Oral History Interview with Mildred Painter

PAINTER: I hadn't saw [seen] Mommy since I'd been married-since the day Nelson was born. That next morning, she come [came] over there on Saturday and brought Doris some tobywip (??). Well, they was [were] in there in the bed asleep in the backroom and they'd pulled the door too. Nelson was born in the night.

Painter: He cried. They didn’t know what in the world that was. He was born about 1 :30 in the morning and Ma Jones was there, she had to come over. She told Dr. Flori (??) she was giving me the ether. She told Dr. Flori she said, “you know, I'm not able to do this well. If you're not able to do that, then you have no business over here while a women [woman] is over here having her first baby!"

PAINTER: He weighed 9 pounds and a half, Nelson did. I was a long time having him, and I was sick there two to three days, you know, before I ever had him. I was beginning to think I was never going to have him, Bu, anyway after daylight, why I don't know whether Mommy or Ma, maybe both of them you know, that cleaned him up and put him in--was these here orange crates, set him beside my bed and was going to let him sleep in here. They were afraid, you know, I would roll over on him and hurt him. Well, anyway Mommy stayed till he was a week old.

PAINTER: Well, I couldn't very handy [hardly] get out of bed while she was there. I had to wait till she left, and they told me not to get up, but when Mommy left, he let the door swing and she said, "Doris, now you don’t let her up. You tell us if she gets up." I wanted some ice one day and we had one of these [those] icebox coolers where you put [one] hundred pounds of ice in [t]he top of it. Bought ice once a week--a big old block of ice. And I said to Doris "I want me some ice," I said "I'm burning up." She told me--she said, “I can't get it,” I said, " if you won’t tell on me, I'll get it.” I went in there and chipped me and her a big bowl full of ice I said, "you carry it back to the bed," and she did.

PAINTER: And she sat on the foot of the bed and me and her ate that bowl of ice and I said, "don’t you tell Mommy now that I got up." Well, whenever Mommy came back over there, I was alright, you know, I was up going around, I would get up and fix some[thing] and Doris’s dinner things lie [like] that you know, I was/t suppose[d] to be up, I got up anyway. Well, whenever Linda was born, then she was born a little ahead of time, [we] weren't expecting her, I didn't have nothing [anything] so I got her out of bed about 5:00. I said, "you

better go get me some sheets, I'm going to have his baby now."

Painter: When the doctor got there, whey [why] her nable [navel] cord come out first and he had to turn her. I [was] Iike[ly] to have lost her. Well, when she was born, they said, "she is dead," said, "that baby is dead" He said, "no its not, Maggie.”

PAINTER: And Marty Starns was there. They were my next door neighbors and Rufus was here and he said, "that baby is dead." Do tor said, "no it’s not." [He] says, “take it in there on [t]he table and treat it rough,” and he let me and went in there and [it] wasn’t long and I heard her cry. I knowed [knew] what was goin on, you know, but just enough to ease the pain. Maggie was afraid to wash her, afraid she would hurt her. He said, "you treat that baby rough. She needs rough treatment." And after he livened her up there he said, "little girl, I didn't think you was [were] going to make it there for a while.” And she was so little and tiny he said that I would have to keep a hot water bottle on her, you know to keep her from freezing to death, keep her he same temperature as my body, There for about enough. That was the funny part of it, if Know'd [known] how far along I was, I could of [have] been prepared for her. But see, I wasn’t expecting her, she was about six weeks early, she wasn’t due till the 1st of August, and she came the 20th of June and she’s been sickly ever since then, too. I had a rough time, but Rufus was good to me, he was good to everybody, and he’d say to me, “if you’d go to the city with me, we’ll go get drunk. Said, “I’ll come back, I said, “I ain’t [am not] wanting to go.”

He said, “[if] you don’t go, I might not come back.” Well, I’d go, and he wouldn’t meet up with nobody [anybody] and he’d come on back to the house and just as sure as he went by himself, he would come back drunk a day or two later.

CROLEY: How much [of an age] difference is there between Nelson and Linda?

PAINTER: Nelson liked (??) a month and fives [five] days being two years old when Linda was born.

CROLEY: Did you feed them with a bottle, or did you breastfeed?

PAINTER: Breastfed them for a while and then had to put them on the bottle.

CROLEY: What kind of milk did you use?

PAINTER: SMA powered milk, goats’ milk, I recon that’s what they said it was, back then you cooked it, boiled it then you had to skim it.

CROLEY: How old was [were] they when you started feeding them off the table?

PAINTER: We fed Nelson when he was about a week old off the table, fed him

Gravy.

CROLEY: What else did you feed him when you first started?

PAINTER: Well, we fed them oatmeal, mashed potatoes, Gerber was putting out baby food, but I didn't Know nothing [anything] about it you know, and we always fed them from the table mashed potatoes and gravy, beans, soup. [It’s a] wonder we hadn’t of killed them, but we didn’t.

CROLEY: About how old was [were] they when you weaned them?

PAINTER: Well, Nelson was about eight months old.

CROLEY: What did you do, just take them both [off] at the same time?

PAINTER: Yes, when I quit giving Linda hers, Nelson stopped. I guess it was a month or two that he had to have a bottle with her.

CROLEY: What did they like to eat the best that you fixed them special?

PAINTER: Gravy was their main dish.

CROLEY: Did you fix them cakes and stuff?

PAINTER: No, very seldom ever made a cake for them, just once in a while.

CROLEY: Did you have a garden?

PAINTER: Yes, we had a garden, we raised tomatoes, corn, stuff like that and after we moved to the country, we farmed there.

CROLEY: Did you have cows?

PAINTER: Yes, we churned the milk and made the butter.

CROLEY: How did you treat your kids when they were sick?

PAINTER: Linda, we had to take her to the doctor, they [there] weren't [wasn’t] no [use] treating her at home but Nelson, never was too sick but, now I always took him to

the doctor when he did get sick, that was one thing I firmly believed in was getting kids to the doctor. Something [or] another, I don't know what it was, it could the bedspreads, it could of [have] been the sheets, it could of [have] been most anything, when they was [were] little, their eyes would matter up and stick together, allergy [allergies], I guess that’s what it was and I had to take him to the doctor for that. Yeah, he’d get up and say, come get me mommy I can’t see,” and I'd wash his eyes with warm water and unstick them and then the doctor had me to wash them in borax water and that helped him.

You know, my kids got that way in a certain time, but when the trees would start putting out.

CROLEY: Do you remember any home remedies?

PAINTER: Whenever they had the croup, we used Kerosene and home-made lard and turpentine and put it on wool sock or something [or] [an]other and put it

on their chest and their back to break it up on them.

CROLEY: Did they have any colic?

PAINTER: Yeah, we used paregoric, we would give them a drop of it in their milk and gave Linda some, one time I had to wake her up and it scared me. You had to have a prescription, then to get, it the doctor prescribed it. They don't prescribed [prescribe] it no [any]more like they used to, it would make them--them sleep.

CROLEY: What about diaper rash?

PAINTER: No, none of my kids were bothered with that except Linda, and I had to wash her clothes in ivory flakes and heat her diapers in the stove oven.

CROLEY: Diarrhea.

PAINTER: I don't remember them having diarrhea--well see, we fed them from the table, we fed them potatoes, bean soup and gravy and stuff like that.

CROLEY: Did they ever have any accidents, did any of them have any broken bones?

PAINTER: No.

CROLEY: Diseases like whooping cough or typhoid?

PAINTER: They had the whooping cough and the measles and had the chicken pox and mumps.

CROLEY: Did you have any miscarriages or anything like that?

PAINTER: No.

CROLEY: How did you play with them, did you have many toys?

PAINTER: They had rattlers whenever they were small and then as they growed [grew] up, they had dolls and wagons.

CROLEY: When they were little, did you read to them?

PAINTER: Not till they got up to a pretty good size, about four years old when I started reading to them.

CROLEY: Did you sing to them or tell them nursery rhymes?

PAINTER: I used to sing to them, I would read “My Little Dog Toby” to them. Nelson loved a dog better than anything, he would just laugh, I would sing “Four and Twenty Black Birds Baked in a Pie.” You could always, ever since they were young, there were toys, but not as much as there is now. Their stuff were [was] made out of rubber back then, that’s when the teething rings first came out.

CROLEY: Did you play patty-cake?

PAINTER: Yeah, do their toes and their fingers.

CROLEY: How did you clothe them; did you make their clothes or buy them?

PAINTER: Little boys wore dresses till they were about two years old, and Mommy bought Nelson; I guess she made them, she made his aprons when he was little—had this little blue and white dotted--what they call baby print and then there was a pink and white, it was checks instead of dotted. She made him aprons out of chop sacks and trim them in blue and pink and they buttoned down the back and had a belt around. It was cute on him, he looked like a girl. Mommy got him his first pants he ever wore, little, short ones, he had little overalls that she got for him for his first birthday, and I took him to town with him to the beer joint and them men you know, gave him candy to put in his pocket. Whenever Linda was born, then they were making baby shoes out of oil cloth and putting cloth soles on them, and I swear she wore out a pair of them a week.

CROLEY: Did you use cloth diapers?

PAINTER: Yeah, there weren’t pampers back then.

CROLEY: Did you have any cribs, playpens, walkers, strollers?

PAINTER: I had a baby bed and a highchair, I [didn’t] need none [any] for my young ones,

they leaned [learned] to walk real[ly] early, Nelson walked when he was seven months old.

Linda was over a year old before she learned to walk, she was sick, she was weak.

CROLEY: How did you potty train?

PAINTER: I never had a bit of trouble out of them.

CROLEY: Did they have naps every day?

PAINTER: Yes, whenever they got still, they would go to sleep but--.

CROLEY: Did they have a certain bedtime?

PAINTER: Yes, they went to bed every night at 7:30, they sure did.

CROLEY: Did Rufus help you with them?

PAINTER: Yes, he was good to help, yeah, he left Nelson on the bus one time, we[‘d] been over at Mommy’s—we rode the bus back and I had Linda in my arms, and we got off and I said, “where’s Nelson,” and the bus had done [already] pulled out. I said, “where’s Nelson?” He said, “I left him on the bus.” He said, “I'll get a cab and run it down,” caught [it] up there in Gate City [VA].

CROLEY: When you got up in the morning, what did you do?

PAINTER: First thing was to take care of the young ones, feed them, wash them, and clean them up and give them a bath in the morning. First thing I done [did] then they was [were] ready for their nap, I'd get [the] washing done, I had to wash on a board and then Inez was, I would have to get her to watch them while I hung my clothes out. Keep from Nelson falling off the bed, day by day, washed every day.

CROLEY: Did yous [you] all sit at the table at the same time to eat?

PAINTER: Yes.

CROLEY: Where are you from?

PAINTER: Dickenson County, Virginia.

CROLEY: How old was [were] you when you [got] married?

PAINTER: Eighteen.