Oral History Interview Ethel Schwartz

Teka Ward: Today is February 11, 1985. My name is Teka Ward. I’m interviewing Ethel Schwartz. We are at 2022 Vogue Avenue, Louisville, Ky. Our topic is Lou Tate and the Little Loomhouse.

As we begin, Ethel, currently you serve as the treasurer of the Lou Tate Foundation, Inc. How long have you served in that position?

Ethel: Well, I believe position (?) is five years and I’ve been there four years. And I just keep taking the job.

Teka: You were on the founding board of directors?

Ethel: Not the beginning; not the first year. I just came in as a member of the Lou Tate Foundation.

Teka: You weren’t on the founding board?

Ethel: No.

Teka: How did you? I wonder why you weren’t?

Ethel: Well, I think, when they first met at the University [of Louisville], not too many people knew me and I know that the people who were selected were those who knew one another. So, for a whole year, I just felt that I wanted to know what was going on. And the first time they had a meeting at Masterson’s [Restaurant] with Hartford,--is that her name?--I went to that meeting. That was the one and only time that my husband came with me. But I went to that meeting and I was really impressed with what the board was doing.

Then Vivian called me and asked me if I would like to be on the board and I said, “Yes.” It didn’t take much persuading, so the first meeting was at Ann Kiper’s house and they asked me if I would accept the job of treasurer. And ever since that, I’ve been treasurer of the Little Loomhouse.

Teka: Tell me when you first went to the Little Loomhouse.

Ethel: Well, that’s been a good many years ago. Susan was eleven years old at the time and someone had mentioned the Little Loomhouse. So I found my way there with Susan and it was a beautiful setting. I really loved it. I loved the outdoors, so I loved the atmosphere there.

And I left Susan and I went home. And didn’t pick her up until late in the afternoon. So for twenty-five cents--then I’d take her there every weekend. For twenty-five cents you could leave her there for practically the whole day.

I believe I did make a mistake by not staying. I really should have learned to weave; I feel now that I should have. But at the time I was busy with other activities. Then I was very much active with the Girl Scouts, so I would bring girls up there who were in my troop so they would weave. You know, it would be just one day, on a Sunday.

And Lou Tate would call me on the phone to ask me to do certain things for her. And she and my husband were on the faculty and she was being harassed by people in the neighborhood. They’d find boxes around and they’d call and they’d send--I don’t know if it was the city, but they would send people there to clean up the place.

One thing I remember was that she would have us throw boxes into the gully to keep the water from moving, to stop the erosion. You didn’t know that? And she was quite upset by this harassment, but I don’t know how she stopped it. I have no idea.

Another thing, she’d call Susan and me up to go down and sit for when there’d be a display at Stewart’s [Dept. Store]. We’d sit in the store and Susan would weave and I’d pretend to weave. But she called Susan and, of course, Susan was quite young then, and I would have to drive her, and I enjoyed talking to people and selling the idea of the Little Loomhouse.

Teka: Susan tells of even her brother helping, in a way, with a table to hold the looms.

Ethel: Well, we took a loom home and we took an old kitchen we found in the basement. He punched holes in it and put strings through it and then she could work her feet. She worked a two harness loom.

Now Susan was very good with the loom. She’s very good with her hands, so she took to it quite easily.

Another thing that Lou Tate taught her was how to read the drafts. That was something Lou Tate wanted the younger children to learn. But Susan did spend a lot of time reading those drafts and trying to transpose them onto paper that she would have to color afterwards.

Another thing that I remember about Lou Tate was that she’d call us and we would call us and we’d have to stuff her walls with envelopes…envelopes, which would… I guess she wanted it for insulation. It was funny. We had to put special sizes, certain sizes in certain walls. It was really funny. And then after Lou Tate had died, there weren’t any envelopes in the walls. Somebody must have pulled them out, you know, but anyway, that’s what we would come and do some of the days. Of course, this was in later years when Lou Tate was ill.

Teka: When you first went down there…?

Ethel: Well, I don’t quite remember; I remember I used to bring a dog. We had a dog. And Lou Tate loved dogs and the dog would just have the whole run of the place. And I remember Lou Tate had a dog and she used to give that dog ice cream. It was funny, really funny, a whole ice cream cone.

Another thing I remember, I used to take Lou Tate to the library or go and pick up books for her or else drive her to the bank, or something.

Teka: Was she not driving at that time?

Ethel: Well, I don’t think she had a car. I remember she had a funny car which was a station wagon and it was a wooden…I think there’s some pictures of it in some of her writings.. A wooden car, a wooden station wagon; it had wooden sides to it, but I guess after a while, it just stopped running. She used travel, from what I’ve heard, she used to travel all over the hills in that car.

Teka: What were your first impressions of her when you first would be dropping Susan off there?

Ethel: Well, she talked a lot. She talked a lot, you know what I mean, she was quite verbal. She had a lot to say and I’ll tell you, I admire her knowledge of weaving and of history. I think it was because of her history degree that she became interested in weaving. But she was very, very knowledgeable. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who knew as much about weaving as Lou Tate did.

Teka: Did she have an accent to her voice or anything that you remember about it?

Ethel: No, no, I mean when she’d call you on the telephone, she had you on, she’d talk a long time. Of course, she’d repeat what she had to say. She’d repeat it over and over and over again. But she’d call here quite often or she wanted Susan to do this and Susan to do that, to do things for her and we were quite receptive; we were willing because we both dearly loved that place.

Teka: Did she had a telephone in Bottom house and in Top house?

Ethel: No, no, she only had it in the Bottom house. At first we were afraid to call her. No, the telephone in the Top house, in fact, there were about four rooms--I don’t know if anyone described it to you, and you could hardly move in the Loom house. You know, they had the shelves with all the looms on them and a big pot belly stove over to one side. I’ve never been there when that stove was lit, because she wasn’t there in the winter time. She didn’t have the place open in the winter time.

And boxes all over the shelves, on the floor, but she did have a refrigerator there and sometimes I’d bring her some food from home, something that I just took out of the freezer and I’d bring her. And that refrigerator had TV dinners. That’s what I believe she lived on; TV dinners. It was really funny.

And another thing I remembered about her, booties; she always wore booties. And so if we wanted to give her something, we would buy her booties. That’s what she walked around in. And if you were ever in her house, now called Esta, but I don’t think at that time they used that name, you couldn’t walk through from the doorway. I think I was in there once or twice. You couldn’t walk from the kitchen through the room. It was just cluttered with paper, just paper piled up high. And then later it was boxes of coverlets. So I don’t know where she slept, I mean, there was a bed there, but I was surprised that the place hadn’t gotten on fire.

Teka: Did you ever get to meet any of her family?

Ethel: No, never, never, I don’t know any family.

Teka: And you wouldn’t see her in the winter time?

Ethel: No, because she wasn’t open in the winter time. She may have had people come in her house, but we would always go to the Top house. You see, she was only open on certain hours on certain days, so you just weren’t free to go just at any time.

Teka: Did you also go to any of the Open Houses?

Ethel: Yes, the open houses I went to, but I never stayed for her parties. She had parties occasionally and she’d tell us to stay. I just didn’t know how to take it. There were things that I didn’t understand about her.

When she sent us the note, it was always on the back, she’d write it in handwriting, but the note would have a lot of typewritten and I couldn’t understand what her notes were all about, but her handwritten note would be for some instruction or something she would like us to do. I never knew that she was sending out lessons or sending out information about weaving, so not until we began cleaning up the Loomhouse did I realize that these were papers that she sent all over the country.

Teka: Did things start to fall in place for you more as your role after Lou Tate died…?

Ethel: Oh, yes, definitely, definitely. I just felt at the time, even though I didn’t understand some of the things she was doing, I just felt at the time, that she needed us. She needed some help. When she was at a nursing home, she called us, Susan and me, and we went and picked up some stuff at the Loomhouse and took it to the nursing home. Then we showed the patients there how to card wool and how to weave a little bit. It really was remarkable that she had a great interest in other people.

Teka: Even when she was in the nursing home.

Ethel: Even when she was sick. And then we were out of town when she passed away. I think there was a memorial for her, but we didn’t have any information on that.

But, she really was a remarkable woman; remarkable. But I guess this harassment that she had didn’t make her a very happy person.

Teka: The harassment in terms of the neighbors not wanting her there? How do you define the harassment?

Ethel: Well, I don’t know if it was neighbors next door, because she did have a lot of friends. But it may have been the real estate people. I don’t know, that’s what I thought. They wanted the land and they wanted her to, you know, leave it and sell it and they could put up probably very expensive homes. What is it, half an acre of land? But I don’t understand all the facts, or I didn’t know all the facts before, about Lou Tate.

Teka: We have a picture of Susan here and it’s with the Oral History project. But do you want to tell us…?

Ethel: Well, Susan’s the young lady who’s warping and Karen, the girl who’s sitting on the right; she was a very good weaver; Karen Weaver. And she has since passed away. The girl on the left is a friend of Pazas, a friend of ours, Susan’s age, Pazas, and the girl on the right is her sister. They’re not weavers, but I have shown them this picture and they got a kick out of it. But Susan’s still taking some weaving lessons in New York. She doesn’t have a loom but she still has an interest in it.

Teka: Now on the back of this…is this a sample of the kind of thing that you’d get in the mail from her?

Ethel: No this is a letter that she wrote to me. But the stuff I would get on things to do with weaving. Now this is what she did send to me. I guess she would use up her paper instead of putting it on a blank sheet. She would use up the paper.

(Papers shuffling) Oh, well this, I don’t know about. I think this is her grand pappy.

Teka: She would send those out to people, too.

Ethel: Well, she may have. I don’t remember ever receiving anything like this. Because I think I’ve kept everything she sent us and all the newspaper clippings about the Loomhouse, I have. I keep everything.

Teka: Now, there’s another photograph.

Ethel: Yea, this came out of the newspaper. And this is Susan and Sue Kendricks. Susan, I believe, knew a lot more of the people who came out because she spent that time and she was younger and they were always interested in younger people, so this is fine.

Teka: The kinds of things that you are doing now is helping to organize and retrieve all of these papers that she left that are in the boxes that kept…

Ethel: That’s true. But what we’d like to do is put them together and get all the pages and make them into book form and make it into a book and sell them so that it would help keep the Loomhouse going. [It would be] one of our resources for getting money.

Teka: When you were going there, you didn’t know that she was sending out, in addition to this, the publications. Did you ever see any of those lying around?

Ethel: Well, she would send one, you know, she could put it into an envelope and she would mail it to you. Now, once in a while, she’d give Susan something like that.

Teka: For instance, Weaving at the Little Loomhouse...

Ethel: She may have given Susan a copy of that. You see, but most of her stuff was single pages and that’s what we’re trying to put together.

Teka: You go out there, certainly, at least, once a week.

Ethel: Once a week, and sometimes twice a week.

Teka: When you started out being the treasurer, did you just see yourself as being the treasurer? Tell me how your increased activity evolved.

Ethel: Well, since there’re aren’t too many volunteers, I decided I would volunteer, other than just keep books; keep the finances going. So I would go and I would work with Vivian and we were trying to get the pages together because she really--they were scattered all over. They were in the shed, they were in her garage, they were up at Top house, they were up in the attic, in Wisteria, in Esta; they were scattered all over and they were already wrapped in the…, like bundles like come from the printers. They were never opened. So we would sit outside of the garage, in the shade, sorting papers. Then Sue Kendricks would come. But Vivian was the one who really organized it.

Well, then, of course, when it got colder, we couldn’t do that anymore. So then I would volunteer for some other jobs. I would always try to be at Open House. And I was really the one who pushed to leave Lynch’s office and to make the Top house an office.

Teka: Oh, now tell me about that. What do you mean leave Lynch’s office?

Ethel: Well, we were paying the attorney for the use of the phone to have and to have the name of the Loomhouse in the telephone [book] and all our mail would come there and …

Teka: So after Lou Tate died, they took the phone she had out of Bottom house. And they changed the mailing address to the lawyer’s.

Ethel: To the lawyer’s yes, well, that had to be done because we were becoming a foundation, so we needed the lawyer. And then Ann Kiper got Pat Bless to live in the house so we would have a custodian.

Teka: Now, with this partly, since you were the treasurer, you began to be aware of what money the foundation did have [and how it] was being spent. So that was kind of your initial reason for realizing…

Ethel: Well, we would have to go to a commercial phone, you see, because before we had a private phone, or a family phone, so in order to get a commercial phone and to be listed as a school, or, not so much as a school, so people could find us in the telephone book and the expense was very high, so we had to make a choice of having the office downtown or moving it out to the Loomhouse. And then we began to get donations from different people, got a file cabinet, and so [[not having] the expense of having the office downtown took care of [having] the phone at the Top house.

Teka: You mean you basically, what it cost you to have the telephone there, was as much as…

Ethel: …As it would have cost us to have the office downtown.

Teka: Tell me about, was this before Top house was renovated?

Ethel: No, this is afterwards; this was after renovation. So I guess it was a little more prestigious to have an address downtown, but we didn’t get the mail. You know first it would go to Mr. Fowler, and then he would have to post it and mail it to us. This way, the mail is sent directly to us.

Teka: You started though going out, though, to the Loom house on a regular basis.

Ethel: Well, because I felt that the Loomhouse should be open to the public. Since we have a telephone and we’re paying for it, I feel we should be open more frequently, but it’s very hard to get volunteers to come out, so we were open two days a week for a year. Now, maybe, if we get more volunteers, we can be open at least three times a week, because people are interested. I’ve heard cases when people come out and all they can see, of course, is what they see through the windows. So we need to be open more often.

Teka: What is on your current list of things that you wish could be achieved for the Loomhouse?

Ethel: Well, I’d like to see those pages all put together. Then we could offer them to the public or to those who are interested in weaving. There’s a lot of information on those pages.

Teka: What kind of things are on all of those pages?

Ethel: Well, how to weave, how to go through and to make certain patterns; very thorough.

Teka: Some of the pages are drafts?

Ethel: Some of them are drafts, yes. We also have original drafts. We have a lot of drafts. We have a lot of coverlets. Lou Tate had an interest in collecting coverlets and then trying to figure out the drafts to figure out the patterns. That’s one of the things that she taught Susan.

Teka: Do you think your daughter’s mathematical bent enabled her able to do so well on that kind of thing?

Ethel: Well, it might have. She sent me an article where she found that you also could also do patterns on a computer. So you can work out things on a computer.

Teka: So saving, rescuing these pages, putting them in some kind of publishable form, is one of the goals you have.

Ethel: Yes, it is. And also to try to make a museum out of a lot of the old weaving, what do you call them? --frames or pieces that people have donated, people who have known Lou Tate, who worked with her. We have some of them that are really valuable; some are worth a lot of money. We have little miniature looms so we hope to make out some kind of a museum, a place to have those things, as well. And then the coverlets, I don’t know how many coverlets we own. It’s hard; really it’s a big struggle.

Teka: It’s a constant struggle. For instance, even in a house that’s been renovated, if you don’t keep on top of it.

Ethel: Things can happen, yea. There’s a tree that’s growing there--someone came down the road to Top house and said, “You know, there’s a tree that’s slanted. Some day, that’s going to go through the roof, if you don’t take care of it.” It’s a big heavy tree. It’s in the back of the Top house.

Teka: You no longer have a caretaker out there, do you?

Ethel: No.

Teka: Do you think we need to have one? Do you think it would help?

Ethel: I don’t think so. In the first place this caretaker didn’t do anything for us. It was a struggle to get him to do any thing for us. And we do save on electricity, because in the winter time, just putting on a heater was a great expense. Just one heater and our bill would go sky high. So we don’t need a caretaker. At least, I don’t feel we do. All we need to do is have those two buildings renovated. That’s really our biggest goal. But it’s hard to get money.

Teka: What is going on with the issue concerning the survey; concerning the property line? That seems to be ongoing.

Ethel: Well, I sent the check to the lawyer; Kyler Willock. I sent her some money and she was supposed to file something in the courthouse and we haven’t heard.

Teka: But this is another form of harassment, in a way, don’t you think?

Ethel: Well, I think so because we want to make a decision on our property line and then put that behind us so we can go on to the next step. But that’s got to be settled one way or the other.

One of our big problems is the road, too. There is a lot of erosion where they had fixed the road in the back. A lot of money was spent on that: over a hundred thousand a wall because the water would rush down and wash the soil away. We still have a little bit of that, but it’s not as great.

Teka: You mean the road that we have going up there now?

Ethel: Yea, the road going up. Oh, there’s another thing with our neighbors. There was a walk that led you up to Possum Path where you didn’t have to go all the way around to get to the Loomhouse and that’s no longer there because the people have put their deck there. So that’s another thing that we have to settle.

Teka: When did they put that deck there?

Ethel: Well, it’s been there quite a while.

Teka: Was Lou Tate alive?

Ethel: I don’t know. I don’t remember. I don’t remember. You see, it’s so wooded I never paid any attention to [the neighbor] him. You know, in the summertime it’s wooded and you can’t see it as much. Now it’s much more noticeable.

Teka: As you look back, and you think about Lou Tate, do you remember anything about her in particular, besides talking a lot?

Ethel: She loved little children. She just loved them. She talked to them differently than she would speak to adults. You know, there was something about little children that she reacted to. Another thing I noticed. She always geared things to the younger children. She would teach the little ones, I guess that was part of her philosophy; teach the little ones and then the little ones would teach the others.

But it did, it used to be wonderful when she had Open House. Lots of people would come. She would also have tie-dye. You’d bring an old shirt or something and she’d have someone there lecturing and there’s a place where they could build a fire and there were different buckets with different colored dye and they’d have a tie-dye party. It was really, really fun. To tell you the truth, I would take Susan, and then I’d go home, and then come back for her. But the children were just wonderful.

Teka: …

Ethel: All right, one of the ways Lou Tate would help with her finances was charging twenty-five cents for the all day and then measure the inches of your weaving. But we didn’t always get…

End of Tape One, Side One.

Beginning of Tape One, Side Two.

Ethel: …attic, oh, in Wisteria and Top house. No, not Wisteria, Esta. I found a lot of envelopes with stamps on them that were addressed but never mailed out. And I assumed that these envelopes were to take care of the pages that she sent around the country. So it was really… Although the envelopes that I put into the wall were not addressed. They were just blank ones that had the Little Loomhouse address on them.

Another thing I found that Lou Tate was very good at keeping records, particularly about the different patterns. She would have her pieces of weaving and then they would be attached to the pages that she would send out. And then there’re some black books that have the entire [selection] of pages that she kept with samples of different patterns. She kept magazines that had weaving, that had color in them that she collected that companies sent her from all over the world. She never threw anything out. (chuckle) She also saved stamps which I’ve discovered but they are in very bad condition. These are canceled stamps. Then she would buy hundreds of stamps for her mailing, but I’ve found they were stuck together so I’ve tried to separate them. They’re not really of any value today, but I tried to use them when I’m sending out my bills for my payments. (chuckle) I tried to unglue them. It’s a little bit funny.

Last week the temperature had dropped to sixteen below zero and we thought we had turned the pipes off in Top house. When Alice and I got to the Loomhouse on Tuesday the bathroom was flooded and we didn’t know how to stop the water. It seemed like there was a break in the walls. Finally, we got Bob Douglas to give us the name of a plumber, who incidentally was a former student of Lou Tate’s. And he sent someone to turn the water off.

When we went over to Esta, we found that one of the windows was broken and the storm window was pushed and broken. And now the roof is leaking so we’re having a problem of how to stop the leak. Every time it rains we worry of what will happen to the Loomhouse.

Teka: You had said earlier that Lou Tate had a plan. I suppose that when we see the day-to-day operational problems, that she must have faced, worrying about plumbing, or about leaks, and she was also trying to do the weaving, and then she was worried about harassment. The fact that you thought she had a plan must make it seem…

Ethel: Well, I knew she wanted to make this into a museum and she wanted it to be kept for future weavers, otherwise she wouldn’t have put it in her will, that this was to be left to the government, if we didn’t want to carry on as volunteers, so that was one of her plans, to keep weaving going in the schools; she wanted the blind, the school children, Girl Scouts to come up and be able to use the Loomhouse. And I think one of the reasons why she charged so little; she wanted to encourage weaving, because if you go for lessons today they’re a lot more expensive than what we would charge. And we want to keep this thing going. We want children to learn about cloth making, how the pioneers came across country with drafts, their drafts and their coverlets. So that’s why we’re trying to carry on Lou Tate’s-- well, we can call it her dream.

End of Tape One, Side Two.