Oral History Interview with Effe Gertrude Humble

Gatewood: We’re in the home of Mrs. Avery Humble in . It’s in the afternoon. Mrs. Humble, your childhood was spent in what community in this county?

Humble: Well, it was spent about ten miles from here in (?) Creek settlement. And they have a school there, you know, a high school. And it’s, that community has the first Baptist church built this side of the . It’s an old community.

Gatewood: And it’s still in existence.

Humble: Yes. The church has been remodeled. But it still has the doors in the back where the slaves come in, you know, people used to have slaves.

Gatewood: And they came to church at the same−

Humble: They’d come to church, but they’d sit in the back. And that’s the reason that they went in that way.

Gatewood: Where you a member of that church?

Humble: No. That was Baptist church, and I belonged to First Christian Church in . My people was all around Monticello and the Frazier, you know, close to the lake where you go across the river at Bronston, you remember coming through Bronston, well, that’s where my mother was raised.

Gatewood: I see.

Humble: And my daddy was raised about a mile up here, down here, in a big old mansion.

Gatewood: Did you all have a Christian church in the community in (Gris Gris?), too?

Humble: Yes. My great-grandfather, well, I had two of them. General Buster and William Kendrick was two of the head starters of the Christian church. They were the charter members.

Gatewood: Is that right? That’s my boss, used to be my boss, General Buster. He has his relatives, they live here, don’t they?

Humble: Yes. I’m his great-granddaughter.

Gatewood: That’s very interesting. He’d like to hear this tape. What we’re primarily interested in is to get at the healthcare in that community at that time before− give us a little background about yourself, just to give a general setting. When did you leave the community?

Humble: Well, I was married the twenty-second day of December, 1922. And I left, my husband was a schoolteacher, and he thought he couldn’t make a living on that kind of money, you know. I think he made sixty-five dollars a month. And then you’ve got to pay your board. And he lived in another county, in . He kept his horse and buggy, and he had to pay board on the horse. It made it a little hard. He had a sister that lived in . And we went to and he got a job working in the old woolen mill. During the Depression, why, it went broke like a lot of others did.

Gatewood: That’s really interesting. That would be an interesting story in itself. But I’d like for you to focus back then on that period of your childhood and early teenage-hood in that community. And I’m particularly interested in the availability of doctors in that time.

Humble: Well, you see, we lived ten miles from . And the doctors had to go horseback. And there was a creek where we lived above the creek. If that creek got up, there was no bridge. And they’d have to wait till the waters run down to get up over to our house. My mother said we used to have malaria fever. The boys, she felt, did swim in the creek too much. Mosquitoes did bite them, you know? She felt that might have given them malaria fever. It’s a bad fever. And I can see that doctor yet a coming. Dr. Woodrow’s the one I remember most. And he was from . He’s from . And I know he had little pockets with leather, saddle pockets, they called them. And he had places you’ve seen where they put their medicine. He had two of them. He put them on his horse, and he’d come. It would take him about two hours or three to ride out there.

Gatewood: And he had a practice here in ?

Humble: . And then we had Dr. Jones at the same time, and Dr. Ab Cook. There’s four Cooks that was doctors. But he was the one I remember. And let’s see. We had Dr. Gamlin. And Dr. Young. He was, but Dr. Woodrow was our doctor. He was head doctor. People thought, you know, everybody has their favorite doctors. And we thought he was the best.

Gatewood: Did he deliver the babies or, that was in the family?

Humble: Yes. There’s midwives back up there. And my mother used to keep the horse saddled behind the barn so if somebody, she never did, she was no midwife, but she’d go and help, you know. And be there. And she helped make the babies’ clothes.

Gatewood: Oh. That’s great. Was that a general practice? That women would go out and help when the baby−

Humble: Yes. Yes. They’d go and help. They’d go and help the midwife. And then my mother come back, it doesn’t matter how poor we was or anything. We was poor, but there’s people still poorer than you. And she would go and give them baths and take care of the little baby till they’d get big enough, till she’d get well enough to get up and take care of him herself.

Gatewood: Was it that same kind of community support when someone was ill, or when−

Humble: Yes. When they had typhoid fever, this one family, now I was just a little girl. I don’t know whether, I wasn’t born when the family man worked with my dad. And he took typhoid fever and had eight children. And his wife didn’t have a thing in the world. They had a little old cabin and a house built on for a kitchen. You know, just kind of like a shed. And my daddy and mother raised every one of them children. And all of us too. He taught the boys how to work, you know. And they would work. They would good workers. He would pay them so much. And their mother worked for my mother. And she took the little girls and taught them to cook and sew. And she was, well, she went to Burnside to college, they called it, the (Danny?) College. And she graduated there. And she was really smart. And she had a heart that she wanted to help the little children.

Gatewood: Was she active in the church? The Christian church?

Humble: Yes. And before her and my dad was married, the Christians come from my daddy’s family, she was a Slone and they was Methodist. My grandpa built this church, this church up here, what they call Tuttle’s Chapel. He built that. He was a good carpenter. And that was their church. And that’s where they all buried their own. 92, goes up toward Burnsides from here. Towards , that you don’t go through Burnside. We used to have to go through Burnside.

Gatewood: Flooded that area, mainly. What was your father? What did he do?

Humble: Well, he was a farmer and a trader. He graduated from school, and didn’t graduate back then, you know.

Gatewood: That’s unusual.

Humble: He didn’t graduate, but he had what they called a college education. And he did, too. And they give them certificates if they want to go into a college like somewhere in or and , they could go there. They was accredited. But they never did. They got married and raised a big houseful of children. Depression comes. They had it awful hard.

Gatewood: Sounds like it.

Humble: After that.

Gatewood: They did a lot of good work, though.

Humble: Yes, they did.

Gatewood: Did you kind of think back about that around the childbirth of, say, some poorer family? You said they would be, usually, if they couldn’t afford a doctor, or a doctor couldn’t be there, there would probably be a midwife?

Humble: Yes.

Gatewood: And then people like your mother would go and help.

Humble: Would go and help, mm hmm.

Gatewood: And after the child was delivered, they’d help with the child?

Humble: Yes.

Gatewood: How would they help?

Humble: Well, they’d give the baby baths and see that it was, its clothes had to be changed, you know.

Gatewood: Take some of the load off the mother.

Humble: Well, the mother would be in bed sick. She couldn’t do anything. Now just about two months ago, she had retired about eight years ago. And she was a midwife. And someway or another, she went to school and got her certificate that the doctors approved of her borning the children. She had some pretty difficult births, I think.

Gatewood: I was talking to Dr. Robertson about, he said there was a doctor here that had a school for midwives, and they got certification.

Humble: Well now that’s what she had.

Gatewood: That’s great. They’ve got a picture of them down there that I wanted to get−

Humble: Well now she was Nannie Ethel Pat and she died. She had heart trouble. She died about two months ago. I don’t know if it’s been that long or not. But she hadn’t been able to do anything for about five years. Her heart was bad. And Dr. Duncan was her doctor.

Gatewood: Do you ever remember actually as a child or a young woman going to a birth?

Humble: No, I never did go to one.

Gatewood: It was your mother that saw to it.

Humble: Well I did, too, after I was married. My sister-in-law. And she had a midwife cause the creek was up and the snow was pouring down, up to above the ankles. We used to wear galoshes, and I know I put on galoshes, and that snow was up over the, and she borned her little boy. And I put first clothes on him he ever wore. Now they, if they’s all right, they done all right. But my mother always believed in doctors. She felt… but now those women back up there, they didn’t want to be born by the midwives.

Gatewood: Do you remember the great flu epidemic in−

Humble: Oh, yes! I had a sister-in-law, well, she was the oldest. And she had TB, but they thought that they had that, you know, controlled. And the doctors thought that she was going to get well, you know, they used to couldn’t cure it. But they got to where they could control it or not. And she took that flu we all did, and she didn’t live no time. And they couldn’t let any of us go to her funeral. Cause was all bedfast with it. It was terrible. My brother just older than I am had double pneumonia with it. And we like to have lost him. My mother sat up all day with him, and I sat up all night. And we had been sick with the flu, but we managed to make it. And he was the sickest person I ever seen in all my life. And the perspiration come from him just was like red blood or something. The sheets, we had white sheets, they’d be just as red, and you cannot wash that out. Oh, that flu was a dreadful thing. And then they had an old rash that went after that. I don’t know if you ever heard anybody say anything or not. It just itch you to death! And doctors, all the doctors tried everything. And that doctor there, he went up, we had an old herb doctor, Dr. Jerry, everybody called him doctor. And Dr. Jerry Denny, he said to Frank, “If you let me, I’m going to cure that itch for you.” And he made up some, Frank didn’t want it, but he made an ointment, you know. And he said he got relief in a couple of hours after he put that on. And he got to telling everybody about it. And they’d give him a dollar, and he’d fix him up with the salve and he really did cure it. And my mother used to say he stopped, that sister-in-law I said you about had two little boys. This one was three, and that one was eight weeks old when she died. And we had to raise those two children. We didn’t have to, but we did. She said Dr. Jerry come and the creeks was up and he couldn’t get no further. And she’d known him all her life, so he said, “Well, Miss Kendrick, I think I’ll just stay all night, and go back if the creek be down, I can get by in the morning.” And she said had tonsillitis so bad he couldn’t speak or nothing. (?) said, “Well, if you’ll take my doctoring, I’ll fix something.” And she said that he had his tonsils down in the morning. And she didn’t know what (?) but he has a remedy of some kind that he used. Had some kind of horehound in it. And there’s something else that they used for sore throat, I can’t think what it was. Anyway, she said she didn’t know what he put in, but she didn’t care. Give to and he was so sick.

Gatewood: So he cured him without actually taking the tonsils out.

Humble: Yeah.

Gatewood: They just went down.

Humble: They just went down.

Gatewood: That’s interesting.

Humble: Well I know I had sore throat one time. Them creeks was always aggravates you when you get sick.

Gatewood: [laughs] They’d be up when you were sick.

Humble: And that boy in there, his uncle come by our house and I was so sick I couldn’t talk. My throat was swelled together. And he said, my name’s Effie, but everybody around call me Ef. He said, “Now, Ef, if you let me, I’ll fix a poultice that will cure you.” I said if you fix a poultice, yes, I’ll be glad to get it. And he put some onions, peeled them, put them on the stove, and fried it in grease. And he put a tiny bit of sulfur in it. And he come, put that around my throat. And I never had nothing feel so good in all my life. And oh, about three hours, I must have begin to breathe. I couldn’t breathe! But onion, I don’t know what?... I’ve heard people say they’ve used it, too.

Gatewood: It smelled everything…

Humble: I don’t know. An onion …put onions and garlic both in high blood pressure medicine. They do that now.

Gatewood: Sure. Yeah. That’s true. Were there many of these herb doctors in the community?

Humble: He’s the only one I know of. But there’s one coming through there. I was in . And my mother said that there’s something that he cured for somebody that was so bad. Well, anyway, this little boy’s had a sore throat. We get those, we called them boogers, those big, hard things that get in the nose and stop him from breathing. And back there and around in the mountains, you ever heard of mullen it looks kind of like a tobacco leaf?

Gatewood: I haven’t heard of it.

Humble: Well, he told him to get some of that mullen and dry it, lay it in the stove, and dry it and smoke it. Just like in a pipe or a cigarette. And it cured his throat, like sinus, you know. Them old big, he called them boogers in his (?) Just big old hard things that would form. My mother used to make some liniment. She’d take camphor and whiskey. Daddy didn’t like her to have whiskey, he didn’t want it in the house. His father drank a lot, and he thought that he spent a lot of money that the family could use. And he just didn’t see no point in having whiskey. But he’d always get her, keep her camphor bottle and she’d put hartshorn, did you ever hear of hartshorn? It’s kind of like, well, rock candy or something. And she’d put rock candy in that hartshorn and that camphor. And it was awful good to ease pain and things with.

Gatewood: Have you ever heard of mixing egg yolk with salt?

Humble: Mm hmm.

Gatewood: She used to do that, too? Make a poultice like that?

Humble: Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Gatewood: Can you think of some of the other things?

Humble: She made a poultice. I don’t know if it was, she’d put a little mustard in the eggs. You know, dry mustard. And eggs. And I believe it was a little vinegar that she’d put in it, in water, mix it up, and she’d put it in a flannel cloth and lay it on our chest for a bad cold. It was good, too. We had a cousin that believed in making, when the children had croup, he’d make them a poultice out of the onions and sulfur and lard. People used pure old hog’s lard then. They didn’t know nothing about Crisco.

Gatewood: It seems like the mother was really kind of a nurse, wasn’t she?

Humble: Yes.

Gatewood: Baby doctoring.

Humble: She was awful good.

Gatewood: Was that generally speaking? Your mother certainly seemed to be. Would most women tend to be nurturing like that?

Humble: No. There wasn’t anybody else out there that I know of. Only the midwives would go. There was about three midwives close to us, and they was awful good about going.

Gatewood: Did the midwives charge anything?

Humble: They didn’t used to, but everybody would give them a dollar. And I think this woman, the last one I was telling you about, got five dollars for it. And she’d go for miles.

Gatewood: Walk?

Humble: No, she had a big old saddle mare. She rode her on the side, back then. Women all rode side−

Gatewood: Side saddle.

Humble: First time I ever rode a horse, I rode side. Everybody had her little saddle that they rode.

Gatewood: Well, this is really interesting. Any other remedy that you can think of that your mother used, or anyone else in the community?

Humble: They used to get black fruit. Go in the woods and dig black fruit and put it in water. And sometimes put a little whiskey in it, you know, to preserve it. And they’d give us that for colds. They’d take… slippery elm, you know, and take it, put it in. They’d give that for diarrhea, and it was really good. Back that time, they used to have flux, and they said that if you couldn’t cure it with that slippery elm water, they’d know that you’d have to the doctor. So many people died from flux.

Gatewood: What were some of the other things that were real serious, besides typhoid fever and flux?

Humble: Well, they had malaria. I told you my brothers, that’s one of the worst things you can have. You just can’t hardly ever get over it. And they’d had pneumonia then, and it would really be awful bad.

Gatewood: Even a doctor couldn’t do much for you, could he?

Humble: I remember, we didn’t have no hot water bottles. And my mother would heat plates and wrap it in some kind of a little, maybe a baby’s diaper, and lay it on the chest. And then it would help loosen up that phlegm. Did Doctor Roberts tell you I was telling you about as a child had to have…and things like that. He got one of those sorrel wood limbs as high as the baby, the little boy was, and let it stay under his bed or under the mattress till he outgrowed that limb. And then he’d be well. [laughs]

Gatewood: Is that right?

Humble: He’d (?) I hadn’t heard of that (?) but he said he couldn’t do no other way, and he just go back to his mother’s old remedy.

Gatewood: Is that right? Dr. Roberts said that? Did that?

Humble: Yeah. (Mac?) Roberts.

Gatewood: Is that right? No, he wouldn’t, he didn’t tell me that. I’ll have to get on him about that. [laughs]

Humble: Don’t tell him on me.

Gatewood: No, I won’t tell it on you.

Humble: He’s the only doctor around (?)

Gatewood: Yeah, he’s a good man.

Humble: My husband was, well, this is kind of like cardiac, but it was just a clot of blood, you know? He couldn’t get to the heart. And he had to have shots. And a lot of times he had to have them at night. I’d call Dr. Roberts and he’d come along at , , anytime.

Gatewood: He’s a modest man. He didn’t say much about what he’d done. But I gathered that he was. He was a little bit reticent about speaking, too. He wasn’t as free with me as you are. I wish he had of been a little freer.

Humble: I’ll tell you about him. He’s a distant man anyway. He just don’t talk to him like he knows you, he knows me all my life, of course. And he used to teach school just like my husband.

Gatewood: He did?

Humble: That’s where I met him. And my husband, he come in our community and was teaching school. And they got to talking about their schooldays, and having 65 and 75 in one room. [laughs] But they done fine in them schools and I don’t see how they did it. Everybody learned. They can all read and spell. You know, that’s a lot more than some of them can do now.

Gatewood: Apparently they had better discipline (?) even though they had, I don’t know how they managed that many people, either. Nowadays, it’s hard to handle two or three. [laughs]

Humble: Yes. It sure is.

Gatewood: We had a picnic in our community. I was in charge of the games. And (?) some little kids, I almost lose my patience! You couldn’t get them to line up, to count them off for their teams.

Humble: No.

Gatewood: They just yap, yap, yap. You set one over here, and he’s gone over there. [laughs]

Humble: They start them out in these schools when they’re not two and three. And then they go to church, and they run all over the school. They’ve got a nursery (?) church. Some way or another they’ll manage to get up about the time everybody goes out, why they’re running in front of you, and you’re afraid you’re going to hit one and run over it.

Gatewood: Was that kind of a general thing that men sometimes would start off teaching like Dr. Roberts did, and then later go into−

Humble: Yeah. Make doctor.

Gatewood: Or a lawyer or something?

Humble: My husband was a carpenter. And where are you from?

Gatewood: I’m from originally. I live in now.

Humble: You don’t know nothing about factories.

Gatewood: No, I don’t.

Humble: He was a maintenance man in the American Standard. They built, I guess you’ve got bathrooms down there that’s made from commodes and lavatories and things. He took care, there’s nine of them, he took care of the woodwork and all that.

Gatewood: Oh, that’s quite a position. Let me turn this tape. It’s run to the end.

[End Side A. Begin Side B.]

Gatewood: −and this factory that made the bathroom−

Humble: He worked for American Razors, American Razors, American Standard, is what it was.

Gatewood: And he sort of made the forms that they used?

Humble: And building parts, you know. When the (?) would drop they’d put them in, put his new form, make boxes for him to ship out all this stuff in. There’s nine regular carpenters. And oh, they did a lot of work.

Gatewood: What was the, in these communities you remember in your childhood, what was the role of the ministers in the church? Were they involved in healthcare in any way? At least in helping people−

Humble: Some of them was. Some would go on and help out, when they were sick, sit up at night. And they didn’t have no nurses. And maybe there’d be two go one night, two go in the nighttime. Then they’d change it, so they could get some rest. People used to be sick for weeks at a time with, I know we had the, big, old homemade rocking chair. And men used to be awful strong and big, you know? And my mother would send that rocking chair, she’d put a big pad it, send it to those people that were sick that could set up a little bit that didn’t have no good chair. And she’d fix them a good chair, lend it to them. They, some of them would be awful, awful sick for months. They just didn’t seem to get well. They’d get well maybe of pneumonia, then something else would develop.

Gatewood: That would be horrible if it was a time of the year when a lot of work had to be done.

Humble: Yes. Well, they used to help people fix their, do their plowing, plant their corn, put out their tobacco. People didn’t, then, it wasn’t like they are now. I know my brother was building him another room on his house. And all the church he belonged, this church that had the back doors, and they all come (?) him, they put up that room in a day. And the women have cooked the lunch. And they all had a good time. Sixteen (?) room. I think it’s about sixteen feet long and twelve to fourteen feet wide. And they (?) it in, too. And they’d do that if one had something to do, they’d call it a house raising. And they’d get (?) they’d go and help out. But we don’t have anymore of that. We had gotten a hospital, which I think is the most wonderful thing. We’ve got a good hospital here. My husband was there a lot.

Gatewood: You all had moved back here before he died?

Humble: Yes. (I was raised here and now?) They got to, we had an awful nice home. Well, in fact, we had (two? We had one in??) but there got to be a lot of colored people moving in. And they didn’t bother us, because we was the kind of people that, I was growed up (by?) them. My great-grandfathers had slaves. But they didn’t want them in the schools, you know, and it was tearing up things, so it got awful bad. And we just got disgusted with it. And we thought we’d come back down here. And when they had that trouble started here, well (?) the superintendent, and he told him, he said, “Those colored people are going to school (out there?) with the white people. And the bus is going to run out there.” And said, “If you all feel like you want to pay taxes and put up a school for the colored people, why you can do that. And if you don’t, they going to ride. And (?), but they will take care of, they won’t run over nobody.” And then everybody had to, there’s a trouble in the world when they all go to school together now. And they play ball together. And but now I don’t know why it was, when Carmichael was a professor at the . They got along fine with them then. But they just got all the grade schools and everything. And it seemed like everyone that had children, and black children, they just didn’t want to get along. And we thought we’d just move away. And I wanted to come back home anyway. So this place used to bring, belong, all these, down in (?) belonged to my great-grandfather, General Buster. And I said that I won’t go back (?) my great granddad. And my other great-grandfather lived about three miles. No, it’s just two miles through that mountain. It gets into Louisville Farm like the land is down here. That’s where my daddy was raised.

Gatewood: Now you− [tape glitch] built this house?

Humble: He had it built. Yeah. It was like them woods over there when we bought it. You can see all that woods. And he had it cleared up. We built the house. Started in ’75. And we got a boy, he had several boys, and we wanted to move, and he finished it in about two months and-a-half. We bought it last summer and moved in fifteenth of January.

Gatewood: Even though you moved away, you seemed to have kept a close contact with the community.

Humble: Well, my mother and father lived there for a long time. And since being back, you see, you get closer.

Gatewood: Reconnect.

Humble: Yes. Being with kinfolk. Neighbors. But people don’t get out and go and see their neighbors like they used to.

Gatewood: All isolated, aren’t we?

Humble: Yeah.

Gatewood: Even though we’re closer together− there’s a car starting out there.

Humble: Oh, it’s just (Jesse ??)

Gatewood: That’s the real the paradox of the situation. We’re really right close, but we stay in our little houses and never visit very much.

Humble: Yes. That’s right.

Gatewood: Was there a lot of visiting in the period when you were growing up?

Humble: Oh, yes. I was telling someone last night that my aunts used to come. All of them but one would stay all day and all night. The other one would always have to go back home to her husband and children. She just couldn’t stay all night. She’d stay maybe sometimes at night. Then her boy would always take her home.

Gatewood: I guess that probably give you a lot of security, to know that somebody would see you if you got sick.

Humble: Yes. Oh, yes. And then you’d go to the neighbors and tell them who all was sick, and what they thought they had. Before they had doctors like Dr. Woodrow and Dr. Cook and all them, why they just had to depend on their own remedies. And I never did know nothing about them, because we always had medical doctors.

Gatewood: Do you know of anybody that would be living now in the county that might remember some of the old remedies that−

Humble: I don’t think of anybody (?). There’s one man died last week. And they said that he was 103. And his boy (left town?). It’s his uncle.

Gatewood: Is that right?

Humble: And we don’t have too many old people. It seemed like they died out and a lot of the younger ones has died since we moved back here. Cancer gets them, anyhow.

Gatewood: Seems like there’s a different type of disease now.

Humble: Yes.

Gatewood: Heart trouble.

Humble: Yes.

Gatewood: Nervous breakdowns. Did you all have much of that? Or do you think it happened and you just didn’t know what it was? Or do you think you had as much of that?

Humble: You mean when I was a girl?

Gatewood: Yes, as a child.

Humble: Yes, they had heart troubles then. And they used to, people usually looked like they just got fat. And now they call it fluid. Doctors did. And the old timey people, they said that, of course, I don’t remember none of that. But I remember when they had what they called dropsy, that swell from that fluid. And it was their heart. And somebody that had experience would take a sharp knife and puncture them, and turn them on something, chairs, I think, and drain that out. And then they’d live for maybe four or five months and they’d have to do it again. Just open up that place. I don’t know how they kept it from getting infected. Because whiskey’s about the only thing they used then, to pour on wounds, you know. You get a snake bite, and they had to take care of lots of snake bites then. They’d pour kerosene on that. And they’d use whiskey when they had to cut a hole or anything in anybody. And sometimes they’d burn that, have to put the whiskey on, it would burn. It would burn that (right in there?) And they had doctors, but they couldn’t travel very well because there wasn’t no roads.

Gatewood: And all the creeks.

Humble: And all the creeks. They had a creek, now this one here we called the Town Creek. You went down (?) that Indian rock. Right out of town. Oh, that creek gets up yet, gets in people’s houses. And they had to get carried out, moved out (?) hours later (hope to?) wake up. Why, they have to get somebody to carry them out. It’s so deep they can’t walk. And it’s got a bridge over it. But all around it, it settles in so you can’t get to the bridge. How long have you been in here?

Gatewood: Quite a while. Do you mean been in this area?

Humble: County. Doing this kind of −

Gatewood: A couple of days.

Humble: Just a couple.

Gatewood: Yes, ma’am. I’m just getting, just getting, it seems like, to know people, and I’m going to have to move on. That’s the reason we need, people need to do it themselves.

Humble: Now that girl that called me, she’s my cousin.

Gatewood: She is?

Humble: She’s a Kendrick, too.

Gatewood: Yes.

Humble: And she married the Rankin boy.

Gatewood: She was real nice to do that for me. I’m staying down there in that hotel.

Humble: That boy’s my cousin, too.

Gatewood: He is?

Humble: Who owns the motel. Chesney. My grandmother was a Chesney.

Gatewood: They sure cook the best food.

Humble: Yes, they have−

Gatewood: It’s a good motel, too. Very clean and nice.

Humble: Clean and, they’re good people.

Gatewood: That breakfast this morning was delicious. Real country breakfast with great white gravy and everything. I bet I’ve put on a pound since I’ve been down here.

Humble: Well, you don’t find as good a cooks as they are everywhere.

Gatewood: No. Good country cooking. That used to have been, I’m sure, a delight to eat, didn’t it? Fresh food?

Humble: [laughs] Yes. I used to really put, have big picnics. I used to have picnics. And they didn’t have tables. Just take sheets or tablecloths. People used to make tablecloths, weave them. And they’d take sheets and tablecloths, spread them on the ground. Everybody would cook. And my daddy used to, if it was summertime, he’d kill a lamb and they’d roast the leg of a lamb. And then two legs of lamb. And then they’d have ham. And chicken. Everything you could think of, almost. And somebody else would have a big lot like that, too. And all of us (would feast?)

Gatewood: This would be done around the church, the school, or in a family?

Humble: The schools. Or sometimes they’d have a family reunion. Now, they’re going to have one here the fourteenth of August, of the Kendrick family. (Rooster?) , he’s the attorney. His son’s an attorney. He’s a (?)

Gatewood: That seems to be returning. Those family reunions seem to be returning.

Humble: Yes.

Gatewood: We have one in my hometown, the (Darasows?), my mother’s side. I go back to it.

Humble: This is our, they call him Uncle Billy Kendrick. He was our great grandson. (?) mother and my daddy was first cousins. The ones to have him, the reunion.

Gatewood: Did you all raise pretty good gardens back in your childhood?

Humble: Oh, yes, the best. We growed everything. And I was thinking that today. My mother had thyme, you know, and (bill seed?) and sage. That was really good sage, too. You could put it in sauces. And it was so good. They don’t get the good sauces. Well, they would if they raised the seed. Now that there’s one or two around here that has old country sage in their sausage.

Gatewood: Makes a difference, doesn’t it?

Humble: Makes a difference, yeah.

Gatewood: I wonder if they had medicinal plants in the garden, too, that maybe they would mix up with things.

Humble: Well, I don’t know. They had so many plants. My mother had a big row of rhubarb, you know. They used that for (medicine?)

Gatewood: They sure did.

Humble: We had some around these (rocks?) But they burned up and they come, we had a pretty warm, they come up early in the spring, and come a hard freeze, and that froze them down. And she said that her daddy picked up some boys and was going, walking to town. And they wanted to work. And he told them to work in the garden. And they dug up every bit of her rhubarb. They thought it was (?). [laughs] And she, oh, she was mad! After she’d so hard to get that rhubarb. Oh, that was terrible.

Gatewood: What kind of chores did you do, do you remember, as a young girl at home? A young child?

Humble: I’d help milk sometimes. Most of the time, I’d just cook. But my sister, she loved to get out and play with the little calves and milk the cow. But I never was much at farming. And then after (Ava and Thomas?) married, then he worked for American Standard, why, we had a hundred-acre farm. And my mother was sick. And she was with me and I couldn’t do nothing else. So I got (? black head ?) cattle, cows. And a big bull. And I raised the calves and sheep and hogs and chickens, turkeys. I had to quit raising chickens, though. The foxes would get them. And we had them in them little thin wire pens. And the snakes would crawl up in there. I just quit raising chickens. We had, of course he didn’t have time to do nothing. He drove seventeen miles to work. I had all I could do. Then on Saturdays, he’d plow and they’d plant. Oh, we done pretty good with our farm.

Gatewood: That’s good. That’s good that you learned to do it, even though you hadn’t done it as a child.

Humble: Well, I know how it’s done, I’d seen it done.

Gatewood: You just got out of it by doing something else.

Humble: [laughs] Yeah.

Gatewood: Did you do any sewing?

Humble: Oh, yes. We done all of our sewing. And my mother had (?) a machine. She’s the only one who had one. I remember it done that little fine tuck, you know, like you had, she had an attachment that did that. And done everything that it does now, like button holes and zippers. We didn’t know what a zipper was, then. Used buttons and hooks and eyes.

Gatewood: Did you all do any weaving?

Humble: No. My grandmother did, though. And I had blankets that my grandmother (Caroline?) and pretty thick. All them covers last week on the bedspreads now. And I noticed many people come to get the design. My house burned up, burned up all that. And I said well I never will think too much of anything else anymore, because I had so much bad luck with losing all my things like that. I had some lovely dishes that was old. Oh, it was worth a fortune. Those bedspreads.

Gatewood: Did you all do, did you all do quilting?

Humble: Yes.

Gatewood: You learned to do that, I guess.

Humble: Yes, I did a lot of quilt. Oh, they do a lot of quilting here now. The senior citizens, they all get together and quilt. And they’ll all put their quilt up, and some of them bring seven and eight hundred dollars. And then they use that for the (?), elder people that can’t do things.

Gatewood: Can you think of some other things that you’d like to tell me?

Humble: No. [laughs] I think I’ve about run down.

Gatewood: You’ve done an awful lot. You’ve helped me an awful lot.

Humble: Well, I’m glad.

Gatewood: I thoroughly appreciate it very much, Mrs. Humble. I hope that someday maybe somebody can come back in the community and talk to you some more. Because you’re a regular mine of all kinds of information.

Humble: Yes.

Gatewood: I really appreciate you letting me come in.

Humble: Well, that’s all right. And I hope that you’ll be successful and, in other places. Are you going to stop in ?

Gatewood: Yes, ma’am. And then McCreary. I’ll be going both.

Humble: Well, it would be easier, the Chesney boy would know, to go from here to . And then go to Pulaski, and then from there down to . You’d get a better road that way.

Gatewood: Coal trucks kind of tear it up?

Humble: Yes. And that road out from here to , and wind up, some of them (?) more dangerous (?) be on 27. I believe, 27. And go right into . And it’s a good road. Then after you get down there, you can be careful of where you go. But they’ve got roads about like . May not be hardly as wide. ’s got good roads.

Gatewood: Yeah, they have much−

[End Interview.]