Oral History Interview Helen L. Mitchell

Teka Ward: Today is March 24, 1985. My name is Teka Ward. I am interviewing Helen Lawton Mitchell. We are at 423 Quad Lane, Louisville, Ky. Our topic is Lou Tate and the Little Loom House.

As we begin, tell me something about yourself first.

Helen: Well, when I knew Lou Tate, I was a reporter for the Courier-Journal and often, to earn extra money, I did stories for Terry Robinson , who was editor of the Sunday Magazine at that time.

So somehow I ended up doing a story for Lou Tate once and then we became friends and she asked me to do another story about her--she wasn’t very shy--and to travel with her over Kentucky where she was teaching weaving. So that’s what I did. So I got to know her through traveling with her.

We took a trip down to Glasgow, KY and met a group of women which she introduced to weaving and we went over to Mammoth Cave. She had small looms then that you could just put on your lap and she had helped the women start these weaving clubs all over the state. I don’t know how skilled the weavers were, but she was always interested in teaching.

But her main thrust, I thought, was in recording patterns and working out ideas and patterns. And when you’d call her up, why, she’d be working way into the night recording patterns; new patterns, old ones, different ones. And she was totally dedicated, really, to research.

And she talked very rapidly always about her past and I’d have a hard time keeping up with her and she would refer to someone like Mrs. Hoover, and finally I’d say, “What Mrs. Hoover?” And she’d say, “Oh, Herbert Hoover.” She was standing next to her in the receiving line in Washington and Bousman, it was Lou Bousman, and I don’t know whether it was Lou Tate Bousman, but anyway Mrs. Hoover renamed her Lou Tate, because it was a short name and good for a receiving line.

So that’s how she became Lou Tate.

Teka: Who all were on these trips? What kinds of things would you talk about to each other?

Helen: Well, she was not actually a very good driver, so I was rather concentrating on keeping alive. But between that and looking out the window, (laughter) and saying, “Oh, there comes a truck,.” she would tell me about different people that she knew over the state. She talked in a rather disconnected, disjointed way and when I was interviewing her, I couldn’t make much sense out of it, but then I’d write the story anyway, so that’s how I got into having her read the story because I wanted to be sure I was accurate. We really never let people read the stories, but then she’d say, ‘Oh, yes, that’s exactly what I meant.” So I must have had sort of a sixth sense about what she meant.

But she mostly talked about people who’d call her up in the night and asked her about weaving patterns. She’d stay up until two and three in the morning. She seemed to have a network of friends or students or someone who were always coming out to the cabin, which was falling apart, and then--money to get the cabin together--she was always hard up for money, and giving classes or trying to just…

Her total life was dedicated to weaving. She was the first person I’ve ever met who was that interested in weaving and patterns. She ignored anything else. She just looked like she wore old things made out of leftover pieces of weaving and was uninterested in clothes and wore her hair straight. She had a very scrubbed look and a surprised look always. And then she’d smile readily revealing a missing tooth on the side. She didn’t really have much feminine guile or conceit about her looks or what she did. That way she was just totally the embodiment of weaving and weaving patterns and building up the research on it.

And I don’t know how she happened to go out to the cabins but when I got married she gave us a party out there and then there was no road to get there. My sister had a new English, tiny little car and they said we just left our car over the hill and trudged up the mountain to get here. And her father was there His name was Bousman. He was in his eighties then, I think. I remembered that he wore high shoes that laced up. He took out a notebook and took down notes but I don’t know what it was about. He was a darling old man and unpretentious.

Lou had an older brother who’d had a son and her sister-in-law died and then the brother remarried. Lou and her father somehow brought this boy into the family and then they called him her brother and I don’t know whether they formally adopted him or not, but everyone…

He was slight in build and he looked young so it was sort of mystifying how this could be her brother and I wondered if this was her child but he wasn’t at all, he was really her nephew.

Teka: And his name was Wood?

Helen: His name was Wood.

Teka: Did he have a club foot? Or something like that?

Helen: No, I met him. I think I would have noticed that.

Teka: What kind of car would you all drive when you went around?

Helen: She had a station wagon that seemed to hold together. And we always had lots of looms in the back of it.

Teka: Did you ever take part in the weaving?

Helen: Oh, no. I didn’t understand it or like it or anything. (laughter) Well, I had done weaving at Camp Meriwether and hated it. She made it sound fairly interesting but not fascinating to me. Although it was small; I liked the idea of a small loom.

And then when I married she made me some mats and got some of my china and tried to match it and gave me a lovely set, which I didn’t realize the value of it; the labor of love that went into it, but I was delighted to have it and I still use it . Some French dressing spilled on it, but outside of that, it’s fine.

Teka: Did she ever talk to you about her college days?

Helen: No, all she talked about was weaving and people that called her up and asked her about how many stitches to put here and there and people who were getting looms and how she could help them get looms. You know, it was like getting bread to them.

Teka: Did she ever talk about going on horseback and discovering any of these weaving patterns?

Helen: No, I think they were coming through the mail to her and she had quite a network of people who were writing to her and calling her and they were sort of a close-knit group, I kind of gathered; these weavers. I mean, they’d come out on Sundays and weave and sit on the porch and have a good time together. The people I saw down in the country were simply housewives, homemakers and I don’t know why they were doing it, really.. They didn’t seem particularly interested or gifted. But she would go any place to teach or to stir up interest in it or try to help them. I think this loom she helped to invent; this small loom.

Teka: Did you ever…you said you didn’t meet the mother?

Helen: No, the mother was dead.

Teka: Did you ever see their house on Third Street?

Helen: No, I lived on Third Street myself with my grandmother one time but I never saw them and I don’t know how--a lot of people had summer homes out on Kenwood Hill, and I don’t know if that’s how she went out there or not, into these cabins..

Teka: Tell us what the cabins were like.

Helen: They were absolutely falling apart and there was no plumbing in them. But I was out there in good weather always, so it was woodsy and lovely and they had a porch and they really looked like Kentucky cabins. They were not fixed up at all; there was nothing in them but yarn and looms.

Teka: …in all three of the cabins.

Helen: Yes, storerooms and things like that; they were totally turned over to weaving.

You never had a feeling that she lived like other people because she would just drift in and out of the cabins. I hardly ever saw a bed and I didn’t really see much place to eat or anything. It was just simply work rooms.

Teka: Did you ever know that she read a lot?

Helen: No, because she never talked about reading. All she talked about was weaving.

Teka: What were you able to figure out about the background of her family?

Helen: Well, I think that they were just Louisvillians who probably came here, upper, middle class family background who were nice, upstanding citizens. He probably earned a good living and had a nice house on Third Street.

I always thought that, of all the women I’d ever met in that time that she was the most totally dedicated to one thing. Nothing else even interested her. She didn’t want to talk about anything else and it was weaving and recording patterns and then teaching. And she was very generous with her time and with the little money that she had. You had a feeling that she was hard up, that weaving was not bringing in much money, but I also had the feeling that she was pouring everything back into the cabins or to teaching or to help someone learn.

You had a feeling that she was rather naive and she enjoyed life. All the enjoyment was through helping people learn to weave. There was really not much else; all her friends were weavers And I can’t imagine her doing anything but weave. It was total dedication to that; total interest in it. Nothing else seemed to matter or interest her.

Right after we were married I asked her to dinner and I didn’t know it then when I asked her, but she was reluctant to accept social invitations. But she came and seemed to have a very good time and I used the placemats she made me to show her how well they looked with the china and so I think she seemed very pleased over all that.

She was a person whose whole life was so centered around her work that she wouldn’t make dinner engagements or luncheon engagements. And you also had a feeling that she was very uncommercial and I think she was only interested in money in the sense of what it would be for weaving or how it would help someone learn to weave. I don’t think she had any drive to commercialize any of her work or what she was doing. She really wanted to get it put down for someone so all these weaving patterns would not be lost.

Lou Tate was generous and likeable, but people thought she was odd. I mean her not caring about house, clothes, friends, or any activity but weaving. And it just made her seem… People would smile sort of benignly when you mentioned her name and they liked her. They wouldn’t say it, but you had this feeling, this agreement that she was odd; a character. She had a sweet smile. And when she’d appear at the door and she’d smile and light up like you were giving her pleasure and she’d going to give you pleasure just by seeing her. She was very appealing.

She seemed truly impervious to any form of comfort. I felt the cabins were cold and drafty, that there was inadequate food or just cans that she was going to open and nothing was really very comfortable, except maybe her seat where she was weaving.

She was just above it all or below it all, I don’t know really what she was. But there was a great sweetness there for someone so absorbed in one topic with such a single track mind. That really came across and you instantly forgave her that she might not want to be talking about weaving all the time, because this sweetness poured forth and you realized that she was the essence of kindness and friendliness and goodwill.

I knew Lou Tate and I thought she was old but she really was not old. She was in her forties and that was probably the prime time for her because; she had lots of energy; she was able to work late at night. She had total dedication and she seemed to be in a good humor.

Teka: This is the end of the interview with Helen Lawton Mitchell on March 24, 1985 Side One, Tape One.