Oral History Interview Ann Kiper

As we begin, tell me something about yourself first.

Ann Kiper

Well uh, I’ve lived in Louisville for the past several years but I grew up east end of Louisville, east of the Loomhouse. My husband and I live here on Dove Road. I am a medical technologist- blood bankers within the aspect of medical technology. We have several adopted children and we are foster parents as well. A lot of the things that I do in my life probably were greatly influenced by things that Lou Tate did or didn’t do as the case may be. We are really glad to get a chance to talk about her and the events that we do remember as we remember them.

Actually everyone laughs when I say that I have been going to the Loomhouses all my life literally. I was there before I was born and that is a very true statement. My grandmother who raised me down in Cumberland County Kentucky had a life long of interest in weaving and spinning since her grandmothers had always kept up these crafts and she had also picked up a pretty good expertise of as a quilter so in the early 30s this grandmother had made a quilt that she exhibited at the State Fair and it won first prize. Well while she was up viewing her handy work hanging, she ran across a young lady who was giving a weaving demonstration and attempting to spin. My grandmother went over and made her acquaintance and explained to her the finer arts of spinning and they got to talking and she says my daughter should know you, she is interested in weaving and uh, this lady that my grandmother met was a young woman that was calling herself Lou Tate and she said well I would love to know your daughter cause she knows people down in southern Kentucky. So they talked on for a little bit and as it was the two girls actually knew each other and they just completed summer school term where they both took analytic geometry together at Berea and competed b/c they were the only 2 girls in the class, I understand. Each thought the other one was the smartest thing they had ever seen and they were so busy competing for their grades and decided to be friends. As it was, my grandmother went home and told her daughter whose name was Mabel, about this young woman who was interested in learning to cipher weaving patterns and my mother knew something of this. It was not too long until my mother jumped in her old jalopy and came to Louisville and they made friends within a couple of weeks. This became a life long friendship between the two families b/c these two women trucked around Monroe Co., Cumberland, Metcalf and Barren and probably Warren County and Allen as best I understand, visiting and between the two of them they could get a foot hold in any household they chose. I think Lou Tate may have had an old jeep. I have heard reference made to this and my mother was not afraid of riding horseback. Whichever way they had to go to get back in the hills and hollers they would literally be it. Lou Tate had her in, in that part of the state b/c she had relatives, the Fords, down around Cave City and she herself had been born in Bowling Green in Warren County and she had some relatives there. Her father had been a railroad man and every little stop that the railroad made to refuel or re-water or whatever, the conductors had became acquainted w/the storekeepers up and what have you up and down the course of the railroad so there was a lot of people that knew who her father was, he was the conductor on the L&N that passed by so and so, so she had a way to introduce herself and she was related to certain people and she could go oh this is oh aunt Sally’s great niece, so and so and she is interested in your weaving patterns and what you have done here and she could begin to talk to people. My mother had a unique situation in that her father, his name was RA Panlord, a lot of people in the state know him as the _______ Panlord. Her father was a minister in the Church of Christ and he was a school teacher from the time he was about 15 years old and he taught in the schools down through there and preached at one church for literally 40 some years so he married 3 generations. If they were not kenned to my grandfather they had been to school to him if they had not been to school to him they had been married by him so there wasn’t any when they went knocking on your door. They literally did. I heard wonderful stories told by my grandmother about their episodes going up and down the creeks and visiting people and interviewing them and looking at old pieces of their scrap coverlets and going in and saying we’ll look at any old scrap you’ve got and going out to the barnyard where they were using pieces of scrap maybe as a horse blanket or you know find a this little tatter of Lindsay wove here. For years there after she would go into communities w/my grandfather b/c he would be preaching from different churches as a special guest and people would say do you still know that lady that was a weaving lady and was interested in these little pieces. When I was a little girl I saw little pieces still being sent to Lou Tate as a result of the early trekking around that these women did. They did learn to cipher the weaving patterns. They learned a lot about quilts as they went around and they learned a lot about basket weaving. A lot of the weavers, particularly the ones I knew up in Cumberland County, seemed to always be into basket weaving too. So there was a fondness developed for those 3 forms of crafts right there early on. My Mother and Lou Tate became like sisters. Neither of them had sisters. They each had a realm of friends that enjoyed each other as time went on and my mother being the daughter of a well known minister and school teacher and school superintendent in the area had certain difficulties in her life when it came to dating. So, she would come to Louisville and spend a week w/Lou Tate in Louisville and my father would meet her there so all of their courting literally went on at Lou Tate’s parent’s house- old house down on 3rd Street. Now I know the house when I see it I can only remember having been in it one time when I was about 5 years old. Now at that time the house had already been sold and they were clearing stuff out of it but I do remember going in it and I remember it was quite an imposing house. My father tells wonderful stories about coming up here and spending a weekend or a few days at Lou Tate’s parent’s home and he always loved Lou Tate’s mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. Bousman and her Aunt Lessie who was a retarded lady who was a sister of Mr. Bousman I believe. He remembers Lou Tate’s grandmother and I believe it would be her grandmother _________ who lived w/them at the time. She was quite a character. He would laugh and giggle about that Mrs. ______ would not sometimes realize that he had arrived and sometimes there would be some shifting around the beds and she would go down the hall and say Lord have mercy Lou Tate there is a man in this bedroom. Then she would realize it was my dad and it would be alright. She knew he came up to visit. Often times they had guests in. I think Mr. Bousman had a love for playing cards and most any time that anybody would come in there was always a Bridge game going on and somebody would be invited to join the Bridge game. There would be guests coming in and it was a very congenial atmosphere and a fun time. The young women had a lot in common. A lot of their interests- they were both kinda pioneers in certain ways. Lou Tate at that time had a room there in her parent’s home that she used as a gallery and sold out of that room and she wove there. It was not until a few years later that her mother purchased the property we now call the Little Loomhouse. I think her mother may have inherited some money and decided to use it for something that she could leave to Lou Tate- may have been the way that came about. At least that was always what Lou Tate inferred when she would speak of it. They found this property up on Kenwood Hill Road. It was just a little tiny path almost to get there when I can first remember- a really ram shackled road. There weren’t too many houses. I know there’s pictures of my brother when he was about 2 years old there sitting on the front porch that Lou had. My father says that I was there all my life but even before there was my brother or I either one, there was a famous wedding dress and in 1939 my mother and father did decide they were going to get married. I guess it was 1940 at the time that the wedding took place. In 1939 the wedding dress was planned for and my mother designed the fabric of this dress. She had become an accomplished weaver by this time. She designed the fabric and she designed her dress and she wove the fabric and made the dress. She was a determined soul and she made it to her own liking and my mother helped her make it was just beautiful. Now it is eggshell. I am sure at the time it was woven it was very white but now it’s aged to an eggshell color over the years. It was a linen weave w/a silk overshot. She came to Louisville to finish weaving it or to weave it b/c she had trouble w/that big loom managed in her own home. You would meet weavers that come to the Loomhouses now that still talk about having woven a few threads in the dress for good luck b/c this was a tradition if you were weaving a wedding dress you had everyone weave an extra thread or two for good luck. This dress was worn by my mother and she carried a fan w/the dress. It was a silk fan and it belonged to Lou Tate’s family. That was something borrowed. I do not know how old the fan was but it had been around a long time in Lou Tate’s family. She said it was a wedding fan. It was always carried in weddings and it always brought good luck to the marriage and there were very few disruptions to marriages in which this fan was carried. But the only way it would keep its present powers was to be used frequently in weddings so this fan was carried by my mother and she tied tea roses on long streamers to this fan. The roses were grown in my grandmother Penlord’s garden in Glasgow and the wedding took place in Glasgow. It was an outdoor wedding and it was a lovely affair. The wedding dress along w/some table linens that my mother had woven that summer were included in a group of materials that Lou Tate put on exhibit and they were on exhibit for 7 years. I know they stayed for several months at Marshall Fields in Chicago. The only reason we have the wedding dress today in our family is they were on exhibit at that time b/c in 1949 our house burned and many of the things that she had woven were destroyed. Not everything, we saved an amazing amount. But the wedding dress was on exhibit at the time so it was probably a lucky thing that it was. It’s been used in a lot of exhibits since then. I used it in my own wedding. If all goes well, a friend of mine may use, or at least use the fan I do not know if she is going to manage to fit into the dress this summer or not. It has been a source of a lot of fun and pleasure over the years and is certainly an heirloom that not many families would ever have. Our roots go from the beginning to Lou Tate. The first conscious memory I have of Lou Tate and of the Loomhouse comes when I was about 5 years old. My mother had been dead then for a couple of years and I was living w/my grandmother down in Monroe County. We just had moved down there. Not Monroe County, it was before we moved to Cumberland County. We came up and spent a few days w/Lou Tate. I judge it was in the fall cause I remember the smell of the leaves and the acorns and playing w/the acorns. At that time there was little blue and pink pinafores that somebody had woven and made and Lou Tate had me dress up in that and have my photograph taken upstairs in the bottom cabin against the big, massive door there. I could always remember that door. A professional photographer came in to take the picture and she used it for the cover of one of her weaving magazines later on. I thought this was big stuff. I think that picture of me in my little pinafore was around 1950 or 1951 production of the weaving at the Little Loomhouse. My mother’s picture occurred a few years earlier obviously it was in 1940, weaving at the Loomhhouse. If anybody wants to look at it they will find her picture on page 23. It shows her in the dress and the fan and the garden settings which was in Glasgow, KY. Incidentally, the property that that was taken on is now where Louis Nunn lives. I do not know that they maintained all of the garden but this grandmother, grandmother Panlord had a wonderful garden and lots of daylilies and Iris and early spring flowers of all kinds. She actually propagated Iris’ and hybridized them to get her own colors and sold Iris- that was her big hobby. If you look around up at the Little Loomhouse today you see lots of little flowers up there and some of them came from that same garden in Glasgow b/c I am quite sure to hear Lou Tate tell it that she could never leave a weekend at mother’s house w/out some sort of flower being stuffed in her hand and asked if she had a place to put it at the Loomhouse. Every year she was real diligent about doing her spring planting. I well remember that as I was a teenager got to help later on. As I say my first memories of the Little Loomhouses are very warm. I know it was in the fall. I can remember the smell of acorns. I can remember the smell of oak leaves. I can remember at that time the fireplace there was still used as a fireplace and sometimes to cook on. There was a wonderful old couch in front of the fireplace. It was kinda a daybed. There was the most wonderful array of colors that you can ever imagine b/c there were shelves around w/just loom after loom stacked upon them. There was a wonderful little cloth monkey w/a tartan and he was there to play with. Underneath the window looking out towards the drive way there was always a basket and from my very earliest memories, I remember the basket and it had spools the thread had come off on and old shuttles and boxes and medicine boxes. At that time, medicine often came in black cardboard boxes fit together they were little cylinder like things- This was for children you could always go and get something to play with. You were free to get anything out of that basket and play w/it that you wanted to. From the very beginning you always knew this was a place you were most welcome as a child. My brother felt that way about it too. He did not keep up w/Lou Tate over the years like I did. He and she had a very warm relationship in spite of that. He has a lot of fun memories. The family always tells jokes on him that he was about 4 or 5 years old toddling around up there. There was a crowd of people as there often was. He goes up and he wanted to Tate. One of the ladies that was there took exception to this and he says well then Lou Tate. She says well you should say Miss Lou Tate. He looked at her w/great dignity says if I miss her, I’ll Miss Bousman her thank you. (laughter) No one messed w/him and Lou Tate from then on. My brother always called her Tate. We did that and when I was older and came to Louisville to visit as a pre teen and a teenager I was a guest when all of her other social friends called her Lou. I just thought somewhere this was not right. It took me several years to accommodate the idea that you could call her Lou. As far as I was concerned, it was Tate or Aunt Tate. It was interesting b/c she was moving things that particularly we could choose moving things from the 3rd Street house out to the 2nd Street house and up to the cabins all at one time. I believe, I know her father was still living at this time and he and aunt Lessie were living in a house down on Second Street, a small house and my Grandmother and Grandfather and I stayed down there but we spent a lot of time visiting up at the cabins on that particular visit so I remember Mr. Bousman and I remember Aunt Lessie and Mr. Bousman was quite an imposing man. He had a coal frame out in his back yard and always was growing things, he had quite a green thumb. Aunt Lessie was a lovely lady and she was I think Lou would call her today in the class of educable mentally retarded. She had always been cared for w/love in the family and anyplace anybody from that family went, Aunt Lessie went right along as long as she was able to. I remember playing dolls w/Aunt Lessie and helping her iron handkerchiefs and things like that. As far as I was concerned, Aunt Lessie was just a dear person. At that time I was living w/my Grandparents at Merbone on Merbone Creek down in Cumberland County. Over the next couple of years I know Lou Tate spent some time, a few weekends coming down there to visit w/us. She would always come w/amazing presents in hand. Sometimes it would be little bottles of perfume. I have quilts that I use on my bed now that were quilts from her mother b/c she did not have the space to store all the stuff that her mother’s family had. She believed I would enjoy them so she would bring them down to my grandmother and say hang on to these until Ann gets bigger and she can have them. Well I know at that time I got my first loom and I was not going to school then. Lou Tate was working on some sort of project for school in Frankfort for mentally handicapped children. She had a bunch of 5, 6, 7 and 8 year olds that she interested in and I happened to be one of them. Somewhere she got us tested or IQ tested. I do not know whether she asked the school to do it. I do not know how it happened but she knew what all of our IQs were. We were very young. She taught us to weave. She asked us to tell her back how we perceived it. We would show things to other children. Based on our approach to things, she modified her teaching techniques for these retarded children. She had quite an active program over the years. I can remember I must have been around 9 or 10 assisting her, going to Frankfort w/her to deliver looms. I remember that day for another good reason- she always had this talent, if there was a youngster along, she always made it a special day. There was an old hotel there in Frankfort and so it was a special treat to get to take this child into order something. You could not order hamburgers or anything you ever had anyplace else. If you were going to go someplace like this, you were going to have to try something new and different like you had never had before. This was the cardinal rule. I can remember around 52 or 53 that Lou Tate met us at the KY Building in Bowling Green. She had an old Jeep Station Wagon at this time and it was sorta modified in the back seat so you could fit looms in. My grandmother and I and grandfather took us over there. It was the first time I ever got to see the KY Building. We stayed through Lou Tate’s presentation and rode back with her to Louisville and spent a week or so. I can’t remember exactly how old I was but I remember the old station wagon and the looms fit in it just so. I remember learning how to take the loom tables apart at that time. B/c if you were w/Lou Tate, from the time that you could pick up or carry anything you were picking up and carrying and you were learning how to do it as well as anyone else. You were expected if once you knew how to do something if you saw it needed to be done from then on you did it. You never had to be reminded to again. She was a star lady in that aspect. You were also rewarded w/a lot of opportunities to do things that perhaps you would not have gotten your parents or someone else would not have let you do. There are very guided circumstances she introduced you to people and situations that were unusual. They were particularly unusual in my case b/c I was being raised by grandparents under rather unusual circumstances. Being that this grandfather was the person that he was I do not suppose I would have ever been in a restaurant that served liquor or at a party that beer was being served. Lou Tate was very cautious to explain to me that there were different types of lifestyles and what happened in these social settings. Later in life I began to appreciate that it was so nice of her to have allowed this little girl from way out in the country to have seen and she made a special effort to see that you got to see these different ways of living and meet people and go to adult parties w/her. Now remind you, she had a way of turning things to make it fit her own amusement at times, when I was about 14 or 15, every year I spent about 2 weeks w/Lou Tate from the time I was 9 or 10 on while if someone was coming to Louisville say for the state basketball tournament which most people from out in the state do, especially if their teams are real active. I would get a ride w/one of the teachers and she would meet me someplace or another at a restaurant or someplace near the fairgrounds and I could spend the weekend w/her and maybe go to a ballgame if I chose and then go back home. This was great for a 10 or 12 year old child to do. From the time of 6th grade on this was a privilege if I wanted to come to Louisville to do something and stay w/Lou Tate, I could. You saw a different side of her b/c you stayed w/her over the years. I got to be w/her enough that I heard the stories about some of her fun times as a young woman. I got to hear stories about some of her boyfriends. I never got to meet any of them but I sure heard stories about them. I saw some of the things that maybe some of them would send to her sometimes. There was one man- I never did remember his name but he evidently was a curator of some museum w/a national status and he would often send her little gifts. When he would come to Louisville, he would come out w/liver pate and fine crackers and wine that they would sip on and reminisce over old times and argue over Grecian pottery and over mythology and why all leading textiles from all over the world would have common threads of patterns in them like winged dragons, you know, imagery that is common to human kind. They would argue over the theories of where this comes from in the mind of the American Indian as opposed to someone in Asia as opposed to someone from a whole other part of the world. It was fascinating to me to hear these discussions had taken place. It was fascinating to realize that she could live upstairs in a cabin and eat off of a hot plate. There was not water in the house. You had to go to the Kendrick’s to get water to drink and once in a while Lou Tate would drop me off there for a bath. (laughter) Other than that, it was pretty much camp style living so I learned to appreciate getting along w/that very much. It was certainly elegant camp style living. You get every night she would round up any kids she could find and the dog, Skipper I failed to mention Skipper. Off we would go. At that time she had a blue I believe Ford Station Wagon. It very was famous. We would go flying up and down the hill in that. We would go out for ice-cream cones or twelve cent hamburgers. There was someplace down the hill you could buy twelve cent hamburgers. Any child that was around was welcome to jump in and go along for these little trips. Every once in a while she had a great love for seafood and we would go to some seafood restaurant here in town and dine on things that you could never have gotten in Monroe County to say the least. That was quite fun. I was always amazed at what she would wear when we would go out. I remember she got me my first pair of high heels. It was for Easter or spring break or something and I was about 12 or 13 and she was so, I need a pair of high heels. So she took me down to buy a pair of little black high heels. She was very proud of that. Her dress style was something definitely fashion. She would always have these jumpers over the years I made her some jumpers and Sally Moss made jumpers but she could never have bought (side ended)

The shirt was the trademark of what Lou Tate wore. She said it was great to put the cuff- if you were taking care of invalid people that need attention in the middle of the night a woman’s pajamas sometimes was awkward and that a slip was comfortable to sleep in and a man’s shirt you could just slip on and be ready to face whatever came on so that is what she generally wore. Occasionally, she would slip a pair of shorts on over the princess slip and sometimes princess slips would dangle a might here and there. I remember one time going to the bank w/her and she had on one of her more colorful outfits and she walked in, insert long underwear w/creepy aunts under it or whatever it was she had on and her old coat was dragging a bit here and there and she looked around and said there’s folks looking at us Ann, I said yes, she said don’t let that bother you in some countries I would just be called quaint and colorful.

It was fun, it really was. She loved to go to shop. She always kept what she called mad money and in later years I came to realize her mad money was probably money that came to her from stocks from the L&N Railroad that her father had left to her and the interest on this stock she would put away for it to grow. IT was always to blow on kids. So there was always this little change there somewhere a few dollars in a little jar or this beautiful silver glassware and things like that all over the place. Anytime you were dusting for her, you would find little piles of money. But you- no one ever touched it. This was just kinda the way it was. She put this away and you would know it was part of the mad money. Whenever you went shopping you would always come back w/little trinkets and treasures. Going to the grocery store was no exception. At that time she shopped a lot there at Iroquois Manor Shopping Center near her home. Everyone in the shopping center knew her and either loved her or tolerated her, whatever the case may be. I remember one time when I was about 15, going shopping and helping her get through the check out line and this lady was having this conversation w/Lou Tate and Lou Tate gives me one of her looks and handed me something to put in the grocery cart and woman who was the checker said, “my goodness, this young lady that you have w/you resembles you a lot “and there is some resemblance I think. Lou Tate and I always did have just a little bit, some family resemblances. Lou Tate smiled and said, “yes, this is my illegitimate daughter from school” (laughter) The lady heard all of the rumors they ever wanted to have confirmed, confirmed right there. I was just about to choke to death I was giggling so hard. And off we went. Lou Tate never cracked a smile. That poor lady she says, ______________. That was the only time she ever pulled that stunt w/me by any means. We laughed about it b/c I always considered her my second mom. She did in some ways treat me like maybe an adopted daughter in a lot of ways. I think I got an unusual share of her love and unusual share of her anger and unusual share of her family things that she wanted kept within the family over the years b/c there would always be some little family heirloom piece that would suddenly appear in my Christmas boxes. Or a little piece of silver. She loved silver. There would hardly be a Christmas that would go by that I wouldn’t get a little silver pin, a sterling silver pin. She loved those. Some little something, as I got to be older it was little pieces of silver, serving pieces or spoons. Her family had quite a collection of elegant things like this and she believed in passing them on. A lot of other young women that she cherished and loved, Ellen Tenny for one and the Hendricks girls too. They have a benefit as much of the beautiful things but I think I got as many or more of the ones that belonged to her family than most people. I sure have cherished and enjoyed them over the years.

Where to go from here. I have to think about Lou Tate’s involvement w/young people as being an influence to me. She had her Bachelors degree I believe in mathematics and her Masters degree was from the University of Michigan in history and her thesis was an antebellum historical time. She focused a lot on these patterns, coverlet patterns, in her thesis. She and my mother were both mathematicians. That was their natural love, believing that this was applied mathematics. This was the rhythm and beauty of mathematics. They are both artistic and musical people so it really came together for them in their life of weaving.

Lou Tate wove as a young woman for commercial purposes to support herself to some extent. Cause she sold the coverlets and you’d see ads and old pieces of flyers that you will find around the cabins she wove what she called commercially but that was not her love. Her love was the research, was trying to figure out how these things had been transmitted from person to person and by what code and method and why they came up w/some of the patterns, the history of the patterns, why it was called Snail Trail and Cabin Track, why it was called Lovers Knot, you know, this was where the intrigue came from for her. Also too, the intrigue came for her in seeing how children’s minds grasped these things b/c basically she was a teacher. I guess a lot of people do not know she actually did teach school at some points in her life. Um, if I am not mistaking, her first teaching position was in Harlem, Kentucky and she was probably an 8th grade PE teacher is the nearest thing I can understand to, what we would relate it to today. She taught there for a year and she was very disheartened, I believe by that experience. Um she relied heavily on um, social things for young people that age and folk dancing and learning just basic skills for living and I am not for sure that these were so well received in Harlem. I never heard her talk a lot about that year of teaching. I believe her second year of teaching probably occurred at um, President Hoovers school, the President’s school in the Rapidends Mountains in Virginia and there is a scrapbook of that and I have heard her talk of many times and of her friend that was the main teacher and she was the assistant teacher and she would talk about these handsome young men that were employees of the President that would come flipping up to their cabin on horseback and invite them to come down to dinner w/the President. And she would also talk about that she and Mrs. Hoover going shopping in Washington. Apparently Mrs. Hoover enjoyed the company of these two young women and uh, liked to go shopping, particularly for hats. Besides shopping w/Mrs Hoover, Lou Tate would tell me a few times about experiences in teaching and at school in the Rapidend Valley and she talked about the little boy that had inspired President Hoover to have a school put there. And he apparently was a child the President saw fishing someplace and asked him where he went to school and he said I have no school and at that point in time there were no schools to speak of in the mountains- this was something like what we would think of as a settlement school and he funded it and I guess maybe had the building built near the camp that he used for relaxation purposes during his Presidency. And this became he and Mrs. Hoover’s hit charitable endeavor, the school did. While they were supposed to be teaching the children reading and writing and arithmetic Lou Tate was brought in to try and teach these women, capitalize on what they called um, um, home industries to try and give them a sense of something that they can do that is marketable. The idea was that she was going to go out w/her basic knowledge of weaving and increase their skill so they would do cottage industries of rugs and things like this and I think they indeed apparently did have looms in the second story of the school building, that’s where the girls lived but to hear Lou Tate hear it that wasn’t the way it worked out. She said they spent most of their time teaching basic hygiene and showing movies on how to take a bath and trying to convince people that they wouldn’t die if they took a bath. And loading the children up on some kind of a bus and taking them out of the valley to see the counties and town and giving them the exposure to life a little bit so she never felt that she accomplished the things that she was hired to do in that school setting but she did have a wonderful time and it was kind of a – if you hear her tell it you would think it was kind of a romantic time with these young men coming up from the President’s camp and inviting you to come to dinner and there you were in your jeans and having blackberry juice all over you because you have been picking blackberries and having to clean up real quick and go down to um dine w/the President. Although you had just eaten a meal you didn’t dare say no. (laughter) and trying to keep a clean pair of white clothes to go if it was formal and you know, the stories that she would tell were wonderful.

But I do believe that she and Mrs. Hoover had some report that was unusual. Cause Lou Tate, as she came back to Kentucky and um got into her weaving started out on large looms which was the loom that was available, these big floor standing looms. Mrs. Hoover apparently was interested in the Girl Scouts and interested in young women and she felt that times were a changing for women as the houses were going to be smaller, women were going to be mobile, living in their own apartments at the time and they should have crafts that were mobile also. So somewhere along the line, she and Lou Tate had conversations about wouldn’t be nice if there were looms small enough and portable enough to meet the needs of the future woman. And I believe after having heard uh Lou Tate talk about it over the years that this was where her impetus first came to make a small portable table loom. Was thinking about Mrs. Hoover and the Girl Scouts. Now she had a different impetus for this as time wore on and the 30s changed to the 40s because she uh, kept up w/her weaving but she also came some sort of a draftsman out at uh, well that would be International Harvester facility now, with some sort of design drafting in the aircraft industry and she was a design draftsman for a number of years there during the war and also she was one I was calling the first occupational therapist. You’ll find in all weaving in Kentucky, weaving at the Little Loomhouse books uh, pictures and comments made about using weaving as a rehabilitive technique for people that had battlefield injuries and had lost a limb or sad fact lost the will to live. And I had heard her many times talk about the uh, officers and people from Fort Knox come in to the Loomhouses on Sunday afternoon for tea and pink lemonade. It wasn’t until I was grown that I understood where the pink came from pink lemonade. That was the little grenadine that was added to it after time after the children had left (laughter)

And she would talk about they were using the weaving to try to rehabilitate some of the men that were injured and I know over the years I had seen that she had created correspondence with various occupational therapy groups and there would be people coming and staying for a week or so with her and would be learning to warp looms, would be learning to do new techniques and would be going to take them back to military hospitals and mental hospitals and different types of settings like this over the years. I had always felt that she really pioneered some of the use of this type of craft and art form as occupational therapy technique tool. And she felt very keenly that her little table model loom that you could switch with your hand were particularly appropriate b/c someone w/out legs could sit one on this table, slide the table over the lap tray and weave as well as anyone else. And she, I have heard her discuss these needs at different times. She also, if I remember right was able to teach some blind people to weave and she certainly worked w/all kinds of other handicaps to uh, allow people this form of creation. Uh, I am sure there are other people that remember those days during the 40s and uh, lived them as Lou Tate did and remember people, places and times I just recall having heard it talked about a lot and knowing that there was the interchange from occupational therapy end, there was a social interchange and it was the cabins, became a time for relaxation and a good time for Sunday afternoon and there was always this kind of relaxed social atmosphere out there. I am sure that carried on for many, many years. I know it was still looked that way some what at times in the early 50s when I was a child visiting there. As it went into the 60s that atmosphere changed. Lou Tate was not as well as she once was. She was bitter towards many people. She felt deserted by other weavers in the community at times and she felt particularly betrayed by the community in which she lived uh, on very practical basis. The surrounding grounds around her home had been made into a more modern subdivision. Houses were being built and a time of soil erosion. I can think of one house just down the hill from her that I remember seeing this huge gully filled in with trash and brush and then a house built on top of it. She felt that the builders were just eroding the lovely hill and up at the top of the hill above the cabins there was a natural fossil bed that was just being destroyed and gone were the days when you could go to the cabins and sleep and have a picnic lunch under the trees and take a hike up to the fossils beds. You know this was such a romantic type of life and it was hardly anyone else out there. A few other cabins and a few other congenial neighbors. But now there were people building these more modern buildings. There was a developer who had no respect for the natural terrain of the land and she felt that her way of life was being encroached upon. And I remember the battles in court even when she would be harassed and people took objection to the fact that she had a well maintained outhouse. And uh, there was many a hate campaign that apparently that evolved around that. These hate campaigns and dissension with the neighbors and I guess it was really a fact that Lou Tate’s lifestyle was different from anyone elses that you ever saw or hoped to see and uh people just really didn’t understand her. She was an outcast in her own neighborhood in many instances. While she was so well accepted all over the world b/c her correspondence and phone calls- I was there enough that I would receive the phone calls for her sometimes. You know she was accepted as a weaver and as a historian and as an acute reviewer of the condition of humanity but this was not what she was known as in the neighborhood and at this point upon her b/c she lived, and really it was a lovely life. I can remember in the 60s, John and I married in 1963 and she was able to come to our wedding and I have to interject this b/c I had not prepared my husband to be for Lou Tate. (laughter) We lived this real small house in United Kentucky and my Grandparents that raised me were quite elderly at the time it was going to be a home wedding and Lou Tate said, yes, I’ll come and I’ll bring the wedding cake. So I said fine and uh, we get everything all ready and it’s just about 10-12 people there, just family members, few other guests. Here Lou Tate was buzzing around in the kitchen, undoing this cake and she had on this strange dress and some odd jewelry and her hair was it’s own unique style of non cut, just so it’s sheared around a bowl so to speak and her run over shoes and you know I thought she was just wonderful. John comes in and he looks in the kitchen and looks at me and draws me over to the side and says is this some help that your Grandmother has gotten in to help (laughter) for the day or what and it never occurred to me to explain Lou Tate to him, it just, b/c I accepted her just as she was. IT was such a shock to me that he thought she was the cleaning lady or the maid or somebody that come in- Lord knows we didn’t have any people like that. So this was a very strange thing for him. And I was so shocked by that that I could begin to see that people that didn’t know her and love her all her life were surprised at her and a little bit taken back at her and the way she was at that time and that was 1963.

We came to Louisville and visited her shortly after we were married and stayed at her house a week or so and John grew to appreciate her for the unique person that she was. But by that time there was a lot of dissension and there was a lot of sadness in her life and a lot of feeling of frustration. And I had known her at her best time and her most romantic, thoughtful times and I had also been around enough to know her at times not so good. And by the 60s I was seeing more of the times that weren’t so good and I was able to understand why they weren’t so good and as a younger person I didn’t. Uh, Lou Tate well she admitted to me at the time she died that she was an alcoholic. And uh, many of the little grocery runs she would do over the years were to go and find this particular type of wine that she enjoyed. And uh, she never drank during the daytime when there were students there or children there but at night, this particular wine was a constant companion and I became more sensitive to that over the last years b/c that too as an abusive alcoholic it has an effect on the personality- changing. Lou Tate became, as I said a while ago, bitter and she became more subject to mood change. And I saw this more frequently and I grew to realize that it was reflective of the disease of alcoholism considerable and the personality changes that I mentioned come along with it. And uh I also, as time went on I wanted to rub out the disease of alcoholism, I am in the medical profession and just out of knowledge came to me as time went on and I learned that, what blackouts were that alcoholics have and this explained some of the bitter things that happened to Lou Tate to me.

I don’t think that they made some of the hard times that Lou Tate and I had personally any less painful but they may have made them more understandable. I know a lot of people are going to talk about that you know there are times became less pleasant at Lou Tate’s and atmosphere changed and maybe the class you thought was going to be taught a certain way ended up being taught entirely differently or you thought you were coming out to plant bulbs and suddenly you were asked to wash windows. And I was maybe able to adapt to this a little bit better over the years b/c I understood the disease of alcoholism. While I never talked to her about that until towards the end of her life. I didn’t understand that was what was happening and that she was doing things and not remembering exactly what she had arranged to do and when she came to she knew she was on some plan to do something and was trying to adlib a lot and what she ended up feeling had happened or the conversation had happened with someone was not really what had happened but her adlibbing made her try to fit in as best she could. Well this ended up as it always does- with disastrous relationships between people and this happened w/her students, this happened w/other weavers, it happened w/neighbors and it happened w/family members and it happened w/Lou Tate and I. Because she would invite us. She loved to have parties. And uh, it was always amazing you know she had old ramshackle type writer and she always, it comes w/paper that was printed on w/all kinds of things she was interested in and then on the back she would write you these invitations and they would be typed in the wee hours of the morning- was the wine helping? And she would suddenly feel the urge for people to be around her for a good time and all of a sudden you would be invited to this party and you never knew what was going to happen. Who was going to be at the party and who wasn’t and you might be skipped for 2 or 3 years and not know why then all of a sudden you were back on this list and being invited to these functions.

Lou Tate’s birthday was always a special time to me. She always had her last open house and a party, kinda for herself. You know I can never go through an October without thinking about Lou Tate and her wonderful end open house fall parties that she would have. Most of the time these parties, up until the very last years of her life, although she would drink at the parties it was a good time. She really was not too excess. And only would you have known what was happening w/her if you had been a kid that was to stay around after the party to help clean up so you got a different picture there and I was one of the kids that often was staying around to help clean up and would sometimes have to uh, carry her off to bed but I never really understood that was what was going on.

Obviously w/my career and medical role and working here in Louisville and living fairly close to Lou Tate and would go up there some but to say for reasons I never understood she began to shy away from me and then finally there was one great party that my husband had built a bar bq pit up there at her request. He had built it to her specifications. There was one great, I guess it was a fall party and Mike Kirk and Laurie Weedman were in college at the time and they came in quite late at night for the party and it was about after everything else was put up and uh, so we got food out and bar b qued ham and turkey I guess it was and fed the kids and they come in through college and what have you. By that time, Lou Tate had more or less gone to sleep up on the second floor of Tophouse where she kept a lounge that she slept on a lot and the next morning, much to my amazement, she was quite angry w/me. She called me and wanted her keys returned. She always had me keep a separate set of keys to her house to get in in case there was an emergency. And she was very angry b/c she thought I had stolen all these pans and there was not way I could explain to her that I had nothing to do w/this. She didn’t want me to step foot on the place for a number of years. This was just like losing your mother. It was just awful. I can’t explain the hurt that I had. And then all of a sudden, you know, four or five years later I get this little note in the mail that says will you please come up and bring your Snail Trail and other coverlet and your baby cradle, I need them for a show and it was just out of the clear blue. Well I went and I took what she requested and it was just like we had never stopped being together. By then I must say I understood more about the disease of alcoholism.

We had a lot of really hard times after that b/c she was getting, well her heart was not doing very well and her blood pressure was not so good/well and she was concerned sometimes about what was happening to her as a person. And she did begin to talk to me some about that and talk to me some on occasion uh, about what I knew about medical things and alcoholism was one of those medical things we had to ask questions about every now and then.

Uh, she had, uh kept on having a few classes in the evenings and odd times for students. I think the students probably absorbed more of the personality and the charm of the hill than they did weaving instructions at that point in time. I had kind of gotten on her and said that all of those years I had been hanging around up there that I knew how to do odd things but I never knew how to warp a loom so I finally convinced her that I had to learn to warp a loom.

Note: At this point on the tape, the interviewer began to ask a question and the sound became distorted w/long sequences of silence.