the apple and orange, and like I said, maybe gloves, or I don’t even know if they had mittens, I remember mine was gloves, you know, and stuff, but.

Now did you wear a sweater under your coat?

No, I don’t remember having a sweater, no, no, no, I really.

It had to be really cold.

Oh, I was cold.

I’m imagining you going into this school, and it was probably not a really well insulated building.

Oh no, no, if you ever, if you ever, it’s still down there, that school building down at Juliet, it’s still there, you know, no, it was, no, there was no insulation or anything, and there was wind all around it, you know, and I like that, but.

So it probably wasn’t even that warm, even with the fire.

It wasn’t, you know, and the teacher, she had, had, she or whoever was teaching, well they had to keep it going.

Now sometimes maybe the older boys, I can’t remember doing this, that see them do it, but sometimes the older boys might have wooded, you know, put the wood in through the day, but you know, but somebody had to do it, you know.

How was the wood supplied?

Did someone from the community?

They would have had to, yes, because see, they were, they were a lot of sawmills in the areas back then.

That’s where a lot of people worked, the men worked, was mills, and so I’m just saying that that’s, that’s what it would, some of them cut the wood, or of course everybody burned wood.

That’s how everybody heated their house, and what they cooked with was wood, so somebody in the neighborhood or someone had to, had to, and of course, you know, it was a big old stove, big old thing like that, you know, so I had to cut it to fit that, I guess, and all that.

So somebody provided?

Yeah, they would have had to, yeah.

I don’t remember anything about that.

I just remember it was there, and they took care of it.

I don’t know who brought it or anything and stuff, but like I said, there was quite a few mills, you know, in surrounding areas and stuff.

Did you have water in the school?

No, out there, and I don’t know, it might still be there, but I don’t know.

I was down there about two or three years ago, but it was just, it’s raining so hard, like it was poured out of buckets and you couldn’t hardly see anything, but anyway, it was a pump, and it was on a found, it was on a concrete about from here to here, and it was one of the big pumps up like this and got a big handle on it, and that’s where we got the water there for at school.

Outside the building?

Outside, oh yeah.

That would have frozen, right?

Well, not as long as it was, you see, the well was deep so it wouldn’t freeze in there, but now if you pump it up and let it sit outside on a bucket or something, it’d freeze, you know, and stuff, but I can remember seeing, especially the older boys, you know, that it was something for them to do to get out there and pump water, you know, and stuff, but no, once it was out of the well, it would freeze and stuff, you know.

Yeah, it was a kind of a trying time, but at the time, you just did it.

Yeah, it’s what everybody did.

It was the normal thing.

Oh yeah, yeah, and see, a lot of the kids lived way up the highway, you know, and they had, they walked to school too, and then some of them that lived down the road, we just come through the woods and come out to where the school was, but some of them lived down and up, and then some of the others lived back up in the other part of the, on the side of the highway, up in the countryside too, you know, and stuff, you know, so.

So you weren’t necessarily walking the road to get to school?

No, we just, we just come through the woods.

Mr. Crow flies.

Yeah.

Well, there was two ways that we could come, and we knew both of them, you know, and stuff, but anyway, they was, it was, they, well, all the roads were rough, you know, because if anyone had a car, it was one of them things that set up like that on the, you know what I’m talking about, you know, about cars and stuff, or maybe an old truck, and a lot of people just had wagons, you know, it rode horses and had mules, and they pulled wagons and stuff, and I remember, like, we’d go somewhere or something, and in the winter, you know, Dad had this fixed wagon and put some straw in it, and Mom would heat some bricks and put, put them on a quilt and put them in that straw, and we’d sit in that straw and go and put quilts over it, you know.

Right.

You know, we think about, you know, this time of year in the fall, people do hay rides for fun, but for you, that was not fun, it was just the way you got around.

That’s why we, that’s why we went.

Yes.

Yeah.

Huh.

When you were young, did you, as kids, did you often, like, I think back to my childhood, one of our favorite things to do was to play in the woods.

Uh-huh.

Were the woods a place where you would go out and play and spend days?

Well, I tell you, I tell you, well, now, now, I didn’t do this, but my brothers did, and of course, they had to make a lot of the things they played with, you know, so they’d make them sleds, and there was an incline, it’s not a mountain, but it was a small hill, it was back up that way from the house, the garden was here, and down here was the bar and all that, and they’d make them a sled, and they, that’s what they’d do in winter when it snowed, but in the winter, I mean, in the summer, this creek that I’m talking about, it was really nice, it was a nice creek and stuff, and we’d play in that creek, you know, and now, I didn’t do this, but my brothers did, they’d take a, an old burlap sack, you know, people had them a lot back then, you know, burlap, and they knew how to do this, and they’d take them a stick that was strong enough, they’d make them a minnow’s thing, and they’d get, you know, how creeks are, they’re like this, and then they’re small, you know, how they are out in the woods like that, and they’d get to a smaller part of that, that’s where they put their, their things that’s just going to catch their minnows in.

For bait?

Yeah, and then, and they, they wouldn’t be big fish in there, but they would be small perch farther down where the water was deeper, you know, it would, the minnows would be up where it was shallow, and then where it was deeper, you know, and stuff, why they’d be small perch, but they, they weren’t any big fish, it was just, it was something for them to do, you know, stuff, you know.

I want to go back to the school, did you have paper, ink, pencils?

Well, what we got, what we got, our, our, our parents, you know, we would get a, what they called a tablet, and you know, it was this, well it was about like this square, and maybe about, about that long, but we got one of them when we started school, and a pencil, a lead pencil, a usually yellow one, you know, we still see them, I think, and stuff, but that’s what we got, and that’s what we took to school, and that’s, that’s all we had, you know, and of course, when we fused up, you know, they’d get us another one, and stuff, but the only thing that was in the school that I remember was, of course, they had the blackboard, that was, that, that down there, and I don’t know how in other schools, I know they’re somewhere, but this was, like when you walked in, it was at the far end of the building, across the wall, that was the blackboard, and then there was an old-fashioned, well, you can’t call it a library, it was just kind of something like that, only it was, it went all the way to the floor, it didn’t, wasn’t that modern, it was just an old-fashioned thing, and it had books in it, and I guess I was born to like to read, and I, and the teacher would let me go up there and get me a book, and you know what, my favorite books were, I can’t remember that, but it was about fairy stories, you know, and I think I know why I related to them, because everything was so neat, you know, when things, these little, they had things, it wasn’t like fortune-telling stuff, not like that, it was just stories about little things and all that, but I, but she’d let me go, and she’d let me take it back to my seat, and she’d let me read it, you know, and stuff, but anyway, I liked that from then on and stuff, and then our desk back then was sometimes they’d be two, most times they’d be two students at each desk, you know, and of course there was a seat, and then it seems to me like that they did have some, they just had one seat, you know, but I’m not really sure, and then on the right-hand side of the school, like I said, there was a lot of windows and stuff, and of course the teacher, she had a wooden desk and all that kind of stuff, but there was a big long wooden bench, and when we’d have certain classes, you know, of course it was all grades from one to the eight, you know, back then, and we’d have certain classes, we’d all have to, in that class, we had to go up and sit on that bench, and that’s where she would ask our questions and all that kind of stuff, but we had to go up and sit on that bench and stuff, anyway that was school.

And how far in school did you go?

Did you graduate in high school?

No, I got to ninth grade, and I never did know how this happened, and I’ve never thought about it until this last few years.

That, of course, like being the older, older in the family and a girl, you learn how to do a lot of stuff, you learn to take care of kids, you learn, I could cook a full meal whenever I was 11 years old, you know, but anyway getting back to what you asked, of course it’s all people we knew, but Dad, he got me a job going, well it was one family, and they’d had a new baby, and I went and stayed with Emma Week, or I guess it might have been longer than that, because women, you know, they, it was different then, and it was on birds and all that kind of stuff, but anyway, and I took care of the rest of the kids and took cooking and took care of them, and then he got another job to stay with another family, and they was three, I think, and her husband was in military at that time, and she was living alone, and then another family, and they had, at that time they had one child, so I stayed there with them, I mean they were farmers and stuff, but then, and like I said, and I never did see any money, and my mom didn’t get, she didn’t get out and go anywhere except she’d go to church and we’d visit our family, grandparents, so I know she had no way to get out and connect and make that connection for that, so I started working when I was pretty early, you know, and stuff.

So it almost sounds like you would go and stay and be with the kids and help with households.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that one place that I went, and it was in wintertime, and of course we didn’t have any water in that house either, and we’d go, and there was three little boys, and it was just so cold, and we had to build fires in the old, oh it was bad and stuff, but anyway, I’m still here.

So you could cook a full meal on a wood stove.

Oh yes, a wood stove, yes.

That’s even more difficult.

I remember the first time that my mother, she, and this was kind of the same with most families, not everybody did of course, but we had the old iron cookware, the old skillets, and pots, you know what I’m talking about.

Heavy stuff.

Yes, it was, and my mom most times, except the day she did laundry, and that day we had pancakes for lunch, and she’d make them, because I never did make pancakes, but anyway, I mean then I didn’t, and she put, she put on that big old pot, and it would be dry beans, you know, and of course she had a garden, and when it got to where she was doing the garden, she was out in the garden and doing the garden and stuff, so then I’d finish up the meal.

I remember the first time I made cornbread, of course she didn’t go over the recipe or anything, and I just remember seeing her do it.

Well, long story, by the time I got all my batter mixed up, I just had corn, corn batter in everything.

I had this pan, this pan, I don’t know if it’s 15, I don’t remember about that, but anyway, but that was my first time at cornbread, anyway.

Right.

Yeah, it was…

Yeah, it had bugged how cooking would be different back then, because everything, of course, was from scratch, so it took longer.

It was not nearly as convenient as we found it.

Oh no, no, and you had to go carry, you had to go carry, we hadn’t carried buckets of water from the spring, you know, we had a place in the kitchen, and that’s where we set the, and the stove we had back then, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that, you probably haven’t done all this, but they had what they call a reservoir on the side, and you could, you fill that with water, and you know, as long as you had water, as long as you had heat in the cook stove, you had warm water, and then they always had a tea kettle, and it had water in it, you know, and stuff.

So you used the spring to keep things cool, and I imagine that was mostly in the spring and the summer.

In the wintertime, what did you do to keep things cool?

Would you put it on a porch in a box, or what kind of things did you do in the winter to keep things?

Well, now, like, if you had any kind of, well, if that’s, you know, if it was pretty good size family, you didn’t have too many leftover things, and if it was like the beans or anything, they didn’t matter, and of course, anything like the breads or, you know, biscuits and stuff, but I can’t really remember, like I said, now in the summertime, of course, we’d take stuff over there, you know, and when, but see, the houses got really cold in the winter, because all you had is just a little heater in one room.

Right, so you could leave it in the kitchen?

Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, because, I mean, it was, it was very cold in the house, you know.

It’s so easy to forget that.

Yeah, because, now, if you had a really big, back then, not some people might have, but some people had coals, you know, they burned coal, but I don’t know if anybody out in the country who I lived did, but I know one family that lived here in town, they, and those, they were big and heavy, and they would hold heat most of the night, and if you wanted to, you’d get up and put more in, and you’d have heat, but the little old heaters that we had when I was growing up, they, they were not heavy, and they didn’t, they didn’t hold heat, and once the fire was gone, the heat was gone, you know.

Were these wood stoves?

Mm-hmm.

And then, could you, could you also, if you had a certain brand, heat the coal in the same stove as what you burned wood?

Well, I, I don’t know, we never did that down there, but now this is just my thought.

I would think to do coal, you’d have to have a heavier stove, you know.

Cast iron.

Yeah, I would think so, you know.

I think there were coal stoves that were specific for that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but, but then some other stoves were heavier, just like the regular, they’re called heating stoves, and they were heavier, you know, but some of them, like one we had up there, the one I’m talking about, that was so cold.

Why?

I mean, it was, it was just, it didn’t have much weight to it, you know, it was, you know, it, once the heat inside was gone, it was pretty well gone too.

It didn’t hold.

It didn’t hold any heat.

So you, you had all these wood stoves in every room?

No, we only had one.

Yeah.

One.

And it was often in the kitchen where you cooked as well, right?

Well, no, they had another one in another room.

Back then, they didn’t call them living rooms, they called them the front room, because usually in the house, it was, it was, that was the room you seen first, and the room you went in, you know, and then you had the cook stove, and you had another heater in there, and some of the houses, older houses, bigger homes, they had fireplaces, you know, and stuff.

And then sometimes people would have a fireplace, and then maybe in another room, they’d have a wood stove.

And of course, they always had the cooking stove, you know, they always had to have that, because that’s the only way you cook anything and stuff, you know, but anyway.

So in the winter, I’m guessing that you layered on your, as many clothes as you probably kept clothes on all the time at school and at home.

Yes.

When you went to sleep.

Yeah.

It probably was a struggle to ever feel warm.

And yes, and I can remember that sometimes we have so many, now we didn’t do it, because we didn’t have that many, but people used to have feather beds, you know, they had, and they were warm, and they were much warmer, because it kind of would move around, you know, because they were very light and all of that, everything.

But I can remember sometimes, I couldn’t hardly turn over, I had to make covers on me.

Oh, right.

You know.

Now did you have, you had a lot of siblings, did you all share rooms, I imagine?

Well, there’s one place that I’m talking about, there’s other places too, but one we’re talking about.

My mom and dad, they had a full-size bed in this room, they called the front room.

Well, they slept there.

And then we had another room that was from, kind of that way from, it was all connected, but from the kitchen.

And at that time, I slept with three little ones, didn’t get much sleep sometimes either.

But anyway, and then I had two brothers, and they slept in the same room, and a bed over there, you know, and stuff going, you know, it just, it just depended on the size of the family, and how much room they had, and what they did, and everything, and stuff, you know.

I imagine it would be easier to stay warmer if you were sharing them.

Well, yeah, yeah.

So a feather bed, is that the bottom mattress that you lie on top of?

Yeah, well, you usually put, you had a mattress, and then you put the feather bed on top of it, you know, and stuff.

And sometimes…

Would it cover you?

No.

Well, you laid on it, but now some people did.

I remember my husband talking about some in his family, I don’t know if he did, but they put a feather bed over, you know, and of course that would be warm, and stuff, you know.

But some people back in those days, they would make what they called straw beds, and they would take it like a, well, just it had to be like a big envelope the size of your bed, you had to sew it together, and leave it open.

And they would, or they would take the shucks off a corn, and dry them, and they would fill them full of that.

And then, of course, in springtime you had to get rid of it, and all of that, and everything.

But, yeah, people…

So you make a seasonal bed that would help keep you warm, and insulate, and give it some softness, but then you’d change it out every year.

Yeah.

And there was a special fabric, wasn’t there, called mattress ticking, so that nothing could, you know, come out?

Yeah, it was heavy, kind of a striped, you know, you know, I didn’t remember just what they called it, but yeah, kind of striped, like that.

But, and you know, the women, that was one of the things that they, well, they had to too, but even some of the older ladies, they still like to do that, and do a good job.

They made a lot of quilts, you know, and they would quilt them, and then some of them would tack them, what they called, tack them, you know, and they had frames, and they put them in that, and instead of, you could go with, maybe ever, well, maybe like that, and tack it, you know.

That would be faster.

Yes, yes.

Now for the cotton, you know, now when you want to do some quilting, it’s a big batting, but did you just put little bits of cotton in, because you didn’t have the big, you know, one big piece?

You know, I, now my grandmother, she, she quilted a lot, and I just don’t remember much about the cotton.

I really, I really, I remember seeing the quilts in the frames, and sometimes they’d set them on a little thing, like a, oh well, if I can think of it, kind of horses, and I want them looking at, well you could say, the men would put stuff, yeah, and one down here, one here, and they’d lay the frame on that, and then, and then the quilting frame had it on the side, where you can roll it like that, as you quilt, you know, like that, and then they had that, and then they would, some of the quilting frames, they would hang them from the ceiling, and then when they was ready to quilt, they’d lay them down, you know, stuff, you know, but I just don’t, I just don’t remember much about the quilting.

Now my grandmother, she, she, they had sheep, and she would spin out wool, wool batting, yeah, and stuff.

Now I’m not saying that she used that in her quilts all the time, I don’t know, but I remember her having them up a lot, and seeing, working on them, and all like that, and stuff.

So you mostly got your quilts from your grandmother?

Well, no, well, everyone, everyone made their quilts, you know, and now this, this is coming for up, up in years later, and at one time, and I don’t know what organization it was, or anything, but they would, they would go to people’s houses, and, and make quilts, but it was a group of people, it was, I don’t know if it was a county thing, or a state thing, but anyway, they would, it’d be a group of the women, I guess the men might go to, but they’d go, and they’d all work on a quilt all that day, and then maybe next week, they’d all go to another place, and do a quilt, and stuff, you know.

Now I didn’t, nothing like that, but I had an aunt, and well, we lived in that area too, at one time, out at, at Weston Town, but anyway, I remember them doing that one time, and stuff, so anyway, it’s kind of, kind of the way things were.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, thank you, you, as you got older, what did you do after school?

Like how, at what point did you leave home, or did you stay home for a while?

Well, I didn’t stay home very long, because my grandparents, on my dad’s side, far off, they, they lived, they lived up, not, moved up not too far, but out to where the city lake is out there, a little house.

So, I came up here, and I got a job, the first job I ever had, and you know the building, you know, and it was at rest, you know, up in town, before they moved the new, the new, oh, resale, they moved it up there, next to the corner, where the pawn shop is, that’s what I’m talking about.

Okay, the first job I ever had, there was a restaurant in there, of course, when you work in the restaurant, I don’t know how it was back now, but anyway, first job, you went in the kitchen, well, I went in the kitchen, and I was, started washing dishes, well, I was back there about a week.

Now, this is, this is kind of scary, it was to me, but anyway, not that part of it, but I wasn’t back there very long, they said, well, you need to go out and work in the front.

I said, okay, so I thought I was just gonna do table stuff, and pretty soon, said, well, you should do the whole thing, everything out here.

Well, I don’t know if you can imagine it, but I never did, I mean, I knew what money was, but I never had any, so never had to deal with it, see, and back then, the over registers, they didn’t tell you what change to give, and I thought the first time I ever went to make change, I thought, I’m gonna do this.

Well, I started it the wrong way, see, you start from the bottom and go to the top, well, I was starting from the top, it didn’t take me long to figure that out, you know, I was, I was, I guess, 15, yeah, that’s 15, and then I worked there for a while, and then, and I don’t know, and now where the pawn shop is now, that used to be the lobby of the hotel, see, that’s hotel stuff, you know, buses were running, people came and stayed, all that kind of stuff.

Well, Frank Jeffrey and Mary, they, they had a donut shop in the corner, I mean, in the end of the building, next to the corner, were all the windows, yeah.

Well, then I went to work in there, and he would come up, and he made the, he had a great big thing that made the dough, and then it went into another thing, and he cut out the dough, they was fresh made every morning, yeah, and they was, it was just, it was like a bar, but it wasn’t a bar, but stools, you know, it’s counters and stools, it went all around like that, and all the desk work for the, for the hotel, it was back there, see, but anyway, I worked there for a good while, and we were really busy, they, they were good donuts, dude, and he, he made them, and he’d put, they were all like the cake donuts, but he’d put different icings on them and stuff, but he done all that, and then I just worked the counter and registered and served them, you know, and stuff.

You said Mary Jeffrey, was it, was she from New York?

You know, I don’t know, I know his mom and dad was here because they lived, well, you know where the bank is, where there used to be houses down there, like near your bank down that way when you go down, they used to be homes down in there, and that’s where, that’s where his mom and dad lived, but I don’t know where Mary originally was from, I really don’t know that and stuff.

Did she go to St.

Michael’s?

Well, she might have, I just don’t remember about the church thing much, I mean, you know.

So that would have been the late 40s that you were working there?

Uh-huh.

Okay, and I’m sorry, where did you say you were, did you, you were, so had your family moved from Jewett or you were staying with your?

I was staying with my grandparents.

Grandparents, okay, they were up here.

Yeah, yeah, they were up here, yeah, and then later on they, they moved and they moved, well, it’s not there now, but you know, for the Skaggs’s store, it’s here in town, it used to be.

Yeah.

Okay, they lived right across the street from there, you know.

On North Main?

Uh-huh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you stayed with them and worked, and did any of your other siblings do the same thing, where they would come up and stay with your grandparents and get a job in town or just you?

No, no, they, well, now my brother that’s next to me, he stayed with my other grandparents for a while, he didn’t stay very long and stuff, but no, I worked, I guess, about four or five places here in Trinidad.

Okay.

It was a busy town back then.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Imagine a hotel with a donut shop.

Oh yeah, it was neat, you know, like a, a trailway, what was the other bus company?

Trailway was one, and they come up West Main, you know, that way, and they’d park that side, you know, this dirt on West Main, and that’s where they let people, you know, get out and whatever they do, change buses and stuff.

Would that have been Greyhound?

Greyhound was the other one, yes, Greyhound.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So at that point here, I’m imagining you, you’re 15, you’re working at this place, doing everything, and what did you do at that point?

Did you have any friends?

Well, I didn’t have too many.

I had one lady that I knew, and I’m sorry to say I can’t even remember her name now, but anyway, not very much, because I just went to work, and I walked all the time, walking back and forth to work and stuff.

Did they have the movie theater you have at that point?

Yes, they did.

And did you do the everything?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I remember the first time I ever went to a movie.

And I remember, I remember this well.

It’s kind of hard to visualize that now here in town, but at the end of the war, you could not have hardly put another person in downtown Frederictown.

That night, the town was literally packed with people, packed, you couldn’t hardly move, and everybody was so happy.

It was just, you know, I’m telling you, it was like an explosion, you know.

I don’t mean that, I mean, with as much as was going on.

Yeah, like a celebration.

Yes, yeah, people so, because so many people had, you know, a lot of people had lost sons in the war, and some of them coming home, some of them still not home yet, but they would be and stuff.

We all see the famous pictures of, that were taken in New York when the war, when peace was, but when you stop and think that happened in every country, every time across the country, people were out doing.

Oh yeah, every time across the country, yes, yes, yeah.

And you remember that?

Oh yeah, and they were blowing the horns, and people had, you know, and stuff.

It was just a lot of activity and noise and stuff, you know.

I remember that and stuff.

But anyway, then I went and I went to, and probably people who mentioned this before, then I went to work for, it is where the Pizza Hut is now, and there was a store there named Federated Store, Federated Store, and some people with the name of Andrea Anos on that store.

So my grandma, she said, we went up there.

Anyway, they gave me a job, and I worked there for a good while and stuff, and anyway, walked back and forth to work and stuff and all, and I really don’t, I really don’t know why I left.

I never was fired from any place, but I really don’t know why I left.

But then, right next door there then, where the alleyway goes through there, right next there, there was a store, the name of P.

N.

Hirsch and Company, and I worked there for a long time, you know, and stuff.

What did they sell at Federated?

They sold very good clothing.

They went to St.

Louis and bought their stock.

I don’t mean that they never ordered anything, but they had everything on the right-hand side of the store.

They had a men’s department.

They had everything from socks to hats, did it, and it was good stuff.

It was not cheap stuff, and then on the other side was a fabric on the other side, and then on the right-hand side in the back was a shoe department, and then on the other side in the back was ladies ready to wear, and then right in the middle was the, you know, where they’d done the, not office work, but, you know, where you went to pay, like check out and stuff.

It was in the middle of the store and stuff, but yeah, they’d done it.

They’d done a good business there, and they had, I think they had, I think they had four children, but I remember two and three of them, but I remember they was younger boy and a girl and stuff, but anyway.

How did you meet your husband?

Well, I was living with my other grandma that she lived up on Ismailamont, and so anyway, this neighbor of hers, I was over there, and I don’t really know how this came about, but anyway, his family was related to this neighbor of my grandma, and so I guess, because sometimes I’d go with this neighbor’s house, you know, and stuff, and so I don’t know why I was over there, but I was over there, so him and his mother and dad, and I think it was a sister, the baby of the family, she wasn’t a baby, but anyway, I think the two of them, two younger ones, and then my husband, he was, you know, had served at Air Force.

He was a tail gunner on a plant, so anyway, of course, he was out of all that.

Well, they came to visit, so that’s where we met, and so about six or eight months later, we was married.

So anyway, it’s kind of the story.

Well, did you keep your job?

No, I didn’t.

No, sometimes I wish I had, but I didn’t, but he never, I finally did work years later, but he never did want me to work.

Well, I’ll tell you where we, let me tell you, okay, you know where the, I think it’s Maple Street, I think it’s Maple, you know where the old library used to be here, well, that street down through there, and anyway, there was a big old house down there, and I can see the lady, she’s an older lady, well anyway, we rented an upstairs apartment, you know, so then they had a furniture store down here, it’s kind of across from the jail house, I can’t remember the name of it, but they had a lot of furniture, so that’s where we went and bought our furniture.

So you lived, it was Maple Street, but was it going towards Saline Creek?

Was it going north?

No, no, like, okay, okay, you know where they, where they fixed a new place down there, next to the fire department, where they fixed that and it’s all leveled, you know, okay, okay, well the house I’m talking, is that street, well you know where the laundromat is down there, the laundromat down from there, it was down a little past the laundromat, is the house I’m talking about.

So your college, college?

Yeah, college goes this way, and this is this one, okay, yeah, and so we we rented that apartment there.

Is it still there?

No, the house is gone, okay, yeah, no, the house is gone and stuff, and then later on we rented an apartment right down on the corner from that, and this man, he was, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a proper name for this, but he, he was a glass blower, I don’t, I don’t know, I know there’s a proper name for that, but that’s what, and it was fascinating, he had a little shop out there, and he could take that glass, and it was just amazing to me, he could do that and he could make stuff out of it, and he’d put colors in stuff, and they’d make color, and in a way it’s just him and his wife, and they, they lived on one side and we lived on the other side and stuff, yeah.

So that would have been probably in the 50s?

Yeah, because we was married in 1950, yeah, yeah, and my husband, and of course, I just done a lot of stuff when I was home, I mean, I could hang wallpaper, and I just do stuff, and so the kitchen needed some attention, and she said, she said, well, if you want to paper the kitchen, you know, people paper back then, she said, if you want to paper the kitchen, she said, you know, we’ll just let that go on your rent, I said, okay, I said, Charles, that’s when I said, Charles, I said, do you think about paper, oh yeah, I’ll help you do it, well, back then you painted the ceiling, one person had to get back here, hold that, while you got up here, and you walked back, and you’d press your hands and put the paper, the paper, the ceiling, and you had to put the, put the paste on first, yes, but you had to be really careful with everybody, and both persons did, well, we didn’t much want he get hold of it, I thought, he don’t know what he’s talking about, let alone doing it, so that, did it fall down on you, yeah, because he didn’t know what to do with, of course, when you got your hands, you got wet paper, they’re gonna go through pretty soon, unless you get them on a wall, but anyway, that didn’t work out, was paper, wallpaper, cheaper than painting, you know, I really don’t know about that, I really don’t know, I just know people did it a lot, you know, and stuff, and everything, because like, back when I was, like, when I was living there, 12 years old, down there, in that place that’s talking about, down in the country, well, me and my dad, we paid paper, that had whole house, you know, with wallpaper, and stuff, well, I know it’s a better insulator, yeah, yeah, yeah, people used to put newspapers, right, on their walls for insulation, and that was really good, that was a good thing, yeah, you know, I lived in an old house in Memphis, yeah, the oldest part of the house had been, they used newspapers, yes, and then did they paper over the newspaper, yeah, well, it’s one place where I stand back, we first lived, that one little bedroom, that’s what it was papered with, was newspaper, that’s where I learned about cool cigarettes, I learned to spell, you know, and there was this light would come through, you know, in this, from this other room, and I could look up there, and okay, yeah, because it would have what it was, needed to have a spelling, how you spell it, you know, and stuff, and I look up there, yeah, and there’s Camel cigarettes, Camel, there’s Camel, a lot of dads, oh goodness, yeah, another time, yeah, yeah, so you were married in 50s, about 50s, yeah, and you had one son, had one son, yeah, he was born in 54, yeah, he just retired about two months ago, yeah, yeah, and my husband, he’s been gone 16 years, I’ve been by myself 16 years and stuff, but anyway, we had done a lot of traveling, he was a very good driver, and he could go anywhere, and he liked to, so we went to a lot of states, and we traveled a lot, and stuff, and everything, and he had, he owned it two different times, it was a service station out on West Main, it was called Zephyr, Zephyr service station, and stuff, and so he owned that two different times, and stuff, but he was about to ask what he did after the war, so he bought a service station, yeah, yeah, and he was a judge here, and I can’t remember what year it was, but it was county, you know, I think they had three or four judges, I think it was, and Mr. Stone was one of them, and I can’t remember who the other one was, and my husband, and at one time, he was chief of police here in town, in probably 19 and 50, Charles, Charles Reed, yeah, he was chief of police, yeah, Charles Daniel, yeah, no, I’ll tell you what it was, you know, you know what Catholic school is, okay, just keep looking to your left, of course, there’s nothing there now, because the building’s down, but it’s right, you know where the IGA store was down there, okay, the station was right here, and the IGA store, here’s West Main, if you want to stop the station, you pull in here, if you want to go down to IGA, you went down that way, because that’s where it was, you know, stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah, do you know when it was torn down?

No, I really, I really don’t, probably so, probably so, the stuff.

I think you said earlier that you had gone back to work later on, where did you go back to work?

Well, I worked, I worked at town, now this was years later, I worked at town and country for about 12 years, yeah, that’s the older store, you know, right, so what’s that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s country mart now, but back back then it was town, no, I was a checker in the deli, you know, and stuff, back when coffee was 19 or 29 cents a cup, and what is it now, dollars, you know, but, but anyway, yeah, I’ve worked at something most of my life, but, but I, when my, my son went until he, I stayed home until he was 13 years old, and, you know, I wanted to stay home with him, and stuff, and I did that, and stuff.

And you’ve enjoyed reading your whole life?

Yeah, well, I don’t enjoy it now, because I got these, I have macular regeneration, and it’s got to before that, well, it’s getting it before that, and I didn’t know this until about two months ago, or maybe even less than that, when I’d look at something that was a straight line, it would start to get a curve in it, so I said something to a lady that knows all about this, she said, oh, that’s what that is, and stuff, but anyway, so reading is a challenge for me, you know, and I used to do a lot of hand work, and stuff like that, and that’s a challenge, too.

You know, anything you do, if it’s a challenge, it’s just a job, it’s not enjoyment, you know, and stuff like that, but I do some, because I’ve got, I’ve got things all over the house, and I hope to become, I mean, a magnifying thing, or something, and stuff, but anyway, but I still do, with two, two happy days a week at the gift shop here in the hospital, yeah, I went, well, I was in that a long, long time ago, when, when the hospital put all this other stuff, but then after my husband died, well, I went back out there, so I’m out there two happy days a week, it gets me out of the house, you know, stuff, you know, so everything’s okay, yeah, and you know what, really, when you get older, if you can, that’s what you need to do, yeah, and you don’t need to be yourself all the time, if you can prevent that, yeah, that’s not a good thing, and you need to find something that you can occupy your mind with, and your, and your time, too, you know, if you can, sometimes you can’t, but if you can, that’s the best thing, yeah, stuff, and I bet you can really count change back, oh my goodness, did you, I’ve got, I got to tell you, because the register we’ve got out there now, it’s just, it’s, it’s a new one, but it’s, it’s not set up to do what all that stuff, a new one does, and so there was an elderly couple, this probably been a year ago, it’s been a few months back, let’s put it that way, and they bought some things, you know, so I don’t know what kind of bill it gave me, I don’t know if it gave me a five or ten, I don’t know what it was now, but probably at least a ten or twenty, because they had brought a few things laying out there, they bought, and snacks and candies and chips and stuff, and so I gave him back the change, and she said, you know, you never see that anymore, I said, well, it’s not people’s fault, I said, the register, it tells them what to do so they don’t have to think about it, and she said, well, I’m going to teach my grandchildren how to do that, I said, well, that’s fine, you know, that’s fine, but I think it’s actually easier, oh yeah, it gets, it’s so confusing, and they’re counting back your change instead of counting what they spent up to the amount of money they gave you.

Yeah, yeah, one thing I’ve learned not to do, and I learned this out of hearties, and I don’t do that, I don’t go out there much, but sometimes, you know, if it’s like a few cents extra, you just, even that out in your mind, but when you give it to them, it confuses them.

Like if it’s $12.05, and you give them a nickel, $20.

Yeah, they’ll see something’s coming up there for them, and you’re giving them this, and they don’t know what to do with what you give them, so I just, I just don’t do that.

Now, how do you get to the hospital?

Do you?

No, I still drive out there, if it’s bad weather or something, well, I take the SMT bus, that’s a wonderful thing, yes.

There’d be so many, especially older ladies, if that wasn’t bad for that, they’d be sitting at home, but they’re, they’re nice people, they’re very good.

Yeah, we interviewed Mr. Osborne.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, anything else we can pick up?

I’m sure there’s plenty more that we could.

Oh, well, yeah.

You’ve been fantastic, thank you so much.

Well, I appreciate it, you know, the reason when they asked me first, and that’s still an ongoing process, but I had this dental thing I was trying to deal with, because, you know, I’ve had cancer, and it’s messed things up, and all this kind of stuff, the cancer, the treatment, you know, what that treatment does to your body sometimes, but anyway, and I told him, I said, well, I just can’t make a commitment, because, you know, I’ve got that coming, but then they’ve told me not to do anything for at least a year, so that’s going to come up, because, you know, your immune system is not good, so they don’t want to go messing around and stuff.

So, anyway, and so it’s worked out.

Well, we’re so glad, we were able to make time to do this.

I appreciate it.

We have a very interesting story.

Yeah.

Well, it’s, but it’s like a lot of people lived back in my time, you know, and stuff.

It’s the younger people, like my grand-granddaughters, they wouldn’t know what to do.

Right.

That’s part why we try to do this, is so that they can hear these stories and better appreciate what they have, what other people have gone through.

Yes.

Do you by chance get on the computer at all?

Do you have internet access?

No, I don’t, because my vision, you know, and because, you know, if you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to look back at this.

When you’re doing that, your eyes have to be like this, and I can do that, you know.

This will go on our website, where people can go, and that’s why I asked if you had access, because that’s one way you can listen to it.

At some point, I think we were going to try to burn CDs so that they could be checked out of the library.

Unless you’re wondering if that’s going to happen, but that might happen too.

If you ever wanted to see, if you come and ask, they might be able to give you some CDs from the other people.

Is your son in town?

No, he lives in Park Hills.

Oh, okay.

When you visit, if you tell him to look up on the Ozark Regional Library website, you’ll be on there.

Okay, yeah, they got all that kind of stuff.

And my granddaughter, Amy, of course, you know, she’s into all that, because she worked for a doctor a long time, and an office manager, of course, they have to, you know what, they have to know how to do all that stuff.

But Dan and Debbie, they got all that stuff in their house too.

Yeah, well, let them know that you’re going to be on there.

Okay.

Yeah, they’ll be able to go and listen, and they can download it.

Okay.

It’ll probably be about two weeks.

Okay, so that Ozark Regional Library, that’s what they have to put in there.

The website.

And it’ll be right on the front page of the website.

And it says Voices of the Ozarks.

Okay, Voices of the Ozarks.

Okay, okay.

Well, I’ll tell them about that, and they can do what they need to do.

And if they have any trouble, they can just call the library and we can instruct them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It’s great.

Well, thank you so much.

Well, you’re just very welcome.

You folks are very nice to do this for people.

Thank you.

Bye.

Want to subscribe to Voices of the Ozarks in your podcast app? Just copy this link: http://ozarkregional.org/blog/?feed=podcast, then paste it into your podcast app’s add a feed field. You can also click the podcast icon on the sidebar to subscribe in Apple Podcasts.

My name is Willa Dean Combs. I was born in 1930 in Bollinger County. We lived in northern Bollinger county and I moved to Madison County later when I married.

Willa says that she and her husband had a farm on Castor River and that he passed in 2017.

She says she was born May 20, 1930 in the middle of the Great Depression. She says that some of her earliest memories relate to her younger brother getting into trouble and she, as the older sister, trying to get him out of it. But then she shares a story of her brother crying and her mother coming to find out that she had bitten him. Her younger brother was the only sibling she had. She says that she and her brother played a lot on the farm where they grew up. She says their main source of entertainment was playing in or near the pond.

She tells a story about her dad telling them that the mail carrier was a government man and that they should stay out of the pond or they would get in trouble. Her brother would hide behind the oak tree when the mail man walked by. She says that he had a nack for getting into trouble and she was the mother hen that tried to keep him out of trouble. She admits that often the trouble was her trying to get him to do things he didn’t want to do. She speculates that perhaps the mother hen tendency is what led her to become a school teacher.

5:00

She went to school in a rural school that was about a mile and a half away from their home. They walked to school for awhile. At some point her teacher that drove by the house on the way to school started picking them up. She says the teacher’s name was Grace Smith and she was her favorite teacher. She want to grade school at South Liberty. She went to high school in Patton and graduated when she was 16 in 1946. That summer she started college in Cape. They were not wealthy but her dad was determined that she’d have a good education. She was hired the next term to teach in a rural school after only one semester of college. She says that was fairly common back then. Teaching at 16 meant that some of her students were almost as big as her. She taught all 8 grades for about 4 years.

She met her husband during her fourth year of teaching. They were married November 25, 1948. She was 18. During that time she would go to school at Cape in the summer and then teach in the fall. She says her school was consolidated into the Patton district. She was married and they were living in Madison County when she got a job teaching at a school at the junction of J and 72 highways, the old Union school which has been gone for many years. She would also do correspondence and night courses working towards her degree. She would car pool with other students to Cape.

10:00

She worked on her degree for over 10 years and got it in 1962.  She says that was somewhat normal during that time, especially with teachers that were teaching while getting their degree. She taught full time for 39 years and 3 months.

She had 2 daughters. Her parents helped with watching the kids. She says her oldest daughter passed of cancer in 2004.

She says that she had both of her daughters as students.

We ask her about why she became a teacher and why education was important to her. She says it was a teacher that she had in grade school that was a model teacher and took her under her wing.

14:00

She talks about the poverty of depression and the scarcity of wartime rationing. She says they always had clothes and food thanks to the farm. She talks about the dresses her mother made her from chicken feed bags. The fabric was often floral print so it was great for dresses. She says that when they shopped they were very careful in their selection of goods based on the bags because they knew that they would be using them to make clothing. She also talks about various aspects of quilting.

19:30

She’s asked about her attendance at community celebrations or churches. She says they did go to church and remembers walking to church barefoot and they would wash their feet and  put their good shoes on just before getting there. And then would walk home barefoot. They did that also in bad weather. Sometimes they would take the wagon and horses but usually they walked. It was about a mile and a half.

She’s asked about having a radio and says that they did have one. Her dad was very careful not to use it too much to save the battery. They would turn it off during commercials and as soon as the show was over. They didn’t have electricity until around 1948 when the REA was finally in the area.

Her husband drove a truck for the propane gas company until they went out of business which was around the time that the mines opened up and he worked there in the refinery. When that ended he started farming full time. They bought an 80 acre farm to raise beef cattle. They later bought an adjoining 80 acre farm near Amidon which she still owns. They lived there most of their married life with the exception of the first few early years. When they bought the property they lived in the original old farm house until they discovered that it was damaged by termites. They built a new house and lived their ever since. Her husband did most of the work with help from neighbors, friends and family.

27:00

We ask her what else stands out in her memory about living in Madison County. Particularly we ask her if she remembers the circus coming through town and she does. We also ask about fairs, festivals and celebrations. She remembers that many such events were around Labor Day. She says that she remembers larger, Madison County fairs or celebrations that would bring in people from the whole county.

She’s asked about the businesses of Bollinger County and she says they had a few though she doesn’t go into great detail. She’s asked about the flooding of Greenville and she says that she does remember hearing about it. She didn’t see it or remember why.

31:00

She’s asked about where they lived before they got the farm. She says they lived in the Spring Valley community which is along the Castor River. The farm that they bought is about a mile and a half up the river from the community. The never lived in Fredericktown.

She mentions that her husband was born in Colorado and had grown up in cities but he always wanted to be a farmer. We ask where she met him and says that they met at a pie supper. She explains that pie suppers were fundraisers for schools where local community women would bake pies which would be auctioned off. Young men would bid on pies and would eat the pie with the person that baked it.

She corrects herself and says she actually met her husband at a church revival during which her grandfather had, in a moment of happiness, grabbed her and her husband-to-be, and had accidentally bumped their heads together.

They later met again at a pie supper. He was buying lots of pies hoping to get hers. One of the neighbors told him which was hers so he got it. He took her home that night and  they started dating.

She talks briefly about Castor Station which had been a gas station and the moving of Hwy 72. She talks about their first home which was on Castor Hill, above the station. It was an old, two story house. She mentions that there were old portraits hanging in the house and they scared her. She says she was a bit scared to be alone in the house.

38:30

We return to discussing her time teaching. There were 3 one room schools that she taught at. She mentions teaching at Rosebud for 3 years. After that she taught at a two room school at Union. Lloyd Pike (?) taught the upper grades and she taught the lower.  She took a break from teaching then for about three years when their first daughter was born. Later she was approached by the Underwood district near her home to teach which she did. She hadn’t planned on returning to teaching so soon but they were persistent. Her husband encouraged her because the mines had recently closed so he would be able to take care of their daughter while she worked. Her mother also helped when needed.

After Underwood she went to teach at Mine LaMotte. She finished her teaching career at Mine LaMotte.  We spend some time discussing the dynamics of teaching and learning in mixed grade schools.

43:00

We discuss various bits of history such as the moon landing and Pearl Harbor. She remembers both and says a lot about Pearl Harbor. She was only 11 and it had a big impression on her. The war affected their lives in many  ways.

49:20

She’s asked about her use of technology and she says that she does use it. Not as much since moving to the nursing home. But previously she used it more. She mentions that she wrote a book about the ancestry of her family which entailed lots of correspondence and a little travel for the research. She’s asked about her family came to Missouri. She says her great great grandfather emigrated to Missouri from Tennessee in the mid 1800s. Some also came from Lincoln County North Carolina. Her daughter mentions that many in our area came from Lincoln County.

She started the book project around 1983 and we discuss how things are different now with the internet. She did all the work of writing it with a typewriter.  She published it in the late 80s or early 90s and it was focused on her Regan family history and genealogy.

The interview is concluded.

Want to subscribe to Voices of the Ozarks in your podcast app? Just copy this link: http://ozarkregional.org/blog/?feed=podcast, then paste it into your podcast app’s add a feed field. You can also click the podcast icon on the sidebar to subscribe in Apple Podcasts.

My name is Maurice Stevens, I was born September, 1930 in Marquand Missouri. My parents are Ruby Stevens and – Stevens. (Note: Jerry Stevens, Maurice’s son, also participates in the interview.)

There wasn’t a lot of money around. My dad had a farm and raised various animals.

Maurice went to school in a small country school, Greasy Creek named after the nearby creek. When he got older he went to the Marquand schools. I graduated from the highschool in 1948.

He and the kids used to play softball but didn’t have gloves. He liked school and mentions that he and his sister did well in the spelling matches.

We ask him what he did on the farm and he says he helped with most things and mentions cutting wood, picking corn using a team of mules. The didn’t sell the produce because there were 8 kids so the food was to feed the family. They did timber work to help bring in money.

He worked in timber until he went into the army in 1951. He shares an army story of being in the honor guard. He was in the army for two years.

5:00

After the army he went to work in St. Louis for Fischer Body on Natural Bridge and Union in Hazelwood. Then came back to Fredericktown and worked in the lab for National Lead for 10 years. He worked with Jack Skinner (a recent interviewee of Voices of the Ozarks). Then he worked construction for two years and then went back to work in St. Louis.

He was a big St. Louis Cardinals Baseball fan and says Stan Musial was his favorite player. He once caught a fowl ball with his bare hands which he says stung for two days.

He came back the the Fredericktown area in 1970. He worked in timber for the rest of his life. He cut, hauled and ran a saw mill. He used a cross-cut saw and Paul Mauser is mentioned as someone Maurice worked with. Maurice talks about tapping trees for maple sap and the process of cooking it down to syrup. 50 gallons of sap would be cooked down to 1 gallon of syrup. They would start the tapping in February. A few people in the area still tap trees.

He’s asked about other food sweeteners such as bees. He says they did keep bees, he says 20 hives. Sorghum is also discussed. It was cane which was grown and then run through a press to squeeze out the sugar liquid.

12:30

He’s asked about community celebrations and says he remembers the Marquand community picnic.

He’s asked about cars and says his dad got a Model T back in the 30s and then a Model A around 1940. He’s asked about the quality of the roads and says that they were cross-country. The old Bloomfield Road is mentioned as having went by their house.

His first car thought he bought to go to St. Louis was a 38 Chevy that he bought around 1953.

15:30

He’s asked about working timber and says they worked around Marquand. They didn’t clear cut, but would selectively cut the big wood. Most of it was used for ties and pallets.

17:00

He’s asked about living in St. Louis and Madison county and his preference. He says he preferred the country. He’s asked what they would do for fun and says hunting and fishing. They would also sell fur. They talked about hunting a variety of animals for the fur as well as for the food. Everything from possum to raccoons to skunks.

20:00

He’s asked if he ever saw bears or wild cats like pumas. He says not often. He’s seen bear more recently but not very often when he was younger.

He says his family is mostly still close by but not all of them.

He’s asked about livestock like chickens and asked if they lost many to predators. He says a few.

24:00

They talk about a log failing out of the fireplace and burning through the floor. He’s asked about the house being raised up on rocks with a plank floor. There was no insulation and the house could get very cold even when there was a fire. At night when the fire would die down it could get cold enough that water would freeze. He’s asked about winter time temperatures and if they were comfortable in the house. We discuss that back then houses were not necessarily as warm and comfortable as they are today.

We talk about loosing livestock in the winter and then talk about smoking meat to preserve it. The process was not cooking but drying. It would also be treated with salt.

We ask him about hunting and seasons, particularly the beginning of organized deer seasons. He says there really weren’t that many deer back then. They were hard to come by. He says he thinks 1944 was the first year they started offering deer seasons. The deer population was very small back then because they had been over hunted. He says that the fished and frogged for meat too.

He’s asked about the construction of the house. The fireplace was built from the ground but the house was elevated.

On the subject of food scarcity we discuss one of the neighbors that had lost her husband and made mud pies so it appeared to the neighbors that they had food. Maurice says they would often share with neighbors who didn’t have food. We ask if they were active in any particular churches and Maurice says they went to the Walnut Grove Church which they walked to every Sunday. It was about 1.5 miles away.

He’s asked about how things were different when they walked everywhere. Particularly, he’s asked if he and the other kids, had a better understanding of the kinds of things that lived around them. Did they know the names of plants, trees, insects and so on. He says that he thinks they did.

33:00

We talk a bit about harvesting nuts like walnuts, hickory nuts and hazelnuts. He said that they did collect those. They also gathered pawpaws. His mother really liked those. And persimmons too. Maurice comments that he does not see as many persimmons today as there used to be. Deer and possums like to eat persimmons.

He’s asked if they kept any wild animals as pets. He says his daughter raised a raccoon which lived in the house. We also briefly discuss beaver and otter. They say that otters will clean out all the fish from a creek or a pond.

37:00

Maurice mentions that they often go up to Minnesota to go fishing. It’s a family trip and they all go and stay in cabins. This was the first year that Maurice that wasn’t able to go.

38:30

We talk about the time that Maurice was in trouble and school and jumped out a second story window to avoid the super intendant that was after him. He was something of an athlete and had no problem jumping from that high. He says he played volleyball.

We ask if he remembered the moon landing and he says he does but it wasn’t that important to him. On the subject of the media we ask if he read the newspaper and he says that he did. They comment that back in those days the Democrat News was a bigger paper. Maurice says that for a time there was another paper called the Madison County Press.

We ask him if they were able to get most of the stuff that they needed in Marquand or did they need to come to Fredericktown. He says that Marquand had more stores back then and that they could get everything they needed there. They mention that for awhile they all had a soda bottling company that made and distributed soda.

43:30

The interview is concluded.

Want to subscribe to Voices of the Ozarks in your podcast app? Just copy this link: http://ozarkregional.org/blog/?feed=podcast, then paste it into your podcast app’s add a feed field. You can also click the podcast icon on the sidebar to subscribe in Apple Podcasts.

This was, of course, they got married in 1934. And I was born in 35. And they’re in the middle of the depression. Jobs were hard to find. And so we moved to St. Louis and that’s why I was born up there.

1940, still jobs were kind of hard to find. So dad, we moved back down to live with my grandpa and grandma Ward, whose farm, they had an 80 acre farm, which lies across the road from the current Amidon parking lot. There on Castor.

Patricia: Was it even hard to find jobs in St. Louis?

Jack:Yes, yes. You might find a job and a month later, you’re laid off.

Patricia: Even in the city?

Jack:Yeah, in they were just very hard to find jobs, even there.

Denny: What were your parents names, and your grandparents names?

Jack:My dad’s name was Glen Skinner. My mother’s name was Anna Ward. My grandparents name was Tom Ward and Lou Ward actually her name was Lousetta, but whenever went by the setta part, we always went by the Lou part. Tom and Lou ward. She was a Vennable. Granma Ward was a Vennable and her ancestors date all the way back. They, some of them were in the Revolutionary War and war of 1812.

They came in from Alabama. Ah, Grandpa Ward, my great grandfather, was in the Civil War. He was with the North, was in the Calvary.

They were outside a little town outside of Nashville and it

We move back to live with my grandparents to their farm for about four or five months. Actually going back to my grandfather and the farm. I went to the courthouse and took a look back at it. The first mention of it was 1820, a family by the name of fair Farrah, I think same name as Clara Farrah, here in town.

It was the first owner. But the key, 1820 of course was when Missouri became a state and so prior records. We don’t know how long he lived there before that. But he was connected with some of the early people who helped the farm the county and it stayed in the Farrah family until the late 1890s, a family by the name of Combs bought it. They sold it to a Backer who lived there two years and then my grandparents bought it and 1923 and lived there until 55 when they retired and move to town.

5:20

Love that old farm. Lot of those farms and even towns spring up because there was a spring and the spring is still running big today.

I go back down and visit with the fellow who lives there once in a while now. My grandfather had the house was a one room log cabin with a loft. There was a log smoke house right next to it and then a long barn down in front of it. When my grandpa moved there, they built a kitchen on one side. And when we moved there in 1940 live with them, grandpa and my dad built a couple rooms on the back. The whole house is gone now.

None of those original buildings are there anymore. But the spring house was so important to that farm.

It was built on the side of a hill, and the spring came out the side of the hill. So grandpa took some flat rocks and built a square box and cemented them together. He had a pipe running out of the bottom, and he built a concrete box, sort of a long concrete box along one side and the pipe ran into the bottom of that so the water would fill up in the box. And then he had a pipe running out of the top of the box. So it would never, it would always flow out, it would keep it filled. And this was all covered with a wooden building a spring house.

From there it ran down through the chicken yard. So he never had to water his chickens. There was always water for chickens there. Ran under the fence into the barnyard and he dug out a little area there made a hole to water, the livestock, the cattle and the horses and all. Then a curved under the fence through the hog lot. And so that spring, well originally it was there drinking water in later years they had a well drilled, but it supplied water for the whole menagerie.

Patricia: Was it connected with pipes?

Jack:Just uh, no, after it ran out of that concrete box it just ran underneath the wall of the spring house and it was just open as it ran down to the barn. The chicken lot and the barnyard like that, just natural stream.

It connected with another Creek, our branch that came out of the woods to the west of there, and both of them then would fall into the Castor River.

Oh, yeah, again, dad could not find work, even around Fredericktown, so after about four or five months, we moved back to St. Louis. He did find a job there for a while. And I was not five years old until November. So, St. Louis schools would not let me start school until January. They run by semesters not by years. So in January of 41, I started kindergarten.

I had an uncle who was living with us at the time. And he had, there was a plan that President Roosevelt had, where you could join the army for one year and get some training because things were already burning in Europe by 1941 in the spring. And so he joined in March with the idea he would get out in March of 42. Something happened in December of that year called Pearl Harbor. And he was long gone to New Guinea for the duration. But anyway, I started kindergarten there, then spent the summer, went back to kindergarten then in September, and graduated from kindergarten in 1941. Started first grade in 1942. But we only stayed there until March, and we moved to Fredericktown. And that’s my introduction to living right in Fredericktown itself.

10:00

Too late to start first grade here, because I’ve only had three months in St. Louis and one more month and they would been out. At that time they dismiss school like the first of May.

So I just stayed out of school until the fall of 1942. Started first grade, I would say that the school I was attending in St. Louis was Hodgins school. I was scared to death the whole time. It was dark. It was a monstrous building. And I knew no one up there. And my first year in the Fredericktown school, it was such a pleasure.

Big, wide open windows. Of course there were no air conditioning, so you cooled it by raising the windows. I had Miss Johnson and Miss Cobb, who Ellen Cobb married Glenwood Counts. She became a Counts midway through the year.

It’s a good thing because by being naive, I had a lot of jokes about her, and I got caught one time. I said to another boy after we had passed her on the sidewalk, there goes Miss corn on the cob. And she heard me and oh, I felt about two inches tall. But she was very understanding and, of course we got along just fine after that. And then after got out of school, I even worked for her husband for a few months, so all was forgiven.

We moved in on a big white, two story house on the corner of East Marvin and High Street, the southwest corner East Marvin and High Street. A family by the name of Charlie Bollinger and his wife.

They owned from East Marvin, that whole block to the south, down to the last, the other corner and there was a family Lloyd White and his family lived there. But the Bollingers had been farmers and so they had a garden that covered that whole block except for where the house, two houses on each corner stood. And their son and his wife and two teenage kids lived with them. They had one bedroom upstairs. Of course they spend all their time downstairs with Grandpa and Grandma. But they all slept in the one bedroom upstairs.

My mom, dad and me, we had two rooms upstairs and a screened in back porch. We did not have a refrigerator. Back in those days we used an icebox. We had a beautiful oak ice box with four doors on it. And you hung your sign up when you got ready for ice and the guy carried it up with tongs on his shoulder and kept things cold and of course in the wintertime, it was sitting out on that upstairs porch, took care of itself with the temperature then. We had a gas stove and a table in the kitchen and a washing machine and the winter time in the summer we would roll the old Maytag ringer-washer out on the upstairs porch.

All the laundry had to be carried down the stairs around the big old white house to the backyard and hung out on lines, didn’t have dryers in those days.

We did not have a bathroom. There was one bathroom downstairs for four different families, actually or four different people, who groups who lived there.

So it had to be a timing to use use the bathroom house.

Patricia: Was there an outhouse?

Jack: No, no, there was none there. My dad had gone to work and got a job with the Sinclair oil company. At that time they worked out of the Fredericktown Milling Company office. Junior Thompson and Mr. Whitener were the bosses. They ran both the Fredericktown Milling Company and the gas, Sinclair Gas.

A lot of times when he would make a run out into the rural areas to the little country stores, they would throw a sack of feed, maybe two or three sacks of feed or something up on the side of the oil truck, and so he delivered feed as well as as gas to those country stores.

15:00

I loved to go with him a lot of times in the summertime. Some, especially the one that I think of most, is Castor Station, which again is no longer there. It is a private dwelling now. But they were so unique. Usually, like, in the wintertime there would be a heating stove right in the middle of the floor.

Two or three old gentleman sitting around it discussing politics or, the hot stove league we called it. Were the Cardinals, are they going to trade this one or that one, or how they going to do next year. They always had a roll top glass cabinet with candy, penny candy in there. Of course I, that always caught my eye too.

But there were just a peculiar smell about those country stores and I think part of that had to do with, they put treated sawdust on the floor every morning. It was wood floors, and they put that sawdust down and then sweep it up. And it’s kind of an oiled material. And of course it was not self-served. All the canned goods and everything were on shelves behind you just told the clerk, at that time Lee Gregory owned it, when I was a kid riding with my dad and in the gas truck. But they lived in a house on the side of the store. So a lot of times even if they were closed, somebody in need would just go knock on the door and he opened the door and go next door and get them a can of food or whatever they wanted.

Croquet courts were big back in those days. And it was more of a profession, professional type court. They really manicured them and and took care of them. They, most of them, were sand, they would water them down and roll them and make them almost as hard as concrete but they were level and the ball would roll true. And the men would take special mallets and drill holes in the end and put lead in there to make them heavier and then cut the handle off and just a short handle. They would get down low and sight up on the on, they played for blood and there was a professional court down on South Main next door to, Turnbows, had a grocery store there across from the swimming pool, and right next to that was a croquet court.

My mom’s aunt and uncle, George Jones lived on the corner of Marshall and it’s that street that runs up to the park.

Patricia: Were they fenced?

Jack: No, no, but they did have a board like about this high as the outer boundary and course you could bounce the ball off of that and kind of like a pool table, you know, you could use that is getting your ball around if you wanted to know or needed to.

I but I that was some of the best years of my life, I guess when we lived there with the Bollingers. Down the block and around the corner and there was a jillion kids and had a lot of kids and became acquainted with and I guess that’s one reason I like, got, ah, like the the Frederick town school because I spent that summer playing and I knew some kids when I went there. But it was just such a different atmosphere, it was a country atmosphere that was different from the city schools. And I just I thoroughly loved school all the way through.

Some of us, fact is we are having our 65th class reunion, two weeks from tomorrow. We’ve been narrowed down there probably going to be about 20 to 25 of us there. But I think we had, we started off with close to 80 or 90, as a freshman, and we graduated 66. I graduated in 1954. It was interesting things were so much different back then.

20:05

The band director in 1947, I think it was, the band director, left in the middle of the summer, left them short handed. So I was taking violin lessons from Della Seal. And they asked her, she had a teaching degree, they asked her if she would take the band. She did. And she asked me if I want to be in the band. I was in the fifth grade. And well, yeah, and so I didn’t have a band instrument, but the school had some that they supplied. I started off the first year on a trumpet, but they had a lot of the trumpet players. So the next two years, I played a French horn.

And then in 1948 I believe it was there was, Ludwig music salesman came to town and set up in the old gym, the granite gym up on up on High, High Street. And I bought a trombone. So the last five years, I spent eight years in the high school band, and I didn’t fail a single year.

But it was interesting. We, we took a lot of trips and things. Even in grade school, we would take parties and things like eighth grade we would go out to roadside park for a picnic, things like that.

But the classes would have. We always had a Valentine’s Day party and a Christmas party. And there were three grocery stores, neighborhood grocery stores, right around the old school up on High Street, though Marvin college, which became the school. Kept three stores in business until the school moved.

When we were in grade school, we we’d have news, 10 cents a month or something like that. And one year I was the treasurer for our class. And what you would do when we get to like the Valentine’s Day or whatever holiday it was, me or the treasurer, and a couple other boys would go across the street. We had orders for what kind of soda to buy. And we would buy a whole case of soda and of course it take a couple boys to carry it full, carry it back. Well, I was, my mom was a cook at at the school and they, is in the basement of the old high school and they cook for the elementary and the whole school.

So I went down to the car where she had her car parked down the hill. And I had the jar of money for the class, that had been saved up, carrying it back up that sidewalk, dropped the jar broke it, and the coins scattered all over. Well, there was a high school girl. And this was the kind of people you had back in those days. She saw that and of course, I was just about and tears. I was just a little kid and I was ruined. I had broke all the class money, you know. She came over and sifted through the broken glass and picked it all up. We got every bit of the money. And she had a sack or something that had been her lunch sack, put the money in there. And I made it on to school. Have no idea what her name was, but high schoolers were just kind of like babysitters. They just took care of your kids, you know, and helped you out.

When we were in high school, Miss Whitener was the drama teacher and every year she took a group to St. Louis, to some of the plays up there.

My senior year, we well, junior year we went to see *South Pacific*. We would go most of the time we went to the American Theatre, but the senior year, we went up there and saw *Death Takes a Holiday* and Vincent Price was the actor. And she got us a pass. We went behind the stage. Got to meet and talk to Vincent Price and he was just as common as an old shoe.

He signed my program and I’ve still got that, I think I’ve got it locked up in the safety deposit box. Probably doesn’t mean a whole lot but it does to me because I, he was a well known actor and paid a lot of villain parts at the time, but he was he’s very popular. But sure didn’t seem like a villain when, we thought he was just so friendly to bunch of kids. He didn’t have to be, here’s a big star, but he just mingled right in with us and talked and answered our questions and took time to talk to us.

25:20

Our senior year also, I played baseball, and Diz Anderson, who had been a former professional football player. He was our athletic director at that time coached the football and baseball. I don’t think he goes to the basketball, but anyway, we had the athletic banquet in the spring every year. He told us as a senior, he said, gonna have a surprise for you.

So we got there that night and lo and behold, it was Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin was here in Fredericktown. This was either Mickey’s first or second year he wasn’t the big name yet.

But we got to meet and greet and talk to Mickey Mantle at the banquet, you know, and a lot of things that, to remember. Pleasant, pleasant things to remember about my my school years.

When I graduated from high school, I was kind of lost. I didn’t know for sure what I wanted to do. A lot of my friends had gone on off to college somewhere. Some of them joined the military. Some of them went to St. Louis to get jobs. This was 54 and my dad had purchased a little grocery store over in North town. And so I worked in there till about November and he decided he wasn’t cut out to be a business person. He was a hard worker. But that just wasn’t for him. So he sold, sold that store.

I carried the mail for one month back then everybody mailed 50, 60, 70 Christmas cards. Only going to cost you two cents to mail a Christmas card in those days. So you sent a lot of them to everybody. And so they always had a big increase. And they hired extra mail carriers for the month of December. And Albert Baines is the one who broke me in. I carried North town and really liked the job. I knew it was just temporary and as soon as Christmas came I’d be out but I loved that job. And being young like that, it didn’t take me long to memorize who lived where and knew where to deliver the letters but once Christmas came I was out of work. In February, I got a job at White market which was right across the street here. White market grocery store. I was a delivery boy they had an old like a panel truck except it was open on the sides. And they would have call-in orders and I would get empty boxes and put the order in the box. And then I would plan my route to deliver those groceries to people. Well, they, White Market was, the mines had not shut down yet, but Kroger had moved into this building that we’re in now, right across the street from so them, so that made it kind of rough on them and so they closed their business. Well, I was out of work.

So I went to work at Swisher Chevrolet and the gasoline part up front, worked that through the summer and I knew there should be doing something more than just pumping gas.

I got a job but Evert Osbourne’s men’s and boys clothing store which is a blond, brick building down here on South Mine La Motte. Worked there three years and I met my wife Betty Joyce LaChance and by the way, she might want to you might want to talk to her sometime too because her ancestors are the ones who helped to found Fredericktown. It was called St. Michael’s Village. But up on the Courthouse Square there that big rock up there and seven those people are her ancestors.

29:48

Kind of interesting, kind of backing up here, just a little bit. When, in 1943, we were living at Bollingers, and dad was drafted and went into the Navy in World War II. When he came home, they had never had a home, and we were living in two rooms without the bathroom and refrigerator and stuff like that. So we used the GI Bill money and we bought a little four room house over on 414 Virginia Street.

It was white at the time, it’s painted yellow. Now I still drive by there and look at that sometimes. But lo and behold, we had in the bathroom inside. That seems important, but back then it certainly was. But we kept that for two years and traded it for what became known as the green house.

This is a house that had green shingle siding on it and a red roof and it’s just east a town. Today it’s a white house with a black roof, the distinguishing characteristic that it has a concrete garage built into the hill in front of the house. It’s right next door to the shoe factory building out there on z highway.

There was nothing there. Golf Homes owned all of that land. And we were just, had four acres right in the middle, kind of like an island. We were half a mile from the city limits, which was the Saline Creek low water bridge at that time, and six tenths of a mile from the courthouse so we were closer to the courthouse than most people in town. And yet our closest neighbor was a half mile away.

And I dearly love that place as well. It was a great place to grow up. We had an orchard behind the house and had grapevines and a big garden spot and, just just a great place grew up. Had a barn, chicken house, washhouse. And

And, I, ah, I would ride my bike over to the depot and take pictures of the old trains and things like that and I would get pretty close with my camera. And of course they always waved at me once in a while they wait till they got even with me then they’d hit the whistle, try to scare me, but I was expecting it and I was used to it.

I used to love to watch him do a flying switch, right down the tracks from our house was a spur that went over to national lead and of an evening, well, of a morning, they were going south. So they would just stop and take the one car and back up all the way over to the mines. Of an evening they were going north, and so how do we get the car over there without being in front of the, behind the engine. So they had what they call a flying switch. The switchman, he would get down at the switch, the brakeman would get on top of the car, that they wanted to take over, they would uncover the cars behind it. And the old steam engine, he would give it the gas you know and open it up wide, the wheels would spin and try and catch and they would take off as fast as they could. Then the brakeman would cut loose, and the engine would pull on off away from it and this car would keep rolling the switch men would throw the switch, it would curve over onto the spur going to national lead. Then the engine would back up, come up and come up behind it then and push it over to the mines. Interesting how they do it, but for them we just a routine thing. But love those old steam engines. And I would watch them a lot from my house or I would go over in an north-town and watch them as they shuffled back and forth. They had a spur that went into the milling company before it burned. We were there the night that burned, helped them carry stuff out of the office, the records and things because they dad worked out of that office at that time.

35:04

But, during flood stages, when the Mississippi River would get over the tracks, sometimes they would reroute those trains through what this was called the Belmont branch. They would reroute them through here, and so I got to see some of the first diesel trains that came through here.

One time there was one of the Eagles came through here. But they didn’t have the modern equipment. And so a lot of times they just stopped, the telegrapher in the depots had to call back and forth and had to wait for trains to pull off on the siding. And then this one would pass and they just sort of shuffle back and forth through here. And it would last probably about a month or so until the water went back down and then they, plus they had to go slow because these tracks were not built for the heavy, fast freights that the Missouri Pacific was using.

Patricia: The depot was in North town.

Jack: Yes.

Patricia: That some areas in North town are prone to flooding as well.

Jack: Yeah, not not around, where the tracks were. The tracks crossed, ah, Lincoln Drive, there were Country Mart is now, the part that flooded and that’s a story too. I was dating my wife and my grandparents had sold the farm in 1955 and they bought a house on North Main Street.

They were south of the Free Will Baptist Church toward toward downtown on that side you know.

We picked grandma up and carried her up to the Free Will Baptist Church and it was still dry ground there and then we went back. We sat they had the old high poster bed thing set up this, pretty high off the floor. And we started picking up chairs and tables and things and sitting up on top of the bed and in the second bedroom, we did the same thing in there and set as many things up on top high, high spots as we could. That night, well, it was getting close to morning, and someone said, what about the lady that lives in the little old house right next to the river? Has anyone seen her? We hadn’t. And so the fire truck came around, Lincoln Drive, came in there and drove as far as it could in the water down North Main Street. And then probably 20 or 30 people formed a human chain, which I was part of that and my dad was further along there, he came in to help too. And we would hold hands because it was the current was pretty swift even that far from the main channel. And it went all the way down and the water was up pretty high on this lady’s house, and knocked on the door. She didn’t answer so they pushed the door open. And that woke her up. The water was just level with the top of her bed. She didn’t know there was any problem at all. She scared her. She swung her legs over and hit the water and she didn’t know they had water in her house at that time. But they got her and carried her out, carried her up that chain back to the fire truck. And then it backed her out and got her out of the way.

40:05

But the water was 14 inches high in my grandparents house that time. And it also ran over the top the two times I think that has gone over the top of Lincoln drive. And the other time was what, 1993 or somewhere through there. Yeah, but I saw water run over the top of, you know, as you go out past the funeral home, there. Go down Wilson funeral home and then go over that bridge and right, right, the little straight stretch their water was going over the top of it. It was that deep.

And back then there were no homes where they’re at now out Z Highway. Like I said, ours was the only home and it sits up high.

If we could not get out we just walked behind, walked over the railroad tracks and walked to town when when the creek was up and it ran down pretty quick too. Had some interesting times with with Saline Creek there.

After I got married in 58 I got a job over at National Lead, working in the laboratory. One of the two jobs I have dearly loved in my life. I probably would have spent my entire time working there if the mines had not shut down. I got the feeling that maybe every place I work they went broke.

They shut out but anyway, went to work in the, in the lab and we would run essays on ore samples from different places in the lab. And they had built the refinery at that time and the roaster and so I broke in with Carlton Mooney, broke me in on titration of iron ores. And then when I quit the last year or two, I was working in the cobalt copper room analyzing the cobalt copper content. That’s why very much interested when this current mine company is coming back in to work the cobalt. The miners, when they shut it down, the guys who worked under ground said, well, they haven’t even touched the richest veins of cobalt yet. They’ll open up in another month or two. And that was what 50 some odd years ago, and now they’re finally opening up those mines. Those miners are all gone.

But anyway, supposedly the best the best cobalt and copper is still down there. Or at least the best cobalt is still down there. Used to be a sign, out here on the highway as you entered, a big billboard said cobalt capital of the world.

I imagine historical society probably has some pictures of that because it was out there for several years as you entered the town.

But I thoroughly loved that job. But of course when it shut down, then everybody was out of work. It was hard to find a job. I worked at, in this building as a produce clerk, which I knew nothing about. But you just got any kind of a job you could get. And it was difficult because Kroger believed in quality and they wanted me to buy three bins of watermelons. And I don’t know if there’s like 100 watermelons in a bin. And they were selling for $1 apiece. But you go down to Thal’s and buy them for a quarter. Well with everybody out of the work the mines, they could care less about quality, they wanted to get the most bang for their buck. And so I had a lot of produce and stuff that I couldn’t sell. And so I didn’t stay with it too long.

I got a job in at Monsanto and moved my family to St. Louis worked for Monsanto for a year. And they were, the company was talking about layoff, the Union talking about a strike. And so I worked there a year and there was nothing secure at all about it. Finally, the union signed their contract and two weeks later, the company laid off, not 75 people which would have caught me, but I quit in the meantime and we moved to Cape and I started college at a Cape went into the education field. I wanted to get into some type of work that had some security which I thought maybe I’d have a job next year.

45:00

And I did. I wound up after four years, I graduated from college in 1966, with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and specialized in science and social studies, and I was doing my student teaching at Farmington and I wanted to come back to Fredericktown. Fredericktown had has always been my home even today. It feels more like home to me then Farmington where I have lived since 66. But there was not an opening at the time, and the superintendent in Farmington said I’ll have a job for you. I’ll sign you. And he did and so I spent the next 30 years teaching at Farmington.

Had 11 years as an administrator there. I dearly loved, I taught earth science. It was a wonderful time to get in to science, in 66. The Space Program was just going wild at that time and the kids were interested in, and course Earth Science covers space. And and with this area, the rocks and minerals was important because the mines had been here and a lot of people are still working at mines, at Viburnum and different places. So it was a great time to get into education then. And yes?

Patricia: If I heard you correctly, you graduate with a triple major, elementary, special ed, and social studies.

Jack: Okay. The major was elementary education and the others were called minors. A minor in science and a minor in social studies. But no, I finally found a job that had some security. There may have been some other college degrees that would have paid more but I was, I enjoyed teaching. The teaching and the lab job with the two best jobs ever had.

We are keeping busy now with

But I just, I dearly loved Madison County, I guess because of my grandparents’ farm down there. I wish I had bought it, they sold it for $5,000, I’m sorry, they sold for $3,000 in 1955. And it’s probably worth $150 to 200,000 today or more. I don’t know. But right there on Castor River, you know. But I loved where we lived here at the green house. Wish I could have bought that too and just was still in college when the folks sold it so I couldn’t afford it yet.

But I could always just grab my fishing pole and 15 minutes later I’d be somewhere fishing like at the reservoir up there. At that time the Slime Pond was open. Mine LaMotte Lake, which became Lake Harmony, or I could, my favorite was just run down to Castor and go fishing from the bank. I never had a boat until later years. But there were a lot of swimming holes. It was kind of funny when we were living with the Bollingers over there, we did not have a bathtub.

You had to wash pan, you washed off every day. But on Saturday was special. We had a foot tub and you stood in the foot tub and you washed from the top to the bottom. And that was you got your weekly bath that way.

Saturday morning when I was a kid was special. I had some little chores around the house I had to do and then around 10 o’clock radio time I would listen to *Let’s Pretend* and *Grand Central Station*. Some of those kids programs, which ran before television came along and then the cartoons took over. But back then it was radio program for kids. Then I would take my bath round noon, grab a bite to eat and jump on my bike and ride down to the Mercier theater. And they had, it always begin with as a serial or some kind which lasted a half hour, usually ran for about a month or two. And at the end, each Saturday, there was a crisis left you hanging. So you had to come back next Saturday to see how they got out of it.

And then there was a mystery movie for an hour and then there was a Western and I would get a quarter on Saturdays, 10 cents for the show. Sometimes I’d spend a nickel for a bag of popcorn, most of the time I saved that. And after the show was over, I would go down to Dicus Drugstore, 10 cents for a comic and a nickel root beer. That was my Saturdays.

I was friends with Buddy Mercier back in those days and his dad, of course ran the theater. But his grandma had Huff’s Cafe, which is, Capital Cafe, is that what’s called now? No, the Olympic Cafe, the Olympic Cafe. But back then it was Huff’s Cafe and it was the elite restaurant in this part of the country. Common folks just didn’t go in there. You know, you had to be somebody. But Buddy would take me after the show. He said, come on down, I’ll give you a phosphate. And so he would take me in There because he liked to mix them up himself. And so I would climb up on the stool, he’d go around behind and he would make a phosphate and it was free. And that made it even better, you know?

Denny: So, a phosphate would be like a soda?

Jack: Yeah, it’s kind of like Kool Aid with fizz to it, like carbonated water in it. Usually strawberry or…

Denny: You said, you like getting a root beer or a comic. So what was a root beer back then? Was it the same as today or was different? Was it a similar sort of drink as…

Jack: Yes, yes. It was a fountain, fountain root beer in a mug, kinda like you get it the A&W.

It wasn’t A&W brand, is just all of the stores that are the grocery, the drug stores, had fountains, soda fountains in them. Ah, Rose’s Drug Store, which is on the corner up here, that’s where the high schoolers all hung out. That was there hang out area and they had booths there and you had little jukeboxes there. You could put your quarter in and select three songs. And it would play on a jukebox back over here somewhere.

Denny: And that was the one on thecorner?

Jack:Yeah, Rose’s Drugstore. I think it’s an antique place now. And it was just like two doors down to the theater, where Mercier’s Theatre was.

Patricia: Which is on the Court Square.

Jack: Yeah, it’s on the Court Square right office.

It’s a great actor. Yeah. Movie, played in my mind. A couple of movies. And then root beer in a comic.

Yeah. Great. Yeah. Sometimes a free, because it saved my nickel then for the root beer, I get the free phosphate.

Boy, I had a stack of comic books. And when I left home, they had no use for them and they disappeared and now they probably be worth a fortune.

Denny: What were some of the comics that you…

Jack: Oh, when the Superman comics first came out, you know. During the war, there were special comics, the Black Hawk. This was a group of guys in blue uniforms with a chauffeur type cap and they flew airplanes and they shot down Japs and Germans and whatever happened to be, you know, they were great.

Archie, Archie, comic books.

Patricia: I was about to mention if you said that Rose’s Drugstore was for the high school kid

Jack: Yes.

Patricia: Then Archie and Jughead comics, would have been a documentary. Because it was real life.

Jack: Yeah. Yes, yes. Yes. And I never I never hung out there at Rose’s too much because that’s where the high schoolers were. I would go down to Dicus and it’s across the street from where Pizza Hut is now, it was across the street there. I think there’s a law office there may be now.

Bill Dicus owned it and later on he also put in Dicus Drugs up in Farmington as well.

Denny: Do you live in Farmington?

Jack: I live three miles east of Farmington, east on Highway 32. We’ve been there 20 years, we live several different places at Farmington, but been there since 1966.

Denny: When did you stop teaching?

Jack: 1996, yeah, I’ve been retired 23 years.

Denny: And it was science and history and social studies?

Jack:I never, never wound up teaching history. I taught science the whole time. Science teachers were hard to come by. And there was such a big demand for them in 66. And so, the first year I taught it was I taught all the subjects It was like a homeroom. Kids came in and they stayed in my room all day and I taught, I did teach social studies then, but math and reading and science and whole works. But the second year they departmentalized and had science teachers, math teachers and language arts teachers and so on. And of course I qualified, they were hungry for science teachers and I got right in

Patricia: So, you retired in 96, was that from administration or teaching.

Jack: That was administration? Yeah, I finished up in administration. I loved the teaching the best, but thinking of retirement and the pay that went into administration, and I really did get to help kids one on one more as an administrator, sometimes they didn’t think so. Because they usually had to penalize them for doing something wrong that that was mainly my job is working with the discipline part.

And, ah, but even today, I run into those kids at Walmart or someplace. And they are the friendliest. Because, most of the time, they knew they were doing something wrong. They were just mad because they got caught. And I didn’t personally have trouble with them. I was just the judge who handed down the penalty. You know.

Denny: And so you, you were a science teacher during the the build up to the moon landing.

Jack:Yes.

Denny: And now, because we just celebrated the anniversary, the one it but you’re also you have this interest, I know you contribute a lot to the Facebook for Fredericktown and Madison County…

Jack: Yes. Yes.

Denny: So you have this interesting mix of interests of history as well as science.

Jack: Yes.

Denny: So yeah. How was the celebration of the moon landing for you? Did you enjoy it?

Jack: Oh, great. Yes. And like I say that came about three years after I started teaching, and course the space race was on, and we were always running behind the Russians and kind of leapfrog and then they’d go off and lead leap frog. But we were the first ones on the moon. And it was interesting, talking to him about the three stage rocket, you know, and like the first stage is kind of like a tractor. It’s the work horse. It has to lift all, lift all of this off the surface to the Earth’s atmosphere, that’s the problem, it can’t get going very fast. The second stage was to kick it into higher altitudes, and get it in orbit, and then that third stage, send it off toward the moon. And of course, when the Apollo 13 thing came along, boy, we have some discussions over that how they were able to survive in the lunar lander. Lunar, the LEM, was lunar excursion module.They crawled in there and how the problem was the amount of oxygen was not that great in there. And yet the need to save some of it to fire, to put them in an orbit to come back to Earth. So it was touch and go. And of course the kids ate that up, you know, they they really…

Patrick: It was exciting.

Jack: It was and I I went back after I retired, I went back and did some subbing one of the science teachers was having a baby and was going to be out for six weeks, and I said, well save your earth science topics for when I fill in. And it’s just not as interesting to today’s kids as it was then, because it was happening then. Today. Oh yeah. You know they did that you know.

Denny: I was going to ask you, thinking about today, you know, so if you’re still following all the missions we have going on.

Jack: Yes. Yeah.

Denny: Mars, we’re about the launch the 2020. Yeah, you keep up with it.

Jack: Not as much as I used to. When I first started, you had those, that first group of astronauts, and they became household names. Now, half of your astronauts are from some other countries, you know, and it just not the same and I don’t know their names and all. I try to find out sometimes what they’re doing, but they’re running so many experiments and things now it’s hard to keep track of. But those early days. It was it was just, let’s see if we could get up there and do something and come back, you know?

Denny: Yeah. We take it for granted, it’s become such a common thing.

Jack: And with the space station, it is just, you never call it routine, but it is about as close as you can get to being routine anymore. So it’s not, not I don’t follow it as close as I, I did when I first started. And I guess that’s kind of why the kids are don’t feel like it’s as important as it once was.

Patricia: And you had said that Russia was ahead of you. But I feel as if I remember that Russia took more risks and that in retrospect, afterwards, you would hear a monkey died…

Jack: Yes, yes.

Patricia: Did a human die, a human died also?

Jack: Yeah.Yeah. They started with Sputnik. And you could go out at night, and you could see Sputnik going over, the, I guess sunlight would shine off, it wasn’t very big, but it was very shiny on the outside, and it looked like a star moving across the sky. You know.

1:00:03

Then we put something up there. And another thing, it was, important was because our early spacecraft was made up here in St. Louis at McDonnell Douglas, and I had an uncle who worked there. He worked in the aircraft part, not in the space program. But a lot of those astronauts were flying in and out of St. Louis. And two of them died in a landing up there. They crashed on landing in just a regular old airplane. But ah…

Patricia: We had casualties too.

Jack: Yeah, yeah.Then they put the dog, Leica,the Russians put him, sent, well, it was not meant for him to survive. They just wanted to measure what happened to him and all. But when we put a monkey in there, we plan to bring him back. So that’s one of the difference you’re talking about. We were thinking then of survival and returning them. You know, and the Russians could care less and I’ll send him up, and then we put him to sleep. Don’t worry about it.

And then they put the first man up there Yuri Gagarin. Then we countered that with John Glenn and we think about him being in space but actually he just circled the earth three times. But he was beyond our atmosphere so we called it space, the first man in space. We did have the first spacewalks, we beat the Russians on that, the spacewalks. And of course, we beat, they never did go to the moon, that we know of.

And I think it’s kind of amusing now, we shoot an astronaut up and he hitchhikes with the Russians on their rockets. And when they show their rocket lifting off it looks kind of antiqueish, it looks pretty much like some of their original rockets.

Denny: Well, one question I have stepping away from that getting back to some of the history of Madison County. So you you contribute all the time to the Historic Madison County Facebook page.

Jack:Yes.

Denny: How did you kind of come back around to that? And what is the…

Jack: I started about a year ago. I just liked my life in Madison County and all and so I wrote an article. I didn’t write it for the Historical Society. I just put it on Facebook. And I think Ruth Ann Skaggs picked up on it. And she liked it. And so I, I wrote another one, and then another one. And so then she talked to me that she thanked me said I was making her day because she was always looking for something to put in the Historical Society newsletter and she was using my articles. So, I got to writing one, I put it on Facebook every Monday.

And I said, Well, I’ll do better than that. I’ll bring the pictures down and you can copy them know that, oh, that would be great. And she told me that they have put up feelers several times, wanting pictures of the trains that ran through Fredericktown.

They don’t have a single one. My pictures are the only ones that they’ve have. And, ah, so, hey scanned them and they’re going to blow them up and, and hang them on their walls and things. They also told me that The Depot restaurant over there have been looking for pictures of trains that went through there too. And I told him they’re welcome if they want to get copies from Historical Society, they’re welcome to get those too. I have no need to hoard them. I just soon share them because I enjoy why not everybody else?

Denny: It’s your love of history that’s led you to…

Jack:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patricia: It’s a gift.

1:04:49

Jack: Oh, going back to Amidon Park and that area, there’s an area called The Edmond Hole. I don’t know if you know where that’s at or not. It’s the lower end of, we always knew it as the Mill Shoals, and Mill and then Shoals. But, as usual, the local people say it the easiest way, it sounded like mill shows, shows, but it should be shoals. But we just call it the Mill Shoals and then and later years young people called it the pink rocks. Well then in I believe was the early 90s, Evelyn Driscoll got ready to retire and she owned the land down there, on both sides of the river. And you may know the story of how I got to be called Amidon. I don’t know. But anyway, she got ready to retire her mom had passed away. And she met this professor from I believe was the University of Vermont or New Hampshire, one of those two states up there. And they decided to get married and she was going to move up there with him. And so she made a deal. She gave half of it to the Vermont, I’m going to say Vermont. She gave half of it to the University of Vermont, the other half to the state of Missouri, if they would buy that half from Vermont, and state of Missouri did and made it a state park. But one of the stipulations is that would always be called after her husband’s name, Amidon. He’d never lived in this part of the country, but he will forever be immortalized as a state park here, Amidon State Park.

But there’s a road no longer there, it ran through the wilderness and came out over in Bollinger county around the Pine Hill area. It was called the Wildcat and a lot of farmers used that from over in Bollinger county, they came through the wildcat to get their grain ground. There was a grist mill there by the Driscoll farm. And there was one up at the upper end of the Mill Shoals, and you can still see the iron sticking up where it’s been cut off, where it anchored the mill. And there’s a race a male race cut out of the granite rock there, where the water would run through when it would turn the wheel to grind their their grain. Ah, it was, I don’t know if it was destroyed by fire or washed out in a flood or what, it’s no longer there. But I have seen the one at the lower end down there. A fellow by the name of Hahn built both of them.

And then he sold it to U.S. Skaggs and U.S. Skaggs is the father of Paul Skaggs who is the father of John Paul Skaggs who is the father of Ruth Ann Skaggs. John Paul, I met with him a lot of times, I invited him up to school one time to talk to my class about the history of Madison County. And he did and he didn’t last too long after that. He died, but got a lot of history from John Paul and of course, Ruth Ann knows a lot of it now too, and so does Terry Moss. I don’t know if you know Terry Moss or not. She lives down there on Castor river now.

But the Wildcat, I used to go through there with my cousin, on Parson wagon. We would take from his their farm over around Pine Hill. We would take the horse and wagon, hay wagon, through the Wildcat over to my grandpa’s and haul hay on it. Back then it was loose hay, didn’t have the bailers yet, at that time. And I didn’t know this until about six, seven months ago, my cousin who is Sandy Smith, was Sandy Ward, married John Smith and they used to have a Catfish Kettle up there at Farmington. But she and this Terry Moss, both was telling me, there was a skirmish there during the Civil War. The Union troops had stockpile warehouses at Jackson and they would come up the old Jackson road and they would cut through there to take supplies over to Pilot Knob and the Confederates laid an ambush there in the Wildcat and killed three or four of the Union troops and they are buried in a cemetery there on the Amidon campgrounds, park grounds.

My great grandfather on the Venable side is buried there too. The graves are not marked. We just know he’s there and we know where the cemetery is. But there are no grave markers.

1:10:00

His name was Mathildred Bass Venable. Well, they shortened the Mathildred down to Dred, D-r-e-d, Dred Venable and he, his family moved to, into the Alabama area. And when he was 11 years old, he saw his dad killed by the Indians. He was off in the distance, he saw the Indians murder his dad, and he was very bitter, very mad.

He got with a group of other young men, and they built a raft on the Tennessee River. And they sailed down the Tennessee to the Ohio and then the Ohio to the Mississippi and then came up to Bollinger county to start with and then he moved to, what’s today is called the Flying V Ranch, where Paul Vance bought it from the Venable, it was the old Venable homestead down on Castor.

And Paul bought it from the Venable people. But he was living there and was coming across Castor one day with the team of oxen pulling the wagon, and they got hung up in the loose gravel in Castor river and he was cussing him out and just making a blue streak in the air with his language. And he saw a vision of his mother who was dead. He saw a vision of her walking out onto the creek bank. And she got on to him and said Mathildred, why are you using such language? It scared the bejeebers out of him. He climbed down and waded to the bank and knelt down and prayed that God would forgive him. And he did. And from that time on, Mathildred had Bible study every morning and every night. They prayed at every meal. And all of his kids turned out to be devout Christians, as well.

And course one of his granddaughter’s was my grandmother.

Patricia: Is that French name?

Jack: Yes, yes, it is. And we were able to trace, there is an attorney in the state of Washington, his name Boyd Venable, I don’t know if he’s even alive or not. But he was able to trace the Venables in from France. They crossed over into England. They spent several years several generations in England, and they came into Virginia, settled, settled into Virginia.

And we were able to trace back, Fern Wamser, who is dead now, but she has an article and that history of Madison County Big Blue Book. She has an article in there and traces it back. And we were able to come with Boyd’s information and connect with hers to connect the family all the way through.

She puts in there, one article, one of the ancestors had a dispute over some lamb. I think it was so he hired Patrick Henry as his lawyer and they won the case. Henry was pretty good lawyer, well as a statesman, I guess.

Patricia: A good orator.

Jack: Yes, yes.

There is an earlier spelling, Veniere or something like that Veniere, which became Venables, and then they dropped the s and is called it Venable. Yeah.

Patricia: Interesting.

Jack: Yeah. We It was interesting. Of course, the war years were especially important with me with my dad being in the Navy, and all. My mom was working at the high school in the cafeteria. And not that she was an exception. The same thing happened to a lot of women who all of a sudden, they have to run the whole show. They have to take care of paying the bills and budgeting the money and taking care of the sick and all like this.

She did an excellent job as all the women did. Alot of women went to work at that time, and that was, I I have an article coming up Monday. Along those lines.

They found it was easier to work in industrial plants by wearing slacks rather than dresses. And after the war was over, then slacks became more popular just to wear for everyday or dress, or whatever. So now it’s just common. Probably see slacks more than you do dresses anymore but…

Denny: Yeah.

1:14:57

Jack: But, ah, we, my dad’s folks still lived at Knob Lick, up until, oh, the latter part of 1943. And with that dad gone, we would go up to visit. Well, gas was rationed. You couldn’t, a lot of things were rationed. Sugar and flour, I don’t know about flour, but no rubber and gas and all those things were rationed. So we didn’t drive, we had an old 36 Chevy. We didn’t drive it anymore than we just had to, and we just lived a block from the school so we walked, walked to the school, but unlike most people, which was uphill both ways, it ours was one block and it was level. We had it made.

But we would go over on Friday afternoon sometime and get a taxi and it would take us over the depot. We would catch the old local and it was basically a freight train. But they carried one passenger car on the back end. Rather than a Caboose. They carried a passenger car. And so we would buy a ticket and get on the old local and we would ride up to Knob Lick and get off there and my grandparents lived on the street that ran parallel to the tracks. We would spend the weekend with them and the buses back then the schools own very few buses, the buses were all private. Thompson, owned most of the buses back then. And I often wondered how they could do this. But we would get up like on Monday morning and there would be three different buses up at the grocery store, which was the main intersection there in Knob Lick. You could ride one bus to Farmington High School. You could ride another bus to Mine LaMotte, or you could ride a bus to Fredericktown.

Knob Lick school went to the 10th grade. And from there you had a choice of either one of those three schools to finish your high school years. Well, we could get right on the Fredericktown bus, not regular riders. A lot of times they hauled civilians because they they eased the requirements back in those days. And we would ride it, take it right back to school and mom would get off and go to the cafeteria and I would sit down there with her till eight o’clock, time to go to class. So we kind of had it made. Then we could visit our, my other grandparents and my dad’s folks and didn’t cost us anything for the travel.

Patricia: Well, I was going to ask you how much was train fare to Knob Lick?

Jack: I don’t know. My mom paid it. I was about seven or eight years old at that time. But it wasn’t it wasn’t much.

Denny: So you would catch the train at the depot, which is now the restaurant.

Jack:Yes, yes.

Patricia: But you took a cab to the Depot?

Jack: Which was probably about a quarter for both of us to ride the cab over to the depot.

Denny: It’s interesting to think of Fredericktown with the cab service, I can’t…

Jack: Well, it was right around the corner here… They had, Baldy Candor, had a Shell service station here with the barbershop is now, it was a Shell service station and Gaily parked his taxi right here beside this building, only on the gas station not…

Denny: One thing that popped in my mind, a couple points while we were talking, while you were talking. And I really had picked up on this until today. Other people talked about it, but it seems like the further back you go the more small neighborhood stores you had…

Jack: Yes.

Denny: And as you go forward in time those stores gradually disappeared, replaced by bigger stores.

Jack: Yes. They were for the most part, they were still here until Walmart came in, which is typical of every community. Farmington was the same way. They have no neighborhood grocery stores, but yeah, you had your staples. You had the milk and bread and usually had a lunch meat counter.

Denny: Were they, it almost seems like you had little shops that were locally owned.

Jack: Yep.

Denny: In time they were replaced like you said Kroger moved in. I’m guessing it was not necessarily…

Jack: Kroger was here when I when we moved to Fredericktown.

There were several women’s stores. I said I worked at at Osborne’s Men’s and Boys. Right next door in the same building was Evy Price, Price’s Dress Shop, and she had nicer dresses and things like this for people. Ah, Figler’s had men’s and women’s clothes. Right down on East Main Street.

1:20:05

And then you had the Fair department store, The Federated Store these were general stores, carried a little bit of everything. Scwhanner’s, down on the corner where Seabaughs is now. Scwhanner’s had mostly clothing for farmers, overalls and shirts and things like that. But they had pots and pans, they had furniture, they had groceries.

Ward’s store, which was right on the corner here where there was a prescription drug store there that is closed now.

Denny: Very different from, it was a thriving economy of goods.

Jack: Northtown was a booming place as well. There were three grocery store side by side. You had the Red & White store, you had the Depot store and you had the DeGears store. And they all had families who survive, you know, made a middle living out of the store.

Patricia: Margaret Miller talked about a Bear Saloon or something?

Denny: Yeah, it was in the little white building, I think.

Patricia: Close to the Depot. And she said they weren’t allowed to go near it.

Jack: Yeah, that was Seabaughs. Well, okay, there was one right across the street, it was kind of in a wedge. You turn in here to the Depot and the other road goes on up through Northtown. And right in this wedge, there’s a little white building. It was pretty notorious. Yeah, I’ve never been in it. It may be a church now. It is a church house now. It got religion and cleaned it up.

Patricia: That would be Villar, Villar Street.

Jack: I believe that’s right.

Patricia: Tell us about the notoriety.

Jack: Mom and dad said, you will never go do, don’t even walk past that place you know? Yeah, I think it was specially on Saturday night it was it was dangerous to be close there.

Well it was it was just a lot of drinking and they get in fistfights.

Denny: Well, if you think about it, of Fredericktown is a mining town, there were a lot of people working and…

Jack: It had two things, it had three mines, National Lead, St. Joe at Mine LaMotte and Catherine mine west of here. And they had the shoe factory. And the shoe factory had probably two or 300 people working there.

And that was that was the industry for Fredericktown. And they all kind of shut down about the same time, which really hurt. Now there, there was, we had our store right across the street from us was Wagner’s. Wagner’s had a store and here’s two stores across from each other, made a living. Turnbows had a little store down on South Main. Farther out, the South Side market.

Denny: They were everywhere.

Jack: Yeah, there was one out in Cobalt Village on High Street as you go on out to there were Reggie, Reggie Starkey had his store before he died, had used furniture. That was a grocery store at one time, or it came along a little bit later on.

Patricia: Well, people walked, they couldn’t carry…

Denny: If you figure without a big centralized place like Walmart and even before Walmart you started getting bigger stores like IGA and Town and Country.

Jack: It started off with on the corner, across from Wilson’s Funeral Home, that was Thal’s Grocery Store. Twister and Walter Thal, both were there. And then Twister built this building next door where, where his son is now and it was a frozen food locker and grocery store combined. That was a big thing coming, in fact, he built one, built a locker plant up in Farmington, too.

Patricia: Were Twister and Walter father, son or…

Jack: Brothers, brothers. And Walter went out, across from Casey’s, he built built a store out there. I think it’s an auto parts store now, but he built that out there.

So all of a sudden the two Thals had two brand new stores and town. And Hills Sporting Goods had, in the block that’s been taken over by, New Era Bank.

1:25:00

There were, there used to be a row of stores there and one of them was a bowling alley. And just a little storefront but it had four lanes, four bowling lanes there and Hills had that. And when the Thals moved out, they moved into that building, and put a sporting goods store in there.

And that stayed that way, she was a teacher language arts teacher high school and he sold the sporting goods, stayed that way and when they finally left out, I think it was Bess Insurance went into that building. I don’t know what’s there now.

The Democrat News was right behind it and the building behind it. And then of course, they moved into this building next door. And that was a Standard service station. Originally it was had the sign of the Flying Red Horse, which was a that.

Patricia: Where the DN is now?

Jack: Yes, yes. Yeah. You just turn into the pumps there. There were gas stations everywhere back then too. But…

Denny: This was the service station at one point too, or my thinking of the DN.

Jack: You’re thinking of the DN. This was a garage. Garage. Yeah.

The dime store is right across the alley from Pizza Hut. And young kids were scared to death of Mr. Posh. He was an old guy with jaws like a bulldog, he sat on the stool with a cane right up front. And he glared at you because you didn’t do, dare do any shoplifting back in those days, I didn’t anyway, but you was almost afraid to go in there. So I bought, when I got into building plastic models and all, I use BA Muellers which was on on down the street.

He had a supply of model airplanes and cars and things back there. But Mr. Posh ran the Dime Store with an iron fist. And he sat up there with that cane and he’d shake it at the kids.

Patricia: Was it called Posh’s?

Jack: No, it was it was just, ah, I’m not sure. It wasn’t a Woolworths but, ah, a Five and Dime…

Denny: There was a Ben Franklin over there, I think?

Jack: Yeah, it might have been might have been.

Patricia: So, he was in the front…

Jack: He sat on a four legged stool right up front with that cane and he just watched every kid that came in. I guess adults didn’t have any problems. Because it was always busy. But kids couldn’t look at toys very much without getting the eagle eye.

I’ve seen, when we lived in, I mentioned the green house.

Denny: In Fredericktown?

Jack: In Fredericktown, yes. Yeah, that they had elephants and tigers and the whole works, you know, and they set up this big tent, and it was a three ring circus, literally three rings. And of course, Golf Homes got paid for doing that. Plus you got some free fertilizer from all the all the animals.

Denny: And how long would they stay?

Jack: They would, they would stay about two days, two to three days, something like that. But they had trapeze artists, you know, the high wire people clowns and the whole works.

Patricia: What year would this have been?

Jack:Ah, early 50s.

Patricia: I know that where the high school is, they had a circus there for a couple years.

Jack: Did they? Oh, okay, that I didn’t know, that was after my time. We, ah, my class. My class was the last one, in 54, to graduate from the old high school up there that they’ve turned down now. The next year class of 55 started there. And at Christmas break, they moved into the new high school, which was the one that burned over here by the the water tower. So the class of 55 was the first one to graduate from that building. And then I don’t know what year was the first class out here where the high school is now.

Patricia: Where was the elementary school?

Jack: The elementary was up there on High Street.

1:30:00

Patricia: Is it the same one?

Jack: Not not the same one that’s there now.

Patricia: Same location?

Jack: Same location. Well, it was on the far end of the street next to Albert Street. It was a brick building, you had where the granite gym is. That’s the only one left that was built in the WPA days. So that’s a newest building. Built in the 1930s, I think. Then you had the auditorium, which was a beautiful old building stained glass. I think they tried to get it on the historical society but didn’t get it. But it had a winding staircase on both sides when you entered and beautiful old building, but the key word was all it was old. About to fall in I guess.

Then you had the high school building where all the classes were. And then you had the elementary over on the far end of that lot. The only thing left from when I was in grade school, they’ve got the two, they’ve got the granite gates, the post gate, the fence is gone, but the posts are still there. And there’s an old cedar tree kind of scarred and battered standing up there. The kids played around that, you know, that was, that was a picture right right beside that was a big tall sliding board.

You climbed up to the top and had hand handles appear, had a bar across here and of course when you got old enough and daring enough, you held on to that and you did a summersault over and landed on the slide and slid down. But it was, it was so worn slick. There was no rust on that. Well, when you came back from the summer, you had to wear the rust off for a little bit. And of course your mom got to wash that out of your seat of your pants. The first few times going down but didn’t take long to get it that. It was also very hot. In the summertime you get burned on that thing.

Down at the bottom end of the field, that’s where the seventh and eighth graders went. We would play ball down there. And then fifth and sixth graders had an area over here and then the little kids had to stay up close to the building. And course there was always teachers out there on on playground duty. Opal Osborne was one of the favorite teachers. I don’t know if any of you knew Opal or not. She just passed away about three or four years ago.

But all the kids wanted to be in her room, but I didn’t make it and I was sorry that didn’t make it into Ms. Osborne’s room. But she would get out and she’d play with the kids when she was on playground duty. You know.

I was never a dancer. But in about the fifth or sixth grade, they had a pole out there and every year they did the Maypole dance. And I don’t know who put them up but they had the streamers of crepe paper. I flubbed that up even. You know if you wove in and out and all, you wound up with the pole with the crepe paper and alternating. But I messed that up somehow or other and there was a there was a blotch in the pole. I can claim that.

Patricia: So much culture.

Jack: Yeah, yeah. Well, things were a lot stricter back then. You didn’t dare goof off. My first principle was Miss O’Brien and she was just a little short, dumpy gal. But boy, she ruled with an iron fist to in school you didn’t dare cross with her.

When I graduated from eighth grade, Burl Lowery was was the principal. He also taught, we had had two teachers, Della Seal, who taught eighth grade and Mr. Lowery also had to come in and teach one one hour or so plus be the principal of the elementary school.

Patricia: That’s a good thing, because the administration still gets to be in trenches.

Jack: Yes, yes, they believed in that. Fact is my high school principal was Clarence Moore, wonderful, wonderful guy. But he also taught math.

The superintendent didn’t. He the superintendent stayed in his office and he handed out this and that and something else. But when I was in high school, a sophomore, I got the job of filling the candy and the soda machine, and I got a free lunch out of it. That was my pay. And so I got pretty well acquainted with the office staff. The supplies were kept in the closet in in the office. After I, ah, when I started college, I had worked in the lab at the mines. And I thought, what I want to be a chemist. I didn’t start out in education.

I had never taken chemistry when I was in high school. And so when I got down and talked to the advisor said, I told him that I had had worked in a chemical lab want to get into chemistry. They stuck me in an advanced class, I had no idea what I was doing.

To date, the time, which was 1962. They didn’t have calculators yet, let alone computers. I was sitting in a class doing chemical, chemistry problems. Everybody else was using slide rules. They were using slide rules. And I was trying to do square root on paper. And I couldn’t remember exactly how to do it because I had been out of high school eight years before I started college. So I came back to town one night, went over to Mr. Moore’s house. He said, yeah, come on in and I’ll show you. And we sat down his table, and he showed me how to do square root. So I still was way behind everybody else because I was doing on paper and they’re writing the answers down. And I didn’t do very well in chemistry. And so after the first semester I decided to change my major and a fella by the name of Richard Moore. He just passed away, he was going into elementary education. He told me said they are crying for male teachers in elementary school. Everyone, everybody is a female teaching and they they need some men in elementary school. You can write your ticket for wherever you want to go.

So I made the decision to go into elementary education. But I still hung on to the science part. So I, I specialized, my area special which was we call it a minor, was science and I took enough history courses that I qualified for that too.

Patricia: Why didn’t you get your own slide rule?

Jack: I did.

Patricia: Okay. But you would have been right up there with them.

Jack: Yeah, but I had never had any training on the slide rule. I could do two times four, and I could get eight but I could do that in my head. To do the square root I really didn’t understand and by that time that semester was over and so I, I changed. I still got the slide rule. I don’t how to use it.

Patricia: You have to have classes or training.

Jack: Well, either have someone explain, usually I’m guessing that those people had a math teacher in high school explained to them how to use a slide rule. Yeah. We didn’t have those when I was in high school. You just did everything on a Big Chief notebook, you know.

Denny: Thank you.

Jack: Well, I appreciate it.

Denny: This was fantastic.

Want to subscribe to Voices of the Ozarks in your podcast app? Just copy this link: http://ozarkregional.org/blog/?feed=podcast, then paste it into your podcast app’s add a feed field. You can also click the podcast icon on the sidebar to subscribe in Apple Podcasts.

Her first memory of childhood was getting electricity in the house when she was only two. She and her older brother followed the electrician, Elmer Hahn, around the house collecting the little round metal “coins” that were left over from punching out holes in the metal outlet boxes.

Sharon says that growing up on a farm they often played “farm” on the old front porch where they would play with toy tractors. She mentions the lizards that her brother didn’t like. On the porch there was a hammock and a porch swing and she remembers many hours of reading there and enjoying the stars in the dark skies. They didn’t have a television yet and in the summer it was cooler on the porch because there was no air conditioning.

She mentions that the house faced a gravel road and there was a creek at the far end of the fields. She says the 4th of July was a big celebration but that the dog lucky didn’t like the sounds of the fire crackers.

5:00

She talks more about her folks starting with a 40 acre farm just outside the town of Glen Allen in Bollinger County. Daddy served in WWII in the Pacific, momma worked at a small arms plant in St. Louis. They saved to buy the farm and there’s a funny story about that. The man who sold the farm to them would often come back and would walk around and take stuff from the yard and even took the clothes line and clothes!

Both of her parents grew up around Glen Allen and were engaged before her dad went to the war. When he left her mom went to work in St. Louis at the arms factory where many other women were working and she shared an apartment with some of them. When she got word that he was coming home from the war she went to California to meet him. While waiting there she got a job at a candy factory and Sharon shares a story about her quitting the job because she didn’t want to join the union.

10:00

Sharon talks about her parents’ return to Missouri and Bollinger County where they were full time farmers. She tells a story about how she and her brother would collect the grass clippings which they pretended was hay. They would take it to the barn and use a bucket to haul the “hay” up to the barn with a pulley.

She says that her grandfather (her dad’s dad) was still farming at that time and still used a team of horses. She’s asked about what kind of farm they had and she says that they had hogs, Jersey milk cows, corn, alfalfa hay, wheat. She says they had a milk route in Glen Allen. He would collect the milk and her momma would filter it and bottle it. She says that at least a third of each quart of milk was heavy cream and most people, including herself, really loved the cream. She says Guernesy cows also have a lot of cream in their milk but that Holsteins, another dairy cow, produces far more milk but far less cream. She says they also sold cream and mentions one of the cream customers, Mr. Hood, coming to pick up cream from the house. They used a separator machine to separate out the cream.

She’s asked if she remembers any national or world events from her childhood. She says by the time Eisenhower was elected president they had a television and she remembers how annoying it was to have all the political hoopla getting in the way of the normal television programming. She remembers the Cuban Missile Crisis because she was older, she thinks around 13. She says she was in high school when President Kennedy was assassinated and she remembers that.

15:00

She’s asked if she enjoyed school and if education was a priority and she says it was very important to her and her parents as well. She remembers starting in the 2 room school and skipping to school everyday. She remembers her penny loafers that she wore to school. The schools is Bollinger County consolidated when she was in the third grade and she remembers being crammed in the old Rock Elementary in Marble Hill. It was further and they took the bus to that school. The cafeteria lunches were something new to her and an adjustment. She tells of getting sick after eating peas and riding on the merry-go-round. She went to the Rock School in Lutesville, now Marble Hill, for 4th and 5th grade. Her 6th grade was in a new building. Then back to an older building for high school.

She was encouraged to go to college by her parents and wanted to go. She went to Cape and majored in Home Economics. She loved her teacher Mrs. Rom and was in the COE program, Cooperative Occupational Education and was also active in the FHA, Future Homemakers of America. She was a regional officer and would go to the state meetings. She remembers stopping to eat at the Olympic Steakhouse in Fredericktown. She says that when the Laut girls bought it it was called Town and Country but she’s not sure about the name.

Her dad thought Home Economics was a good subject because those teachers got an extra month of pay because they made home visits in the summer to check up on the special projects that were expected over the summer. She says that eventually that was discontinued and Home Economics was less emphasized as work outside the home became more of a norm.

20:00

She talks about the special projects that some of the students do over the summer for the vocational education programs such as cattle and construction. She says it’s primarily an aspect of rural education and mentions funding from Carl Perkins Vocational Education Act.

Sharon reiterates that she went her first two years of college to Cape which is where she met her husband, Dwight, who was a chemistry major. He was going to go to graduate school in Ames, Iowa and at the end of her sophomore year they got married. She finished her degree there and says that their Home Economics department was huge and included the Elementary Education department as well as several other fields. She talks about the World War II era housing huts that were being used for student housing and which they lived in. This was in 1968.

25:00

27:00

The move back to Missouri was difficult because her youngest child, Jonathan, needed a lot of medical care and she had a good support network where they lived in Indiana/Ohio. After returning to Missouri Jonathan started going to school so she started looking for work in the schools. She started with a job in the Marquand schools as a part-time remedial reading aid which was a job she loved. This was in the late 80s. They needed an English teacher so she took a couple courses that she needed to be certified to teach those and taught 6th – 8th grade English. Then she started teaching in the Home Ec department in Fredericktown.

30:00

She tells the story about her job search and a surprise when she went to the West County (North County?) district she had a meeting with the Superintendent, Mr. Lynch, who had been her freshman science teacher when she was in school in Lutesville.

Education and certifications are discussed comparing the past requirements to today as well as the different state certifications. She mentions that she never got her Masters though she had intended to. She taught a total of 23 years an retired around 11 years ago. She shares some of the details about the process and finances of retirement. She mentions that Missouri has a very good system in place for teacher retirement, especially for the teachers with long-term careers.

35:00

She’s asked about what it was like to return to Missouri after living away for so long. She said at first she enjoyed being anonymous but that it wasn’t long before that was gone as they got reacquainted through church and work in the community. She says it was very nice to be close to family again. She mentions that Dwight had gotten a flying license when they lived away so they had actually come here often during their time away. He had encouraged her to also get her license which she did. They flew often over the years. They would stop to refuel in Carbondale then land in Fredericktown. At some point they put built runway in Lutesville. They didn’t land there often but sometimes and she tells a story about landing there. There was no phone so they would circle her parents’ house first to let them know they were about to land and would need to be picked up. She shares a couple stories of flying, one in particular she flew her kids and babysitter to stay in Knoxville, TN during the World’s Fair.

They sold the plane and a few other things to finance their move and his career change. In addition to the change to being a lawyer she mentions Dwight also briefly published a small newspaper in town, The Ozark Gazette. Which she says he loved.

40:00

She’s asked about her kids, grandkids and family. She does have grandkids. She says her older son lives in town, he’s a doctor and he has two girls, both students. Their daughter is an attorney and has two boys but lives in Kansas. She says her son John still lives here and is involved in various community groups such as the Historical Society and is a bell ringer for the Salvation Army. He has a couple of his own enterprises such as raising miniature horses and he keeps chickens and grows pumpkins.

She’s asked about her use of technology. She does use email and the web. She does not like or use Facebook or social media. Her husband is very computer savvy and uses it all the time with work.

She is concerned about too much screen time and dependency, even addiction that she observes in young people. She is concerned that it might get in the way of strong family ties, healthy face-to-face stories and enjoying the stories that humans share.

She uses the internet as a tool but only as a tool for searching and purchasing from Amazon and that sort of thing.

45:00

She talks a bit about the move of computing into the schools for the staff and teachers. One year before her retirement the school started using a computer-based grading system. She says she’s just not the kind of person that likes spending time at a computer. She says she has a Kindle but prefers an old fashioned paper book. She reads many books and loves a well written story.

She’s asked if she enjoys living in a small town and she says she does. She shares her appreciation and love of the environment of this area.

The interview is concluded.

Want to subscribe to Voices of the Ozarks in your podcast app? Just copy this link: http://ozarkregional.org/blog/?feed=podcast, then paste it into your podcast app’s add a feed field. You can also click the podcast icon on the sidebar to subscribe in Apple Podcasts.

My name is Joan Whitener. I was born in Flat River Missouri, September 6, 1935, I’m 83, soon I’ll be 84.

When mother and dad were married they lived with my mother’s mother who had lost her husband for awhile. She went to Jr. College for awhile and her brothers were int he service. Then my mother and dad moved to Fredericktown with his mother and dad. I was only 18 months old when we moved to Fredericktown so I have no memories of this time. But during that time they lived with dad’s parents, Eli Minor and Mary Burdella Minor, she was a LaPlant. When I was 6 I remember grandpa Eli and my dad and his brothers that were home at the time built our house on some land that grandpa Eli gave us and it was right next door, across the little field. My parents names were Claude and Glendora Minor. Mother was a Dudley from Flat River and she was a school teacher. And my dad was a farmer and a chicken rancher for awhile. And then he was a foreman in the shoe fitting department at Spalsbury, Steis and Deevers Shoe Company which was the precursor to Brown Shoe.

She remembers the building of the house and then a year later they decided they needed a basement so they hand-dug a small basement to put in a furnace and washer.

Joan is asked about her mother being a teacher and she says that she taught for 32 years. She was a teacher in the Boswell community (the name of their small community outside of Fredericktown) and then, later, in Fredericktown. Several of those early communities such as Cobalt Village and Katherine Place are mentioned. Joan says that her father was on the Boswell school board. Joan mentions that her husband, Bill Whitener, was from the Cedar Grove community. Earlier that area was called Creek Nation and it consisted of  several communities: Boswell, Little Vine, Cedar Bottom, Cedar Creek and Cedar Grove. Nearby were others such as Black Mountain, Minimum and Annapolis. She says they all had there own schools and churches.

7:00

Joan says that the area had its earliest farmers in this area in 1803 and by 1830 it was well populated. She says there were farmers there raising cows, hogs, dairies and chickens. She’s asked about allotments and she says that a lot of the earliest ones were given land grants. She says that by the time she was married to Bill in 1955 they had already consolidated all the schools and that they lived in the Cedar Grove community. The name Creek Nation was no longer used. She’d gone to Boswell for 6 years and was taught by her mother for 2 of those years. Her school was in Mill Creek. There school was about 30 children and was all 8 grades. She remembers walking about a mile and a half to get there and back. As they walked the neighborhood kids along the way would join them. She mentions that of her siblings she was the oldest and is the only one left.

After the 6th grade the Mill Creek had a 2 room school. 1st to 5th grade was in one room, 6th to 8th grade was in the other room. She went there for the 7th  grade. She says the building is still there but is now a home. She graduated from the 8th grade and then road the bus to Fredericktown for the rest of school. She graduated from Fredericktown High which was the end of her schooling.

11:00

She says that she worked a lot at the home too. Her siblings were both younger than her by about 3 years. That left her with dishes, ironing, and house chores. They didn’t have a farm but gardened. Her granny who they called Birdy, had a huge garden and they would help her too. Her granny taught her to make pies and to this day making the pies is her job when they have family gatherings. Back then she used lard as it makes the best crust. These days she uses Crisco and butter which works just as good. Lard is rendered from pigs. For mincemeat she says you would use

suet which comes from cattle. She says that in her family,  no one but her likes mincemeat pie.

13:30

We get back to discussing schools and she says that when she went to the high school it was up on High Street, she graduated in 1953 and got married in 1955. It was not the Marvin College buildings. She’s not sure which of those buildings were still there at that time.

She’s asked if she remembers community events or celebrations in the community and says that she remembers box suppers that were prepared by older students and women in the community. The were box lunches that would be auctioned off as fundraisers for the schools. She says they had the King and Queen contest and Christmas and Halloween programs.

16:00

Joan is asked if she remembers anything about World War II and she does remember that her grandma Minor, Birdy, had five boys in the war all at one time. Her dad, the oldest of his siblings, was the only brother that was not in the war because he had a family. She mentions that one of her dad’s brothers, Floyd, hand two Purple Hearts and other medals and that he was a major when he retired. She wasn’t sure how he got the two Purple Hearts.

Her mother also had three brothers that were in the war. She points out that her mother’s family and her father’s family were all about the same age and that each family had 11 children. She’s asked if she was close to her cousins and she says that she was. They would have summer-time reunions and that they stayed in touch via the phone.

They talk a bit about food rationing during the war and how it affected people in Madison County. She says she remembers her mother had a food stamp book for things like sugar and other rationed items.

19:20

Joan talks about early married and going into business with Bills parents, Clark and Louise Whitener. They went in together to purchase a farm right next door to his parents, it was the old Ed Lewis farm. They lived in the old house for 5 years but there was a lot of termite damage and it couldn’t be repaired. They tore it down and built a basement that they lived in while the house was being built on top of it. Then they started having children. They had 5 children in 7 years.

She says that the Lewis family that previously owned the farm had 13 children. They had a very large garden and a very nice milk or spring house about a half mile away. It was placed far away but was the best place because of the location of the spring. She says her grandparents, the Minors, had a great spring, very cold. It still runs today.

She’s asked about the abundance of food in the country compared to the city.  Says her father, when he was around ten, lived in the Bruno area which is down by the community of Jewett. Her dad told her that one winter a deep snow had covered all the fence posts. Her dad and grandpa would go out and find rabbit holes to hunt rabbits which was the only meat they had. They had potato’s and turnips. She says they had some tough times partly due to weather but also due to having 11 children to feed.

Growing food and canning are discussed. She says one summer they canned 500 quarts of green beans but that was one of the few things that grew well that year. We discuss the difficulty of growing some crops.

25:30

Joan is asked about the safety aspects of canning food and what process ensures safe-to-eat food. She explains the process that she used for canning. Joan points out that if you are going to ferment something like kraut you don’t use heat and use different lids because the process is different.

We ask Joan about her husband and she says that Bill was a full time farmer. He never had an outside job and they were full time farmers. They ran a cow, pig, and layer operation. The also rented land for their cattle.

29:00

She was in charge of the laying operation. She says they had 600 layers at a time and points out the difference between layers and heavier breeds that were kept for meat. She describes the process of collecting, washing, candling and grading eggs which were collected 3 times a day. They delivered three times a week to area grocery stores. She’s asked about the candling device and she describes that as well as the weighing machine.

She describes the cattle and hog operation which was fairly large, 300+ cattle. Haulers would take the pigs to St. Louis. She’s asked if they had employees and says that they usually had one employee. The kids helped a lot too.

She points out that Bill had his Future Farmer “American Farmer” degree and a few others from Future Farmers. Her son David and his son Eli and daughter Rachel also have the Future Farmers degrees. She describes the Future Farmers program and how it begins in high schools and then is finished after high school with further farmer vocational training. We briefly compare the 4H and Future Farmers programs. She describes the FFA as a more advanced vocational training for farmers that includes business related topics as well.

38:00

She’s asked about local farmers being bought out by larger corporate entities. She’s asked about the local farming community and if there are many local farmers. We discuss this year’s planting of corn and soy beans.

Joan goes back to the operations of farmers in recent history and talks about some of those operations. She mentions that there were 5 dairies in Creek Nation. She mentions the Bollinger family and their cattle and hog operations. She says back then they were more full time farmers whereas now many of them doing the farming on the side and also hold down another job. Some of the possible reasons for the changes are discussed, such as the cost of living and the cost of feed. She says that though the Bollinger family had larger operations, John’s wife worked away from home as did many others. Joan says that she herself worked on the farm until the kids were gone then she went to work at the animal hospital  as their bookkeeper for ten years. She also worked at the sale barn writing tickets. Then she also ran for County Clerk and was elected and served 4 terms, 16 years before retiring.  We discuss how as farmers get older sometimes they might move onto other, non-farm work which is what she and Bill did.

45:00

She talks about retiring at 72 and appreciating her grandchildren. Her kids and grandkids are all still nearby and very close except for her oldest daughter who works for LabCorps in Dallas Texas.

We ask Joan about her thoughts on the outlook of Fredericktown and Madison County. She says she loves it here and believes it is a wonderful place and people.

She mentions that she wanted to talk about the local water ways and bridges and fords. She says that over in their area there is the Whitener ford because there are so many Whiteners living there.

We ask if she uses a computer and if she’s online. She says she is. She doesn’t use Facebook but she does look online for interests that she has such as antiques and flowers. She also plays a few games. She doesn’t really use it for email or text, she prefers to just use a landline phone for staying in touch.

52:05

The interview is concluded.

Want to subscribe to Voices of the Ozarks in your podcast app? Just copy this link: http://ozarkregional.org/blog/?feed=podcast, then paste it into your podcast app’s add a feed field. You can also click the podcast icon on the sidebar to subscribe in Apple Podcasts.

Billy Ray:  My name is Billy Ray Starkey. I was born in Marquand, MO 2-18-1946. I was born near the Castor River in a house near Green Hollow. I think it was the last existing house there at that time. I’m here with my son Rory

Rory: I was born April 9, 1971 in Cape Girardeau.    

Billy Ray shares that his parents did not own their farm. He thinks the house was torn down in the mid 1970s or 80s. He lived in Marquand most of his life and went to school there at Piney Union which was a one room schoolhouse. There were no busses so they walked. Later he went to the school in Marquand. He mentions that his dad had worked with he WPA program and that they had used teams and wagons to haul rocks for the gymnasium for the school. It still stands today.

Rory asks his father to share the names of family members and Billy Ray does. He says his dad’s name was Dolph Starkey and he was the son of James Starkey. They were raised just outside of Marquand at the edge of Bollinger county. 

Dolph was born in 1909. Dolph and his older brother Robert Starkey (born in 1887) both helped build the floor of the gymnasium. An even older brother of Dolph’s was Clarence and he may have been born in 1883 and served in WWI. An aunt Letha is mentioned as well. She later moved to Fredericktown and married a Williams.

Billy Ray lived in Marquand for many years. Eventually they moved to Fredericktown and he lived on Saline Street. He now lives in Marquand again. Rory mentions that when Billy Ray was in his teens he’d moved to Michigan for awhile. Rory points out that for his dad’s generation it was fairly common that they often left rural areas and found work in cities, particularly for work in the auto industry. Often it was a move from the south to the north. Billy Ray points out that it is now the opposite and that there is more industry here than in Michigan. 

He says that most of his siblings went up there for work and some stayed. They still have family up there. There were 5 boys and 5 girls in his family. Billy Ray was next to the youngest. 

He did not finish school. He went as far as the first two weeks of the 11th grade then dropped out. He left home when he was 16 and has been on his own ever since. He had a handshake agreement with Gradey Beckett, the owner of a construction company based in Tennessee. They had an agreement that if he got hurt on the job he’d pay for his hospital bill but that he couldn’t sue him. They shook on it. The job was doing construction in Flint, Michigan. 

He talks about living with his sister in Michigan until he got his job and his own place where he paid $16 a month. He made enough and saved and bought his first house at 19. His land lady, Ms. Blaine, was an older woman and she rented to him because he reminded her of his grandson. She was alone and she welcomed the company. His room was upstairs and he went through the house to get there so they would often visit. 

He tells a fun story about how two pigs got him to Michigan. His parents couldn’t afford to loan him or give him the money. Fortunately while living at home he had helped with milking the cow and with the pigs. One of the baby pigs was injured and needed special attention. He raised it up a family member wanted it to butcher for meat so he traded it to him for two younger pigs. He finished raising those two and sold them a little while later. He used that money to buy a ticket on the Gray Hound Bus which he caught up on the Court Sq in Fredericktown. The ticket cost $18 and he had a little left. 

13:00

He says he never borrowed any money from his parents that he can remember. He moved to Michigan around 1964. He remembers when JFK was shot in 1963 and tells the story of hearing it on the radio while sitting in his dad’s 49’ Chevy at the Demmon Grocery Store. He went into the store where his dad was visiting with some men and he told them all that the President had been shot. Breaking the news to the men seemed very important to him and he remembers it very well.

He mentions that when JFK many were worried about him being a Catholic and what that might mean about how he would govern the country. There was concern about what influence Rome would have. He says he was very fond of JFK and to this day has a picture of JFK and Jackie that lights up. He briefly mentions about voting and political parties. He says he’s an independent. 

18:45

Rory brings up small churches as communities or parts of communities that are a heritage that might be lost. They talk about the church that Billy Ray was raised in which had been built by a woman who founded and led the church, her name was Pool and they called her Sister Pool. Billy Ray remembers the family walking to church, sometimes he’d be on his dad’s shoulders. Supposedly one of the longest-lived revivals in the area was at that church. Some of the revivals would go on for many weeks, 5 to 6. They talk about a revival that happened after the earthquake in New Madrid and people thought the end was coming. 

24:00

That revival is supposed to have lasted a year or so. That revival and time period was thought of as the “Second Great Awakening”.

Billy Ray is asked about his return to Fredericktown and going to work for Miner’s Lumber Company. He says he actually came back to Marquand. Then worked for Revel’s and Miners. After that he worked for awhile in Jackson for a siding company.

Around 1972 he worked in the top of the Court House when nobody else wanted to because there was so much pigeon manure up there. He talks about Cecil Burch running Miners Lumber Co and he mentions Cecil’s wife, Anne. He mentions that the hospital needed a food cart for meetings. Cecil asked him if he could build one which Billy Ray did. They used it for many years and he said he saw it there still in use just a few years ago. The mention the fact that Miners was located where City Hall is now. He says he think’s that when they sandblasted the building at one point the painted sign for Huffman’s Lumber which preceded Miner’s was revealed and may still be visible. He’s not sure if it was Huffman’s or another. He says Fredericktown has change a lot since then.

28:20

Billy Ray is asked about the changes he’s seen in Fredericktown. He says there are many. He remembers being at what used to be the A&W which is now the A&M Restaurant. He was working for Miner’s at the time and building a barbecue building for the A&W. 

He mentions Cobalt Village and that they were going to remove the smelting tower, it was 500 to 600 feet tall. It was costly to replace the light that was at the top to warn planes. He talks about how they would blast steel in one place to weaken it so the tower would fall. While he was building the barbecue building for the A&W he could hear them setting of the charges as they worked on the tower demolition. After three to four days of hearing the charges being set off he heard a series of successive charges so he went out and saw it fall in the distance. He says it was like they had dropped a bomb where the tower fell and impacted the ground around it. It was a part of the horizon and landscape that, once gone, was very noticeable. Another that he points out was the removal of the fire tower Cottener Mountain fire tower that wasn’t in town but was a noticeable landmark in the area. 

32:42

He says that there used to be a drive-in theater that was in the area behind the old Walmart. He and Rory talk about the Pig being one of the few businesses that has survived through the years. Billy Ray says they would come up from Marquand, go to the Pig and take the food over to the drive-in. He then mentions the movie theater on the Court Square and says there was also a Mobile gas station near it. Also, he says there was a very small “hamburger joint” near the gas station, around Court Square and North Main. He says it was behind the old jail, across from the current Sherrif’s Department. 

He’s asked about the Womack hotel which he vaguely remembers but does not remember when it closed. 

35:00

He’s asked about the Colbalt mine/tower that was destroyed and if the foundation still persists underground. He’s not sure. 

36:10

He talks about one of his uncles  working around the trees when 51 HWY was built. He’d take a rope to the top of the heavy trees and tie them off then the other guys would cut it then they’d use the rope and a team of mules to pull it over. 

37:13

Rory talks about the changes that stand out to him as someone who was a child here in the 1970s. He says that there used to be distinct villages such as Cobalt Village, Mill Creek and others. He mentions Reggie Starkey had a furniture store in Cobalt Village, there had been a grocery store. He says there were two grocery stores in Cobalt Village. At Mill Creek there was DeSpain’s grocery was still running until the late 80s. He points out there were quite a few little grocery stores like that and Billy Ray mentions the meat market. They talk about the IGA that was in town.

Billy Ray mentions Teen Town and Rory says that it was a WPA project, specifically the stone and rock wall. The villages as places with their own identity and schools is discussed further. 

39:00

Rory brings up two mausoleums that are in the Catholic cemetery in Village Creek. One is the Schulte Lane family and the other is Pierce which is discussed as a family that was here because of the mines. There was some discussion about the perception today of Fredericktown as being poor but that during the period of active mining it was prosperous. He brings up examples of the significant financial investments of those times such as Marvin College and the quality of the construction of that campus.

42:00

Billy Ray mentions a specific example of Judge Walker and Castle Walker. He says there was a nearby house that had a large, two pillared porch that he worked on. When they dismantled parts of the house they found an old pistol. 

He further mentions other historical artifacts he’d found while working in Michigan such as a photo of men working at a CCC camp (Civilian Conservation Corps) that the men had signed on the back.

44:40

Photos as documentation of history and the importance of adding information such as names is discussed. Rory suggests that in the future we’ll have a problems the the loss of information due to digital storage. Photos, letters and such things all being online only. Billy Ray chimes in that the loss of old-fashioned letter writing is another example of historical records that are no longer being created. 

47:00

Rory is asked about what led him to leave Madison County to travel and move to half way around the world. He says that it began with social studies, history and geography in the 8th grade. He made the decision that because he could go anywhere in the world that he would do that. During his college years he traveled to Saipan and worked for a Christian missionary school. He taught third grade for two years. He’s been teaching ever since and has taught 3rd, 4th and 6th grades too. He’s lived there for 25 years, about half his life. He comments that even being that far away he’s met several people from Madison County while there.

The tell the story of Billy Ray visiting him there during the holidays and the different decorations that include all the local, natural elements such as various ocean animals such as turtles, dolphins, and fish. 

The talk about his experience teaching in rural Philippines which had higher poverty and the lack of night time lighting and access to books. The books would be damaged by termites and they often didn’t have enough. It helped Rory appreciate the surplus he was used to. Billy Ray would send toys and books from Madison County. 

54:00

Rory talks about the importance of collecting oral histories. He mentions that many elders are not literate. Also, that much of what is known about any given area is what is collected from the wealthier upper-class. It’s often this privileged perspective that tends to be prioritized. Other voices get filtered out and are lost. He gives an example of the difference between the perspectives of the different groups: “He’s telling you how he built the building, the other person is telling you how he paid for the building.”

To get a better balance oral histories need to be included.

Billy Ray mentions working in Imperial and Kimmswick. For example, the well known restaurant, The Blue Owl. Billy Ray and his brother-in-law were the ones that did the work of renovating that building and several others in that community. But the story of that side of the work doesn’t get told. The business aspect of the story is prioritized, the story of the carpentry is lost.

Rory also brings up the Civil War in the U.S. and the different stories, perspectives and persistence of division in modern culture. He highlights some of the details and dynamics that are often not known. The ones that win the wars tell the story. He brings up tribalism as an aspect of modern history and cultural dynamics. He brings it back to the importance of perspective. 

K

Want to subscribe to Voices of the Ozarks in your podcast app? Just copy this link: http://ozarkregional.org/blog/?feed=podcast, then paste it into your podcast app’s add a feed field. You can also click the podcast icon on the sidebar to subscribe in Apple Podcasts.

My name is Howard Kenneth Royer.  I was born in October 3, 1929 in Silvermines Missouri. My parents are Audrey Jewel Means and Harmon Howard Royer.

I remember the Depression and how hard it was and I remember how my parents started out on the farm. My grandfather owned the farm and my parents lived there.

Dad grew corn, wheat, oats and barley. He used a team of horses to farm and he owned cattle as well.

In his family he was the oldest. Roy was the second, Shirley was the third, Charles was the fourth. He notes that his parents took a break with kids for awhile but then had Lee Gale, Paul Dean (they called him Buck), Louis who was named after his grandfather, and the last was Linda.

5:00

Howard shares some of his memories of life on the farm. He says his father kept bees and he once got stung because he poked them with a stick. His uncle and dad farmed together and he remembers that at a very early age he wanted to go with them and work in the fields with them which he did.

He says they lived a mile from the school and he talks about going  through the neighbors yard barefoot to get to school. Shoes weren’t easy to come by and it was common for kids to go barefoot.

His first memories of working in the fields was around 1935 when his uncle and aunt got married and had left on a trip to Colorado. His dad was putting in corn and needed someone to drive the mules. Howard drove the mules. The mules turned sharply and flipped the Howard and the drag over. His dad stopped them, righted the drag and handed Howard the reigns so he could get back on and continue. Working on the farm and helping with the timber is all he ever wanted to do and it’s what he did. All his siblings helped too. His dad had a job for them to do everyday. Howard looked forward to it. Linda worked in the house with mom.

10:20

He says he did not want to go to school and had to be forced. The neighbor girl, Eloise Allen was five years older then him. She would help his mom get him to school. They would push and pull him to get him there. He didn’t want to go to school but he always wanted to work in the fields. He went to school 8 years in grade school and a year and a half in high school. Then he quit to work on the farm. He has been farming his whole life since.

After working for years on his parents farm his grandfather bought an farm that had been neglected. It was overgrown by blackberries and other brush. His dad was managing it and sent Howard and his brothers over there to clean it up and begin farming it. The first year they put out a hundred acres of corn. By that time he was 16 to 17 years old and was also driving so he would truck the corn to where it needed to go.

14:30

They were using a new Ford tractor on the farm. His grandpa, dad and uncle James were still using teams, they had three. But Howard and his brothers were using the tractor.

In addition to the corn they were also growing and harvesting hay. Eventually they added wheat, oats and barley. Howard says it’s river bottom land, really good land and he ended up with it.

Eventually he married. He tells the story of his first engagement that did not work out. Then he sells the story of meeting his wife, Norma, when he took a load of 4H kids to the skating rink in Farmington. He was around 17 or 18. He met her there when they started talking. They would meet again again later at a revival in Silvermines. She was leading the singing and they talked again. They started dating after that. She was still in high school and not long after he was went into the army and went to Germany for 17 months. When he came back she was waiting for him. They decided to wait another year to get married which they did on March 26, 1954. Their oldest child is Rodney and his daughter, Sherilyn,  who is present at the interview. She mentions that there were two other boys in the family, her younger brothers, Michael and then nine years later Danny was born.

20:00

He’s asked about the Silvermines community and what  was there. He’s says the church was built in 1949 and that there was a post office and school. His dad was a deacon at the church. His daughter talks about how they made a quilt to help raise funds to build the church.

Howard talks a little bit about Silvermines and the dam that was built there. He says he doesn’t know much because it was before his time. He thinks most of the mining was done by the time he was born. The town was originally close to the mine but he says he heard that it had been moved further west out where the school and church were. When the mines were running he thinks there was a store and hotel and mentions that someone named John Allen lived there.

24:20

Howard mentions that in Oak Grove someone named Ray Kinkly had a store. His parents and grandparents would buy, sell and trade there. He mentions they would sell cream and other things at Sonderman’s in Fredericktown. Generally all that they did in “town” was in Fredericktown, sometimes Ironton. Silvermines was not functioning as a town at that time.

He mentions that further back, early in the 20s,  his grandparents lived in Barn Hollow which was a bit closer to Ironton.

He’s asked if a train went through Silvermines. He says no, that there was a train to Ironton and one to Fredericktown. He mentions the old rifle range in Arcadia that the military used for the first and second World Wars for practice. He said you could hear them firing. They would come down from Jefferson Barracks to train.

His daughter mentions that there were several communities in the area such as Barn or Barren Hollow which is where his Howard’s grandparents got their start. Howard says that community hand one store up from the Methodist camp.  He thinks there was a post office there too where Mr. Mear was the postmaster for years. They also had a school there which is where his dad went.

29:45

He talks about army life and says that he enjoyed being in Europe and traveling. But when his time was up he was ready to come home. He came back and they got married and started a family. The time was the 1950’s and 60’s. He’s asked about what Fredericktown was like then. He says that he was working on the farm and talks about how the family helped one another. He’s asked if they hired help and he says they sometimes did hire local school boys. He mentions that it’s hard now to get boys to work like they did back then.

He’s asked if he had his kids help him the way he helped his father on the farm. He says yes. He says the boys helped in the fields and the daughter chimed in that she worked in the house with her mom and granny.

Howard is asked if they had a tv and if they kept up with world events. His daughter Sherilyn shares that it was around 1962 that they got a tv and she remembers the Kennedy funeral. Howard mentions that the kids were members of the 4H Club. He says he had been too. He mentions that his aunt was involved with running the 4H. His daughter points out that the 4H and church were the center of community activity, especially for the kids.

36:00

They’re asked about where they went to school. Sherilyn says that they started in Silvermines but then transferred to Fredericktown. Much of the activity that might have historically taken place in Silvermines was gradually moved over to Fredericktown. But they continued going to the church in Silvermines. She says that when they were young and going to school in Silvermines there first school bus was a woman in the community that would pick them up in her station wagon. The same woman would also take them to town for vaccinations and ice cream cones.

39:31

Howard is asked who farms the farm these days. He says the Algiers are farming it now. He mentions that there are fewer and fewer farms these days and says that he thinks farmers don’t have enough of a voice is the passing of laws. He thinks city people have more say in government.

We thank him and he says he’s 90 years old. The interview concludes.