Oral History Interview with Faye Estep

CASSIE MULLINS: I’ve got this turned on, and for the record, I like to have this on there, it’s July the twenty first. If you don’t care, just state your name and where we are today. Just go ahead and do that.

FAYE ESTEP: You mean right now?

C.M.: Yeah.

ESTEP: Okay, well do you want me to put it in...

C.M.: Yeah, that’s fine, just so that we have you stating your own name. You can just go ahead.

ESTEP: I’m Faye Combs Estep. I don’t know what else you wanted.

C.M.: That’s fine, that’s just fine. And now, of course we have been visiting a little while today, and getting to know each other. But first of all, why don’t tell you me where you grew up. 1:00I know we’ve talked about this earlier, but so we can get it on the tape. Where you grew up and went to school and things.

ESTEP: Well, I grew up in Hindman and went to school here.

C.M.: Okay.

ESTEP: Took my piano lessons here.

C.M.: And now did you got to school, did you start off in Kindergarten?

ESTEP: Yeah.

C.M.: Here in Hindman.

ESTEP: I went to that building up there, where the chimney is standing now.

C.M.: That’s right.

ESTEP: And we had clay. And I can remember us playing with that clay. And I hated to see that Kindergarten be torn down so bad. I told your daddy the other day. I went there to buy a book. One of these Knott County...

C.M.: History?

ESTEP: They’re heavy.

C.M.: Yeah, I know.

ESTEP: And I went up there to buy a book and I said, I think it is a disgrace that these buildings were all torn down. And I knew it wasn’t my business, 2:00but it hurts me every time I drive up that road.

C.M.: I know, gosh, oh they tore those down....I don’t even know.

ESTEP: It was before he came.

C.M.: Yeah, like the sixties and things.

ESTEP: They started tearing them down.

C.M.: I think some of them, maybe did the Kindergarten, it burnt down, I think.

ESTEP: Did what?

C.M.: I think the old Kindergarten burnt down. I think it caught on fire, it’s been a while though.

ESTEP: Seems like they tore it down.

C.M.: I don’t know, I don’t know.

ESTEP: I never did know of it burning, but now I could be all wrong.

C.M.: I don’t know either. I just remember there were, because back in the early years there were so many fires.

ESTEP: Yeah.

C.M.: So you now you went to Kindergarten over there and then you went to grade school.

ESTEP: Yeah, and they had a big, you know the chimney is big, fireplace. And they had a man that would keep the fire going, 3:00you know and have the coal in there and the wood, and what all they needed. And we sat around a little, long table, not very high off the floor. And that’s where we played. Oh, we thought that was the finest thing. When we played with that clay, and they would show us and tell us what animals and things to make.

C.M.: Well, that’s pretty neat.

ESTEP: And it just, you know, you just wanted to go to Kindergarten so bad. I said, I think everybody pronounces that “Kindergarden”, but it’s a “t”.

C.M.: I know, I say it that way too.

ESTEP: Kindergarten, now that is really the way that’s supposed to be, but I never do.

C.M.: Yeah.

ESTEP: But anyhow, oh, I just enjoyed that and you know, you weren’t afraid, 4:00one bit afraid to let your child walk from home here in town...

C.M.: That’s right because you lived at home, you didn’t live on the grounds.

ESTEP: No, I lived where ( ) preacher [Laughing] C.M.: That’s right.

ESTEP: And my daddy had that built.

C.M.: So you would just walk down to school.

ESTEP: And we had a playhouse around where they dug out and built that garage.

C.M.: Right.

ESTEP: We had, oh we thought we had the finest playhouse. And we’d make lemonade and we’d....There was a girl that played with us and there was an old, lady, she lived and stayed across from us, across the highway. It wasn’t a highway, it was just a little narrow road. And she would bring stuff from her house and we would make the lemonade. And sometimes we would sell that lemonade just for paper money. For paper money, it’s just 5:00comical what children will do. That right today, feels more like home to me than this does.

C.M.: Yeah, because that’s where you grew up, I mean.

ESTEP: Yeah, that’s really where I grew up. And so, then he had, he sold it. He sold it to the parsonage and had to find this place. And this stone that was taken out of this place right here. You know where Sheldon Maggard’s store was, where I told you ( ) would sit on that wide bed in the window and look over that way. He was thinking about home. Because I knew him pretty well. And he was smarter than the other one. But 6:00he was thinking about all that, about how he was raised there. And everybody had a cow. You couldn’t go in a store in this town and buy a quart of milk.

C.M.: Because everybody had their own.

ESTEP: They had to have their own cows. There wasn’t any milk brought in here. And you had to have your own cow. And they’d fix pastures for them, you know. Then finally, way after so long they started, when the roads started being built, you know. And they could drive in, all right, they started bringing the milk. I said, you know, back then, 7:00people had, they had it hard.

C.M.: I’d say so.

ESTEP: When you get to thinking about what they went though. My grandmother, she was the sweetest little, old thing there ever was, we were crazy about her, you know. She was about five feet tall. She just loved us to death, and she lived in that house. They built that house that was next to the old Baptist church that burned.

C.M.: Okay.

ESTEP: And across from Doc Kelly’s house, kind of, more or less across from it. I believe Doc Kelly is the one that finally bought it after grandma and grandpa, both, were dead. We would go out there, and she had two daughters that lived in Saint 8:00Louis. And they were Dora and Allie. Well, Aunt Dora married a lawyer and Aunt Allie married a Daniels. I don’t know what he did. But anyhow, she would, grandma would go to Saint Louis to visit them, you know. Go down to Prestonsburg, I guess ride a horse from here to Lackey. And get on the train, and they’d meet her then at Prestonsburg on the train. You had to go across a bridge. And I remember there was a tollhouse, I stayed down there about every summer. Because Aunt M( ) and Uncle French didn’t have a girl. Well now I believe Uncle Vernon had a girl. But the others, there were three boys, Uncle French’s, one doctor and two lawyers. They’re all dead, you 9:00know Uncle French and Uncle Vernon left here, they were lawyers. So, my daddy went to, oh what is the name of that school down in Lexington? That teaches, oh typing and all that stuff. It’s got a name. It’s got a name that’s kind of hard....Oh, it’s high to go there to that school today.

C.M.: In Lexington?

ESTEP: Yeah, now can you think of a name of an old school, it was the first college.

C.M.: Transylvania?

ESTEP: Transylvania, that’s it. He went to Transylvania.

C.M.: Yeah, that’s a good school.

ESTEP: Well, Uncle Joe went there too. And he was the one, he had a Ph.D.. And he wrote poetry and all that stuff. Now, they’ve about quit mentioning him, but they’ve 10:00got him down at Louisville, they’ve got him in Lexington, got him everywhere. Well my dad went to Transylvania and he studied business. Well, he could type, now this is a terrible tale to tell, and I guess people wouldn’t believe me. [Laughter - Mullins] But he could type a hundred and thirty-five words a minute.

C.M.: My goodness.

ESTEP: Now you know that’s going to town.

C.M.: I can’t imagine. I’d never be able to do that.

ESTEP: And he was really good. Well, he and Uncle French, now that’s his brother, they never did hit it off like they should. Whether they meant any harm 11:00toward each other. But they had the Courthouse in an old building down there, at Calloway-Napier’s, across from Calloway-Napier’s.

C.M.: Okay.

ESTEP: I think it had been a movie house, silent movie house at one time. Because we’d all, we’d want to go and see, one that was continued, you know, a movie that was continued. And they didn’t say a word, you know. They just had music going and we just had to watch it. [Laughing] You wouldn’t believe what we went through, what we had to go through. I don’t guess, but it’s all true.

C.M.: Well that’s something. When you were....Oh I’m sorry, go ahead. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.

ESTEP: Well, my daddy was a court reporter 12:00then in this old courthouse there, they’d never built one up where that one is now. And so they took that for a courthouse for a while. And he was the court reporter. And I do not know today, what happened. But my daddy must have got so mad at one of them, I think it was Uncle French, his own brother.

C.M.: Uh oh.

ESTEP: And Hillard Smith, you’ve heard of Hillard Smith, lived in that white house, out where they’re going to tear down that old high school. You know, they’re going to tear that down. And Hazard is going to take part of it. Now, I don’t think that’s right. And they’re building this...

C.M.: Yeah, the ( ) down there.

ESTEP: A what, this is a 13:00superintendent’s building they’re building up here on one sixty. And they’re wanting to take part of that stone and do something with it. And they want to keep part of it here. And he could type like nobody’s business.

C.M.: That’s amazing. Did you all, when you were in school at Hindman, did you all ever have typing or anything like that?

ESTEP: No we didn’t have any. I tell what I hated too, we didn’t have any foreign language, I said old Latin and Cicero and Caesar.

C.M.: You did have Latin?

ESTEP: Yeah, we had Latin, but we had no French, no Spanish, no nothing like that.

C.M.: I know they had French at one time, but that must have been later.

ESTEP: Well, it was later, it was after I left, after I got through.

C.M.: After you were there. Well what kinds of classes, I guess talking about high school, did you enjoy?

ESTEP: Well, I enjoyed about all of them.

C.M.: Did you?

ESTEP: Oh and we had the cooking. I told you about the cooking class.

C.M.: Well tell me about that again, I think that’s interesting.

ESTEP: Okay, we had, when 14:00we graduated, of course, we went over to the, where the grades went up to eight, and that was where the library is right now. That’s where we had our dinner, you know they have for the alumni and all like that. Well, don’t you know, they made the freshmen fix it.

C.M.: That’s what people have said. They told me that.

ESTEP: Oh,...

C.M.: What was that like?

ESTEP: I said this was not right, putting this on us. But they had been doing it to the rest of them, back of us.

C.M.: Right. I guess so you’d know how to prepare all that, I don’t know.

ESTEP: Well we, I don’t think we prepared all of that. We told them we couldn’t.

C.M.: Yeah, or you had to serve it.

ESTEP: I think at the school they prepared some of it, over there at the kitchen, you know. 15:00And so, we made, we had a sewing class. Now we had a lot of things that were good. And my mother was a real good seamstress and she got it from right over there. She took weaving. They taught weaving, honey, where you pushed these things. I’m so sorry that I didn’t try to take that on the side some ways, outside of school.

C.M.: But your mother did?

ESTEP: My mother did. And so, and she took sewing lessons. And we had one teacher, I’m about afraid to mention any names, then. [Laughter] They gone and distant now, I guess. But we had a Miss Courtney, now I don’t believe ( ) until 16:00I went to her.

C.M.: I haven’t heard her name mentioned.

ESTEP: But she was the sewing teacher. Well, we made our aprons, that we were to serve the night that they had, the alumni, we’d call now. And it had a band around here and gathered skirt, you know and a pocket here, and straps behind that buttoned down to the band that went around our waist. So in the sixth grade we made our apron, that we were to serve in, for that year when they graduated, you know. I was scared to death, I’d pour hot coffee on somebody. [Laughing] That’s what scared me.

C.M.: That would scare me.

ESTEP: Going around them and over them, 17:00yeah sure you’d have been scared. Well you see now it’s not that way. I don’t know who serves it now.

C.M.: We do, the people that work there, I do. I usually work it.

ESTEP: Yeah. Well, I know they don’t make the ones, like when I was.

C.M.: No, it’s not the same.

ESTEP: It’s different that way. But I didn’t care to do it, but we made our aprons. And then she thought we were good enough to start a dress. Well, my mother sent me to the store to pick out my material, what I wanted. Well, I picked it out and we were making cute dresses, you know. Well, I went to Miss Courtney, now that was her name, Miss Courtney, and I went to her for some help on that dress. I don’t remember what part. 18:00I took the scissors and the dress [Laughing] I get to thinking back and I don’t know how anybody stood it. But we didn’t have many like that. She said, Faye, just as mean as any human. Come to find out, she stayed there one year. They got rid of her.

C.M.: She must not have been very popular.

ESTEP: They were afraid from, away from here. We had no local teachers, not one local teacher did we have in that school, when I was going. They’d get them from out east. And some of them were rich people. And they’d get these rich people, would come in and teach and work. And they had, what do they call them when they send them out to beg for money? [Laughing] 19:00What would they call them?

C.M.: I don’t know.

ESTEP: Well, that’s what they had two or three, they sent on the road. They said, we didn’t know what silk hose were, oh they told the biggest lot of stories on us. We got so mad, we liked to died. Now we weren’t full up and stocked up with silk hose at that time, but we had silk hose. And you know, they’d just tell things that weren’t true to get money.

C.M.: Yeah.

ESTEP: It made some of us so mad, we couldn’t see straight. Because they would bring them in here and let them go out and do that, now that was Miss Stone and Miss Pettit, you know. And I can remember those two. Now, I wasn’t born when 20:00they came here, but I can remember them well.

C.M.: You remember both of them real well? What do you remember about Miss Pettit?

ESTEP: Well, just that she came in here and they put up, right at the start they had to put up tents. And then in cold weather, I don’t know what in the world they did, because I wasn’t here. I wasn’t born when they came in here. See, they came here in nineteen two. And when they had the fifty....Have they got anything that they can show that on? Over there now, do you know of anything that your Dad or anybody’s got?

C.M.: About the fiftieth anniversary?

ESTEP: The fiftieth anniversary.

C.M.: There’s a newspaper that was done.

ESTEP: Well, Sheldon Maggard drove the wagon. And you now when 21:00Uncle Sol Everage went over there. He heard about them being in Hazard. And it must have been hot weather, because he walked bare foot to Hazard, and asked those women if they would come there and have a school, so his grandchildren could get an education. And you know, they decided to come. Well, when they had this fiftieth thing, they showed it all. They had the Hillside, we called it the Hillside, that’s where they dug up and built up. But it was between, it was between the hospital, that’s the only one standing, and the Orchard House.

C.M.: Okay, yeah. 22:00ESTEP: Now that was the Orchard House, right there where they eat it all now. That’s what they named it the Orchard House. And it was, can you take any of this out, if it’s not right? [Laughing] C.M.: Well we, I mean, people say different things sometimes because things change.

ESTEP: Yeah.

C.M.: But yeah, the person that will look at it, will know the facts.

ESTEP: Because there are things they put in the newspaper, you know, that, what’s that called....

C.M.: I know what you’re talking about. Yeah, they’ll check everything, because we have all these journals and papers and things, that are dated. And things where they can look back and find out about buildings.

ESTEP: Yeah.

C.M.: Yeah, there’s ways of finding out, because it is hard for everybody to remember the same things.

ESTEP: They don’t remember it the same way. But they’ve told some things in that paper that absolutely 23:00are not true. I know what I’m talking about. And one thing won’t interest you probably one bit, or I don’t know. Now Grandma Estep and Grandpa Estep, I didn’t know them. I didn’t know them. But they came here from Virginia, Saint Paul. And she had an Uncle Charlie Neal, they put his name in there as three or four different names. And he wasn’t married and he came here to Bosco. And you know there are a lot of people that are just land crazy. Instead of being money crazy, they just buy up every inch of land they can get. Well, he put this store up and he could not read nor write. 24:00Now she said, Grandma Estep after we married, and Bart he never did sit down and ask her any of this stuff, or she’d tell it. But I did, I’d listen for hours. And she was kin to what’s her name, that married the Cash. The Carter.

C.M.: Oh, June Carter.

ESTEP: June Carter Cash. She was related to her. Grandma was a Carter before she married Nathaniel Estep, of course that’s getting over in Floyd county now. That’s not about the school. [Laughter - Mullins] But I called, told David one day, I said, they’re getting these things all mixed-up, 25:00because grandma knew what she told me was true. And so, but she told me, she didn’t have when she came over here, Uncle Charlie went to Cincinnati to bring in goods. Sometimes they’d bring it down the river on a boat. And then put it in something that they could get it to Bosco, you know, where he was. And why he ever, I don’t know now. Oh, I wish I’d have asked her more. Why he ever came to Bosco, I don’t know. But what I tell, I want to tell the truth and grandma knew. She just had real good, she was real good mentally. And so she said that he ran a store. 26:00And you know, they traded with gold then.

C.M.: Oh yeah.

ESTEP: Yeah, I guess you’ve read about that. Well she said he would get that gold and he would pull up a board under the floor and have this gold in pots. I guess they were iron pots and put it under that floor. Well now you know somebody seen him, because after he died. He died with small pox. It had started in Cincinnati and he went there to get goods, they called it. That’s what they called it, he went to get goods. And he came back and was real sick. And there was nothing they could doctor it with.

C.M.: Oh, I know, at that time there wasn’t.

ESTEP: No, and he died and he left everything he had, Grandma had one brother, 27:00Ballard Carter. Well, Ethel Sturgill, you know her.

C.M.: Yeah, I know her real well.

ESTEP: Her grandpa was a brother to Grandma Estep, so that’s how much kin Barte was to them. Of course that’s not a whole lot, but it’s kin. He decides to sell all his land he inherited over there and go to Prestonsburg. And he was really, what you’d call a builder. The high school at Wayland and the one that was at Garrad. I think they’ve torn the Garrad one down. They finally built one. And he was the one that built those high schools. Well, he sold his part 28:00of land there. And he had brought(*) it from Bosco to Garrad, that Uncle Charlie Neal had. I know that doesn’t interest you too much, when Barte was raised over there. But I told him, I told David that they’ve got things wrong here, because Grandma wouldn’t have sat and told me that.

C.M.: Yeah, it hard to....

ESTEP: I’d talk to her for hours.

C.M.: To keep everything straight, I think over the years between people.

ESTEP: I could remember though real well, I could remember, better than I can now, even.

C.M.: I know that’s why I wanted to make sure I got to talk to you, because I’ve been trying to find people that lived 29:00here different times.

ESTEP: And I got off into Floyd County.

C.M.: Oh, well that’s okay. Like one question I really think is interesting is just finding out about being in school and things. Of course it would have been a lot different, but a lot of things would have been the same. You know, you still had to do your homework and go to class.

ESTEP: Oh yeah.

C.M.: But I mean, I guess one thing that I wanted to get from you is, what was it like being in high school then? Did you graduate in twenty-eight?

ESTEP: Yeah.

C.M.: Okay. So you graduated from high school in nineteen twenty-eight. That’s what I thought. What was it, you know, that’s a totally different time period. What was it like going to school in Hindman then?

ESTEP: Well it was just like you got here and wade a mud hole. [Laughter - Mullins] You didn’t have any streets, any sidewalks. They told us never to get in the water, you know, like the forks of the creek. A lot of them, especially boys, would skate 30:00on that water up to school.

C.M.: Really, when it was frozen?

ESTEP: Yeah. I thought one day I would just love to get on there. Well, I did, and one of my legs went through it. It had thawed enough. Well, I said I’ll get skinned over this. I went home. My daddy wasn’t home then. And my mother said, now you remember what your daddy told you, never to get on that ice. I said, I remembered and I’ll never.....

END OF TAPE 20 A 35, FAYE ESTEP, SIDE A BEGINNING OF TAPE 20 A 35, FAYE ESTEP, SIDE B ESTEP: Right pretty dresses, but they weren’t formals or anything like that.

C.M.: So, you all just had more of like a simpler graduation. 31:00ESTEP: Simple, it was simple. Yeah, it was simple. Because my mother could have made me a real, real....well she did make me a pretty dress for graduation, but it wasn’t formal. You didn’t go half naked then, they didn’t let you, away down here and away down the back cut out, you know, like they do. I don’t know if they do that up here or not.

C.M.: Well, no, now everybody wears the cap and gown, you know, the black cap and gown.

ESTEP: No, we didn’t have any cap and gown. We just had our dresses on. And the boys, they usually had a suit on.

C.M.: Yeah, I think that would be nice. I mean, that sounds like it would be real pretty.

ESTEP: I thought it was pretty. And then we usually had a pretty good crowd, you know, 32:00of folks of the ones that were graduating.

C.M.: Do you remember about how many people you graduated with?

ESTEP: Yeah, wait just a minute now, Geneva Smith, you remember her, Jim Duke, ( ) and Topsy Clark. Oh lord, I know one died not too long after that. I can’t think of his name. 33:00There was maybe seven or eight.

C.M.: In your graduating class?

ESTEP: That was all.

C.M.: Isn’t that amazing, you think about now, there’s like two hundred in a class.

ESTEP: No, it was nothing like that.

C.M.: Yeah, but that’s pretty neat though.

ESTEP: Because you see we had to start when they came here and we got ready to go to school, old enough to go to school. But I wasn’t, as I said, I wasn’t even born when they came here. And so, but now they tried to teach us things.

C.M.: Yeah.

ESTEP: I don’t think they do that now. Do they teach sewing and cooking?

C.M.: Some places have home ec., but I never had any of those classes when I was in school.

ESTEP: Well, I sure got scared to death of Miss Courtney.

C.M.: It sounds like it.

ESTEP: When she said, she said, "FAYE." Well I didn’t know what I had done. 34:00And I said, "yes?" She said, "don’t you ever hand those scissors to me like that again." I never did finish my tale. And I said, well how am I handing them to you? And the points were toward her.

C.M.: Oh, that’s why.

ESTEP: Well, she never had told us not to do that. So, I said, well I wasn’t going to jab you with them.

C.M.: You weren’t trying to stab her.

ESTEP: But I knew that if I sassed that woman, because I never did sass any of them, I’d get “F” right on that sewing class. I knew.

C.M.: Good thing you didn’t.

ESTEP: Huh?

C.M.: I said, it’s a good thing you didn’t then.

ESTEP: No I knew I better not. But now, we didn’t have many teachers. We had one, Miss Foote. I’ve never seen anything like that woman. She just stayed one year. They got rid of her. When the children didn’t make good grades and didn’t care for these teachers, they got them out of here. 35:00C.M.: I guess that’s kind of good though. I mean, you wouldn’t want to, I mean it was good for you all to not have to be stuck with them.

ESTEP: Yeah, it was good for us. They tried their best to bring in the best teachers here. And then some of ours got through high school and went to college and started teaching. One by one they’d come back here to teach. Now Bevie Pratt was one, you know her. I bet you she taught English up there forty-five years.

C.M.: That’s amazing.

ESTEP: You can ask you and she can tell you, no she’s...

C.M.: I know she’s real sick.

ESTEP: She’s, what do you call that?

C.M.: Is it Alzheimer’s?

ESTEP: Alzheimer’s.

C.M.: Yeah, I know, I would have loved to have gotten to talk to her, but I knew that I couldn’t.

ESTEP: Have you talked to her any?

C.M.: No.

ESTEP: Well, they’re supposed to be home, I think, in about a week. It was supposed to have been two weeks, not long ago. 36:00Before I went down to Bob’s, it was supposed to be they’d be back in two weeks. But they don’t stay up there any. I don’t have anybody living close to me. Shelby and Mavis out here, and I kind of hate to go, both of them sick. But they treat me real nice, you know. But I’ve never been across that highway, to walk it, since I was in the hospital.