Oral History Interview John "Maury" Weedman

Teka: Today is April 10, 1985. My name is Teka Ward. I am interviewing Maury Weedman. We are at Tophouse on Kenwood Hill, home of the Little Loomhouse.

Our topic is Lou Tate and the Little Loomhouse. As we begin, tell me something about you.

Maury: I grew up in Louisville, in this end of town, and moved across the street from the Little Loomhouse when I was sixteen. Prior to that I was basically an introverted type of person who spent most of my time alone being introspective. And I really didn’t develop socially much until after I had gone to college.

That basically takes care of that, until I moved across the street from Lou Tate here on Kenwood Hill when I was sixteen. And then I met my first girlfriend who also lived up on the hill here, in the log cabin on top of the hill, which I forgot what they used to call it; Hill House, I think, or the house of hill repute. (laughter)

But Lou Tate actually was a matchmaker between me and Ellen Tenny. She set up a date at Louisville Downs, which was also the first time I’d ever gone to a race track of any kind. She arranged it such that I and Ellen were both at the same place at the same time.

From that point on we became pretty much ‘steadies.’ I guess you’d say, until the end of high school. And then we maintained a relationship--um-m--through most of college and then even after we’d both gone our separate ways, as far as different males and females, and we still maintained sporadic contact, you know, on occasion.

Teka: When you first moved across the street and saw the cabins, did you know anything about them?

Maury: No, I didn’t know anything at all about them and I don’t really remember any specifics in terms of meeting Lou, but she was always out working in the yard and I was always out working in our yard. That’s the way I would work off my adolescent energy, I guess--post-adolescent energy, whatever you want to call it.

And she was always really outgoing so, like I said, I don’t remember specifics, but, I’m sure that she probably introduced herself to me.

Teka: And then you started coming over.

Maury: Yes, I started coming over and I never really minded work. My family situation wasn’t the best and I found Lou almost immediately to be a really warm and inviting person, you know; and not only that, but intellectually stimulating. So I started coming up and just talking to her about a wide variety of things. Not weaving, because weaving never interested me.

Teka: You were sixteen. What year was this?

Maury: I’m thirty-six now, so…that’s sixteen years ago, right? So, whatever eighty-five minus sixteen is, which I find difficult to do in my head. Let’s see, seventy-five (laughter)

Teka: You all just had fun talking.

Maury: Well, we spent a lot of time talking; and then she was never bashful about asking people to do work for her, so. I didn’t mind. In fact, I always had liked to do physical labor. That’s what I spent my whole week doing, building a playhouse for my kid right now (?), but there was always certainly a lot to do. She sort of felt, I think, or it was easy for her to have a family-type feeling for somebody or for lots of people, and that, along with a family, certain obligations come along. She would take on a parental role and provide tasks for each to do, and also provide guidance, I guess, would be the main thing that she did.

She used to always harp on the fact that the main reason she taught weaving, wasn’t to teach weaving, but to teach values to her students.

Teka: Did you ever observe her with her students?

Maury: Oh, yea, lots of times. Like I said, at that point in my life I wasn’t particularly interested in doing things with my hands. In fact, I didn’t start doing things with my hands until I was in my twenties. And now that’s practically all I do.

Teka: But you could overhear her talking to the students.

Maury: Um hum. I did do a couple of things on the looms but it just was always too tedious for me and I still wouldn’t be interested in weaving. It would drive me crazy.

Teka: I’ve heard that she would give history lessons. She would incorporate that into the teaching.

Maury: I don’t specifically remember, like in terms, of a weaving class, that was up here, or anything like that. I wasn’t around that much, you know, when lessons were going on, but I do know we had a lot of conversations that involved history. I mean, she was very aware of history, because, I think, she had a degree in it and I think she was very internationally minded, too, and literate in that way.

Teka: Did she ever tell you about her childhood?

Maury: Not really. In a way, she was always--her past was always sort of mysterious. I always wondered whether she’d had a boyfriend at one point or not. Or what really was the story on her being single; whether she decided overtly to be, or whether it just didn’t work out for her over the years.

In a way, I feel like it’s probably the best thing for her because she’s such an independent person. You know, she’s the type of person that you could be a friend to until the end, but I don’t think anybody would want to live with her (laughter) and that’s not an insult; it’s just that she was so strong-willed and had such a good idea, I think, of what she wanted to do with her life. Where very few people have a good idea of what they want to do with their lives; I think she had a well formed idea of what she wanted to do with her life.

Teka: Did she ever talk about Berea?

Maury: Yea, I can’t remember much in the way of specifics, but my impression is that what she said about Berea was very favorable. I think she looked upon that as a really good time in her life, but beyond that I can’t remember anything specific.

Teka: Did she ever talk about going on a mule and recovering drafts and talking to people about their weaving?

Maury: I don’t really remember that, but, you know, she could have; and we had so many conversations and I’m sort of a forgetful person anyhow.

Teka: Michael Kirk told me that you all made some steps over here.

Maury: Yea, we rented an eighteen foot, flat bed truck which was about twice the size that we needed, twice as big a truck as we needed, and she had some kind of connection with the L and N railroad so that we could go get some old railroad ties We went and loaded the truck up and the truck was so high that by the time we got the truck loaded up, we were about ready to cash in our chips.

And then we had to drive it up Possum Path which was practically only a cow path at that point and our truck just barely fit on the road and almost tumbled off the side of the road. But we got it up there and unloaded the truck and basically shored up the side of the hill that was coming down because of the poor drainage. I think it was possibly that same year that we built the concrete retaining wall. I don’t know if it’s still there or not. We signed it, of course. (laughter)

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

Maury: Oh, yea.

Teka: What were they like?

Maury: Let’s see. I hadn’t thought about those in years. Basically, I guess, they were informal. I don’t see Lou as a formal person; far from it. I mean, I think, in a way, she could get really uptight about the houses up here and the future of them, you know. She was really worried about that and would get exasperated with the direction of society in general. She’d get exasperated about that; I think that made her real nervous.

But, on a one-on-one basis, I think she was just a real informal person and had the--the gift of gab wouldn’t be the word for it, that would be trivializing the way she was. You could just say she was a genteel person; but not genteel in the sense that--sometimes that has the connotation of artificiality, but she didn’t have an ounce of artificiality. But body, mind, and soul, what you saw was what you got, I mean, she was right there, in front of you. She didn’t mind disagreeing with you at all and if she did disagree with you, she didn’t pull any punches. She wouldn’t be offensive, I mean, I don’t think she was an offensive person. I think some people considered her to be overbearing and maybe at times she was, but I think that just comes from, like I said earlier, having a really good idea of what she wanted to do and having a good idea of the direction she was moving. And I think she was really impatient with people who tended to be wishy-washy or confused about what they were doing.

Teka: At the Open Houses, would you ever see the sheep (Maury: sheep? I missed the sheep.) for spinning wheels (laughter)? What about the dyeing; were you here for any of the dyeing?

Maury: I was here when Betsy Dienes, who also works at the library, which I do; she runs one of the branches. I remember she and her husband running a tie-dyeing thing up here and bringing all sorts of weeds and pounding them up, or whatever, and steeping them in a large cauldron, you know, making natural dyes.

That’s something else I never really got personally involved in myself. I liked being around the activity mainly because I came from a family, in general, that was extremely introverted. There really wasn’t any kind of fun going on--in fact, just the opposite. And then having this resource right across the street from me, at least from the time I was sixteen.; every day, of course, it was available to me until I was eighteen when I graduated from high school.

Well, of course, I went to the University of Louisville my first year so, and lived at home most of that time, so it was readily accessible to me. But then I went to school in Wisconsin, at the University of Wisconsin after that point and then didn‘t spend as much time here, although in the summers I did come back and Christmas and whenever I would come in for the holidays, usually.

I would call Mike first and we would go do something, or while Mike was on his way over or while I was getting ready to go to see Mike, I would come up and say hi to Lou. As I said earlier, she was sort of like a parent, which she was, but she was also a friend; sort of a combination of the two, because there were many times I would walk across the street and go down to the liquor store for her. And [when I returned] we would sit down and have it. And there was never any lull in the conversation.

Teka: How did you find out that she had arranged for you to meet Ellen Tenny at Louisville Downs?

Maury: I don’t really remember. I imagine that Ellen told me after we got to know each other a little better. I’m sure that’s what it was, in fact. But I’m sure that Lou wouldn’t have been afraid to admit that she had set it up.

Teka: As you observed her over the years, did you notice; did she change?

Maury: Well, the only way in which I think that she changed, and, of course this was during the time when I hardly saw her at all, was that after I came back here from Wisconsin I was wrapped up in my own life so tightly that for some of the years that I saw her hardly at all ,so mostly the information that I got was second hand, you know. It seems like she was ruffling a lot of feathers about trying to get that--I don’t even know what the foundation is called.

Teka: The Lou Tate Foundation, Incorporated?

Maury: Yea, getting all that set up and arranging plans to see to it that the houses here would survive sort of in the tradition that she’d set up. I knew that there was some conflict going on between her and some of the others involved in setting it up. And I can see how it would be, too, just because of the way she was.

And then one day she came into the library and I just happened to run into her, and passed a few words and I said something like, “Oh, how are ya?” and she said, “Oh, I’ve got cancer; it’s terminal,” just like she was giving me the time of day, you know, it was like--big deal, you know. I don’t think she had any fear of death, whatsoever. In fact, she told me the story once that, if I remember correctly, she had a heart problem, also.

So apparently she’d been near death more than once and apparently one of those episodes she had told me was similar to one of those near death experiences you read about in books and magazines; how she was disembodied and had this warm feeling and was totally comfortable and she said, “If that’s dying, I’m ready.” (laughter) I mean that wasn’t her exact words but it was the gist of the feeling.

Teka: What did the neighbors think of her?

Maury: I don’t really know because the only neighbors that I really knew up here were the ones who were involved directly with her. Ellen and her parents had been good friends with Lou for many years.

Well, actually, I do remember one household here, in fact, my next door neighbor, who I remember Lou talking about being received with some hostility by them, because they thought the place was kind of a dump, basically. And in some ways it was, really, ‘cause she didn’t have the money really to keep it up like she wanted to. But just because there may have been some little piles of stuff here and there, I think that overall the place, if anything, it added an immediate attraction to the place. There was just something about the place and she had given this old place an aura. You know, if she’d had the money to fix it up, I’m sure she would have fixed it up, but it still wouldn’t have had a shiny fresh look because that’s just not the way she was. She was more like earth tones.

Teka: I’ve heard about the chili suppers and the pot luck suppers. Did you ever go to any of those?

Maury: I don’t think I went to a pot luck. And really I don’t know if this is what you mean, but several different times she would have chili suppers for like-- seems like the ones I went to it would be me and a group of mutual friends. It would be me, Ellen, Mike Kirk, and maybe whoever he was dating at the time. It’s all sort of confused but I remember having small chili get-togethers and her talking about her secret family recipe of a can of this, and a can of that, to make the chili.

Teka: She would tell you all how to make the chili?

Maury: She was making a joke about the family recipe, like it was sophisticated, and she’d say, “Well, you put in a can of this and a can of that.” It’s not like she’d labored over it, but, you know, it was good.

Teka: Would this be in bottom house?

Maury: Right.

Teka: What was that like?

Maury: The house?

Teka: Bottom House; Esta.

Maury: I loved it. As far as the interiors of any one of these houses, the room that she lived in was my favorite, with the large, massive limestone fireplace. I think it was a limestone fireplace. It’s been ten years since I’ve been there.

And, you know, all the dark wood inside the bay window on one side of the room. What I remember is an oriental carpet on the floor. It was a real detailed pattern on the floor. It just had a real comfortable and homey feel to it which was almost alien to me because I wasn’t raised in a homey environment and it was really comforting to me.

That’s the thing that was really good about this whole place for me. It was, you know, basically a comfort. I mean, there were times when I would come over and I would get a little irritated because I wouldn’t feel like doing the job that Lou had in mind for me. But, you know, that was nothing really, because it was a comfort to me to be up here. I spent many hours up here just chopping wood. Seems like I was chopping wood. I don’t know why I would have been. I guess a tree fell down every once in a while. Seems like I was doing a lot of chopping in those days.

Teka: When you said that she would try to pass on values, what kinds of values?

Maury: Why, I think her values were basic Christian values. Although I don’t think her religious outlook was necessarily that doctrinarian. I don’t think she was a dyed-in-the-wool Christian but her values were basically Christian. And, you know, basically the Golden Rule, which she took very seriously and treating people well, being persistent, and disciplined and that about covers it.

I think she had a very simple approach to life. I don’t mean simplistic in the way that the term has been applied to Ronald Reagan. That would be more like simple minded. She wasn’t simple minded at all. But I think she just felt that the basic Christian values were a valid approach to life.

I don’t know if I am a Christian or not. I guess basically, I’m not a Christian. In terms of values, I feel that the basic Christian values pretty much cover it all in terms of what I hold to be valuable.

Teka: She had a car and she gave it Michael Kirk and then Michael gave it to you?

Maury: No, she gave it to me first. She had a nineteen fifty-four Ford station wagon which she gave to me when I had come back here after dropping out of the University of Wisconsin, before going back again. She gave it to me and then I was here for about a year and I didn’t want the car anymore. I, also, had another car and I gave to Mike. He drove it for a while and he gave it to his friend, Carl, and I don’t know what Carl did with it. (laughter) I haven’t heard.

The thing that these conversations have reminded me of is that I’m sitting in the midst of all these looms and that just reminds me of how uninterested that I am in weaving. After hanging around Lou, I guess, on a really regular basic for something approaching ten years or so, I only made one or two pieces. And when I did that, I didn’t enjoy it at all. I hated it, in fact. And to this day, I don’t have the slightest desire to weave.

And I look at these looms and I can appreciate the way they’re made. At this point in my life, I might like to make a loom, because since I was regularly involved with Lou, I’ve become very good with my hands, whereas at that time, I was a total klutz.

I just think it’s interesting that I kept coming back for more contact with Lou and most people think of her as a weaver, and really, I could have cared less whether she’s a weaver, or not. She would talk about some of the pieces that she used to have hanging up around here. Maybe they still are and they looked complicated to me and she’d start talking about the types of looms and I’d get some real vague idea of the complexity of weaving the pattern like some of those on the wall right over there.

And it just to me, it sounds like utter torture. I can’t imagine how anybody could be motivated to do that. I mean, I can appreciate it, you know, different strokes and all that, but I never would do it. Over the years I would be even less interested in weaving now than before. And then again that’s not a put down on her in anyway. That’s just my particular personality.

Then I guess she didn’t mean what she said in terms of teaching values, ‘cause she wasn’t teaching values to me through weaving. She tended to take people under her wing and she took me under her wing as sort of a son/brother/friend; all those sort of mixed in together and then I think I had a sincere enough quality and a harmless enough quality that, you know, she was at ease around me. And, not to mention the fact that I would do work for her.

I don’t think she ever would come right out and say it. I mean, she’d give you sort of a little hug when you came in after being gone for three or four months, something like that. In that way she was kind of stiff, I think, physically. I don’t think she was a person who’d ever learned how to be openly physically affectionate. But, she would always be verbally excited; you would know that you’d be welcomed, there would be no doubt about it. And she would never come right out and say, “Oh, gee, I really missed you,” and all that stuff.

And if there was anything that might smack of self-pity, also, she wouldn’t do it. It may have changed somewhat toward the end of her life, but then I wasn’t involved with that, and I don’t really understand all the factors involved with that. ----She was probably in a lot of physical pain because when I was coming over here she was a good deal younger, you know, than when she did die. And, if I remember correctly, she did have arthritis, also and I don’t know if her heart condition was a continuing problem or not. Even then, you could tell that she was in pain; there was just no doubt about it, you could see it on her face. She was in pain.

And she had the type of drive to work on through that. I think one of her ways of dealing with the pain was, sort of, to chain-smoke Pell Mel cigarettes (laughter)--no

But she could inhale those things just like they were air, You know, it was nothing to her, she must have had calluses on her lungs! But, I don’t think her cancer was lung cancer; I don’t think that’s what got her.

Teka: So obviously it was beyond the weaving and the looms that attracted you to Lou Tate and to the three cabins. What was it?

Maury: Frankly, like I just said, weaving was nothing that I was interested in. I kept coming back because she offered something to me, which I think…I think in a certain way we were soul-mates, in that I had been the type of person who thought about the big questions, you know, like: why are we here and all the types of questions that are not popular things to pursue these days.

People are supposed to spend their time distracting themselves from the serious nature of life rather than trying to deal with it. I think that’s something that Lou found disgusting. She wasn’t afraid to hit life head on and would have questions;---I mean, meaningful questions; questions of death, questions of life in the types of things that she expressed which kept me coming back and were what I interpreted to be her searching for the actual value of life and the meaning of life. I think she had an abiding faith which she didn’t describe in real doctrinarian Christian ways and when I think back upon her descriptions of her religious faith, she seemed to be pretty much a skeptic in terms of organized religions. And I don’t remember her ever-- I remember her talking about the miracle of Christ more as a beautiful tradition rather than necessarily something that she specifically believed in, although I don’t really know.

That’s something which she seemed to almost automatically steer away from and that is revealing the actual details of her personal faith and like I said, that’s just my interpretation. Her reason for doing that was that she didn’t feel like she had the right to push her faith on anybody else. Plus, I think, she probably didn’t have it honed down to that many specifics. I think she was probably the type of person that felt like, as I do, you know, you can’t get it down to too many specifics, in terms of Messiahs and Saviors and avatars. You know, maybe, there have been Messiahs, maybe there will be more, but her main approach to life which was, in a way, overlapped with mine, is that she felt like there was a meaning in life and that the purpose of life was to seek that out and get as close to it as you can, even though she knew you’d never be able to figure it out to the point where you could put it on paper.

Teka: This is the end of side one, tape one.

Teka: This is the beginning of side two, tape one.

Maury: Little things I really liked about Lou was not the fact that she was a weaver but the types of feelings that she generated in me, and the fact that she looked at life as a way to gain faith through a personal search. I think it was really important for her to her to make her own decisions, and not to fall into a group of people that could be categorized in any way, in terms of--I’m speaking mainly now about religious groups. I don’t think she could ever fit into that, but I think she had a really strong desire to unify herself with whatever it is that created us, you know, the human race. I think she had an abiding faith that whatever that is was really good. In fact, she was more than satisfied that that was a truth.

Maury: This is the end of the interview. Side two, tape one.