Oral History Interview with Mollie Holbrook

ANN COX: Okay. This is still April 26th, but now I’m just continuing the interview with Mollie Holbrook because Norman and Darrell have left. Okay. So how old were you when you married Norman?

MOLLIE HOLBROOK: I was well on my way to being eighteen. I got married, got married on the 6th, I was eighteen on the 12th and he was, turned twenty on the 26th then. So we was, I guess say seventeen and nineteen. We got married and we just. . .

AC: Was there any sort of, was there an age where you couldn’t legally marry, or was there no law?

HOLBROOK: My mom, 1:00dad was working and so mom went to town and signed for me to get married because I was under eighteen. And we was the first couple getting married in the chapel down there out of Strong Fork. Grace Baptist chapel now I guess it’s called. We was the first couple getting married in there.

AC: Yeah, I think it was the same thing with my grandma. She was almost eighteen but not quite, so they had to have somebody sign like you. Yeah. So had you graduated? Or you hadn’t graduated yet.

HOLBROOK: No, and then I got sick, I got bladder, the doctor said I had a touch of Bright’s disease, I ( ) so I, I made it, let’s see, to March, was up in February and I just had to quit 2:00because I had a touch of Bright’s disease and I found out I was pregnant so. . .[phone rings] AC: I’ll just pause this. [tape goes off and on] I don’t remember what we, oh, so you got sick in, in March and you couldn’t finish school then?

HOLBROOK: No.

AC: What is Bright’s disease?

HOLBROOK: It’s kidneys, it’s with your kidneys. When I had polio they, they thought I had arthritis, they talked to me like I had it, they didn’t know what polio was and they said that it might have been my kidneys that, you know, caused that but I never had any trouble but I think it’s just I got pregnant and was just maybe showing up in my kidneys or something because I never had any more trouble with them. 3:00But he graduated in ‘49, May of ‘49 and then came out here in January of ‘50 to get a job. I would have graduated in May of ‘51.

AC: Did most of the people you graduated with, did they usually get married around that age?

HOLBROOK: Yeah, back then it was real, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen and stuff. Now it seems like they’re waiting longer. I know our granddaughter got married in November, she was twenty-five, she just turned twenty-six and she got married in November and our grandson, he was, he was twenty-six I think when he got married and so people, they are 4:00waiting longer now. They’re finishing their college. I think a lot of them, if they went on to college they didn’t, but if they didn’t go to college they pretty well, I guess just got married, come out and got work.

AC: So most of the people who graduated left Breathitt County?

HOLBROOK: Quite a few of them. We have a reunion Memorial weekend, we’re having one up at. . .I say probably about half of them left. The others, they ended up being school teachers, something, but everybody couldn’t teach school [clock chimes]. . .

AC: Yeah.

HOLBROOK: But, but the majority of them, like a lot in his class and in my class was school teachers. Others were, a lot of them lives around here, so. 5:00. .we have up a, church got up here on 741 every three months we have a Breathitt County get together, people that went to Breathitt High School and we bring in a covered dish and just get together and talk and it’s real nice because one year, I mean one time, a couple times we had one that graduated and taught, well it must have been 1930, he was up in his eighties, I mean you know, and there was some that graduated in the seventies and stuff. So it’s real nice to meet the different ones. Just like a big family now.

AC: When you and Norman moved here were there people that you knew around?

HOLBROOK: No, when we moved up on Pennyrile mom and dad 6:00had moved on Pennyrile and, and we lived in an apartment a while down in Middletown and there was a little cabin that was empty and they told us about it so we rented it and then we moved across the road and built the basement in ‘56 and moved in there and then in ‘57 we built the house and then we moved over here and built this one in ‘78 and our daughter. . .but when we moved up on the hill we didn’t know, well when we came to Franklin we didn’t know anybody. I had an uncle in Franklin. But in Middletown he had some cousins and aunts and his sister lived down there but we didn’t go that much, but up here we didn’t know anybody so we’ve been here a long, 7:00quite a while.

AC: Yeah. So was it hard not knowing anybody, or. . .?

HOLBROOK: It wasn’t for me because I was, what do you call it? Introverted? I mean I, I just didn’t talk and I didn’t mix so I was satisfied not, just being in the house and coming out in the yard. I was just, I was just satisfied without knowing many people. I was just, this genealogy has brought me out.

AC: Yeah.

HOLBROOK: But no, it didn’t bother me. I think I enjoyed it then.

AC: So you had your first child here?

HOLBROOK: In Kentucky Norman 8:00was laid off, well we was married a week and he got laid off so we just went back down to mom and dad and his dad’s and then he got come up in April and got another job and then he got laid off again in July and then he came up again in August so I stayed down there, I was going to Jackson and having to go to the doctor’s office and they thought I was going to have a c-section so they sent me to Lexington but, and then he was born in October and I think I came up in January of ‘52. We moved in with his sister and we got an apartment then. And so, and then Kenny and Donna was born up here, my other two 9:00was born up here so. . .they’re all time ( ) one born in Kentucky, they just have a big time out of it.

AC: Were they all born in the fifties?

HOLBROOK: Yeah. Donna was born on the Fourth of July ‘55.

AC: That’s neat.

HOLBROOK: So they was all born in the fifties.

AC: During that time that you knew, you knew you were going to come up here but you still lived in Jackson, did you want to come up here? Like were you excited about it at all?

HOLBROOK: No. 10:00[laughter] I’m trying to. . .I don’t know! I really. . .it was just something I had, I guess, I had to do. I just didn’t think nothing about it I guess. I don’t know I can’t even. . .

AC: Yeah. So did most of the families that lived around you, how they survived was that they raised crops and had their own livestock.

HOLBRROOK: Yeah. We didn’t have livestock cows or anything, but my grandpa did and he always gave us milk everyday and then he gave, you know, butter when we needed butter and then we had chickens, but as far as cattle or anything, we didn’t and then 11:00he had, he raised cane, he made molasses, he had the mill and he made that so we always, you know, that was our sweets, molasses that he made and stuff and then he had the corn mill, he grinded the corn and they always gave us the meal for that and dad kept him the farm and when he wasn’t working and stuff in Jackson or around here or anything so. . .but they had the cattle, the cows and the hogs and they’d always give us meat and stuff so it was just, but we, I’d say we had our chickens in our garden and stuff like that, yeah. Everybody pretty well had that, just a. . .

AC: So you never went through times when it was hard finding something to eat? You always had something to eat? 12:00HOLBROOK: Yeah, I think, I think it was like for mom and dad because see, I was little really but I know a lot, I mean breakfast like we have biscuits and gravy, you know with no meat and stuff, meat mostly was when we had company and people would come, my grandpa and grandma’s family and we’d go, she’d have dinner on Sunday or before they’d go back home and we’d always go up and eat. She’d always send you home full up with dinner but, and usually a dinner meal was cooked and then supper we’d just have something left over and a lot of times a cornbread and milk. And that’s what, you know, for snack time before we’d go to bed but I think it was, 13:00because I remember dad, coal for the fire place going out and I guess what you call ( ) you could see the coal and he chipped it out, you know take a pick and you know pick it out for the cold of the winter so I know now that they, they probably worried and wondered what we were going to live on and stuff because they got married in ‘31 during the Depression and so I think you know, then, but like I say, I guess I realized it a little more. He was working more. So it, but it was that way with everybody and you just didn’t, didn’t know and it’s be better. 14:00AC: What were your parents’ names?

HOLBROOK: Dad’s name was Johnny Smith and mom was Alpha Boggs. She was a Boggs before she married. Alpha and Johnny Smith. And so. . .

AC: Did your dad every have to work in the, in any kind of, in the mines or timber or. . .

HOLBROOK: No, he never did. Like, he drove a truck for the sled, sled mill. They made barrels, they made these ( ) that makes barrels and he would haul the timber out, but he didn’t saw it or cut it, and he didn’t work in the mines or anything and my grandpa didn’t as far as I know. Neither one of them. My grandpa Boggs had asthma and he, he couldn’t work any, 15:00but he would make chairs, the little chair, rocking chair there, he made that for me when I was two years old, and then I got another one, one my daughter’s got. It’s real short structure, he made when I was a year old and I was so short that it’s just a. . .

AC: It’s really little.

HOLBROOK: But he made chairs and they lived over on Quicksand and then he made baskets and stuff and the missionaries would take them to Philadelphia and sell them ( ) give him money, but he couldn’t get out of work he had, he died when he was pretty young, he had an asthma attack and died. But they, in August I remember them ( ) and fed him all night, you know, so he could breathe because the pollen I guess it was and 16:00we didn’t have electric so there’s no fans so they’d take time out fanning all night for him to get air to breathe, he would just get so bad so it, my grandma, she pretty well, her and the kids raised the crops there, but he would make woodwork and stuff.

AC: Why did your parents decide to come up here?

HOLBROOK: Well dad, he came for work. And he worked, he’d get laid off and he’d go back and maybe find work down there a while in Jackson he worked at a filling station a while and then he’d come back and, you know, get another job, or they’d call him back or something to work at General Motors. Then 17:00after I got married why, like Darrell said, he had that wreck and mom said, “We’re going up there.” Because he’d drive every weekend. He worked second, he’d leave after work and come in home and he’d pick me and John ( ) that morning, it must have been one or one thirty and Norman had to work on Saturday, that’s why he didn’t go, he’d been going and dad said he was sleepy and he thought, well, he’d let Norman drive, but Norman didn’t go. We got to Mt. Sterling and he went to sleep and we wrecked and that’s when mom, it was just, you know, him driving that, that poor so, she decided to move up here.

AC: Did he live, 18:00where did he live when he was coming up here by himself?

HOLBROOK: He had a brother that lived down here in Franklin and he rented from him, you know paid him and then he had a couple more brothers. When they come up, they’d stay with him and his sister. When she came up, Hazel, the one with Lorrine, when she came up you know, they just boarded with him. That’s like Norman’s sister. Norman and his brother, when they came up they boarded with her and you know, different ones like that. You had a family like and just boarded with them so it was like. . .[laughing] when I think of it now. . .

AC: It was a full house.

HOLBROOK: Yeah! It was really taking changes out, I mean more changes than what you are now. 19:00AC: Yeah. How many brothers and sisters does Norman have?

HOLBROOK: He has, there’s eight of them living, eleven, there’s three dead and there’s eight of them living. And we get together, they come here every Christmas and we get together four or five times a year, you know, just go out and eat you know, or fish fry or something. We get together.

AC: How many, is he in the middle? Do you know?

HOLBROOK: Okay, let’s see, Albert, Luther, Betsey, he fifth one from the oldest.

AC: Oh, okay.

HOLBROOK: So he’s pretty well the middle, yeah. Then his baby sister, she died when she was ten, she was a 20:00Mogolo, I think that’s where. . .

AC: Did she have Down Syndrome?

HOLBROOK: Yeah, Down Syndrome, yeah. She was Down Dyndrome. She died when she was ten, she was. And then the next ones up from her was twins and then two girls, three girls, and then Norman. So he, he was pretty well in the middle of them.

AC: Were most families big like that or were they all different? Most of them were big?

HOLBROOK: Mm-hmm. I guess we was unusual. My grandpa Smith had eight that lived at one time. She was born dead, the youngest one, she’s pretty much younger than me and then mom’s parents had about nine. 21:00Norman’s one grandpa, he had I think fifteen. He was married twice, but he had I think fifteen.

AC: Wow!

HOLBROOK: So, yeah. Most of them, they was big families, just. . .

AC: Mm-hmm. Wow. Do you know when that started changing? When the families started getting smaller? Was it the sixties or fifties? I don’t know how you would know that.

HOLBROOK: Probably. It might have been. Late forties, fifties, more, I guess it was a little bit more in the fifties if you think of it. Now like Lou Belle, I think there’s only four in hers. And that, I think that was 22:00sort of unusual because she’s the same age as Norman and she’s the baby so I guess it was sort of unusual not to have a lot, you know, of the older ones, but I guess it was in the fifties, late forties, fifties.

AC: Do you still, do you have any family that’s still down in Jackson?

HOLBROOK: I have one uncle and probably six or seven cousins. Norman has some cousins down there. He has, some of them on Strong Fork Road. I have some on Strong Fork Road. At the chapel we, in the bottom, that new house built is my cousin’s. 23:00And across and then up, so I have probably about seven cousins down there and then first cousins and he has probably about four or five so that’s about it. You just don’t know people when you go down anymore.

AC: Yeah. Do you go down there very often?

HOLBROOK: We used to go down three or four times a year. We’d go Memorial weekend to the cemetery and usually we go before then but we haven’t this year and then we go in the fall and then maybe twice in the fall, once in the summer, August and stuff. His sister has a trailer on the homeplace 24:00and us and two of his sisters go and spend four or five days in the trailer just doing nothing. Running around going to cemeteries and stuff like that so we, we go down, but like I say this year we haven’t got down. Well we went down and just stayed one night in a motel but we haven’t, haven’t went down to just, you know, be going down and stuff but. . .I guess we’ll, we’re going Memorial weekend.

AC: What did, or do most of your cousins who live down there, what do they do, have they always lived down there? Or did they go and then come back?

HOLBROOK: They’ve always lived down there. 25:00The one, he works in West Virginia in the coal, he’s ( ) or something in the coal mines and one closed up in Kentucky and went to Virginia and he had to go so he pretty well stays there and comes home every other weekend or something. And then one teaches school, two of them teaches school, I guess and then my uncle he’s, he farmed and then he worked some on the highway when he, whatever he was, if he was a democrat or a republican, but, and he just more or less farmed, but that’s pretty well, let’s see, 26:00school teachers, now with Wal-Mart, you know, a lot of people works in the stores and stuff but my cousins teaches school. One of them works in the office, she’s a nurse and she works in a doctor’s office but the rest of them just, one works in the bank, but they’ve always lived there, they didn’t move away or anything.

AC: Mm-hmm. Can you describe what, when you would go down to the city, what it was like? Down to the town?

HOLBROOK: In Jackson?

AC: Yeah.

HOLBROOK: Well, most of the time 27:00dad, when he worked for the, this company, he’d take us in, my Aunt Hazel and I on Saturday morning and there was two movie theatres in Jackson, we’d go to one and spend half the day, come out and go to the other one, then we’d come out and he’d bring us home. So that’s pretty well, we’d just go into, well, I don’t know, we didn’t go that much I guess because the grocery at the mouth of Strong Fork, Warty Joseph had the grocery store and that’s pretty well where we got our groceries and then school, they had a book mobile, they, you know, bring the books 28:00around, you’d check the books out, I don’t even know if we had a library in Jackson, I guess we did but I don’t know, we just didn’t, except for the movies I can’t remember going!

AC: Yeah.

HOLBROOK: It’s changed now. So many of the buildings, a lot of them’s burnt and they tore down to it’s not, it’s not Jackson, it’s not, and then they got all these big stores and stuff so it’s not Jackson anymore. It’s not like it used to be.

AC: When you went to the movies did you just pay for all day, like could you pay a certain. . .

HOLBROOK: We, I guess we, we’d get a ticket 29:00and go in, I guess you could stay all day on that ticket I, I know we probably, we, half the day we’d see the features, you know, whatever was on, and probably some more. I was trying to think, I don’t know, I guess we bought us a candy bar and ate it for lunch, I don’t know. [laughter] And then we’d go to the other one, you know, and buy a ticket and. . .

END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE A BEGINNING OF TAPE ONE, SIDE B HOLBROOK: . . .he’d bring us home and, so that was. . .

AC: That’s funny. Did coming here to live change your perception at all of what it was like, 30:00or what, where you grew up was like or eastern Kentucky?

HOLBROOK: Well, when we lived in the apartment we just didn’t get out and go, you know, that much, we pretty well stayed there so really, when we moved up here and it was, you know, in the country, so really we’ve not, like most people go to a city, you know a big city and they have all this stuff, well, it wasn’t that way and Middletown wasn’t that big and like I say, we had a grocery store across the street and we’d walk over there, well, it was just a little grocery store, we never went to the supermarket [laughing], even when we come up here, 31:00there’s a grocery store over the hill, I don’t know when, I can’t remember the first supermarket I went to because it just, we kept the little stores and it would have been a big difference if we got out and went. A big change. I don’t know if I could have coped with it, you know, the way I was, so shy. I just don’t know if I could have coped with it.

AC: Yeah. Have your kids ever been back there? Do they go back there with you?

HOLBROOK: Yeah, they, we used to take them like growing up and they’ve been back after 32:00they got married. Our oldest sons went back quite a bit because he got into genealogy and he’d go back and talk to people and take pictures and stuff, so he’s been back quite a bit. The other two mostly at funerals, you know, his mom and dad and his sister and stuff. His oldest brother died when he was fifteen, he had an appendicitis and I guess he got it real, you know, he wasn’t getting any better and they took him to Hazard hospital and it busted and so he died and he was fifteen, but and then the baby was about, she died about six weeks before Donna was born but then when the other one died they went back to the funeral and then his mom and dad so 33:00that’s more or less when they’d go back but I said John and his wives family was from down there so she’d go back and see her grandparents and stuff and, but the others, they’re like me. They go back and look and are ready to go home.

AC: Yeah. How did John meet his wife? Was she born down there?

HOLBROOK: No, she was born up here in Franklin High School. They both went to Franklin High School. That’s where all of them met their, in school. And our granddaughter got married in November. She met her husband when she started going seventh grade school and they went fourteen years, I guess they, then they got married. 34:00But they, they met in high school.

AC: Mm-hmm. I think I’m running out of questions. When you were living there did you see much change take place to like the area where you lived? Did you call it Keck?

HOLBROOK: Uh-huh.

AC: Okay. Did Keck?

HOLBROOK: The big, well, in the fifties they put electric up through there, I think it was ‘49 or ‘50 they got electric. But we didn’t get it, no, it must have been ‘48 or ‘49 because we lived in just a little two room house 35:00and in ‘50 dad built another house and we, it was already in, up through there so we put it in. That was a big change. And then in ‘50 they started making the road that’s up through there now and that, that was a big change because you just couldn’t get up through there over winter in a car, so that, that was the only two big changes that I can think of when we was down there. ( ) [laughing] AC: So that road people could come and go more easily?

HOLBROOK: Mm-hmm. But they didn’t blacktop it until, it was a gravel road up, 36:00I don’t know when they did, maybe sixties they put the blacktop on it, but the gravel road was great. From what we had it was great. Really right there on that hollow, of course in Jackson there was more changes, but right there, that’s, that’s the biggest change that I, like I say I don’t, I don’t think there’s been any changes up there since then because. . .

AC: Mm-hmm. There’s still families up there. But they can get down a lot more easy.

HOLBROOK: Yeah.

AC: 37:00Are there any teachers you had growing up that stick out in your mind? Were they mostly the missionaries or not?

HOLBROOK: No.

AC: Oh, okay.

HOLBROOK: Miss Joseph, well she had what, eight grades you know, but the ones I guess, well two year I went over to Sugar Camp on Quicksand, we went over there and Cassie Redbowl, now my mind’s went blank, Amos, ( ), she was mom’s cousin and she was married to Amos, but I really, they 38:00taught me more than I guess, they taught me mostly what I know. There was two teachers there in that school and they could take more time. I know when we come back to Strong Fork I was supposed to be either in the fifth or the sixth grade ( ) and I was the only one that would have been in that class, well, I guess it was, I was supposed to have been in the fifth grade, the sixth grades couldn’t do fractions, they was in sixth grade and they couldn’t do fractions, so she put me up with them because I could do them, I had learned them, you know, in the other school, so I skipped the fifth grade because I could do fractions and I guess I must have helped the other 39:00girls, I don’t know, but I remember that. The first, I had just started school, I started then in July when I had polio and one of the missionaries would come over to the house, they just lived across the bottom and they taught me until I could walk over to their house. I guess it must have been two years they taught me. And then Norman had an aunt that taught down at Strong Fork, Hazel Holbrook Leon is his mother. I don’t know why she taught down there that year because she usually taught at Camp Christy, but she had a car and she would pick me up and take me, you know, to school, because I guess I’d get tired, I don’t remember, but she would, you know, take me to school and bring me back that year and then after that why, 40:00I walked, and then when we went to Quicksand I walked over there, I had about, probably a mile and a half to walk down the hollow to the school over there. But then at Quicksand they didn’t have enough teachers those two years and they’d have like school Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday they’d teach at one school, and they’d go Thursday, Friday and Saturday to another school and teach. Then they’d be back at that school Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday so I went at three days a week to walk out and I believe it might have been two years they taught like that and it was, it was different. But I think they, they just had, the teachers just didn’t have, I mean, they had too much to do to really 41:00teach the kids like they should have been taught.

AC: How many kids would be in those little schools usually?

HOLBROOK: I’d say there’d be thirty plus. I know the room would be full, I mean you’d have these little bitty ones and these big guys and the rooms would be full of kids, it was, but. . .I went, I was, I took one semester of practice teaching and then I could have graduated if I went to college that summer and could have taught that fall if I wanted to and then kept on going and getting my. . .teaching 42:00has never been my thing.

AC: Yeah [laughing].

HOLBROOK: I’ve tried all classes and Sunday school. Teaching’s not my thing. [laughter] AC: Oh well. So let me get this straight, you were born on Qucksand, right?

HOLBROOK: Yeah. My grandma and grandpa Boggs, my mom’s mom and dad lived over on Quicksand on Wet Branch, well, she’d go over there and stay until we was born because back then they’d stay in bed a week, they wouldn’t let you up and then it was, so she’d go over there with her mom and dad and then come back home when she was three or four weeks old, well maybe a month old when, but we lived over there the two years 43:00when my sister was born, we was living over there so, she was born in ‘43 so I guess it was ‘42 and ‘43, maybe ‘44 that we lived over there so, but other three of us come back to Frozen then, but we could walk, go up past Cynthia’s, just up past her house and go across the hill and go right down where my grandma and grandpa lived and now they have an airport up there. We’ve been up to the airport.

AC: There’s an airport?

HOLBROOK: Uh-huh.

AC: Oh, okay.

HOLBROOK: Yeah.

AC: I didn’t know that.

HOLBROOK: It’s, and they have a weather station and ( ) even here the weather reports from all down in there comes from that weather station up there at that airport. And they did have a helicopter from the university that stayed up there and 44:00we’d be down at the trailer about 9:30 every night they fly out and go back, you know down there, but they would be there emergency anybody there and then they would take them to Lexington to the University hospital and stuff, or the hospitals so we’d hear, you know, the helicopter take off. And then they had a, I don’t know what happened, I think it was rain or something and they got turned, they had just took off and they crashed into a mountain and after that they, well, they just dropped that a couple of years ago I think, but the nurse and the pilot and the other guy with them, I don’t know if he was a doctor or what, they was killed, but they would fly in in the morning, stay there, then fly back out at night. 45:00AC: Do you remember any of the doctors that would come back?

HOLBROOK: Doctor Hogue was the doctor we had in Jackson. Seemed like he was old. But that was, and then when I left they had a Doctor Sewell and I believe and Doctor Lewis, Doctor Hogue wasn’t in there anymore. And they had, like if you had a baby you could go and stay all night, I don’t know how many beds they had, but you could have it and then stay all night and then go home.

AC: Mm-hmm.

HOLBROOK: Now they have a hospital in there so, but Doctor Lewis and Doctor Sewell was there later on. But Doctor Hogue mostly when we was there, was about the only one. 46:00The others might have come in in the fifties, but, or maybe ‘49 or ‘50, something like that, but. . .

AC: Yeah I, I interviewed the son of Doctor Sewell.

HOLBROOK: Oh you did!?

AC: Uh-huh.

HOLBROOK: Oh.

AC: So I got to find out all about him. So once you were here you never considered going back go Jackson?

HOLBROOK: Not me! [laughing] AC: Did Norman ever consider it?

HOLBROOK: I think if there’d been work down there he would have loved to have went back but when his father died they all had, well at least nine of them then had the farm 47:00and the younger brother, they sold out to him, because he, he wanted to raise, you know, he worked, he lived in Indiana but he’d rented the tobacco base out and all except the one sister and she bought somebody’s part, but the rest of us sold to, you know, the brother, but then he sold to a cousin because it was just too hard working and then trying to keep that up so if there had been work back there I probably would have thought nothing about it if we went back maybe first two years or something, three, or if we got married, but go back now after a day or two I get depressed. I think it’s because I was sick so much and everything and in my subconscious 48:00mind I’m reliving all the aches and pains and my woes and stuff like that so. . .

AC: Well, I’m glad you like it here [laughter]. How long has, have you lived in this house?

HOLBROOK: ‘78. We built it in ‘78. Our, well we had the land longer but our daughter, we started building about, must have been ‘73 and then we didn’t and with him he, going in debt you know, borrowing, so we didn’t bail we, 49:00he was going to and then we backed out and then our daughter, let’s see, ‘77 she had, she lived in an apartment downtown and we’d talk about it and talk about it and we was talking about it again and she had had a baby and it only lived four days, her oldest baby had a hole in the upper or lower chamber of his heart and she was, you know, just, then she came up everyday, she liked the, well, she just didn’t like the apartment she, being ( ) up and one day we said, “You want to buy this house that we built?” she said, “Yeah!” So we talked about it some more. She come up, she told us, she said, “I gave notice on my apartment. 50:00I’m moving in. You gotta build now.” And so [laughter] She said, “I know how to get him to build.” [laughter] So we, we got us some plans and we started in I guess, must have been, no, we started that fall building it in August we had it dug out and started building it. And then a blizzard came in January of ‘78 and we couldn’t get over here for a week or two. We had it worked, we could work inside and then she was expecting and Devon was born in April so we moved over here in March down in the bottom section and just had 51:00a couch made into a bed and we’d go over there and eat so she could fix the nursery up, you know in the, in our bedroom. So then we built, finished it up living in the basement. We got it, okay we got our electric turned on in August a year later so we, we would go over there and eat, cook and eat and just sleep over here and stuff.

AC: Mm-hmm. And now she lives across the street?

HOLBROOK: Uh-huh. She lives in the second house. They built on, they built a big bedroom and a family room all since we’ve lived over there. Then our other son lives out on 122 out Franklin, 52:00the middle kid, and then John, our oldest one, he lives over at Marl, it’s just about forty miles, he’s a pastor of a church over there. He’s the one that’s a grandpa of the two kids, his girl and sons kids but. . .then Donna’s boy’s in Oxford and then Devon is the one, her girl, daughter is the one that teaches school.

AC: So the one in Oxford is the one who had the heart problem?

HOLBROOK: No his brother, his brother, he lived four days.

AC: Oh, okay.

HOLBROOK: It was the oldest one.

AC: Oh, okay. I was confused.

HOLBROOK: Well she was, she’d come up everyday and she’s just being cooped up in an apartment 53:00and she wasn’t used to it, she’s used to getting out more, running around and playing, but she says, “I ain’t gonna let you back out so you gotta build now!” [laughing] AC: Yeah. Moving in!

HOLBROOK: So I packed all my stuff up and we used her stuff and when we got the garage built we moved the stuff over here.

AC: It’s a nice house. I really like the tree in the front. That’s how I found it.

HOLBROOK: I thought how can, then I thought, the tree, the big willow tree. And he says it needs to be cut down because it’s getting rotten. I don’t want it cut down. I’m gonna start, I started it from a limb, I put a limb in a jar, it took roots 54:00I guess in ‘79 or ‘78.

AC: I think it’s raining.

HOLBROOK: It is! Them bugs last fall, beatles, they have ruined that skylight. It’s gotta, I’m afraid for him to walk on the roof and ( ) cracking. They ( ) it.

AC: I’m gonna stop the tape unless you, do you have anything else?

HOLBROOK: Not unless you think of something.

AC: No, I pretty much asked all the questions on here.

HOLBROOK: Okay. Did Lou tell you about the pie suppers we had at school?

AC: Yeah, she did.

HOLBROOK: Okay!

AC: But you can tell me about them too.

HOLBROOK: Well, no I just, that’s the way we would raise money, was pie suppers so. . .

AC: Yeah, it sounds like a lot of fun.

HOLBROOK: It was. We didn’t have anything else to do. 55:00AC: So it was you’d make the pie and then whoever bought your pie. . .

HOLBROOK: You had to eat.

AC: You had to eat with?

HOLBROOK: Uh-huh.

AC: Okay.

HOLBROOK: And you’d decorate the box, you know, you’d try to make it real pretty and stuff. No, they wasn’t supposed to know whose pie was whose.

AC: Oh, they weren’t? Oh, okay.

HOLBROOK: So they didn’t know who they was ( ) They would find out I think. And they would be at ( ) you know and you had to, I was trying to think, seem to me like, and then they’d have a pretty girl contest, did ( ) AC: Yeah, she told me about that.

HOLBROOK: And an ugly boy and you know what? I believe Orville won that one year down at Strong Fork, ugly boy. Orville Back. 56:00I’ve got a scrap book my grandma had and she saved clippings you know and everything. I’m almost sure, next time I go through that I’ll, because she would write the Keck news, you know and everything, who visited who and all of this and it just seems like that he won ugly, but they were just putting, you know, it’s just to raise money and stuff, it was a big, oh I got a kick out of that.

AC: Sounds like fun.

HOLBROOK: That’s about all I can think of.

AC: Were you good friends with Lou when you were growing up? Are you the same age about?

HOLBROOK: She’s the age of Norman.

AC: Oh, okay. So she’s a little older. 57:00HOLBROOK: And, well, when I got to be a teenager I, my uncle went with her and I got to know her then and then I drew, when, got acquainted with her, her first husband, oh, somebody joined their church and they was from, they went to church with her and her first husband and they got talking, you know, about her and we, we know her! And then, them, we didn’t know him as well and then we went to revival, they took us to revival and we got reacquainted with them friends.

AC: Oh that’s nice.

END OF INTERVIEW