Oral History Interview with Thelma Roberts

CASSIE MULLINS: Get this rolling, make sure I've got these microphones on, yeah.

THELMA ROBERTS: I better not slurp my coffee.

C.M.: Well, you can if you want. You're allowed to slurp coffee on this. [Laughter] I don't reckon anybody will get mad. Okay, today is August the fourth, nineteen ninety-eight. Just go ahead and state your name.

ROBERTS: Thelma Roberts.

C.M.: Okay let's just start off a little bit about where you grew up. Tell me about where you grew up and your family.

ROBERTS: Well, I grew up in Sassafras really up Sassafras Hall, where the Carr Forks Dam is. And what else did you want to know?

C.M.: I guess, just about brothers and sisters or.

ROBERTS: I had an older brother and an 1:00older sister and a younger sister. And my father cut a tree and it fell on him when I was in the eighth grade. And killed him. And that was the reason I ended up going to Hindman Settlement School. Mother had to go to work. And we broke up housekeeping. And I had planned on going to Carr Creek.

C.M.: Right. Because that would have been closer.

ROBERTS: Right. But that happened. So it's just....

C.M.: Yeah, several people I've talked to that's .... It's been something that I didn't know. Several people, that's how they ended up at the settlement school, just because their families needed....

ROBERTS: Well, my older sister had gone to Hindman and stayed in the settlement school. So she was there. And my brother had gone to Carr Creek. So since I had gone to elementary school with the kids at Carr Creek, I had sort of wanted to go to Carr Creek. But I'm glad, not that what happened that sent me there. But it turned out to be a good experience.

C.M.: Okay, now what year did you graduate? 2:00ROBERTS: Fifty-five.

C.M.: Fifty-five. I guess let's talk a little bit about when you first came to the settlement school. Did you start there in high school then?

ROBERTS: Right. Yeah.

C.M.: Freshman year in high school? I guess thinking back on that, how did you feel coming there? Because you stayed there on campus. What was that like?

ROBERTS: Well, with my sister already there and I really knew a lot of the kids, because in visiting with her, I had become familiar with the school. It wasn't bad. It was sort of like a family. I think if she had not been there and I had just gone and had not had any contact with the school, that it would have probably been difficult for me. 3:00Because I was quiet and shy. I would have had a hard time adjusting, I think.

C.M.: Did you get homesick very much?

ROBERTS: No, I didn't, because home was not there anymore. So, I guess I just accepted the fact that there was no place to go.

C.M.: Now where did you live when you first came to the settlement, what building?

ROBERTS: It was called Little Girls' House, I think they eventually changed it to Westover.

C.M.: I've heard a lot of people call it Little Girls' House during these interviews. What was the room set up like for you?

ROBERTS: Well, there was four, two bunk beds in each room. And the rooms were fairly large. And then there was one room that had just two girls. And I had a younger sister that stayed there a little while. And she and I were fortunate enough to get that room one year. Sorry.

C.M.: No that's all right, go ahead. 4:00ROBERTS: I did, my job was to work there at that dorm that year.

C.M.: Oh, okay. What kind of work did you do?

ROBERTS: Oh we scrubbed the floors and cleaned the bathrooms and took care of the housemother and the home ec. teacher, Miss Orrick roomed there. We just sort of took care of what needs they had. We didn't work very hard, but we were required to do a certain amount, which was good for us.

C.M.: Now, was Miss Orrick your house mother?

ROBERTS: No.

C.M.: That was a teacher.

ROBERTS: Miss Scobey, she was not there very long, I don't think. Just maybe one year or two years.

C.M.: What was she like?

ROBERTS: She was sort of strict, I guess. You could get grounded, 5:00or I think they called it "campused", which was restricted to campus for sort of, I thought minor things sometimes. But I guess there were reasons.

C.M.: And who was your house mother after she left?

ROBERTS: Oh, where did I go from there? I guess I roomed at the hospital. I never did room at Orchard House, which was usually the next step up. The hospital and Miss Beeman was the nurse. I guess she was considered the house mother, or whatever.

C.M.: Miss Beeman? Had she been there for a while?

ROBERTS: She was the nurse. Yeah. Really, I don't really know. I think she had been there quite some time.

C.M.: What was Miss Beeman like? That's somebody that nobody's really told me about yet.

ROBERTS: I really didn't have a lot of dealings with her. 6:00I don't remember anything negative. She was just downstairs and we were upstairs. We just did our job, so...She was easy to work with.

C.M.: Was she an older lady?

ROBERTS: Oh, you know when you're young, forty seems old. [Laughter] C.M.: Everybody seems old, yeah.

ROBERTS: I guess she was mid, in her mid years, forty-five, somewhere along there. I really don't, couldn't say for sure.

C.M.: So, when people came to the hospital. Were people sent there when they were sick?

ROBERTS: Yeah, they had, she had a certain amount of medications, I guess, that she could give, maybe aspirins. And she'd take your temperature. If you had a temperature, then you were put in the hospital. 7:00There were, I don't know, maybe four rooms, three or four rooms. And you'd just stay until your temperature went down. Or she decided you were well enough to go back to school.

C.M.: Did you ever have to stay down there? In the hospital, like in one of those rooms?

ROBERTS: Yeah. And of course, we carried up the food for the patients that were there. The girls that roomed up there. There were three. And we did some of the housekeeping chores and ferried food from the dining hall each meal up to the patients.

C.M.: So, that was kind of your job when you lived there.

ROBERTS: Yeah. Nothing was really heavy work or hard. You were just required .... The kids that worked in the dining hall. They would have to sometimes work in the mornings before breakfast. They would 8:00work during lunch hour, bringing up the food, and then after school. But the ones that lived other places, they just worked after school.

C.M.: You know that's one difference I've found is, in the years you were in school. You still had to work, but not quite as much as they did in the earlier years. I know they had to, they worked, I guess, a couple more hours a day. But of course, like you said, it probably depended on what job they gave you and how much you had to do.

ROBERTS: The worst job was having to get up and get breakfast ready, [Laughing] because it was early.

C.M.: Did you have to do that ever?

ROBERTS: I did, I don't remember really if it was during the school year or during the summer when I stayed there.

C.M.: Okay, so you stayed during the summers too.

ROBERTS: Yeah, well with my home situation. I would have preferred to have stayed there all summer. But they wouldn't let you. I would stay most of the summer, but they felt like you needed some time away. So I would stay with some relatives. 9:00C.M.: So you were talking about the worst job was getting breakfast ready. Let's talk about that a little bit.

ROBERTS: It was just bad for me, because you had to get up early.

C.M.: How early did you have to get up?

ROBERTS: Gee, that's been such a long time, I really couldn't say. Probably an hour earlier or so, than you would otherwise.

C.M.: Yeah. Because breakfast was probably like around eight o'clock or something? Probably earlier, I guess.

ROBERTS: Probably earlier.

C.M.: So you would be getting up at five or five-thirty.

ROBERTS: Yeah, it was sort of early and the head cook, oh what was her name, Miss Owens. She would have things sort of organized. And a lot of times we would get down there before she would. And we would have to do the biscuits if it was the morning we were going to have biscuits. And you'd mix them in this big mixer and roll them 10:00out and cut them, and all that. Like I say, the worst part was just having to get up early.

C.M.: What was that Miss Owens like?

ROBERTS: A lot of, a lot of the students seem to think she was hard to get along with, but I never did find that to be so. I mean if you treated her with respect and did what she asked you to do, you know, I had no problems with her. In fact, they slaughtered their own hogs sometimes.

C.M.: On campus?

ROBERTS: Yeah, I was always squeamish about things like that.

C.M.: I would be too. [Laughing] ROBERTS: It was during the lunch hour that we were required to go down and carry up the food. And this hog's head was on the table on .... in the kitchen. So I just turned and left. And she sent word for me to come down 11:00and help carry up the food And I said, well if she would remove that, I would be down. And she did. She didn't make any big deal out of it. And I was happy to do my chore, you know. [Laughter] C.M.: Well that was nice of her.

ROBERTS: It would have been nice I guess, if we'd had one of those elevator things that carry the food up.

C.M.: Oh yeah.

ROBERTS: But we had to carry it up the stairs.

C.M.: So the dining room was, the kitchen was below the dining room?

ROBERTS: Right.

C.M.: And you came upstairs?

ROBERTS: Right. We brought the food up to, I guess we might have set some of it on the table. We set bowls of food on the table and then they had a serving room, the coffee and the extra food was in there. And when the people at the table needed more food, whoever was serving the table that week, would go to the serving room and get more food. Or get coffee and serve coffee to the adults. We were not allowed to have coffee. 12:00C.M.: I guess let me backtrack a little bit. We're not doing this in any kind of order, so if you think of things while we're going feel free to share them with me. You don't have to worry about that. I think it's interesting to find out about the dining room, especially since you lived there. And you worked in there some. So let's talk about the meals a little bit. What would be something you would have for breakfast? What was the typical breakfast like when you were in school?

ROBERTS: In winter, we had hot cereal a lot and we had biscuits and jelly. And I imagine at times, even though I don't remember, we had eggs. C.M.: Yeah.

ROBERTS: That's been a lot of years ago. [Laughter] C.M.: Well that's all right.

ROBERTS: But the food was excellent. The biscuits were of course, homemade. I don't know if they had canned biscuits back then.

C.M.: Probably not.

ROBERTS: And you had all you wanted. 13:00There was no serving and then there was none left. There was always food. So everybody had all they wanted.

C.M.: What about for lunch? Did you come back over and eat at the settlement school? How did that work? Oh, I'm sorry.

ROBERTS: Well, for breakfast in the summertime, we usually had cold cereal. You would have a variety, you didn't always have the same. And in the winter, we had different hot cereals too. Okay ask me, the lunch?

C.M.: Yeah. How did that work since you boarded? I didn't know how they did lunch. I didn't know if you ate in the cafeteria.

ROBERTS: I think after breakfast, the girls that were assigned to the dining hall washed dishes before they went to school. And all the plates 14:00were set on the table, all the place mats. We had place mats. The silverware was put at each place and the napkins. The serving plates were put at the head, what we called the head of the table, where the ladies served. So that was all done. And then a white sheet, I guess is what they used with to put over the table, to keep everything clean, dust off of it. And we always had fresh, in the summertime, fresh flowers on the table. And then the girls would come in and they'd remove the tablecloth. And get the food carried up. Well, not the tablecloth but the covering, the sheet, and carry up the food, and ring the bell for you to come. I think the first ringing of the bell was like ten taps and then a couple in about five minutes. I think it was five or ten minutes 15:00between the ringings [rings]. Then everybody went in and sat down. And the food was, if it was ... the main dish was served by the lady at the head of the table. And then the other foods were passed. I can't remember what types of food we had for lunch though. The food was always good. I mean most of us had better food there than we probably had at home, a more balanced diet. Miss Owens was a great cook.

C.M.: So you did, during the school year, you did come back over and eat lunch at the settlement?

ROBERTS: Right.

C.M.: Okay. Was that just for the, I guess obviously that would just be the boarding students 16:00would come over and eat lunch?

ROBERTS: Right.

C.M.: What did the other people do? Was there a cafeteria?

ROBERTS: There was a cafeteria and I guess some of them went to town and had candy bars and pop, and potato chips or whatever. But they were not required to eat in the lunchroom.

C.M.: Okay, so it was like an open lunch, you could go.

ROBERTS: Right.

C.M.: Oh, okay.

ROBERTS: It was a little, the best I remember it was a little white building that was sort of near the high school. It wasn't in the high school itself.

C.M.: Yeah, because I knew that, a lady I talked to had told me that it changed later on, but I wasn't sure if that change had taken place when you were there.

ROBERTS: It might have when they built the new gymnasium. They might have put a lunchroom. Since I never ate down there, I just couldn't say. C.M.: Yeah. She said later on the boarding students had to eat in the cafeteria. That's what I was just trying to find out about. Like in the sixties I believe they changed that.

ROBERTS: Oh, they didn't go back to the settlement and eat?

C.M.: No.

ROBERTS: Oh, I didn't realize that.

C.M.: No, because there had been an accident or something. Some kids had gotten killed during the lunch hour. 17:00Or something really bad happened, so they just changed all that to keep it closed lunch. And I didn't know if that was when you were there or not.

ROBERTS: No.

C.M.: Must have been later.

ROBERTS: It happened later. I hadn't heard about it.

C.M.: Okay, well then in the evenings when you all would have supper, was that more formal? Or was it very formal in the dining room at anytime?

ROBERTS: Well, I guess I really never thought about it as being all that formal. But it might have been ...

C.M.: Yeah, I guess() wise.

ROBERTS: Yeah, you were...there was not a lot of noise and giggling and foolishness, you might say. But yeah it was sort of, it was relaxed. I felt 18:00like it was a relaxed atmosphere, but done in an orderly manner too. Then....

C.M.: What sorts of.. ..oh go ahead ROBERTS: What were you going to ask?

C.M.: I was going to ask about if you remembered what sorts of things you all had for dinner. I'm sure there were lots of different things.

ROBERTS: Oh, we had meatloaf and we had oh, I don't know if I know how to say this. Something I never had, they called it. ...well it was a white sauce on toast and they called it. I always thought they called rabbit, but that's not the way it was spelled.

C.M.: Hmmm. I don't know. I've never heard of that.

ROBERTS: I'm sure we, well I just don't remember. I remember one of the meals that they had a lot on Saturday would be like sausage and mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans and apple sauce. And I always liked that. And biscuits probably.

C.M.: So that, so you all probably got like ...

ROBERTS: That was probably a lunch on Saturday, for the kids that.. .. when 19:00you worked. You had to work in the morning and probably worked up more of an appetite than during the school.

C.M.: Did a lot of kids stay there on the weekends?

ROBERTS: Yeah, you were allowed one, I think it might have been one or two short weekends a semester, and one long weekend. And the first semester the long weekend came at Thanksgiving. And some were required, everybody couldn't go home. So some had to stay there to carry on. Do the chores and what not. And the other long weekend was at Christmastime.

C.M.: How long did you all go home for Christmas?

ROBERTS: We probably were off a week, I don't know, probably about like they are now. And Thanksgiving, 20:00I think we probably could go home Wednesday after school and be back Sunday by dinnertime, suppertime.

C.M.: That's kind of how it is now, I guess.

ROBERTS: Uh hmm.

C.M.: Was there any like special activities on those kind of holidays, like for Thanksgiving or Christmas that you all did over at the settlement?

ROBERTS: Well we had, of course, the big Thanksgiving dinner. Other than that, I don't remember anything special. They always had a lot of things planned, which kept you busy. But Christmas they did have a Christmas program. And sometimes we would feed the birds and hang things in the trees for the birds. And we would gather at a certain point and then we would go to, what was called 21:00Recreation Hall, which was up on the hill, and have a program up there. And I don't know what the boys got, but I know all through high school, the girls usually got a doll of some kind, and some other small gifts. Sometimes we would go caroling. And sometimes the boys would come Christmas morning and sing carols outside the dorm for the girls. That was sort of a treat.

C.M.: I'd say so.

ROBERTS: But we had the typical Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners, which was always really nice.

C.M.: Now when you all, when you were on campus, what kind of things did you all do to entertain yourselves, I guess? Or when you had time, like if you were with your girlfriends. 22:00ROBERTS: Of course, we had to go to church on Sunday. The first three Sundays of the year when you went back to school, you could go to the Methodist church or the Baptist church. And then after the third Sunday, you had to sign up for one or the other. And then that's where you were required to go, except if there was a revival or something. I don't know if you were required to go to revivals, but there were chaperones that would take students that did want to go. And of course, we had folk dancing, which one night a week you had your class, your instruction on new dances and so forth. And you were separated according to first, second and third year dancers. And then Saturday night, it was a combined dance and singing ballads. 23:00And of course, by the time you did your little chores after school. And we had mandatory study hall.

C.M.: Or you did?

ROBERTS: Yeah.

C.M.: How did that work? I mean, did you just.. ..

ROBERTS: You had a room that you, or there were tables out in the lobby I guess. And you would study out there. And the house mother was usually present. And on occasions, I remember, especially my freshman year, if you made the honor roll, you could study in your room. I don't know if I did as much studying at that time. [Laughter] And getting back to .... well Sundays. Back to what we did for entertainment.

C.M.: Oh okay, yeah.

ROBERTS: You could go on a walk. They had quiet hour. 24:00So, you had to be in your room. You could do whatever you wanted to, as long as you were in your room quiet. But then you could go for a walk. Sometimes we'd go down to Ogden, and to the store and buy junk food. Or we would go for a hike in the woods, when the weather was nice. We were not allowed to wear jeans or anything outside our room. We could wear them in the room. And maybe when we were scrubbing the floors we might have been allowed to wear jeans, I'm not sure.

C.M.: So what were you expected to wear all the time, I mean like to classes?

ROBERTS: Dresses, skirts. 25:00We were not allowed to chew gum outside our room.

C.M.: Really?

ROBERTS: I guess that's all I can think of right now. I'm sure a lot went on. We met, of course, we gathered a lot on the campus. There was a well, which is no longer there, which I sort of wish they'd left. I think it had been filled in with rocks. But it was a rock or a stone well. And we would gather around that and then just socialize a lot, before mealtimes, after mealtimes, in the evenings. If you were dating, when the boy walked you home, you had to go directly in. I mean if you lingered outside, after everybody went in, 26:00you got called on the carpet. [Laughter] C.M.: If they couldn't find you I guess.

ROBERTS: That was not allowed.

C.M.: Were you all allowed to hold hands or anything?

ROBERTS: Yeah, I guess. I didn't do a lot of dating in high school, so I wasn't affected by that, so I don't really .... There was not a lot. I don't think there was a lot of holding hands and kissing in public and things like that. They sort of frowned upon that I suppose.

C.M.: Yeah, I'd say so.

ROBERTS: Not like it is now.

C.M.: Yeah. I remember one thing, when I was here earlier, talking to your husband. You said something about the laundry. That was something I wanted to ask you about. 27:00ROBERTS: Well, I didn't work in the laundry, but some of the other girls did. In fact, I did my own laundry most of the time. You could send, I think for a small amount, and everything was on such low pay scale. You didn't make much when you worked, but you didn't have to pay much when you had things done. So for a small amount, I guess they'd charge by how many items you sent to the laundry. But you could get all of your laundry done. And there were several girls assigned and then there were some women from town that were hired to come in and oversee the laundry. So, I imagine most of the boys sent all of their laundry and the faculty sent their laundry. And us girls, we did some of ours and some of them sent it, I guess. But if we did it, we either took it down and did it in the bathtub or in sort of like large pans. But that was what I got "campused" over. I had done, 28:00I had washed a corduroy skirt and it needed to drip dry. And I had turned the light off and then pulled the string again to turn it off. And there was a loop in the end of the string. So I had my skirt on a hanger with a clothespin pinned to the hanger. And I hooked the hanger in that loop and hung it over a pan in the study hall. And the house mother found it and I got "campused."

C.M.: Why?

ROBERTS: I think she thought it could be a fire hazard or something, I don't know.

C.M.: Oh...so you got in trouble.

ROBERTS: I thought it was, that was what I referred to as unfair. 29:00Because I really wasn't doing anything that I thought was wrong. So I got "campused" probably for a week, which meant I couldn't go to town. was really what it meant.

C.M.: Was that a big deal to you, not to be able to go?

ROBERTS: Yeah, because you would go down there and you'd meet with the kids from town. And some of them would dance. And you'd just sit around. It was a restaurant where we went mostly. The name of it was Joe's. They had a juke box and they played. We were not allowed to dance. We were not supposed to do, jitterbug is what they did. You know, just go down there and socialize, that was basically what it was. To have a Pepsi or something, which we didn't get at the settlement. It was either milk or water or, I guess that was it. We didn't have any soft drink machines.

END OFTAPE 20 A43 , THELMA ROBERTS, SIDE 30:00A BEGINNING OF TAPE 20 A43 , THELMA ROBERTS, SIDE B ROBERTS: Bible Club, that I would join. I always thought of her as being a very religious person. And then we had Mr. Taylor, he was a history teacher. I don't think he heard very well and a lot went on in his classroom because they could get by with things, because he didn't hear real well. He was an older gentleman. Well, you can't have a lot of teachers when the same ones teach.

C.M.: Yeah, that's quite a few that you've told me.

ROBERTS: You would take we would take four, two classes 31:00a semester. So we only had four teachers a year.

C.M.: Now did you, were you around Mr. Still any? Was he there?

ROBERTS: Yeah, I worked in the library for a while. He was sort of a person that I think, more or less kept to himself. He would of course, talk with the faculty members, but us students, I don't recall a lot. He would tell us what to do in the library and what was expected, but then he just went on about his chores. I ate at the same table. I guess he just ate maybe the lunch and the evening meal. I don't recall where he stayed, if he stayed at home and commuted or if he had a room there 32:00at the settlement. I don't remember. But he didn't much like for us to have our pills. If we were taking medicine, the nurse would always recommend that we put our pill bottle at our place mat to remind us to take our medicine. And for some reason he didn't seem to think that was the appropriate thing. Maybe he didn't believe in a lot of medication. I don't know.

C.M.: I don't know either.

ROBERTS: But we thought we would harass him a little. [Laughing] We laid some aspirins or something on his place mat once.

C.M.: Uhoh.

ROBERTS: He just picked them up and sort of tossed them. [Laughter] Of course we all kept a straight face and we just pretended we didn't know that anything had happened.

C.M.: Didn't know how they got there. 33:00Now were you around Miss Watts? Was she there, when you were there?

ROBERTS: I roomed at Hillside. And I also ate at the table that she served. She was the head of that table. I found her, if you did the things that you should do and obeyed the rules and didn't buck the system. If you just did what was expected of you, there was no problem with her. But she could really be tough, I imagine for those who tried to get by with things that were not allowed. But I didn't have any trouble dealing with her myself I did room at Hillside. And we were supposed....I guess we were assigned one week we had to get up 34:00and wake her and close her window. Even in the winter she would have her window open and the heat turned down. So we'd turn the heat up and close her window and wake her, tell her it was time to get up. Another thing we had, they didn't have .... she had a bathroom but it was out. She had to come out in the hall to her bathroom. I think her room probably was just one room. It was her living room and, I'm not sure, maybe she had more than .... She might have had two. But anyway we carried a pitcher of water in her room. There was a, maybe a washstand or something and a wash pan. And in the mornings we would carry a pitcher of warm water maybe, not hot water. 35:00And then there was another lady, Miss Cobb, she was quite elderly, downstairs. And the house mother, Miss Truman was well up in years. And we'd get them up and carry the water for them to wash their face and wash up in. Like I say, I think if you just did what you were expected to do, the faculty members really were all nice.

C.M.: Now, did you get to know Miss Cobb very well?

ROBERTS: No, she was quite elderly at the time. Her, I mean I don't know how old she was. But I'd say she must have been in her eighties.

C.M.: Yeah, she would have had to be, by then.

ROBERTS: She was 36:00.... well her voice was quite broken and sort of shaky, which goes along sometimes with age. And Miss Truman, she had quite a bit of difficulty in hearing. And so she talked to herself a lot. [Laughing] Has anybody told you that?

C.M.: No, I haven't heard about her.

ROBERTS: So, if you walked behind her, she carried on a conversation with herself. She would tell somebody what she thought, and then she would say what she thought they would probably say back.

C.M.: Cause she couldn't hear? [Laughing] ROBERTS: It was really sort of funny. And sometimes she would say what she thought and then she would just say hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. And we thought that was her imagination of what they were saying back to her. So, she was somebody that if you wanted to do anything you wanted to do, you probably could have gotten by with it.

C.M.: With Miss Truman?

ROBERTS: Yeah. She just sort of stayed 37:00in her room. She wasn't out really overseeing things so much. Since we were at Hillside, maybe that was Miss Watts' obligation up there. I don't know. With Miss Truman having problems with hearing, us senior girls, there were four senior girls that roomed up there. We decided .... Well Miss Watts was gone, Miss Cobb was gone. And there was only us four girls and Miss Truman. And she couldn't hear very well. So, we decided that we would sneak out and go to town one night. But we didn't want to go alone. 38:00We got these boys from the settlement to meet us. So, we all sneaked out and went downtown. Well, there was nothing open, everything was closed.

C.M.: Yeah. [Laughing] ROBERTS: But, we walked downtown and walked around and if a car came, we would tum our back to the oncoming car so that whoever it was wouldn't recognize us. And then we walked above town up to, we were going to go up and play cards, but that place was closed too. So, really all we did was to get out and walk down the road and up the road and went back. But we didn't get caught, but we would probably have been in a lot of trouble if we had been caught. But we thought we had done something so bad.

C.M.: Oh, I'd say so.

ROBERTS: It seems so minor now. But when we ran down across campus, we didn't, of course they had lights, flood lights or 39:00street lights or something out on the post. So the campus was well lit. And the boys said, why did you run right down under all those lights? Get in the shadows. We did. If somebody had been looking out they would have seen us.

C.M.: At least you didn't get caught.

ROBERTS: But that was probably about eleven at night. There was like four girls and four guys. And we just walked down there and walked back, nothing to get into.

C.M.: I was going to say, I'd say Hindman would be pretty quiet at eleven o'clock.

ROBERTS: Hindman was boring on .... well Saturday there was a lot of kids in town. Sunday was boring. Usually summer, it was boring, because all the kids were gone and doing other things, vacation and whatever. 40:00C.M.: I'm trying to think what else I need to ask you. You've told me a lot of good stuff.

ROBERTS: I should have been thinking and jotting some things down.

C.M.: No, this is .....

ROBERTS: When you try to remember it.. ..

C.M.: No, this has been really good, I think. Because there weren't as many people that lived on campus when you did. So, it's been harder to find people that I could talk to. You know, that were still like, within me finding them, kind of spread out across the country now, some people are. I guess just thinking back on it now .... oh I'm sorry, go ahead.

ROBERTS: Of course we had sewing facilities at one of the dorms at Orchard House. I remember this one girl in particular. We were going to go dancing. She bought a piece of material and she was going to make her a skirt to wear that night. And in an hour's time she had made a gathered skirt. Now, I don't know how well it stayed together. [Laughing] C.M.: Oh my gosh, pretty fast though. 41:00ROBERTS: She put that thing through that machine and wore it to dance that night. But you wore a lot of these real, full skirts, or tiered, gathered skirts with a lot of. ... especially if we went folk dancing to a festival, a lot of crinolines under those skirts.

C.M.: Yeah, I think I've seen pictures of that before.

ROBERTS: Yeah. So we did have means to mend our clothes. Each dorm had an iron and ironing board that you could press your clothes. One thing you were asking earlier about, 42:00things that we did in the wintertime. We would sleigh ride. Down the center of the campus there was a road that would have been like a one car road. But it was sort of a raised, there was a ditch on each side, so this road like thing was a little bit more raised than, it seemed like the rest of the campus. But we would ride sleighs down that in the wintertime. So, I was on the back with this one kid and he said, hold on Thelma, said I'm going to roll off. And he just rolled off and left me sitting back there with no way to control the thing.

C.M.: Oh my gosh.

ROBERTS: I hit a tree. [Laughter] C.M.: Did you get hurt?

ROBERTS: No C.M.: Well that's good.

ROBERTS: It was sort of shocking to find yourself sitting back there.

C.M.: Yeah, I'd say so.

ROBERTS: As my husband told you, when you interviewed him. The boys would sneak out sometimes at night, probably go to town before the restaurants closed and everything. 43:00In the summertime, if, one of the dorms, Orchard House. They would come right up near Orchard House. So we would get all these little green apples off of these trees outside Orchard House. And we'd have a good supply of them. And we'd climb out on this roof and wait for them, [Laughing] with a ton of little green apples. We gave them a hard time sometimes, taking them by surprise when all these apples started raining down on them. They couldn't throw back, because of the windows.

C.M.: Yeah, you'd be in big trouble if you broke a window, I'd say. 44:00Well I guess thinking back on it, over your experience of living in the settlement and going to school there and things. Trying to see if this is working, yeah. What has it meant to you, the settlement school? Or what does it mean to you? I mean you spent four years there.

ROBERTS: Well, I think you learned about getting along with people, living under strict supervision, which wasn't bad. Learning to adjust to things like that. And it was like a big family, so to me it was a pleasant experience. I look back on it as being some of the best years of my life. Of course, I met my husband there. We didn't date until after 45:00we graduated, or after he graduated. But I have nothing but good memories. All my experiences there were good. [ tape goes off and on] C.M.: Okay.

ROBERTS: I know I've sort of rambled, but I remember these bits and pieces. One thing I remember, especially when I worked in the dining hall, and I don't remember this happening anywhere else. We were evaluated on our work. But then, maybe not all the time, but we were asked to evaluate ourselves. So, what we thought about ourselves and what our supervisor thought were compared. And I guess that stands out in my mind. Because at that time, Miss Waddell was the supervisor 46:00and I guess she was the dietician or something. Anyway she was the supervisor of the dining hall and she had evaluated me and I did mine. Well, I tried to do honestly what I thought. And Miss Watts said that ours was the only time, my evaluation, where the student and the faculty evaluated everything exactly the same.

C.M.: Really?

ROBERTS: I guess that's why it stood out in my mind and I remembered it. We were evaluated on our work ethic and we were, I guess ...I think Miss Watts would call each of us in and maybe go over it. If we had done good, we were told and if we were lacking, we were probably told. As I know, I don't think any girl got in trouble. 47:00Nobody got pregnant, while we were there. I think the strict supervision was, they had such a responsibility with us. To go home we had to have written permission from our parents to go home. And it had to, they didn't accept calls or anything of that nature. We were to notify our families and then they wrote a letter to Miss Watts to request that we be allowed to go home. I don't recall our mode of transportation, if the person 48:00had to come on campus. Somebody else might remember that. If they had to report to the house mother and then the house mother knew that we were leaving with whoever we said we were leaving with. But even though things were strict, I don't recall there being any problems with dealing with it. They were not overbearing with things, until you felt like you couldn't breathe. There was room to ....

C.M.: That's good.

ROBERTS: You know, to be who you were.

C.M.: Well is there anything else you want to add, that maybe I haven't asked you about? You've thought of a lot of different things.

ROBERTS: I wish I had spent more time. Of course, my daughter, they're going to induce labor Friday. You got that off?

C.M.: Here, I'll turn it off. [Tape goes off and on] ROBERTS: We were required to go through 49:00a fire drill on how to get her out.

C.M.: Now this was Miss Watts' mother?

ROBERTS: Right.

C.M.: She stayed up there for a while?

ROBERTS: She would come and spend some time there.

C.M.: Okay, now you had fire drills for her?

ROBERTS: Are you on?

C.M.: Yeah, I'm on now, go ahead.

ROBERTS: Yeah, when we lived at Hillside, on occasion Miss Watts' mother would come. I think she might have been in her nineties. She was well up in years and didn't get about very well. So we went through these fire drills and how to get her out. That was the main thing, everybody else was probably capable of getting themselves out. Our main thing was how to get her out, and she was up on the top floor, which this building was all wood. It would have been a treacherous thing if it had caught on fire and she had been in there and us trying to get her out. But 50:00anyway that was one of the things they did take into consideration, was fire, which eventually the building did burn. We had fire escapes, of course the only way she could have gotten out would have been down the stairs. The building was on a hillside, so if you were up on the top floor, and you were young, you probably could have jumped out, you know, some of the windows.

C.M.: Climbed out, yeah.

ROBERTS: But then you went down to the next floor and you could walk out. And then you go down another, you could walk out the back. But down on the bottom level you could walk out the front. So the backside of the building, a lot of it, was underground.

C.M.: Yeah, 51:00I never thought about that. That fire drills and things.

ROBERTS: I don't recall having them in any of the other buildings.

C.M.: Just that one.

ROBERTS: Because of Miss Watts' mother. And of course, if the other ladies were there, I'm sure we were instructed .... Miss Cobb, she would have probably needed help. But according to who was there, we were designated which one we were to go to.

END OF INTERVIEW