Oral History Interview with Betty Morgan

BETTY MORGAN: Had typhoid fever when Imogene (??) was a baby, just after she was born. He had typhoid fever in Harlan County and then he had pneumonia after we moved here. David was about eighteen or nineteen years old and wasn’t going to go, so Dave picked him up and took him over to Prater (??) Hospital and he stayed in the hospital, I think seven or eight days.

NINA MARPLE: You did [Did you] have any of your kids [die] to die except one?

BETTY MORGAN: I had two girls and three boys and then Helen, and that made six children, and that’s all the children I had.

NINA MARPLE: Tell me some of your home remedies?

BETTY MORGAN: Johnny would take this throwing knife and took off that way and get that black bark on the outside of it and take a throwing knife and take all the outside bark off and take an axe and hack around and get that black bark off, and he put it in a little brown paper bag and he would go to a white pine [and] do the bark the same way. And then he got me some mullen [mullein leaves], we used to [do] mountain tea hunting and get that mountain tea. We had a lot of sugar trees, and we would go tap them and put a cane in them and they would drip, and we would get maybe a half of gallon to a gallon and bring it home and mommy would make sugar tree syrup out of it, it and she would make us some sugar candy out of it. You get willer [willow] switches to put in the cough syrup, I boil that pine bark and wild cherry bark and mullen [mullein] and willer [willow] switches and put on and boil it down and then I would strain it and put about two thirds [of] honey in it and then you boil that down and make cough syrup out of it.

NINA MARPLE: What did the kids play with?

BETTY MORGAN: They would go up on the hill with a sled and they would get on that sled, but they would make them out of rod irons and put planks acrossed [across] it and they would get on it way up top [on] of the hill and they[‘d] sled down it.

NINA MARPLE: Did they have dolls?

BETTY MORGAN: Yeah, we never· did have no [any] money to buy them any toys.

NINA MARPLE: What did [the] kids do?

BETTY MORGAN: They went outside and pitched horseshoes then they would take them [those] sleds and get on the hill and ride down. They would get some water and pour it on that hill and make those sleds fly. Now, if one gets sick, you sit up with them all night and mine never was [were] too bad sick [sick that bad]. Imogene, when she took [got] sick, but she was sick tor about three months, I guess before she died, but she hadn't been sick enough to play or come to the table and now she eat [ate] supper with us on Monday night and died on Friday. Johnny got up Tuesday morning and she was vomiting; and she couldn't keep nothing on [in] her stomach and Johnny went to go see the doctor and he sent her back some medicine to take and he went and got her some bread and margarine and she eat [ate] a half a slice of that bread and eat [ate] an orange. He set her up on his lap and pealed that orange for

her and that’s all she ate and that was on Tuesday evening and then she died on Friday evening. One of my children after I moved here, they all had the whooping cough and I had it, all of them had it except Irene. All [of] my children caught it at school, and we all had the whooping cough. Here—well, when they caught the mumps, and all of them had that except

me, but Johnny had them, and him (??) that old and then they got German Measles [also known as Rubella]. I had them [the] red measles when I was about thirteen years old, but

I[‘d] never heard tell of the German Measles, they caught it at school.

NINA MARPLE: What did you do for the whooping cough?

BETTY MORGAN: We just coughed it out, I think I gave the children honey, I had bees here and Johnny would always take out them [those] bees, I think when Helen had the red measles.

NINA MARPLE: Did you make dolls or rattlers?

BETTY MORGAN: Well, Irene would make dolls and things Imogene would get a needle and some thread and make some theirselves [themselves] out of old rags and stuff and they would cut it out, sew, then stuff it, and you would stuff it with other little rags.

NINA MARPLE: You was [were] busy with the garden?

BETTY MORGAN: Yeah, one time I was planting beans and I was in the garden and

Johnny was working and I was up in the garden working of course. Imogene was nine years old on the eighth of October, but she could sew. I had an old peddle push sewing machine, but I didn't have any needles, so I had to sew with my fingers, and she got a needle sewed and made her[self] a doll and she took the thread out; and she was sitting on the bed and stuck it down on the pil1er [pillow]. Well, it went plum on down in that piller [pillow] and she wouldn't tell me about [it] and she told me about it two days before she died. She said, “Mom, there is a needle in this piller [pillow],” and she said, “I thought I would tell you, yous [you] might stick it in yous [you].” And she said, “when you were planting beans in the garden last spring, why I was sewing on my doll clothes,” and she said, “I took all the thread out and stuck it in the piller [pillow] and went on down there and I couldn't get it and I was afraid to tell you, afraid you'd whoop me.” And so, I said then-- after she died and was put away, I hunted in that pillow and couldn’t find that needle no where [anywhere] and I said, “that needle is there or that child wouldn’t of [have] told me that and it was laying right on the end.” Well, Johnny had them a while, I'll tell you what, fifteen minutes to twelve that night he asked me if I would get him a little water because his mouth was dry. He looked at me and said, “are you here by yourself?” I said, “no, Dad, you’re here with me and the good Lord is taking care of us,” so he didn't say anymore. I kept going back and forth to the sink and wetting a rag with cold water to put on Johhny's head, you know he didn't have no hair much [very much hair] and then I went back, I just had him rolled up in that hospital bed and had my hand behind his head and I put a little lard in his mouth, but then I thought, “I’ll get that ice cream out of the freezer and give him some of it.” So, I went and got a teacup, and it was froze[n] so hard that I could hardly get it out and it was that chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. Well, he always like[d] the strawberry and vanilla, but he never did like the chocolate. So, I got out six bites, and it was so hard I bent the handle of the spoon and I put a bite in his mouth, and he open his eyes and looked at me well [while] I fed him the six bites [of ice cream]. Then, I said, “Dad, do you want some more,” and he said, “a little.” Well, I went back and got about six more bites and fed that to him and the- last bite, he put in his mouth, why he just gobbled it down and shut his eye and that’s the last word he ever said to me, and it was about fifteen after two and he died at fifteen after six.

NINA MARPLE: How did you know that he was so bad off that one night?

BETTY MORGAN: Well, when they brought him from Knoxville on Friday and then the

Doctor called me on the phone and told [me] that he had done [already] dismissed Johnny, and he said, “now you’ll have to feed him.” Said, “he can ' t feed himself, you'll have to feed him.” They called me and ask[ed] me if I was willing to let them put a tube up his nose and down to his stomach and I said, “yeah because he told Dave—your father isn’t going to be here long.” Said, “what do you want me to do. You want me to put him on the machines that keep him alive ordo you want me to let him die a natural death?” Dave said, “well, doctor, what would you do, you’re the doctor. What would you do.” He said, “well, he was my father, I would just let him die [a] natural death.” Well, David said, “I’ll have to call Mom and I’ll call you back.” So, he called me and asked me, and I said, “I don’t know what to do.” And I said, “I’m going to call Helen.”

BETTY MORGAN: So, I called Helen and Helen said, “Mommy, I’m forty-three years old and I wouldn’t want to be put on a machine.” Well, it went on into Wednesday and Helen went over there to see him and he talked with Helen, and they took it out on Wednesday, and we just had to feed him with a spoon. Well, they said they was [were] going to dismiss him on Thursday, so Helen called up there to see. Well, they wasn’t [weren’t] going to dismiss him till Friday, on Friday morning at 9:00. The doctor called me and Helen she went over there and then she had to pay a hundred dollars for--he had a private room, so then she said he told me--the doctor did and said that I would have to feed him and then he came home that evening. And that women [woman] asked, “do you want to send an ambulance after him?” And I said, “well I would rather--you send him in an ambulance over here because I don’t know if I can get an ambulance over here or not.” And he said, “well, they didn’t bring him till 9:30.”

NINA MARPLE: Did you ever sing songs to the kids or lullabyes to get them to sleep?

BETTY MORGAN: I use[d] to all the time. When we moved backed [back] form Harlan County, I didn't have a rocking chair for a while, and I would get an old straight chair, and I would rock them, and Mrs. Ferguson said she would be walking down the road and could hear me singing and I would be rocking Cecil. And then, we got us [ourselves] a rocking chair. I tell you, when Johnny was int he hospital, the first time in Knoxville, I would bend down on the couch be praying, honey I would just pray to the Lord to let Johnny live and I come [came] up a sing[ing] a song that I haven't sung in forty years.

NINA MARPLE: Did you ever read to your kids?

BETTY MORGAN: Yeah, I use to read the bible to them every night. I ordered that bible from Sears and Roebuck; it was the King James version and I ordered it whenever Helen was about a year old and ever[y] one of them has read it. I’ve had the bible since Helen was about a year old.

NINA MARPLE: Did you teach them to read, or did they learn it in school?

BETTY MORGAN: They done [did] that at school. [It] just didn’t seem like my boys could learn like the girls did. Well, David always liked to play ball, they wanted him to go to high school, but he didn't do it.

NINA MARPLE: How would you dress your babies?

BETTY MORGAN: Well, I always had him plenty of little yellow gowns and back in them [those] days, you got meal and flour in cloth sacks, and I would wash them [those] sacks out and put two together and put the seam in the inside and make a little gown. I would take his diaper and his wet gown off and put a dry one [on] and sometimes, I would have rubber diapers I would put on him at night to keep from wetting the bed. Yeah, I made the children clothes, I would get me some white outing and make them some little gowns before they was [were] born. After they got big enough, I would make them some little pants to wear.

NINA MARPLE: You didn't have no [any] playpens baby beds?

BETTY MORGAN: No, I didn't no [a] highchair, I would tie them in an old straight chair and 1et them eat out of their plate.

NINA MARPLE: Did they like to take naps?

BETTY MORGAN: They all did till they got up to a pretty good size, then they didn’t like to.

NINA MARPLE: How did you potty train?

BETTY MORGAN: I just let them go out, we had a place fixed out there, [behind the] back of the chicken house, that’s where they went to.

NINA MARPLE: Who helped you with the kids?

BETTY MORGAN: Nobody, just me. After Irene got up [to be] big enough, she helped me.

NINA MARPLE: Did Johnny helped [help] you with the kids or was he working in the mines?

BETTY MORGAN: Well, sometimes you couldn’t get no [any] work back during the Depression. And he helped me work in the garden and stuff like that, but he made about enough to buy a sack of flour, but he helped when he was around.