Oral History Interview with Della Smith

Q: Della was [were] you born here in Whitley County?

SMITH: Yes, I was.

Q: Right around where you live now?

SMITH: Out here on the south end of Williamsburg.

Q: When did you have your kids?

SMITH: Well, I was married when I was fifteen years old, and I’d been married ten months and eleven days when my first child was born.

Q: Did you know what you was [were] getting into?

SMITH: Sure, I knew what I was getting into. Well, when I met him, I didn’t even know who he was, there seem[ed] to be a strong dawn between us. I kept inquiring till I found out who he was. Well, I didn’t see or hear from him anymore and then he was wanting him a girlfriend. His first cousin called him and told him that she had found him a girlfriend. I had seen him out at Redbird Church, she wrote me a letter and signed his name to it and when I answered it, he got it, and I wrote to him. I answered her letters to him for a long time and I got a letter from him one day. The first letter I got from him went to the wrong post office. There was an old griss [grist] mill down there and my half-brother had went to them [that] mill to get some corn ground and when he brought the letter back he said, "I[‘ve] got you a letter and I’ll give it to you if you’ll me read it.” I said, “well, you can read it, just give it here and let me read it first.” He handed it to me and when I read it, I handed it back to him and he said, "I’ve already read it and stuck it back together with molasses".

Q: How old was Clarence then?

SMITH: He was twenty and I was sixteen.

Q: Was that considered young?

SMITH: Yeah, it was considered young to get married. I liked a few days being sixteen and he was twenty. Well, I wrote to him for a 1ong time. I answered his cousin’s letters, he got them, and I got a letter from him one day saying he was going to Cincinnati and one from her that said that was the first one that he had wrote to me, and said, “I didn’t go to Corbin.” I wrote to him and ask[ed] him who had been writing to me and signed your name to it and he up and told me. He came to the church that I was attending and took me home from church. He come [came] to see me every Sunday. You wasn’t [weren’t] allowed to do no [any] courting on Sunday evening after church and you had to leave before it got dark.

Q: Where would you court?

SMITH: Sitting on the front porch or out on the front yard. One night, he stayed till after dark. My mother walked in, an[d] set a lamp in behind us. We was [were] sitting in front of the fireplace on a box. We didn't have no [a] couch, it was a covered wooden box. My mother brought a lamp in and put it on the mantel behind us were [where] it reflected our shadow till she could watch. The fifth time he came to see me, I went home with him already married, we were married at my home and believe me, I wasn't allowed to get away from the house with him. My mother tried to talk me out of it she said, "you don't love him,” said, “he[‘s] just going for you cause you’re a pretty little girl and for what he can get from you.” And I said "Momma, I think more of him than anything else I [have] ever looked at," and she said, "well, then go to it,” and so we did.

Q: So, you've been married how many years?

SMITH: Fifty-seven last June.

Q: Did you have all your kids at home?

SMITH: Every one of them.

Q: What was it like?

SMITH: It was painful.

Q: Did they give you anything?

SMITH: Well, they tried to give me some whiskey with one of them, but I

didn't take it. They would give me some tea sometimes. Once in particular, they had me to sit over a--I guess, it was a lard can with steaming pine limbs in it.

Q: It that to ease the pain?

SMITH: Imagine it helped [to] open to [the] mouth of the womb. I had a midwife with my four first ones. I was two days and nights delivering the four first ones but, the last ones, the other eight, I had a doctor with.

Q: What was his name?

SMITH: Well, I had Dr. McGever (??) with part of them and Doctor Brown with most of them. I had one in Ohio, and I don't know the doctor’s name that delivered him.

Q: Did he come to the home then in Ohio?

SMITH: Yeah, we lived at Lancaster, Ohio then. Well, I woke up at 3:00 and had to use the potty, we didn't have inside plumbing. So, my husband wanted to get up and get the doctor. I told him, I was sleepy. I laid down and went back to bed. I went back to sleep just about as fast as I hit the bed. I waked [woke] up at 6:00 to use the potty and he said, "you ain’t [aren’t] telling me, I’m going to go get the doctor.” I hadn’t had a[ny] pain. It was about 6:00 then, my mom was staying with me she said, "I’ll get up and fix the children some breakfast and fix your bed so we can throw away the things that was [were] on your bed," and said "you get up if you feel like it and fix the children some breakfast and I'll fix your bed and get the room straightened up.” So, when I got up I was in the kitchen fixing some gravy for the children's breakfast, I still hadn’t had a[ny] pain when the doctor come. It was pouring with rain; my husband showed the doctor how to come [there]. He didn't see the doctor pass [by]. He was standing on the man’s porch and the doctor when [went] on up the hill. He came down and into our house the doctor said, "where’s the patient, she’s not ready to deliver, she'll have to go to the hospital." He said, "I’ve got four operations this morning and they begin at 8:00.” I thought, “nope, I’m not going to no [any] hospital.” So, he said, she’ll have to go to bed and let me examine her to see if she's ready to deliver.” I went to bed, and he said "oh yes she's ready, she[‘s]already advanced four fingers,” and he give [gave] me a shot and it seems to me that he gave it to me in the neck. He started washing his hands, he got his rubber gloves about halfway off. I was laying cross ways in the bed and the baby almost hit the floor, he grabbed it. I had one pain, and that baby was there. My mother washed the baby and dressed it.

Q: Did they make you stay in bed?

SMITH: He tried to, but I didn’t.

Q: Was it customary to stay in bed?

SMITH: Yes, for nine days. When one of them was born on the sixth day, I got up and cleaned my house and fixed my children something to eat. I stayed up when that one was born in Ohio, she was born the 2nd and we moved the 16th from Ohio.

Q: Did they tell you that Herman had Down Syndrome right then?

SMITH: The doctor told me, "Mrs. Smith there isn’t a thing wrong with your baby. I mothered too many children to know that he’s not like other children, Finally, they was [were] a holding some kind of a clinic in Corbin, doctors from Louisville was [were] holding a clinic up there. I went up there to the doctor, the one that had been burnt so bad and I told him, “I want you to examine this child too. I said, “I want to know [what] exactly is wrong with him and if there is any cure.” I said, "he has not improved like a child should," and he said, "alright". When the doctor come [came] out with him, he took him into another room, talked to him and measured his hands, his head and when he come [came] back out, I said,

“what did you find wrong with him?” He said, "the nurse will be out to

talk to you in a few minutes.”

SMITH: Well, in a few minutes the nurse came out, had me to go into another room said, "you want to know exactly what’s wrong with your child and if there is anything that can be done for it.” I said, “that[‘s] exactly what I want to know.” She said, “have you ever heard of a mongoloid?” I said, "no I never did [have.]” she said, "a mongoloid (??) is what it is called.” I said, "I know he’s not a real (??), an (??) don’t [doesn’t] know one person from another.” And I said, “he knows everyone in the family.” She said, “he knows when he's being treated good and treated bad.” She said, "I understand that.” She said—I said, “I've got a cousin that has that and doesn’t no one person from the other." She said, “it doesn't even know that's it's in this world." But, I said, "Herman does,” and she said, “that’s the name for it.” I said, "well is there anything that can be done for it?” I said, "I know he's not like other children” she said, "honey, that's the best thing I ever heard from a mother is to know that her child is not normal.”

Q: There was no schooling or nothing back then that they could do for

them?

SMITH: Well, yes there were a little [few] later on, at that time, there wasn't-- if there was, I didn't know nothing [anything] about it. I said, "he has to have more care than the other children, and I said, "I understand that he is not like the other ones." She said, "honey, there is no use, it happens in all walks of life,” and that science has not found out what causes it or

if there is any cure for it and you'll understand not trying to hide him and letting him meet other people is the main thing. She said, "there was a women [woman] that come [came] in here the other day, she asked me the very same question you asked and I told her. She went to jumping up and down said, “no, my child is not a mongoloid,”” and said she, “all but took the roof off of this building” She said, "she screamed, and she hollered, she said all kind[s] of things said she wouldn’t admit there was anything wrong.” I said, "anybody that’s got [a] good mind would know that he's not normal.”

Q: When your other kids were small, what childhood illnesses did they have?

SMITH: Chickenpox, measles, whooping cough just children’s diseases.

Q: You didn’t have any to die at early childhood?

SMITH: No.

Q: Did they have immunizations then?

SMITH: Yeah, I took them over to Jellico Creek School one time to have their polio test, it was just a lump of sugar with something on it and when they talk about somebody being embarrassed. They ask[d] me what the children's birthdates were, I said "I can't tell you", I said, “if I knew you needed it, I could of [have] brought it with me.” I said "just to come out and say it, I can't.”

Q: You had eleven, right?

SMITH: Fourteen and four miscarriages.

Q: And they all lived?

SMITH: No, the twins died at birth, one breathed three times and [the] other one five.

Q: They were too little?

SMITH: Yeah [you] put them together, they just weighed three pounds they were seven[th] months [month] babies and Herman was thirty-three years old when he died.

Q: Was there any thought of birth control back then?

SMITH: No there wasn’t [any] no such thing as birth control

Q1 Nobody talked about it?

SMITH: No, you never talked about sexual intercourse or anything like that, not even growing out of teenage to womanhood.

Q: What did you feed the Kids?

SMITH: When they were little, the four first ones, I raised them on the breast and fed them off of the table. When I didn’t have anything to mashup, I would chew it then feed it to them but, that chewing was kind of going out back in them [those] days. You fixed food for- your children, that you could mash up.

Q: Where there ever times when you didn’t have enough food for them?

SMITH: Plenty of times. There has [have] been weeks at a time there wasn't a thing in my house to eat except meal. You couldn’t even by no [any] lard or cooking oil. Soon as they got to be a month or two old, I would start feeding my babies off of the table. Then the latter part of the family, bottle fed them. As I gained my strength back, my milk would dry up till I wouldn’t have enough milk.

Q: What did they put in the bottle?

SMITH: It was cow’s milk, not the ones that was [were] bottle fed from the start. As I got able to cook and wait on the children, why, my milk went to drying up and even if I did have milk, it would drain down to the end of my dress. It would just run on out. It was so blue it didn’t even look like milk but, during the Depression you couldn’t buy no [any] meat or

seasoning of no Kind. We brought [bought] us a bottle of mineral oil and I cooked with mineral oil making meal gravy, till it would go through you. You wouldn’t even know if it did go through you, you would see a greasy spot when you got up, it just went on and left the corn meal.

Q: You raised a garden in the summer?

SMITH: Yeah, when we could raise a garden. A lot of places we didn't have no [any] mules to plow up the garden. There wasn’t no [any] such things [thing] as tractors out in the country back then and if we could get out and rent a mule, people wouldn’t hardly let other people use their mules. There wasn’t no [any] money in circulation. My husband worked many a days [day] for- a bushel of corn or a bushel of taters, then he got a job on the WTA (??) working for 75 cents a day. When payday would come, he would have to walk to Williamsburg to get his pay and carry his groceries back in [a] coffee sack throwed [thrown] across his shoulder. Back then, your groceries were a little bit of sugar, pound of coffee, four pound[s] of lard and maybe a sack of meal or a sack of flour. When I was growing up, I

Didn’t see no [any] five- or ten-pound sacks, we just had 25-pound sacks. You saved your sacks and washed to make the children’s clothes out of them.

Q: Made them little dresses?

SMITH: Yes, panties and slips.

Q: You sewed that by hand?

SMITH: Yeah, most of the time, I didn't have a sewing machine.

Q: What about toys?

SMITH: Well, they consisted of oat boxes, match boxes, spool strung up on the thread, matches boxes strung on the spools for wheels, you made tops out of spools. Once in a while, you could get a bag of marbles for a nickel. The girls played bob jacks with little rocks. Children played back then, they didn't sit and fight. They had to work so much and had little time to play, that they enjoyed playing.

Q: Did you ever have any books?

SMITH: No, not when they were little, not till they got old enough to go to school. You was [were] seven years old before you went to school because, the teacher wouldn't fool with you because, it was usually a one-room schoolhouse and she had all [of the] grades. She didn't have time to train the little ones.

Q: Did they older kids take care of the younger ones?

SMITH: Yeah, I never had a hard girl in my life. While I was in the bed, Clarence and the girls would cook and [did] what had to be done.

Q: What did you do for diapers?

SMITH: You used ever[y] old dress tail, shirt tall [tail], wore out slip or stiff sheet. Whatever you could use. Your sheets consisted of yard-wide fabric sewed together and seamed at each end. You would use your old grass seed sacks for towels.

Q: You had to wash them out by hand?

SMITH: Yeah, I never had a child to have pampers in my life. A lot of the time, I had to go to the river and wash. I washed them on a board and boiled them in lye. I had the prettiest clothes that you have now a days. I gathered ginseng weed for my mother to wash with to make her clothes white to use for blueing (??) you don’t use that now; you use fabric softener. I carried a many [lots] of a sand rocks and beat them up to make the floors white. You didn't have rugs on floors, you just had pretty white pine planks on you[r] floors and you would scrub it on that. It would take that grease up too.

Q: If the kids got real[ly] sick, was [were] there doctors you could take them to?

SMITH: No, if you got a doctor to come to your home, you had to take a mule for him to ride, then you had to take him back to town. It took so long to get to town to get a doctor.

Q: Did the neighbors help?

SMITH: Oh, yes neighbors would come in. If somebody died, if it was a man, the men would come in [and] wash him, shave him, dress him. We usually had a coffin maker out in the country that made all the coffins for the people around and if it was a women [woman], the neighbor women would come in and wash her, comb her hair and get her ready for burial.

Q: If the kids were sick, would the neighbors help?

SMITH: Oh, yes and if any of the neighbors got sick, they would come and sit with them during the night, you just doctored yourself.

Q: How did you doctor them for bad colds and stuff?

SMITH: I believe we used vie save to doctor them with. Sometimes, you would let them get a little mint and sniff it—get them to sneezing or something. Branch mint or peppermint, sometimes you would get out and gather birch. Birch was more of a flavor[ing] for tea and spicewood. You could gather it and make you[r] teas out of it.

Q: If they got diaper rash, what would you do?

SMITH: You went and got you a little piece of clay out of the chimney and

Beat it and get up and put it in a rag and dust it on them. Keep it washed off every time its kidneys would act up or its bowels would move, wash it, and dust some fresh dirt on it.

Q: You must of [have] been busy from early in the morning till late at night?

SMITH: Yes, you raised your own cotton, you picked the seeds out of your cotton, and you batted your cotton to go in you[r] quilt. You raised your own broom corn and made your own brooms. Frank Carr had a broom factory over at Piney Grove. He would make them on the halfs and he would sell his brooms. When me and Clarence went to housekeeping, we had ten dollars to buy groceries with and we spend [spent] nine of it to buy stuff to go to housekeeping, I brought 25 pounds of flour, 25 pounds of meal, some salt, back then, you bought salt by the pound. I think it was two cents a pound. I brought [bought] soda and baking powders, [a] pound of coffee, coal bucket, shovel, stove pipe, water bucket and dipper for nine dollars. Use[d] to when the kids were little and times were so hard, I would go over to Frank Carr’s, he got in a big shipment of old spool-healed sharp toed high top women’s shoes. I would go over there and get me a pair when I could get [a]hold of a quarter and go. I would cut the heal off and wear them for every day, sometimes I would cut the top off cause I didn’t have time to do all that lacing.

Q: Wish you could go back there?

SMITH: No.

Q: It was too hard?

SMITH: It was too hard. You get a sheet tied up of dirty clothes on your back and a child on your hip, another one just dragging along holding on to your shirt tail, start out to the river to do your washing and you was [were] tired before you could even start the water to boil for your clothes.

Q: What kept you going?

SMITH: I Just knew it was my duty, why, I really enjoyed life back then. The only thing I didn’t enjoy was that my husband drunk [drank] back then. He couldn't get [any] no job[s], so he tried to drown his worries in whiskey,

Q: Now they say men should help with raising the kids, did he help any?

SMITH: He did sometimes but, them [those] children were all mine, and I really didn't want no [any] help with them. I wouldn't call on his mother or mine---only if it was an emergency.

SMITH: One time I got my mother to tend to my children. I just had two, one of them was just a little baby and the other one was walking. I got her to tend to them one afternoon so I

could go pick peas on the halves, they had a field full of peas down there. I know I didn't have money to buy soup beans through the winter, I wanted them [those] peas to eat. You could pick a coffee sack full in a few minutes. I went to go pick some peas on the halves and left the children with my mom. The oldest one wouldn’t let her touch him,

he sat on the back porch and cried all the time I was gone. He’d say, “boy I wish my little mommy would come home.” Mom said, "don't you ever leave them [those] kids with me again, if you've got something you have to do, tell me and I'll do the work but, I won't keep the kids.” She said, "I cried with him, I felt so sorry for him, I cried with him.”

Q: What is [are] peas on the halves?

SMITH: I got half of what I picked, I had to give the people that owed [owned] them half of what I picked, that’s the way we shared cropped for a long time. The other feller would furnish the team and the field and we would raise the crop and give us half of what we made but, we always got our garden [for] free, but, we would have to give half of [the] corn, tobacco, whatever else we growed [grew].

Q: Did the kids work in the garden?

SMITH: Yeah, when they got big enough to work in the garden, it wasn’t really as bad as it sounds.

Q: Did the kids mind?

SMITH: Yes, they minded.

Q: When they were little, did they [know] knew to mind or did you have

certain disciplines [discipline methods]?

SMITH: Well sometimes they would get rough a switching. They got a switching; they didn't get a spanking. I had smacked one a time or two, but I usually got a switch and whipped them, they didn’t seem to mind it like children do now-a-days. When it come [bedtime came]

bedtime, when Hestel (??) was little, I believe that boy could of [have] laid down in a rock pile and sleep, I’ve seen him lay with his head on a rock, I always went to the corn field and howed [hewed] corn and canned, whatever needed to be done.

Q: You didn't have bay [baby] cribs?

. SMITH: No, you took a quilt to the field and set the baby down on it, you

just knew you had it to do.

Q: [Did] the baby sleep with you when they were real[ly] little?

SMITH: When we just had four Kids, we lived in a one-room house, we had two beds it. [It was] just wide enough to have two beds and a walkway in the middle. Then on the other end, it had a fireplace and a little old step cook stove. Clarence slept with the two boys, and I slept with the two girls, you didn't bed up boys and girls together when they were little back in my days [day] and I still don't believe in it. I believe children taught more than they was [were] back in them [those] days.

Q: A lot less backtalk?

SMITH: Yeah, there was a lot less backtalk, I don't remember my dad ever hitting me. But one time, he was putting out a garden, he was planting some peanuts. He told me to keep the chickens out of the garden so he could go shell some more peanuts. I let an old hen in there and she scratched up what he had already planted. He hit me that’s the only time I remember that he hit me.

Q: Do you know any midwives?

SMITH: Susie Taylor was one and Delthie Croley (??) was one.

Q: They had no special training, they just took to this?

SMITH: I believe they had some training; all they knew was to catch the baby and cut the cord you did the rest of it yourself.

Q: Well, Della, we thank you.

SMITH: You’re just more than welcome.