Oral History Interview with Bess Browning

CASSIE MULLINS: There we go, all right today's date is August the fifth, nineteen ninety- eight. And just go ahead and state your name.

BESS BROWNING: Bess Browning.

C.M.: And let's just get started, tell me, we were talking in there, when we were eating. But I would like to get it on here. Tell me about where you grew up.

BROWNING: I grew up on Bald Fork in Knott county. And my parents moved around a lot. Up until I was almost through grade school we lived there. And my father, 1:00about the time I started high school, got sick. He was a coal miner. He wasn't well and he died the day school was out when I was a Junior in high school. I couldn't go to school where we lived, there would have been no way I could have gone to high school. So I decided I would write to the settlement and see if I could get in there. I wrote to the settlement, and it took me because my name was Creech and this relative of mine had given them land to build Pine Mountain Settlement School on. Miss Stone was there at that time. She was one of my favorite people. 2:00C.M.: Miss Stone was?

BROWNING: Yeah, she was always so kind and just never got excited about anything. You could talk to her about anything. I took the test to pass for high school, even though I hadn't had any seventh grade or any eighth grade, and just about three months of sixth grade. And I didn't have but three books that I had borrowed. I don't know how I passed that test.

C.M.: This was to get into high school?

BROWNING: That was to pass the test, you know, to get into high school. And I don't know how, and I never did fail anything, but I skated thin ice when I was in high school. But I found out there were children worse off than I was. I went a month early and I worked, to work out my tuition, which was ten dollars at that time.

C.M.: Was that for a whole year or for a...? 3:00BROWNING: That was just to...

C.M.: A semester?

BROWNING: Yeah.

C.M.: Okay.

BROWNING: And we got ten cents an hour. But they didn't let us work but eight hours. But a lot of times I worked sixteen, so that made me many a nickel, didn't it? [Laughing] C.M.: Yeah, I'd say it did. That would have been rough.

BROWNING: But they were good to me. I worked for Miss Elkin. She was a tough customer, but she was fair. I worked at different jobs. Miss Elkin, I used to complain about the other children when they didn't, didn't do what I thought was their share of the work. Miss Elkin would say, the only reward you get 4:00for good work, is just more work. [Laughter - Mullins] C.M.: So when you ended up, like you said....I'm just backing up a little bit. When you ended up coming there and writing to them to see if you could come. You told me earlier, that you started high school when you were seventeen?

BROWNING: Yeah.

C.M.: And that was because you were taking care of...?

BROWNING: I was taking care of my mother's babies. You see, I'm from a family of nine and I am the oldest girl and the second child in that family. So, when I was thirteen, I was doing everything. I didn't realize that until my granddaughter, who's thirteen. I looked in Daddy's Bible to see how old I was when one of my sisters was born, and I was thirteen, and I said, oh, if somebody was to do Shirley that way, I'd kill them. [Laughter] I was more grown-up, 5:00I had to be grown-up though.

C.M.: Yeah, I'd say so. So when you, I guess, when you first came to the settlement school, and you lived there on campus.

BROWNING: I lived there the year round. I'd take off two weeks every summer.

C.M.: Oh okay. You stayed there the whole time.

BROWNING: Yeah, four years. I was there four years.

C.M.: Do you remember kind of how you felt when you first came there and started living there? I mean, were you homesick? Was it hard for you?

BROWNING: Yes, I was homesick and I was literally scared to death of everybody. [Laughing] C.M.: I'd say so, though. That would be traumatic, I think.

BROWNING: I was older than most of the children that were there, too.

C.M.: Yeah, right. How did, what kind of things helped you adjust, do you think?

BROWNING: I just had some good room mates and everybody was just so nice. 6:00The people in the kitchen, I remember, Christmas Day came on Sunday one year and I worked in the kitchen, in the dining room that day, and didn't go to Church. You know, some of us would have to stay and help and the others would go to Church. And that was the first time that I ever got too tired to go to sleep. And I had worked in the fields, you know, in growing up. I knew what hard work was. I went to bed and I couldn't go to sleep, and I wondered why. And I was too tired. And I went downstairs that morning at five thirty and came back up that night at ten thirty. And that was a long day.

C.M.: Yeah.

BROWNING: Even though I was young and strong.

C.M.: Now where did you live when you were on campus? I guess you might have lived different places, but...

BROWNING: I lived in Orchard House, and I lived at Hillside and I lived at the Hospital. 7:00C.M.: Okay, who was your housemother at Orchard House?

BROWNING: Miss Elkin.

C.M.: Okay, yeah. You were telling me a little bit about her. [Laughter - Browning] And I have heard quite a few stories on Miss Elkin. I have to be honest with you, but I guess just describe her for me.

BROWNING: She was just a little, tiny woman that put the fear of the Lord in us. We were scared to death of her. And even to the boys downtown, sometime come up to the dorm at night and be bad, be walking around, you know. Oooh, she'd get her flashlight and go out there and they were scared to death of her. They swore she had a gun. [Laughter] Of course, she didn't. She was great, though. Miss Elkin had, oh she had a bunch, she really managed us well though.

C.M.: What sort of things did she do, 8:00I mean I can't imagine being responsible for a bunch of....What did she do?

BROWNING: Well, she ran the whole house, she ran the dining room, she ran the kitchen. She ran the whole Orchard House. Orchard House had, I believe there was about twenty-six girls lived there, when I did. And we just minded Miss Elkin. [Laughing] C.M.: Did you all ever do anything that got you in trouble with her? Are you going to tell any tales on yourself?

BROWNING: She, there was one girl, that Miss Elkin I thought, was mean to. And this girl never would say anything back to her or do anything. And she used to pinch her like this, when she would go down the dining room with a big pan of water. And that would just make me so mad when I was working in the dining room. And she would 9:00make you carry these huge pans of water over to where she sat, so she could feel and see if the temperature was right. And I refused to do that. And she got after me, and I said, I'm doing just what you tell me to do, and I'm not carrying this big pan of water over there, it is so heavy, just so you can feel this. If you want to feel it, you get and walk over there where I am. [Laughing] So we had a few words there. And you know, she never liked me, until after I fussed with her.

C.M.: Really?

BROWNING: Isn't that strange?

C.M.: I guess maybe because you stood up to her. I don't know.

BROWNING: I think that....She loved me after that, she was so nice to me. And I said, I wish I had been mean a little quicker. [Laughter] And Mrs. Burns that worked on the grounds, she was one of my good friends, too.

C.M.: What was Mrs. Burns like?

BROWNING: Well, 10:00she was just a real hard working, lovely, Christian woman. She made it rough on the boys, but she had to, she had to, you know. They really needed a man to do her job. And there were so many wonderful people there at the time. I was young, I didn't know. Miss Cobb was such a wonderful person. She was just my good friend. [Laughing] And Miss Watts was good to me. They all were.

C.M.: What did you think about Miss Watts? Because I know, I guess she would have been in charge when you were there.

BROWNING: Yeah, oh yeah. Miss Stone, Miss Stone was there when I was there, but Miss Watts was too.

C.M.: What was Miss Watts like?

BROWNING: Well, Miss Watts was a Northerner, typical Northerner. And she was more domineering. Miss Stone would have asked you, if she wanted to know something. She 11:00would never just assume that she knew without asking you. Miss Watts did. She didn't ask you, she told you.

C.M.: Oh really?

BROWNING: She thought I did something one time and I didn't. And I never told her I didn't.

C.M.: Really?

BROWNING: Yeah. We were just sort of afraid of her. But I wouldn't have done that with Miss Stone, now I would have explained to her.

C.M.: Yeah, it sounds like you have really fond memories of Miss Stone.

BROWNING: Oh, she was lovely, wonderful person.

C.M.: How did she act around the students, or I guess what did they think of her?

BROWNING: Miss Stone would never let you do anything for her that she could do for herself. Even though when I went there, she was kind of crippled. I would take her, I remember I would go over in the summertime, when the roses bloom 12:00and get a pink rose off of, over near Uncle Sol's cabin for her breakfast tray. And take her breakfast tray to her. And I'd want to go in and put this flower in some water. No, she said, honey, I'll do all this myself. Thank you for bringing my breakfast. Had to set her tray just inside the door on a chair. She'd take care of herself. You went to, knocked on Miss Watts' door. You went in, told her what the temperature was outside. You turned her lights on.

C.M.: And somebody did that for her every day?

BROWNING: Every, every day.

C.M.: Sounds like they were really different, kind of different people.

BROWNING: Yes, yes they were.

C.M.: Now were you ever around Miss Pettit any?

BROWNING: I never did meet Miss Pettit. 13:00C.M.: Okay, see I didn't think that she would have really been around there at that time.

BROWNING: Miss Stone would always laugh at things that Katherine had done, though, I remember. [Laughing] C.M.: Oh really? That's funny. What were some of the jobs that you did when you were living there, the work that you did?

BROWNING: Well, I worked in the dining room, I worked in the kitchen. And I worked two summers, stayed at the Hospital and worked and cleaned up the guest rooms. You know people that would come in to visit. I had a neighbor on MacDowell Road, said she thought the neighborhood was going down, some mountaineers had bought that house over there, when we bought our house. And I knew I had seen her someplace. And I couldn't figure out where I had seen that woman. So, I was collecting for the Cancer 14:00fund one day, and got talking to her and that's where I saw her. She had been to the settlement, as a guest.

C.M.: Really? All those years ago.

BROWNING: All those years ago, and I had cleaned her room for her. And I thought well, it was all right for me to clean her room, but she couldn't live next door to me.

C.M.: Yeah.

BROWNING: See isn't that something, how people are. People are funny. [Laughing] C.M.: That is. That's something though to see somebody like that from so long ago.

BROWNING: And it had been years ago, you know. And then I worked, I worked at Hillside some. And one year, I was head girl at the grade school, head janitor at the grade school.

C.M.: Uh hmm.

BROWNING: Some wonderful teachers over there, too. I went back to the Alumni Luncheon a few years ago and one of the teachers remembered me from taking 15:00her lunch to her.

C.M.: Yeah? Well, what did you think about having to do all that work? Maybe not at the time, but now thinking back on it.

BROWNING: Well, I think it was good for me. I think everybody ought to work. If you don't work, you don't benefit. That's been the hardest thing about having this stroke. I can't work like I want to.

C.M.: Now when you worked in the kitchen, what sort of things were you expected to do?

BROWNING: Well, I helped, we had a pasteurizer, and that was one of my jobs, to clean that. And when I went to clean it, it hadn't been cleaned very well, either. So, that was one job that I did, because if I drank milk, I wasn't( ) [Laughing] 16:00And my first job was washing tea towels and hanging them out. And Miss Elkin told me to be certain that I didn't let them droop when I hung them out. Because if I did, I would be acting just like some slouchy woman hanging out baby diapers. And that just made me so mad. [Laughter] C.M.: I'd say so.

BROWNING: Hang out those tea towels and bring them in. I was tea towel girl there for about six months or half the year. We changed jobs at Christmas time usually. But that was a good time in my life.

C.M.: One 17:00thing I have found interesting asking people about, is the things about the kitchen and the dining room, because you all ate together, had all your meals together and things. What was that like? [Laughter - Browning] I mean, I've heard different stories of, some people have said that time made them real nervous. Or at first, when they first started coming there, because you were expected to act a certain way. But it has just been neat to hear stories about it. What was it like, like a day, maybe a typical day, eating in there? Starting with the breakfast.

BROWNING: Well, you come down to breakfast. Miss Elkin, we'd go to our chairs, you know, stand behind our chairs. Miss Elkin had this little bell she'd tap. And we would sit down in our chairs. And when I went this fellow was there from Berea, one of the teachers that had come down and he sat beside me and he pulled the chair out and I couldn't get my chair in. [Laughing] That just upset me, I just felt like I was doing something 18:00wrong. I didn't know what to do. And then we had to read the Bible every evening when we had our service after dinner. Somebody would have to get up and read the Bible. And that was such a scary thing, everybody got real quiet and you got up and read the Bible, you know. [Whispering] And I remember this one boy was so nervous, he turned over a chair and he was real blond and he got real red. Poor Byron, I'll never forget him. Turned that chair over and how embarrassed he was, oh he couldn't even speak, he was so embarrassed. [Laughing] C.M.: I'd say so. That would make me a little bit nervous. What kind of food did you all eat? What were some typical foods that you had? 19:00BROWNING: Well, we had real good food, when Miss Elkin, of course she was head of the dining room until I left. We had good food. Sometimes we would have dry cereal, but lots of times we'd have bacon and eggs or sausage and eggs. And biscuits, she had, that was another job I did, was make biscuits. [Laughing] C.M.: Oh, you did. That was probably a job, a big job.

BROWNING: Well, and I still don't like beaten biscuits. [Laughing] We had this machine, you know, where you'd turn and knead that. And it was, everybody just loved them. The people would just...

C.M.: I know that's what people have told me, they loved them. So, you're not much of a fan of those?

BROWNING: I'm not much of a fan for the beaten biscuits. [Laughing] Made too many, I guess.

C.M.: It sounds like it. 20:00BROWNING: But that was so needed for the children back then. There would have been no way I could have gone to high school.

C.M.: How did you know about the settlement school, when you decided to write to them to be able to come?

BROWNING: My aunt took me and my cousin there one time, to see if we could get in the school. We must have been twelve at the time. And I believe she had gone there as a child. And she liked Miss Stone real well. And I remember Miss Stone sitting on the upstairs porch reading a book and we didn't get to see her. And she was so disappointed that they wouldn't let us see Miss Stone. 21:00Of course they had to protect her, you know, she wasn't well at that time. Old and worked to death.

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

BROWNING: Oh yeah, yeah.

C.M.: Well, thinking a little bit about when you were in high school, who were some of the teachers you remember having?

BROWNING: Well, the best teacher I ever had was Betty Combs. And I just so wanted to see her and thank her, and of course, she died. I never got to see Betty again. She was not only a good teacher, she was a kind, good person.

C.M.: What was she like in the classroom?

BROWNING: Oh, terrific. She'd make you, she would, she would have a book to read and she would make that so interesting that you'd just want to just keep reading this book, you know. She 22:00was the one to teach Old English and all that stuff. And then I had Eda Kay Smith, who was the Ancient History teacher. She was a tough customer. [Laughing] C.M.: Was she?

BROWNING: But she was very fair.

C.M.: Yeah?

BROWNING: Yeah. And Pearl was just a good, Pearl Combs was just a lovely, likable person and couldn't teach anything. [Laughter - Mullins] The worst teacher I ever had.

C.M.: But you liked him as a person.

BROWNING: Oh yes, oh everybody wanted to be in Pearl's class, because he was just a lot of fun. And Prof Smith was a tyrant.

C.M.: That was the principal? What was he like?

BROWNING: He was a very cruel, domineering person. 23:00And I remember I was trying to get a window closed one cold morning in the grade school. And that window wouldn't close, and it was so cold. And I was trying to work it around, trying to get it to close, and he was going down the road and saw me there at that window. And oh, he threatened me, never did ask me why. So, I just walked off until he got out of sight and went back and finally got it. And he beat this little boy in school. I never liked him after that. The boy didn't have a Dad, and he was a real good child. He just didn't like him and just beat him half to death right in front of all of us.

C.M.: Were there many discipline problems when you were in high school, with people? 24:00BROWNING: Very few, very few. Because the children were all, you know, they were from homes where they had to mind, I guess. Of course, things change a lot, my daughter teaches fourth grade and if she complains about the salary, I always tell her about my grandfather. One of my grandfathers taught school. The year my mother was born, in nineteen hundred, my grandfather, it was either six or eight dollars a month he got for teaching school. [Laughing] I tell my daughter that and she quits complaining.

C.M.: I can’t imagine. I'd say so. Were there any other teachers that you had? I don't know if there were any others that we left out. 25:00BROWNING: Well, I had Miss Hadley for a Home Ec teacher. She was from Indiana. And she was a lovely person. She was also my housemother for six months. We used to go, we called it Practice Home. We'd go and six of us girls would go and live and run the house, you know, do the cooking and everything. She lived upstairs at the Hospital, we all lived there. And some of our cooking was a scream, I'll tell you. [Laughing] C.M.: Was it?

BROWNING: We'd open a can of something and not know what to do with it. [Laughter] C.M.: Once you opened it?

BROWNING: Poor Miss Hadley, she had a hard time with us. She was great though. She taught us a lot, helped us a lot. And Miss Cushion, she stayed over at the cabin. She was a lovely person. 26:00All the teachers there were just great when I was there. They were all good to me and just real wonderful people.

C.M.: What subjects did you enjoy when you were in high school?

BROWNING: Well, I loved Home Ec, I loved English, because Betty was such a good teacher.

C.M.: Yeah.

BROWNING: I had an awful time in Algebra, because I never could learn anything under Pearl, we just had a good time in there. [Laughter] We didn't learn anything, but we had a good time. And the literature I loved too. Of course, back then we didn't have many books.

C.M.: Right.

BROWNING: The library was built when I was in high school. And we just thought we had really arrived when that library got built.

C.M.: Oh I'd say so. 27:00BROWNING: And I ate on the same table with Mr. Still. [Laughing] C.M.: What was that like? I'll bet you've got some good stories about that.

BROWNING: Well, I loved fried apples and he hated them. [Laughing] And he'd get mad every time we had fried apples, and I'd get mad at him for not liking the fried apples. Shoot, isn't that funny? [Laughing] He was a card. He was a young man back then.

C.M.: Yeah. What did you all think of Mr. Still? Because he worked in the library, I guess.

BROWNING: Yeah, he taught Library Science. He was just very businesslike, did his job and expected you to do yours. But he was lovely. We all liked Mr. Still. 28:00C.M.: What year did you graduate in? You told me earlier.

BROWNING: Forty-two.

C.M.: Forty-two, okay, that's what I thought. That's what I thought. Another thing I was going to ask you about too, when we were talking in there earlier, of course you were in high school or you were graduating as the war was going on, and all these things were going on.

BROWNING: Yeah.

C.M.: How did that, I mean how did that effect the town?

BROWNING: Well, we were very, very disturbed. I remember we were, on Sunday, we'd go, they called it Quiet Hour, we'd have to go to bed or stay in our room and be real quiet for a couple of hours Sunday afternoon. We were in our room and Miss Watts came to the door and said, war has been declared. And some of the girls started crying. And 29:00Miss Watts came back and said, we'll have no crying. I thought to myself, you can't do much about that. But there was, a lot of the children didn't make it back. Buddy Sutton was a classmate of mine. There were several boys that got killed, I know.

C.M.: Yeah, these would have been people your age. Especially being such a small town, that's why I asked about it, I mean.

BROWNING: People doing dumb things. 30:00[Coughing fit] C.M.: Okay, now I'll turn it back on. We were just talking a little bit about the war, when that happened.

BROWNING: That was a bad time in people's lives, wasn't it?

C.M.: Yeah. Yeah, because I had talked to another lady that had graduated, not the same year as you, but like a year after, or two years after.

END OF TAPE 20 A 46, BESS BROWNING, 31:00SIDE ABEGINNING OF TAPE 20 A 46, BESS BROWNING, SIDE B BROWNING: In the war, he was in the European Theatre. And he came back, got the G.I. Bill and went to school. He wasn't even through high school. And he got his PhD right before he quit.

C.M.: Yeah, that's amazing. Well, I guess, kind of summing this up, thinking back on it, we've talked a lot about, you know, your memories and things when you were at the settlement school and kind of what it means to you. How do you think that it's impacted your life? The school and your experiences.

BROWNING: Well, I certainly wouldn't have gone to high school, if it hadn't been for the settlement. 32:00I wouldn't have met my husband. I met him in high school. So, who can know what it would have been like.

C.M.: Right, yeah. Are you very familiar with the things that go on there now?

BROWNING: No, no.

C.M.: Not really?

BROWNING: Not really. I went back to the Alumni Luncheon. I think I've been back three or four times. And my sister and I were planning to go this year, but....See I had two sisters at the settlement, three!

C.M.: Wow. And they all went there too?

BROWNING: Yeah.

C.M.: Did they live there?

BROWNING: Yeah, they lived there. But my sister who is nineteen years younger than me, it changed a lot.

C.M.: Yeah, yeah I'd say it had. 33:00What kind of things do you think were so different for her, I guess just from talking to her?

BROWNING: Well, they didn't work as much as we did.

C.M.: Right.

BROWNING: They weren't as strict on them as they were on us, which was a good thing, because, as I say, there are some children that will always get into mischief, if they are not watched, like the girls smoking. But my sister, my youngest sister went through Nursing at U.K., and got her R.N. degree. And another one, she got married right quick. And she got her LPN 34:00degree and worked about thirty years at the hospital at Hazard. She is a great nurse, she got in the right profession. But the one that got her R.N. degree, she never used it.

C.M.: Really? Well is there anything I haven't asked you about maybe that you want to add, or that you've thought of while we've been talking?

BROWNING: I don't reckon, my memory is not too good now to tell you the truth.

C.M.: Well, you've done a pretty good job. [Laughter] I wouldn't call that a bad memory. Okay.

END OF INTERVIEW