Oral History Interview with Mollie Holbrook, Norman Holbrook & Darrell Smith

ANN COX: Okay.

DARRELL SMITH: I don’t have to go.

AC: Okay.

SMITH: Want me to get out of the way?

AC: [laughing] MOLLIE HOLBROOK: I was going with you [laughing].

SMITH: I get nervous.

AC: You get nervous? Everyone always gets nervous once I turn it on, and before and after they just talk, but when it’s on, it’s like they don’t have anything to say.

SMITH: It’s the fear of the unknown. I didn’t know what she was going to do. She might have been more to strangle him instead of. . .

AC: Okay. This is Ann Cox interviewing Darrell Smith, or Earnest Darrell Smith.

SMITH: Everybody knows me as Darrell.

AC: Okay.

SMITH: The only one that don’t is someone that works with me, you put your first name on your ( ) where you work. So Ben knows me as Ernie, or Earnest. I’ve got a split personality, 1:00I guess. I’ll answer to both of them.

AC: [laughing] And Mollie Smith Holbrook and Norman Holbrook. All right, you guys, I guess, can just take turns telling me where and the date you were born.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Okay, Norman. I was born January the 26th, 1931 in Mack Roberts, Kentucky. That’s a coal mining section of Harding County.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Letcher.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Letcher? Okay, Letcher County.

AC: Okay. So your family didn’t always live up on Strong Fork?

NORMAN HOLBROOK: No. They moved there when I was a year old.

AC: Oh, okay.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: And I’ve known the Martin family since I was yeigh high.

AC: Right. 2:00 Mollie?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: I was born January 12, 1933 up at Quicksand, Wet Branch, Quicksand, Breathitt County.

AC: Okay.

SMITH: I was born February the 11th, 1940. My name’s Darrell Smith and I was born up on Wet Branch. That’s over on Quicksand. That’s where ( ) I survived.

AC: So how did you guys, how did you guys end up in Franklin, Ohio?

SMITH: My dad came up here and worked at Fridgidaire and he worked up here for what?

MOLLIE SMITH: He worked ( ).

SMITH: And Mollie and Norman got married and they moved here to Middletown 3:00and he’d come home on weekends and Mollie would come with him and he had a wreck coming home one weekend and my mom said, “You’ll not go back without us.” And I was, I think living, ( ) living. . .

MOLLIE SMITH: It was ’52.

SMITH: About twelve years old when I moved. Maybe a little bit before. We lived up on Pennyrile. That’s really where I was raised, I guess. But I’ve always thought I wanted to go back. But when I’d go back, nobody’s there that I know, you know it’s just so different, you know. But I don’t like the fast life up here. Everything’s in the fast lane. I like the slow lane. Enjoy life.

AC: Lots of people I interview say they like the pace of life down there better than. . . because lots of people I interview have moved to Ohio or Indiana 4:00or. . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: It just wasn’t worth it down there. You had to come to Ohio or Michigan or somewhere so you could get work.

AC: Mm-hmm. So your dads came up here after you got married?

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Mm-hmm.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: He was already working up here.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: We got married in 1951.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: He came up here in 1950 and got a job. He come back and see me.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Mollie and I used, I used to chase her underneath the quilt frames. [laughter] MOLLIE HOLBROOK: ( ) NORMAN HOLBROOK: You know what a quilting frame is?

AC: Mm-hmm.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Quilting frame?

AC: Yep.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: It’d hang from the ceiling and all these people’d be, her grandma, I don’t know if that was true but we’ve known each other about that long, haven’t we? 5:00First time I saw her, her, her grandpa had a gris mill where they’d ground corn and so dad took me down with him to get the corn ground to make cornbread with and they lived up on about a half a mile down the road from the, down the creek from the gris mill. So it was real hot and I thought, well, I’ll just lay underneath this sycamore, it’s nice and cool here. And so I laid down and almost went to sleep and all of a sudden I, I couldn’t breath and she had, she came out and threw a bucket of ashes over the bank! [laughing] And I woke up and couldn’t see anything. It scared me half to death and I looked up and saw the prettiest thing I ever saw.

AC: Aw.

SMITH: His 6:00eyes were full of dirt.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: I saw her through the rose colored glasses, I guess [laughter]. Isn’t that some way of meeting somebody? She tried to burn me up. The ashes were hot, by the way.

AC: Oh! Did you know what you were doing?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Uh-uh. I didn’t know he was there!

NORMAN HOLBROOK: But really with a, she’s the only girl I’ve ever dated. She might have dated some other boys.

AC: She’s not admitting it [laughing].

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: No I didn’t. Because we started, I was about twelve, twelve ( ) when we started talking.

AC: Mm-hmm.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: But she was really about six or seven years old when you threw those ashes on me.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: No, it was when you saw me walking, that’s when I was walking under 7:00the quilting frames. I must have been about nine. Took them out of the cook stove and. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: When the flood came, she came down with polio after that. And so she had to learn to walk again.

AC: Oh my gosh! Wow.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Was that after, was that after you threw the ashes on me?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Yeah.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: The lord punished you.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: No, that was before because I was six and a half when the flood came so it must have been afterwards. It might have been before, I don’t know.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: I don’t know.

AC: So the flood was in ’39?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Yeah. July, so it could have been before because it was a year or so before I could walk. So it was either. . .

NORMAN: You’d have been about six.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Six or I would have been nine. 8:00NORMAN HOLBROOK: When the flood came?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: No, I was six when the flood came, but that was before I could have walked, ( ), before I could have walked to do that.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: That flood was a dangerous looking thing.

AC: Mm-hmm. Do you remember it?

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah, I remember it. She probably don’t. There was, the main branch, stream came right by their house and one from where your grandparents lived came out below there and they created a, kind of a whirl, kind of backwater.

AC: Yeah.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: And so that, still backwater was moving around but it was all around their house, they were up on kind of an old. . . there was no way to get out, so they just had to wait until it went down.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: But if it hadn’t been for the backwater, our house would have went because this house below us 9:00went and the Deatons. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: The whole family was washed. . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: They lived on down from us so it went straight to their’s, you know, it kept, it’s the only thing that saved us.

AC: So you weren’t around yet?

SMITH: No, I was. . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Mom was pregnant with him.

SMITH: Oh yes, she was carrying me I guess.

AC: Mm-hmm.

SMITH: But I’ve heard a lot of talk about it. It’s scary. The thing is dad, didn’t he try to take a cedar chest. . . ?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: A homemade cedar chest, he put me in a cedar chest to go on and try to swim to the hill and then come back, but he didn’t get very far before it started sinking so he had to come back.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Filling up with water. It probably had some cracks in the bottom of it.

SMITH: It, it, it’s, 10:00he was going to try to take us on, going to swim over, but it would sink.

AC: Mm-hmm.

SMITH: Now, I was told this, I don’t ( ). . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Yeah, I remember.

SMITH: But getting back to Mollie, I always was glad to see Norman come down to see Mollie because he’d ride his bicycle and I didn’t have a bicycle. I would ride his bicycle until he went home. I told him he could come a ‘courting every night as long as he wanted to because I’d ride his bicycle. [laughter] And one night he stayed late and it was dark and he had to borrow a flashlight. Do you remember that? Well, somewhere along the way going home, he got scared and when he got back, there were prints of the handlebars and the flashlight [laughter].

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Was there?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Junior Martin was coming down from seeing 11:00Fern. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: You know, that might have been just not fear, but you had to hang on, you know. I don’t know. I might have been afraid of. . .

SMITH: They accuse you of getting scared. He scorched the flashlight.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: A lot of people talk about, well, let’s see, Patty Loveless has a song about the coal mining eastern Kentucky, about how late in the morning it gets day light, about nine o’clock, and that’s true, because the mountains were kind of straight up. You remember how the mountains were?

AC: Yeah.

NORMAN: So the sun didn’t come in until about nine o’clock and about three in the evening, it started getting, it, shadows. So we had very little sunshine. But back to the flood, it washed 12:00all dad’s, I think he just raised corn back then, but it washed everything away. It washed the topsoil away from the fields and you could see, looking up the stream, you could see the water would be maybe two feet high or just a little ways up coming in sheets, different heights until the, it started going down. And it went down pretty fast because the stream is only about six miles long. But all these little branches came into it and when they did it just, every branch would raise the creek up higher, but then like I say, it went down fast. But it did a lot of destruction. 13:00You couldn’t, I don’t believe you could have survived outside. The only way probably would be to put your hands over your, like this because it was just like pouring a bucket of water on you. It was a ( ) cloudburst.

AC: So what did your family do to. . . ?

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Our home was up on the, on the hill and it was pretty safe. It didn’t even leak, so. . . dad built the house and it was a fairly good house. But it washed our barn away and dad almost drowned in the barn trying to save the sows and the pigs. We saved one pig, dad did. And it was a white pig and we called it Sambo and it was a pet and it was a little rascal. And my brother was down on the floor and he was cracking walnuts and he was, 14:00he’d crack the walnuts and give the pig this kernal from this walnut, the next one he’d eat. Well they got tasting pretty good to him, he started eating them all, and the pig, I was watching them, I was playing under the floor with a block of coal, I didn’t have a car, pretending that block of coal was a car and I watched Albert, my older brother he was, he was tantalizing that pig, I believe, well the pig pretty soon made a lunge and cut him right in the forehead and just bit him and he bled and Albert got mad at it and he, he came out from under the floor crying and mom grabbed it by the ear and was whipping it! Then Albert started crying because the pig was getting a whipping. But it was 15:00something to watch.

AC: So other than Jackson and Franklin, you haven’t lived anywhere else?

NORMAN HOLBROOK: See, since we’ve gotten married we’ve lived in an apartment for a short time, maybe, just a few months? And then in ’52, close to ’51 wasn’t it? We moved up here on the hill.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: ’52.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: ’52? Yeah. ’52 we lived in a little defense cabin and it had two rooms and a garage and we had a little kerosene stove, we got it from Lady Wher, didn’t we?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: No. We didn’t even know her then.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Didn’t we?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: No.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Oh. What kind of stove was it? 16:00MOLLIE HOLBROOK: It was a fuel stove.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: A fuel stove, yeah. And the flew went out the wall instead of out the chimney. Out the roof and the wind blew and blew the fire out one night. Came in threw the ( ) out the window, or out the door and so it blew the fire out and so the stove was hot. Well, the oil kept coming in and so it exploded, Molly had a miscarriage, and the house was. . . you remember it? Ooh, it was a bad time.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Yes, I remember it!

AC: Do you remember it!

SMITH: Yes, we try not to remember.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: But I was just thinking about how. . . then we moved over here and built a basement and lived in it for a couple of three years, didn’t we?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: One year.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Okay. One year. Seemed like longer.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: ’56-’57 17:00we bought the house.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: And the wall caved in one time, the neighbor took the dirt out and the wall just popped back in place and so it’s a wonder hadn’t all got killed, but I guess the lord was with us. And so we built the rest of the house. I was always afraid of going in debt so we, we paid for things as we went. And when we first got married we only had, we didn’t have any utensils and so we’d buy a fork and a knife and a spoon. And you didn’t give, people didn’t give showers back then. You were kind of on your own. Even your parents didn’t help you much. I think that was good because that made you kind of independent. 18:00Then, well we built that house and then we let our daughter have it, and then we moved over here. Built this one.

AC: Did you guys miss Jackson a lot? No?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Not me. He does.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: When I first came to town, I brought some rocks from the creek. I carried them in my pocket to remind me of home. I had a terrible time with it.

SMITH: I pretty much did too. I always said when we left down there, I said that really tore me up. I wanted to go back I didn’t want to come. You know, like I said, the fear of the unknown. I, I just wanted to stay down there. But I moved back after I grew up and everybody else had left too. J.M. was gone and ( ) and you know, everyone I knew and played with 19:00was gone. So I, that made a double whammy. I didn’t want to be down there, didn’t want to be up here. So it, it’s. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Than his best, your best friend got killed, Bear.

SMITH: Yeah, Bear. Clyde, Clyde Spencer. That really, that really bothered me. I got my first guitar that Hezekiah bought me and, this is all ( ), and I had it, I don’t know how long I’d had it, but ( ) come in here that morning, woke us up for school and told us that Bear had gotten killed and the first thing I thought was, he’s been up here and I didn’t get to see him. And I got a ( ), I got out my guitar and busted it all to pieces. I mean, I still don’t know why I did that. But I, me and Bear was, 20:00his name was Clyde but we called him Bear was my best friend right down there.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: He was driving his car real fast and. . .

SMITH: Yeah, and he didn’t know the road, he was up here visiting.

NORMAN: There’s a road, a bridge was out and he just dove right into the construction.

AC: Oh no!

SMITH: It kind of, I don’t know what it is, and I still don’t know why I busted that guitar. Loved it, I still don’t understand it.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Well that was your way of getting rid of your. . .

SMITH: I think I was mad because I didn’t get to see him. But I don’t know who I was mad at, so I sort of took it out on my guitar. [laughing] NORMAN HOLBROOK: I know when mom passed, my mother passed away, she was not, 21:00we didn’t think she was sick, you know, she had high blood pressure, but all of the sudden my brother in law called me, said she was dead and I, I had a lot of anger. I don’t know why, I don’t know who I was angry at but. . . at myself a lot because we didn’t go ( ) as much as I thought we should, but we really did. But I, I thought, you know, I could have been with her more.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: An eight hour drive and just, with three kids it was hard to get out and go. And work, I mean, you know, you’d come in, but we, we went well often.

AC: It was an eight hour drive to Jackson? Wow.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: The roads were very crooked and a lot of traffic even then because the roads were small. 22:00We would go through Mount Sterling and Maysville down 68 and 73, that, there was, as you go almost into Maysville there’s a little creek or a little road, what was the name of that? There was a creek there that the road crossed several times, I mean it had to be twenty times. You remember that Darrell? One way bridges. . .

SMITH: One way bridges on it. ( ).

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Gas was thirty cents a gallon. So I had a Volkes Wagon one time, I drove it home and I think I spent ten dollars on gas going down there and back, we stopped in Campton and dad said, “I’ll buy the food, 23:00you buy the gas.” Well, I filled it up, cost me about a dollar and a half and then you know, dad probably spent ten or fifteen dollars for. . . were, were you with us? [doorbell rings] And he, he thought, “Man, I have, I have been gyped!” [laughter] But the Volkes Wagon got real good gas mileage. Come in son!

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: He’s going to do church work. Got two little babies.

AC: So when you guys came up here did you have a car?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Yeah. His, he was using his brother’s car, his brother went into the service, and he let Norman have his car for about a 24:00year and a half he drove it and then Norman had a small car, just an old one, then he come back and got married, you know, he came back for it then, but you know, he drove it for over a year. And I don’t know.

SMITH: Sold it when he got that little green Plymouth. I remember that little green Plymouth that he had, that’s the first car I remember. ( ).

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Yeah, he did. And he kept it though and drove his brother’s car, what was that? Well, and with a rumble seat in the back. It was, wasn’t too good, his brother’s was a nicer car.

SMITH: And really Norman was more like a brother than a. . . even when they were going to see each other, he’d come and get me and Seldon. We’d go down to Black Bridge and go swimming, in that little green car.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Yeah.

SMITH: And they, and really, 25:00in all my life, if I’d have problems, I’d always come to Norman. I mean, because he’s just like an older brother.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Back then they thought you all was brothers.

SMITH: Yeah, I remember one time going down there and the breaks went out on that and he took the ( ), he put water in for break fluid, made that line over ( ) and drove us back home. [TO NORMAN] You could have stayed out there just a little bit longer. We was talking about you.

SMITH: Yeah, the ‘36 Plymouth?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Oh, I couldn’t think what it was.

SMITH: Remember you broke that break line?

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah, I can’t remember putting water in it, but I remember. . .

SMITH: You didn’t have no, that may have been, yeah, you didn’t have no break fluid so you filled it back up with water and it worked.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: I guess.

SMITH: With what little oil was in there. 26:00NORMAN HOLBROOK: But we’d go down to Black Bridge and go swimming, I remember. . .

SMITH: That’s what I was talking about. You’d come down and get us and. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah. That’s where the, several streams came together. ..

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: He was supposed to be dating me and he was out running around with my brothers.

SMITH: Well, I said he’s more like a brother than, you know, than, well, he wasn’t a brother-in-law then, but, you know. . .

AC: Mm-hmm.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Actually, about all you had was neighbors. I mean, you didn’t have toys.

SMITH: I had a, a, me and Seldon, see, what was it, Barney lived up from us? No, Ballards.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Ballards.

SMITH: One of them Ballards, he ( ) out a, like a 1954, or I don’t know what it was, with wheels on it, a little nail in it 27:00and made, for Christmas one time for me and Seldon and I believe there’s a picture, we’re over there and me and Seldon and Cricket’s ( ), I believe that was one of them cars that he made. Little wooden ( ), and he just wittled it down and put wheels on it.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Look like a car.

SMITH: Yeah. ( ) Lordy, you thought I had a fifty thousand dollar toy. I still love that. I still, now, you know you can’t buy a kid something that it’s already got it.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: They have too much.

SMITH: And you could get them anything and they’d appreciate it, you know. I like that life.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: The missionaries got a, gave us a lot of, 28:00more clothes than anything, but sometimes, one Christmas they gave us a toy.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Christmas, they always gave toys to each, again to each person. The church in Philadelphia would send them the stuff and they would have a big tree and, and give the kids. . . if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t have had toys or clothes except a feed sack dresses.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: You ever hear of feed sack dresses?

AC: Yeah.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: ( ) your grandma. Yep.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: I was reading about them, and Purina was one of the big companies.

AC: Mm-hmm.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: And they would put, you know they, they would have the good feed for cattle in plain bags, but the ones 29:00that had real pretty print on it for dresses and things, they would grind up corn cobs and things like that just to fill it up and you didn’t get much. . .

END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE A BEGINNING OF TAPE ONE, SIDE B NORMAN HOLBROOK: for your money.

AC: Mm-hmm. Wow.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: They’d buy the seed at that point.

SMITH: That was the clothes you wore most of the time.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah.

SMITH: Made from a feed sack.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: There was two fire trucks that went by now, but no, no lights.

AC: Did you guys know that you were poor, like, did you realize it when you were little, or was it sort of, that’s how it was?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Everybody was. . .

AC: Everybody was the same?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Yeah.

AC: Yeah, okay.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah. We didn’t want anything.

AC: Yeah.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Did you Mollie?

SMITH: We didn’t know we was poor.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: We had the hills. We were blessed with 30:00a clean life, really. . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Well, we raised gardens and. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: There was no pollution because you didn’t buy anything in a can. You, you canned it yourself and when you opened the can, you used it the next year. But we didn’t have a, a garbage pick-up and didn’t have any garbage. There was no paper diapers for instance. You know, they washed them.

SMITH: And you’d make a sled for you. Papa always made a sled. And really it was pretty, you could guide it. He’d burn a hole in a stick and put a nail, you’d pull down on it and head back up. I mean, really some of the stuff they did was really, you know, pretty, well now it’s nothing but, we grew up, me and my brother, we cleared out a path ( ) up on the hills 31:00and I’d let him ride it first. He went down that hill ( ), comes down where the cemetery is now, when he’d get to that place like that, he’d come off of it. I was about killed ( ).

NORMAN HOLBROOK: This is a picture of our homeplace.

AC: Oh, okay.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Can you see how clean everything is?

AC: Mm-hmm.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: The stream was even clean. You never saw any trash in the creek. And now all this was covered from the front of our house over to this bank up here. So all this was underwater. This is my grandfather’s house, this is the Holbrook cemetery, and this is where Hubert Hollon lives. Right there. We went to school there in his house.

AC: Yeah. He told me about that.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah. 32:00AC: Was it called the Camp Christy school?

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Mm-hmm.

AC: Okay.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Isn’t that beautiful?

AC: Yeah, how did you get that picture?

NORMAN HOLBROOK: I was up on the mountain, looking down. I took another picture of my uncle’s house and it’s, I just turned around south and took it and it, it’s just as pretty.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Oh, that’s the back side of it though. I, I’d say Cynthia’s house was made kind of ( ) over like that where the porch and everything. Makes you think of that one.

AC: Yeah.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: That’s where Jay and grandpa lived. My grand, my grandfather lives here. See how much lower it is? See how that is there? Now, now he lived right in here and it didn’t wash his house away but it destroyed the house. So then he built this one. 33:00AC: Can you talk about, like, I know it wasn’t really called your neighborhood, but the little community you grew up in? Like who you played with and what families you were really close to when you were growing up there?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: For me it was Lorrine and my aunt Hazel Smith and I guess that was right there was about all. They was older than me.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: ( ) MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Well, we never did, just in school once with them, we didn’t visit or anything. But with us, then my cousins would come in from Ohio so I could be with them, 34:00but in school there was a Spencers and Coles, I mean, there were several, I guess, I went Strong Fork, that was down throughout the hollow.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: That’s flat land.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: And then he went to Camp Christy, so. . .

AC: Oh, okay. So you went to different schools when you were younger?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Uh-huh. We went to the same high school.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Our little schools were only about three miles apart, weren’t they? Years ago there was a, a logging camp there where they, it was one of the biggest ones in Breathitt County and there was a little train that ran on through there and picked coal up, or, timber.

SMITH: Yeah. I don’t remember that.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Oh, you don’t remember ( ) when it was there? And so there’s a lot of people that lived there and they worked in the timber, lumberjacks.

AC: Mm-hmm.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: And then after the. . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: That was ( ).

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah, a long time before us. We don’t remember 35:00it, but then after the timber was gone, people tried to survive on ten acres of land, you know, and that was, so that was the reason people became very poor. They were attached to the community and didn’t want to leave. The flood was a blessing in a way because it forced some people to leave. It washed everything they had away so they, they just gave up and most of them were successful because they were self-sufficient, they came to Ohio and saved their money. Your relatives too.

AC: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They left.

SMITH: Me and Cricket and Norma Jean played more than anything.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: And then Eva, Corbitt’s kids were more your age.

SMITH: Yeah, Eva and Corbitt’s.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: I’m like a, 36:00another generation from them someway, I don’t know, but. . .

AC: Yeah, like ten years.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: My younger brother Jay, Jay Holbrook, he, he liked Corbitt’s children. They were all about the same age. He’s a little older than you, isn’t he Darrell?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: No.

SMITH: Me and him are not. . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Him and. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: You and Lou?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Gladys.

SMITH: Gladys. Me and, Gladys is a little bit older than me and I’m older than Jay.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: He’s older, the same age as Crawford, Jimmy.

SMITH: And when the Carpenters would come over, but most of the time it was just me and Cricket and Seldon.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Houses was further apart like they are down there now because it got trail ( ). But there just wasn’t, 37:00well we were at the mouth and my grandpa and then Corbitt and then Bud and Holbert and then Seymour, I mean they wasn’t, just wasn’t that many, now his on up, he and ( ) lived pretty close and they had a lot of kids so they ( ) you know, they was together. But for us there wasn’t that many except in school.

SMITH: That’s about all that I can think is me and Norma Jean and Cricket and when her brothers and sisters would come over it about. But you could out and just spend the day out in the woods, me and Seldon, and Cricket would be with us then, but then me and Seldon would, we would spend a day in the woods. We liked to climb a tree, find a limber one and swing it out. I remember you 38:00would hung up, it would go down about half way and stop. Way down here is the ground, up here is you and you can’t [laughter]. . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: You just found your own thing to do. And then of course most, well we didn’t work that much on the farm but you all might have helped papa a lot.

SMITH: He, he did. Yeah.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: I remember some, but not much. I was a girl.

SMITH: He helped, papa loved, he made crossties, he’d cut out crossties and Seldon helped him.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Yeah, I remember Seldon talking about that, setting out tobacco, something like that, but really. . .

SMITH: Yeah, I remember once that they were around behind the missionaries up cutting some crossties and I went up there, because you could go anyplace by yourself, you know, I knew where it was at, 39:00they were thirsty and they sent me to the house to get them some water. My dad and mom was going to Jackson. I jumped in the car and went with them! [laughter] ( ) at papa’s, I mean that’s the one, you should have done it if he had to say anything. But don’t think I didn’t hear about it. ( ) said Darrell, you didn’t get no water.

AC: So did you guys go down into Jackson often? No?

NORMAN HOLBROOK: No.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: No, we had no way to go. When dad would work out here, he’d come in on the weekend and we didn’t go that much then, but then he worked down there at a filling station in Jackson and at a stave mill and really you didn’t go, it was a treat to go to Jackson. It just, 40:00and most time, maybe three months, you had to walk out to the main highway.

SMITH: Yeah, you couldn’t get in and out with cars.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: The creek, the creek was the road. And then where the creek, where you couldn’t use the creek for some reason you’d go through the, the lowland, it was not tillable because you couldn’t raise anything because water would get up and that would be a real mushy and sometimes it was, it was sandy so when it dried out, which was real quick, it was a good road, but when it was wet it was mire, you couldn’t go. . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: So Jackson was a. . . that’s why if you got a chance you’d jump in the car because that was a, that was a big. . .

SMITH: That’s why I thought you can get your own water, you know? [laughter] I wanted to go to Jackson! 41:00NORMAN HOLBROOK: Did you tell her about the, checking the ignition and see if the key worked?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Oh, no, that, that. . .

SMITH: I can picture that car, that car we wrecked in.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah, were you, how old were you?

SMITH: I was in it.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Mm-hmm.

SMITH: I got a knot on my head.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: The first cars that, when you turned the ignition off, it locked the steering wheel. That was, I don’t know how old it was, but. . .

SMITH: About ‘36.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: ‘36?

SMITH: I think.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: It was in ‘43 when we had the wreck because it was before Carolyn was born.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: You remember that road that makes these curves back and forth and goes over to. . .?

AC: Mm-hmm.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: The reason it’s made like that, was a train would pull around and reverse and back up one hill and then pull forward again. 42:00It made a Z. Then the road was put in following the railroad tracks, they took the railroad tracks up after the timber was all gone. So they were coming from Jackson, over coming down that crooked road and Mollie’s dad had just made him a new T, and they’d been using just a. . .

SMITH: The thing didn’t work, it wouldn’t lock.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: It wouldn’t lock, no. So his dad said, “Oh, I see you’ve got a new key,” or something and so her dad didn’t know it would lock the steering wheel, he, he said, “yeah, I did,” and he took it out and he, and when he took it out, it locked the steering wheel and they went right over the hill.

SMITH: He went around the curve and. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yep, went around the curve and kept going.

SMITH: Went down to the next road.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: And they, the, the road next to the S turn, 43:00they went from one level down to the next one. Cut trees out and got the car back on the road.

AC: Wow.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: I thought that was pretty fascinating.

SMITH: It was that nobody got hurt.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: To me!

AC: Were you in the car?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: I fell out over top of mom, the door come open and I was standing right behind her. Let’s see, Seldon was, even Seldon was up in the back ( ) and papa. Or was you in the front with mom?

SMITH: I don’t know.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: You might have been in the front.

SMITH: I was thinking when she. . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: You must have been.

SMITH: . . . and ( ) Gage was on a school bus and he seen who it was, ( ) broke everybody’s ( ) getting out there. And he run up to the car and says, “Is anybody hurt?” Nobody said anything but me. Oh yeah, I’ve got a knot on my head. [laughter] MOLLIE HOLBROOK: It was a big drop down to the second road and. 44:00. .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Did you go to Jackson?

AC: Mm-hmm.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: You know the crooked road?

AC: Is that, is that 1812? Would that be it?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Mm-hmm. Yep.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yep.

AC: Yeah.

SMITH: They call that Panbowl Hill.

AC: Yeah, Panbowl. Mm-hmm.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Mollie’s dad used to work in the stave mill. I guess he drove a truck for them, didn’t he Mollie?

SMITH: Yeah, he hauled, he hauled stave bolts in.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah. And they were telling about, he was, when he was younger he would pull pranks on people and he’d, he hooked up a wire from a spark plug and he held it in his hand, it wouldn’t shock him because he wasn’t grounded. And then he asked somebody to fill his car up with gasoline and when they did, he’d say something to them and it was something they couldn’t understand what they said, they’d, and he would, they would lean over to ask him what he said and he’d reach out and touch them on the ear and the 45:00current would follow his finger! [laughter] It was a shock they got. [clock strikes] SMITH: ( ) at this bar.

AC: Geez!

SMITH: ( ) in the head.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah, it wouldn’t hurt you, but it’d scare you. It seemed unusual for him to do that because he was pretty serious, wasn’t he?

SMITH: Yeah he, and I can’t, never said nothing ( ) funny, you know, he was just solemn.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: He was quiet.

SMITH: And I guess ( ) whooped, or did he? I know he whooped me.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: He slapped me one time.

SMITH: Oh yeah, that’s right. But he busted my bottom. Of course I asked for it. It was probably that time I threw the cat out the window, probably. It, mom was sick and I wouldn’t let him feed me. 46:00And I wouldn’t eat because I wanted mom to do it. I guess, they told me, I don’t remember, I don’t remember it, and said he busted me one. But I was so little I don’t. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: I’m sure he didn’t beat you ( ).

SMITH: I’m sure he didn’t.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: I had to take ( ), when I had polio, they didn’t know what I had, they thought I had arthritis so they gave me pills, I guess for arthritis. And I couldn’t take the pills so I’d open my mouth and he’d flip them, they’d go down and I’d have to swallow and one day I bit him. He slapped me hard!

AC: Oh. I bet it was a reflex. It hurt so he slapped.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Yeah.

SMITH: It was fun though. I wouldn’t give nothing, 47:00anything worth trading the memories and, and I, I like it a lot better than the life I live now. You got everything you want, but I had everything I wanted down there. You didn’t know all this big world, and really, they might have called it ( ). I sort of led a sheltered life. When I went into the army, I didn’t know this big world was out there. And I just went crazy for a while, went nanny goat as they say back home. I was just butting my head against everything. But I, I, really wish I hadn’t learned that the world was out there because I was happy, content.

AC: How long were you in the army?

SMITH: Two years. I was eighteen. And that’s another thing, me and my brother, 48:00I guess me and Seldon pretty much have been pretty close or because I could do about anything as long as Seldon was doing it. He’d go out and spend half the night, I could talk granny and my mom into letting me go because he was older, you know he was older. “I’ll be with Seldon.” And, well, he, he, I don’t know what I was going to say, but, NORMAN HOLBROOK: He probably started courting the girls and didn’t want you around.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: He got drafted and you joined.

SMITH: Yeah, that’s what, he got, then they called two people a month in one county, you know, they had the draft and he got called and went down and passed his physical, come back, so I went over and I was going to join the army and get three years and they said, “well you go over 49:00and volunteer for the draft and you’ll probably go in with your brother, you’ll both be in at the same time.” Well, I volunteered for the draft, they drafted me, I spent two years, come back out three months before he left. [laughter] I did. I was out about three to six months.( ) wouldn’t have been that long ( ) postpone a little bit.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Darrell went all through Germany and saw the big castles and stuff, didn’t you?

SMITH: Yeah. I, I enjoyed it. But I wish I’d been older.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: You’d have enjoyed it more.

SMITH: ( ) having fun. There was a lot to see over there and I didn’t. If I, if I’d been older I might have did that. The only opportunity you’d ever have and I didn’t take advantage of it. But, I mean, I was busy, young, you know, and I didn’t, this big world out here, look what I found. 50:00And I was never so unhappy in my whole life. Got home and got back to the simple things. ( ) ain’t me. I really love it right where I’m at.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Did you say you knew Rose, Rose’s youngin’, Rosie Back?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: You’re getting off the subject now.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Okay.

AC: That’s all right.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Okay, that’s okay. Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll ask you something after a while.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: It will take too long to explain it.

AC: Is, is Seldon still around?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: He’s in Arizona.

AC: He’s in Arizona? Okay. Then what about Cricket?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: My sister? She lives down in Carlisle.

AC: Oh, okay.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: She has one grandchild.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: One son, one grandchild. 51:00He had to go to Arizona, his kids had, his boys had asthma, allergies, so he had to leave this climate with them.

AC: So you guys came here in the early fifties. Is that right?

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Mm-hmm.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: He came out in ‘50, I came out in ‘51 and got married and they came out in ‘52 then. March of ‘52.

AC: Do you think if there would have been jobs in Jackson that you would have stayed there?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Probably, yeah.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah, we would have. The only thing that was available was teaching or maybe a lawyer or working on the road and politics played a big part in, say if you were a democrat and they knew it and the republicans got in, they would fire you. 52:00And, but vice versa, you know. So employment was not steady and the coal mines were dangerous. A lot of people were killed.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: All you had were your tobacco patches to make money on. You didn’t have the land, like there was four boys in his family.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: We were kind of like the Mexicans, you know, I suppose the people in Ohio really kind of resented us coming in and taking jobs because we worked hard, we were used to working hard. We put in a good days work because we worked from daylight to dark down there for two dollars a day, but up here, I think I made sixty-seven cents an hour at the first job I had in a paper mill 53:00and, but, you were taught to, you know, you were working for your neighbors and you were taught to do the very best you could for them. And so we kind of considered our employer up here as a neighbor. So kind of reminds you of Mexicans, you know, they, they work for less. But I think the Mexican people should have to pay taxes. They don’t. . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Don’t… .if it wasn’t for the Kentuckians, there wouldn’t hardly be nobody in Ohio because it’s all. . .

AC: Yeah. Especially in southwestern Ohio, all around this area.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: But you know, the farm, the farming people treat us with kind hands. We would, 54:00matter of fact we would work for Eddie Weervis, an old man who lived half a mile from here. He owned all this land and so on the weekends when we weren’t working, we’d help him take in hay, do you remember that Darrell?

SMITH: Yeah, I worked for him. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: I never asked him to pay me, did you? Did you? Did he pay you?

SMITH: Yeah. I worked for twenty-five cents an hour.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Did you?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: You worked for a lot of the farmers.

SMITH: Yeah.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: ( ) you worked for him?

SMITH: Yeah.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Joe Lestrue? Joe Hanks? The Sears, did you work for them?

SMITH: That’s about all there was, you know. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah, there was very little industry. . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: All this was farmed then, they farmed it, all these fields. They just had rows, houses up Pennyrile, then a couple up this road and it was all just farm land when we 55:00first moved here.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: This neighborhood had, very few people had phones and if you did, there was about five or six party lines so when you got on, you know, when somebody rang you, it would be a certain ring.

SMITH: A one and a two, or a three and a one. And you’d pick up the phone and somebody’s be talking and you’d have to wait until they got done.

NORMAN: And, and very few people had plumbing in their home. They had outside toilets.

AC: Oh, okay.

SMITH: Yeah, because we used to turn them over ( ). We’d turn everybody’s outhouse upside down. That was a big thing, game with boys, you’d get everybody to go and turn the outhouses over.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: But the farmers treated us good, didn’t they?

SMITH: Yeah they did. Yeah. They would feed you and pay you. And back then, you know, what, a couple dollars a day? 56:00That was a lot of money for a boy, you know? I was what, thirteen or fourteen when I started working for Eddie, and, but that’s because I thought, I thought I was a millionaire.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: We bought, we bought milk from Eddie Wehr. He was a, he belonged to the church of Christ, no, Methodist church, and the, the containers that he, they were supposed to have held half a gallon so, we’d been getting milk from him for, I don’t know how long, maybe a year or so, so he, one day he told me, he says, “I have measured your container and they don’t hold a half a gallon and I have calculated over the back years,” and he said, “you won’t owe anything for three months.” So, you know, how many people would do that? 57:00Not very many. Because we were satisfied, it was. . .

SMITH: That was a lot of money back then.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: I think it was ten cents a, ten, twenty cents a half a gallon, I believe.

SMITH: I remember getting me some.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: He and his two sisters never were married and, and they owned a lot of land here and they just lived together. I doubt if they ever dated. They were kind of unusual people. Kind of like the Shakers, I guess.

AC: I’m going to take a break really quick.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Sure. [TAPE GOES OFF AND ON] AC: Mm-hmm.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Do you remember that?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: I remember they were called WPA and they made good schools and roads and stuff, yeah, built. You never did sketch that school, did you? I thought I e-mailed you and told you to sketch that Strong Fork school.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: He’s a good artist.

AC: Oh, wow. 58:00MOLLIE HOLBROOK: You didn’t get that e-mail did you?

SMITH: I’ve got a picture. . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Oh no, you e-mailed me the picture and I e-mailed you back and said, “Why don’t you sketch one?” NORMAN HOLBROOK: The Strong Fork school was, it was built out of real pretty stone and I don’t know where the stone came from, but when they tore the school down in Jackson, they built a memorial to the ( ). The ones that died overseas. Anyway, they used the stone from that school to, to build it. So it’s real pretty. ( ) used to work there. And the school I went to was weather boarded, it was a real good school. The floors were tongue and roof floors and it was, we would cut and use up the sawdust and 59:00put oil, like motor oil on the floors and then we would walk over it, and ( ).

AC: Neat.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: They had made the floor pretty, it was. . .

END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE B BEGINNING OF TAPE TWO, SIDE A NORMAN HOLBROOK:. . .but it protected the floors. And we heated with a pot bellied stove. It was a big stove. So one morning we, I, I was probably six or seven years old, just starting school and it was a real cold, cold morning, and they’d built a fire and they put coal in on top of the fire and that kind of smothered the fire down but when the, something went over and opened the doors and opened the vents on the stove 60:00and it caught on fire real quick and exploded, the gases just exploded and blew the cap off the top of the stove, I remember it hit the ceiling and went all over the floor and it was hot! You know! [laughing] And so that’s just one of the experiences. And Rosie Back, I don’t know if, Rosie?

AC: I don’t know of any Rosie.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Grover Back? We couldn’t make a tie there. Anyway, this lady was, I guess she was about fifteen years old, she was kind of heavy and so she was, everybody was playing ball and I think the boy she married swung at the ball and missed the ball and lost the bat and it hit in the chest and knocked her out so we thought she was dead and that was a very, that was a 61:00weird time. We didn’t know what to do, you know? She probably did lose her breath. I saw it hit her and it just hit her broad sided, you know. If it had, I think if it had hit her with the end of the bat it would have probably killed her.

AC: Oh my gosh! Wow. So where was Strong Fork school in relation to the Camp Christy school? I know you said it was three miles apart but. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: The main creek is only about seven miles long.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: When you turn up Strong Fork you remember seeing a house on the left, a log, log cabin?

AC: Yes.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Okay, it’s just, in fact you could have, if the school was still standing you could have seen it from there. 62:00It was just up there on the right. It’s across the creek and it’s just up there on the right, the Strong Fork school.

AC: Did, did you guys go to church at all when you were down there?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: The chapel was right over from our house. It was, belonged to, the land belonged to our grandpa Smith. ( ) all of them. The house was already there.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: He built the church, didn’t he?

SMITH: He donated the land and built the church with the, the, if it didn’t go, he got it back. You know. And it’s still going.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Cynthia and all of them came down there to Sunday school. We just had Sunday school so they all came down to Sunday school and it just. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Cynthia could sing pretty good.

AC: Oh yeah? Huh. 63:00I never knew that.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: I never heard Seymour sing, but I heard her. Did you ever hear her sing?

SMITH: Uh-uh. I don’t remember ( ), after all I would have been, I was too busy getting in something, pull somebody’s hair, trip them.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Darrell was always a prankster. At school one day the teacher told him, he said, “Now, you’re not getting out of your seat anymore. You stay in that seat.” SMITH: In a one room schoolhouse.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah.

SMITH: And I was the teacher’s pet for some reason. I could do anything I wanted, walk around with my bicycle all day, not mine but Bear Spencer had it, Spencer had it. But she got mad because she went out in the kitchen to get her something to eat, come back in and everybody’s everywhere. She sat everybody down and said, “If I catch you moving you’re going to get a whooping.” 64:00So I sat down in my little chair and here I go backwards, I had that thing, you know that little coat closet back there? I was even back there and. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: He was in his seat though. He had taken it with him.

SMITH: And finally she caught me. And I said, ( ), and she had to laugh. And when I saw her laugh I knew I had it made.

AC: Yeah. [laughing] SMITH: But she, that ruined me later on in life because I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t learn nothing. So up here I had to go back three grades and just barely made it because I was, whatever I wanted to do, I did it, I mean, if I wanted to go outside and play, and the restrooms were outside and Bear Spencer ( ), I’d go jump on it. 65:00Two hours later, I’d come back in. She did nothing. I’d go over there and draw. That’s why I’m good at drawing, I guess. I drew all the time. And my brother was in high school, junior high, little red, I guess.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Yeah. He had started junior high.

SMITH: I was probably in the third or fourth grade and I would take his papers and erase Seldon off of it and put Darrell on it and his grade and turn it in and she’d grade it and give it back to me, knowing that I didn’t know how to do all that division and they wasn’t teaching that yet, but she’d grade it and give it back to me.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: One teacher had seven. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Seven classes.

AC: Seven grades.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Seven grades.

AC: Wow.

SMITH: And that really, I loved it then but it, later on in life it, it, 66:00you know. . .

AC: Caught up with you.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Well they moved up here and they. . .

SMITH: And I had to go back three grades and I was in the same room with my younger sister. Well what I’d do, I said, “We’re twins.” [laughter] “Don’t you think we look alike?” I told everybody we were twins. I was ashamed that I had to go back that far. And I didn’t tell nobody my age. And if you look back on it, I always dated younger, always dated someone younger. And I don’t know if that had anything, I didn’t want them to know I was that old. But I did it, I dated younger.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: You know that system of one teacher teaching all those grades worked pretty good. We would learn from the older ones, we would be sitting, maybe reading, you know children, they pick up things, yeah, and they would pick up what the older ones were doing 67:00and so it helped. The older ones taught the younger ones. By the time you got to the older grade you knew because you’d heard them talk about it.

AC: Where did you guys go to high school?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Breathitt County High School in Jackson.

AC: Oh, okay.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: We had to walk out and catch a bus to go into there. It was a, the county kids. They had a high school for the city kids and one for the county.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: There was always a big rivalry between the two schools and especially when ball games would come up.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Yeah, because the marches in Jackson would come to the ball games and yell for the Jackson and poor old Breathitt. . .[laughter] it wasn’t fair.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: But you know we, we defeated them most of the time. 68:00MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Yeah. That might have made them more, more determined to win.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah.

AC: Did you feel like there was a big difference between you and the kids who lived in the city part of Jackson?

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah, because they had, or most of them were better off. Or we thought they did, we thought they were, I don’t know if they were.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: I always felt like they, I don’t know, were better than us.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: We had just assumed that they thought they were better than us because they had paved streets and they had plumbing in their homes, but you know, they didn’t have the mountains. They didn’t have the streams so I think we were better off.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: We was, but back then they just. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: And when the depression came. . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Well we was, I wasn’t born then, I don’t know. 69:00. .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: No, but when the depression came we weren’t around, but I was born, but people in the, on the farms didn’t, they weren’t effected at all because they never bought anything to start with. They raised everything so they rationed sugar, they rationed salt. . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: That was in World War II.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah, well, but I half remember it.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Well that was in World War II. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah, but they rationed all this stuff, shoes were rationed. Well we had relatives that lived in Ohio, mom would mail them the sugar, stamps, the shoe stamps and soap stamps and mail it to them because we didn’t use it, we didn’t buy anything. We, we went barefoot in the summertime and so, and we made, mom made her soap, we didn’t buy soap [chuckles] so the Depression 70:00came. . .

SMITH: We were self-contained.

NORMAN HOLBROOK:. . .and we said, “What is the Depression?” AC: So when you came up here to live in Franklin was it strange? Did you start buying more things that you did. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Not very much.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Because. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: We were used to having very little. We didn’t want much.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: He didn’t, he didn’t make that much so I guess we’d pay rent and buy our groceries. It just lasted us week to week because it took everything. Had to, well, Kenny was born August of, Johnny, ‘51, ( ) ‘51 and Kenny ( ) to ‘52 so we had two kids and then paying rent and buying groceries, it just, it took, 71:00took everything we had to. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Looking back I can see where we could have saved money because we went home about every weekend, and you know, that was quite expensive. I could have stayed up here and maybe roofed houses or something and been a lot more successful, I’m sure mom and dad wondered why are them kids coming home? You know, but we were homesick!

AC: Yeah.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: And every time we went home they’d send us, send us back with groceries, you know, dad would have potatoes dug and I guess that’s about all they sent, wasn’t it? And another thing is we didn’t buy meat because we killed our own hogs and mother would make sausage and she would put it in a jar and pour the grease over top of it and turn it upside down and when the grease would settle it would be at the lid so no air could 72:00get in so it’d be just like fresh when you opened it. And so the neighbors were, well everybody was close. You knew, you knew all those kids and we would go and I don’t think Mollie did, the girls didn’t so much, but the boys, wherever I was at dinner time, that’s where I’d eat. Were you that way?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: There wasn’t that many down there near us.

SMITH: We wasn’t, we just. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: I’ve eaten at Claude Ballard’s.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: There wasn’t any, well you, you was older than us.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: I played the guitar. We’d go to square dances, I’d play the guitar and older people kind of liked me and there was one couple, his name was Steve King, that was a long time ago [phone rings]. Everyone thought 73:00his wife was a witch, but she treated me like I was. . .[laughter] I thought she was very. . .[answers phone] Hello? Oh not much, what are you doing? We decided to work on that Tuesday, didn’t we? Yeah, yeah, today’s Monday. Did you want to work on it Tuesday?

AC: So you never really got homesick because your, for your family anyways because your family was here.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: They moved up, we’d been married, we’d been up a year when they moved to. . . but I just, I don’t know, I, I think because I was sick and stuff down there growing up, 74:00you know, the flood, polio, and then I, I’d get sores on my feet and I’ve got scars, you know, and I think when I’d go down I’d get depressed. I think I connected the. . .

SMITH: You know when they was having that party over there for you? They kept, Benny kept coming to get me to say something to you, and you didn’t. And the only thing I can think of is me and Seldon and Cricket and. . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Because, see, mom wouldn’t let me out and play.

SMITH: She stayed in the house with mom.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: She wouldn’t let me out!

SMITH: And I didn’t realize that until it was a birthday, was it a birthday?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Mm-hmm. My seventh birthday.

SMITH: And they was telling some stuff, telling her, she got into or whatever, and they kept coming and asking me, because we was watching a football game 75:00and I couldn’t think of. . .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: I was like a. . .

SMITH:. . because she’s always stayed in the house with mom. And I figured it was because we was running all the time and she couldn’t keep up maybe. I don’t know.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: I’m a, I’m just, Cricket was a, I mean, she wouldn’t let me out, Cricket was just, she’d go anywhere with you. But I, she, she thought I couldn’t do it, but I could, I mean, she just. . .

SMITH: She’s overprotective.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Yeah!

SMITH: And really she was with me and that, like I said, when I went in the army I was overprotective ( ). Wish I hadn’t found out, I mean, I was happy.

AC: Yeah.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: But I’m like another generation, my kids is more like. . .

AC: Like him?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Yeah! 76:00I mean, like Carolyn was their sister and my kids are more like brothers and sisters because she’s only eight years older than John, I’m ten years older than her, and she would play with them and you was over with them.

SMITH: As a matter of fact, after ( ) got married I stayed around ( ) their house as I did my own.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: And you was with my kids more than they was with me so they feel like they’re their, I mean their kids. . .

SMITH: I’ve got a picture of me and, I’ll send that to you, me and Johnny and Kenny on that old ( ).

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: I brought, I brought, I’ve got that. I brought a bunch home and, but I was just like another generation growing up and they’re, my kids and them are like 77:00brothers and sisters.

SMITH: I think that had to do with mom wouldn’t let her out. We was outside, was never in the house. We’d cry if it rained, we’d have to come in, we’d just ( ).

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: And Cricket was right with you, I mean she was just a, but I had to sit in the house. I started making quilts when I was six years old. And my mom and grandma and aunt, I’d stand under the quilting frame and quilt, I just, I was six years old when I started making quilts and quilting.

SMITH: There she was working, we was out getting in trouble.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: I had to do something to entertain me.

AC: Yeah!

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: I remember one time dad made you all a little sled or something and I wanted to go out and play so bad I cried. That little sled. 78:00AC: How old were you when you got polio?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: I was six and a half. I was six in January and got polio in July. Right after the flood I got it.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Do you remember where there rock is, just before you get to where you turn left at the first. . .

AC: Yeah.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Some people landed on that rock and stayed there during the flood. I forget who it was too.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: I can’t remember.

SMITH: Isn’t that the one that’ll turn around if it hears a rooster crow?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Yeah.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Every time it hears a rooster crow it turns.

AC: The rock?

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Uh-huh. I asked my dad if that was true and he said, “In a way because it never hears a rooster crow.” So if it did, it’d probably turn. [laughter] SMITH: But that’s an old saying, every time it hears a rooster crow, it turns around.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Oh yeah.

SMITH: It always ( ) remember.

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Lou has in her book who got, show landed on. . .

AC: Yeah, I remember 79:00that story, but I don’t remember who the family was.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Mollie’s, Mollie’s mother was in a rest home and she has an aunt, she had a sister who lived there too who was younger. We went up to visit her one day, visit her aunt, well I guess your mom was there too and somebody was out in the halls, a young girl and she was dressed kind of scanty and Mollie’s aunt said, “That girl hasn’t got enough clothes on to wad a shot gun.” [laughter] You know what that means? To wad a shot gun?

AC: Uh-uh. What’s that mean?

NORMAN HOLBROOK: The old muzzle loaders, you had to put your powder in, then you put, you put the powder in and then you put a piece of cloth and you’d push it down 80:00and it would keep the powder from flying on out, then you’d put your shot in and that’s called wadding a shot gun.

SMITH: And it’s just a little piece about this big.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah, about that big.

AC: That’s funny.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: So they had funny sayings. People in Appalachia, back where we were from, they used a lot of words that were old English. Like dad would say, “Would you holpe me do this?” So everybody did that. They talked like that.

AC: Mm-hmm. That’s neat.

SMITH: Really hard to understand.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Now I can’t think of some of the other words, but. . .some people used the words thee and thine.

AC: Yeah.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Uh-huh. I think it’s from the King James version of the Bible. My grandfather was a Primitive Baptist preacher and they believed everybody was predestinated 81:00for either heaven or hell, then the missionaries came back and they enlightened us to the fact that that wasn’t true. No, the Bible says, “Believe,” you know, “choose you this day whom you will serve,” so it’s a, we realized then the missionaries helped us to, then most of the people, they were Baptists and so most of the people back there now are Baptist, I mean they’re not Primitive Baptists but. . .Missionary Baptists?

SMITH: Yeah, Missionary Baptists.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: And so when we came to Ohio we’ve joined, joined the Southern Baptist Church and I got, I was saved when I was about twenty I guess, I don’t know. Eighteen or twenty. Mollie, I guess she’s ten, 82:00were you baptized in a creek?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: [indicates that she wasn’t] NORMAN HOLBROOK: Well she was baptized in our church, I guess.

SMITH: I remember you got baptized at the old swimming hole, wasn’t it?

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah.

SMITH: And John A. Chapman, and. . .it wasn’t the same time, I mean, that’s where we used to go when. . .

NORMAN HOLBROOK: He helped baptize me.

SMITH: Oh did he?

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah. He was deacon. Yeah. So we’ve been going to the same church now for fifty years.

AC: Wow! It must be a good church.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: It’s a good church, yeah. Yeah. The missionaries were nurses and that was their profession. They gave us all of our shots so that in another way we didn’t spend any money, you know?

AC: Yeah.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: So they helped us a lot. 83:00SMITH: Anytime we’d get scratched, because we live right down over the hill, I’d go running over there. And they petted me too. Every, I must have been a pitiful little thing because everybody petted me to death. It was Miss Leager, I believe, I remember Florence, I don’t remember which one it was. .

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: Miss Leager, I bet.

SMITH: Now she, she’d pick me up and carry me. She wouldn’t even let me walk. But I’ve always, even now, I was talking about that ( ) with them, they pet me bad. Oh, and that one girl has been in the hospital for over a week that had that gaul, her blad, her gaul bladder quit working. They about lost her. And she just got, 84:00just got home day before yesterday. Last night after church I went by to see her and what do you think, I was sitting down there and I sat nice in between her and Jackie and she hollered at her husband, told him to get in there, said that Darrell needs a cup of coffee. I mean that’s just what they do. All my life it’s been, I’m spoiled rotten! [laughter] I still am. I mean, and every time I get in trouble here I ( ) how am I going to get out of this? Or you know, how, how did I, how did I do this or how did I don’t do this. He just really was more of a dad than a big brother. 85:00NORMAN HOLBROOK: There’s our great-grand kids. The little girl is, we don’t see the boy very often, they live about fifty miles from here. About forty maybe. But we see her quite often. Her mom and dad are getting divorced.

AC: Oh.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: We don’t like that!

AC: No.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: But they’re still friends. They just. . .

SMITH: That’s, that’s weird. Stacey is too and they still, they go out and eat every day, they see as much of each other now as they did before.

NORMAN HOLBROOK: Yeah, I think. .

END OF INTERVIEW