Oral History Interview with Inez Siler

CROLEY: Where do you live?

SILER: In Vern.

CROLEY: How long have you lived here?

SILER: Thirty-six years.

CROLEY: Where did you grow up?

SILER: Around Norton, Coburn, St. Paul, Stoney Lonesome, Virginia.

CROLEY: How many children do you have?

SILER: Five children, the oldest one was born dead at home in a little two-room house down [a]cross [from] the railroad tracks.

CROLEY: How old was [were] you when you had the first one?

SILER: Twenty-five.

CROLEY: Did you have a doctor?

SILER: Yes.

CORLEY: Who was he?

SILER: Dr. Brown in Williamsburg

CROLEY: Do you know what caused the baby to die?

SILER: No, I have no idea.

CROLEY: What was her birthdate?

SILER: March 8th, 1950.

CROLEY: How did you feed yours, on a breast or [on a] bottle?

SILER: On the breast.

CROLEY: How long did you breastfeed them?

SILER: Eighteen months.

CROLEY: When did you start feeding him other things besides milk?

SILER: When he was about six weeks old.

CROLEY: What did you start feeding him?

SILER: Baby food, mashed potatoes, stuff off the table, gravy, peas, but we stringed them like we made our own baby food, really things that he could eat.

CROLEY: Could you tell [me] what a typical day was like for you?

SILER: First thing was to take care of the baby, they got changed, dried, put back to bed for their nap then the day’s work started. Mondays was [were] always pretty busy, we had washed on a board. [it] take [took] all day long to was just a tub full of clothes. Then usually, it would take all the rest of the time to get them all dried up and then Tuesdays was [were] ironing day[s]. Ironed [with a] stove iron, heated them on the stove and then Wednesday was housecleaning day. We mopped the floor, scrubbed the kitchen. Then, there

Was [were] the three meals a day to cook and get ready for tomorrow. There was a big load of clothes, back then [there] was another wash day on Thursday, and on Friday was another ironing day and then Saturday and Sunday was [were] loafering [loafing] days and town days and church going days.

CROLEY: Did you have the baby on a schedule?

SILER: They mostly scheduled theirselves [themselves] a healthy baby will, about every four hours was feeding time for them. Well, it didn’t matter what else you were doing, you had to take care of the baby, then there were times that we could piece quilts and quilt and go to the garden, pick our beans, bring them in, string them and break them up put them on the--cook [them] the next day for our canning.

CROLEY: When did you start feeding them solid foods?

SILER: When they were about six months old.

CROLEY: What did they like to eat, like for a special treat or something?

SILER: Most of the time my kids, like[d] soup better than anything else, they weren't too fond of cookies, but back then, you didn't get that many cookies, you didn't have all the store-bought cookies like you have now.

G: Did you bake cakes and stuff like that?

SILER: Made cakes out of flour, five eggs, milk, and sugar, with a little flavoring throwed [thrown] in.

CROLEY: When they were little, did yous [you] all eat together at a meal?

SILER: We all sat down at the table at the same time.

CROLEY: Were there times when you didn't have enough money?

SILER: That was all the time.

CROLEY: How did you make do?

SILER: Even if he was out of work or if he was a—working, I raised a lot of chickens. I always had chickens and eggs to sell, and I fed my family off of the eggs that I took to the store and bought my other groceries with [it] and we had a rolling store that stopped up at the highway and we would take a big bucket of eggs to them two or three times a week. Anywhere form fifteen cents to a quarter a dozen was [a] big price for eggs.

CROLEY: Did you grow a garden?

SILER: Always raised a garden, always canned stuff to put us through the winter, raised our own potatoes, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, canned our green beans and dried our green beans. We always kept a hog to butcher in the wintertime. We had plenty to eat but there were times where we didn’t have salt or grease to put it in.

CROLEY: Whenever the 1ittle ones were sick, did you take them to the doctor, or did you doctor them yourself?

SILER: [For] Both [of them I] took them to the doctor and Dr. Brown told me that I could doctor them just as well at home as he could at the office if I give [gave] them what he told me to. When Daryl was about two months old, he had a terrible, bad cold, he was so croupy, and I took him to the doctor[‘s] office and sat there all day [me] and him in a medical meeting and couldn’t--and he was sicker- in the doctor[‘s] office than when I stayed there all day. And an [old] women [woman] she told me if I take him home and give him a teaspoon full of castor oil and three drops of turpentine off of a broom straw in and she guarantee[ed] it that he wouldn’t have a cold the next morning. Well, since the doctor never came, in I took him home and I give him his castor oil that night, and the next morning you could never tell he--never had a bad cold.

CROLEY: Did you ever have to put any of them in the hospital?

SILER: Yes, Daryl when he was 4 and a half months old.

CROLEY: What was wrong with him?

SILER: He started out having a high fever and convulsions that lasted—him from 9:00 in the morning till 4:15 in the evening and [got] him packed in ice. At the Corbin hospital, they tapped his spine they told me either he had brain fever or polio, and I never did find out what he had. And he went down from weighing sixteen pounds the day before I put him in the

hospital till he weighed twelve pounds over two months later, that’s how sick he was.

CROLEY: What about any home remedies?

SILER: Yes, if they stuck nails in their feet, we used soda with vinegar and it will draw that rusty nail right out of there and for our save that we had for cuts, burns and things we made [it] out of muntentella (??) and Bonegilla trees. We had fried onions for colds, we made our own soap out of lye and grease. I washed the Kids many time[s] in homemade lye soap, their hair and all, and they had pretty hair, it’s not dried up with shampoo like the babies’ hairs are [now] anymore. We didn’t know what it was to have dishwashing liquid, we washed out clothes, our dishes, we washed our bodies with homemade lye soap, we had our own chickens that we killed and eat [ate] and dressed them out. And I guess now my kids would

croak if they seen [saw] us kill a chicken and dress it. I doubt they even knowed [know] how to pick one.

CROLEY: How did you play with your babies?

SILER: Yes, I made clothespins, they could make all kinds of things with clothespins, the long slip-in kind. We’d make houses out of them, then they would knock them all down and then we would start them all—[of] them up again, then we would have our spools that our thread was on, we strung them up, we[‘d] paint them or we’d leave them just plain colored, and they were made out of plain colors. They would make cars out of them; they would put a string through them and run through the house with them all day long. And in the fall of the year, we would get out here and we, would get some kind of big red berries and we would string them up on the thread and make necklaces out of them and kids like that, they would place [play] with their berry necklaces till they dried up and all melted away.

CROLEY: Can you remember any songs that you sang to the babies?

SILER: “Jesus Loves Me,” and Rock-a-Bye-Baby.”

SILER: What about nursery rhymes?

SILER: Little PIG went to the market, that was pulling their toes and counting their toes, fard (??) knocker, eye winker, nose dropper, bout beater, chin chopper, gully, gully, gully under their chin and they would laugh.

CROLEY: Did you ever read to your babies?

SILER: Many be the time. [Many times].

CROLEY: How old was [were] they when you started reading to them?

SILER: Very, very little very young. I read to them when they were just tiny babies right on up, they always enjoyed animal stories and we would make animals for them out of our clothespins. And we[‘d] have the bobby[pins] and then we would stick the clothespins up one side and they would make legs for them to stand on. Then, we would put another up for its neck and its ears.

CROLEY: Did you make any baby clothes?

SILER: Very few baby clothes did I ever make, my mother made my baby

Clothes.

CROLEY: What about diapers?

SILER: We use[d] to use roll sheets and our old pillow cases where they've been boilded [boiled] for years, where you couldn't use them on the beds and we'd cut them and hem them and made awful[ly] good diapers out of them because at that time, most of our sheets and our pillowcases were made out of feed sacks, but I did now--made the kids underwear out of sacks, I done [did] that. I made the boys shirts and pants to [for] the girls, I always made their slips and their panties out of chop sacks, and they were so soft and pretty and white.

CROLEY: Did you have and cribs, playpens, or highchairs?

SILER: I had a baby bed all four of my Kids used and I could remember—I brought [bought] it from my sister-in-law. I had a highchair that matched the baby bed, they were maple, that all four of my kids used. I had a playpen for two of them. Two of them, I didn’t have [it] and it was a homemade playpen, but the bed and the chair was [were] store brought [bought] and that was the first highchair I ever seen [saw] in a store in Williamsburg.

CROLEY: How old was [were] they when you started potty training them?

SILER: They broke them[selves] ownselves. I never really tried to potty train them, because he never needed to be potty trained, from the time he was nine months old, you could pull his diaper off and set him on the pot and he used it. Daryl was a little bit older because he'd been sick and you didn't have the time really to fool with one for having to look after the older one, he just finally went going to use the pot because the other [child] did. And Beverly use[d] to sit on it for four to five hours at a time and sew[ed] and she had to have her a needle and thread and a piece of cloth and sew while sew was using the pot, which I never made no [any] big deal out of trying to potty train them.

CROLEY: Did they have a certain nap time and bedtime?

SILER: They had a naptime everyday around 1:00 after they had their lunch, which—they would have soup and a sandwich for lunch, which was homemade soup, homemade sandwich--if it was light bread, biscuit bread, or cornbread and a piece of fat back and green onion was lunch for the kids, and [a] bowl of soup.

CROLEY: Did you have help with your babies?

SILER: Anytime when anybody would help with them is when my mother came to visit. I took them everywhere I went, which wasn't very much, but if I had to go to the grocery store, they went there with me, they went everywhere with me.

CROLEY: When you had your babies, did you lay in the bed [for] nine days?

SILER: Sometime[s] I did, sometime[s], I didn’t.

CROLEY: Did you have same one to help you when you had your babies?

SILER: Your daddy (??).

CROLEY: Which do you think is easier to take care of a boy or a girl?

SILER: A boy.