Oral History Interview with Pryce Hounshell

ANN COX: Okay. This is Ann Cox interviewing Pryce Hounshell on December 5, 2003. Okay, you can just start off by telling me a little bit about yourself, like. . .

PRYCE HOUNSHELL: Want me to pick it up when I. . . ?

AC: Oh no, it’s fine. It picks up a really long range away so it will be okay. I guess if you wanted to talk sort of towards it, you could do that, but just start out by telling me where you were born and the year you were born.

HOUNSHELL: Now that way I’ll have to tell my age, won’t it?

AC: Yeah [laughing].

HOUNSHELL: I was born here in Breathitt County and at Vancleve. That’s pretty well where we are now 1:00and in 1931, September 6, 1931.

AC: Where were you born in respect to here? I mean like, whereabouts?

HOUNSHELL: You mean a hospital or. . .

AC: No, I mean where did you grow up? Was it right around here?

HOUNSHELL: Yeah. Close.

AC: Really close? Okay. Were you an only child?

HOUNSHELL: No, I have one sister who is older than I am and one brother that’s younger.

AC: So have you lived in Breathitt County your whole life?

HOUNSHELL: No, I, I went into the air force in 2:00‘50, 1951. When I came out I worked in Middletown, Ohio for two years and then I worked at Interlake Steel in Newport, Kentucky for five years. And then I ran a grocery business for about eighteen years and then I worked for the county, the physical court in Breathitt County for approximately ten years as a supervisor. And I, when I was younger, of course I didn’t have that much college and back then you didn’t have to, 3:00to start out with, I taught school for one year before I went into the air force in a one room school.

AC: Was that here?

HOUNSHELL: That was up on Quicksand close to Jackson, well it’s twenty miles or more.

AC: Mm-hmm. How many students did you have?

HOUNSHELL: It was about fifty.

AC: Oh wow. So they were all different grades?

HOUNSHELL: Yes. You had to take care of all of them.

AC: Mm-hmm. Did you teach all the subjects?

HOUNSHELL: Well, mainly, mainly what books they would put out, you know, like reading and math and English and things like that.

AC: So when you left to go into the air force, 4:00you didn’t actually come back to live here for a while?

HOUNSHELL: Well I did for a while and then I, I decided to go to Ohio to work and I stayed up there seven years and then I came back here. My dad had run a business for forty years or more and I took the business over since he had a stroke and took care of that.

AC: Mm-hmm. What made you want to go to Ohio?

HOUNSHELL: Well, I needed to get a job where I could make more money and here 5:00it was, wasn’t that much going on as far as jobs and everything.

AC: Yeah. And that was in the late fifties?

HOUNSHELL: Around ‘55 I’d say. 1955.

AC: Okay. Did you want to go to Ohio or did you. . .

HOUNSHELL: Well, I was younger then and that was kind of something I needed to try, you know, to see if I could make it.

AC: Did you like it up there?

HOUNSHELL: Well, I liked it there and of course I like my home state here more, you know. So eventually I came back. 6:00AC: Mm-hmm. Did a lot of people you know do the same thing as you did? Go up?

HOUNSHELL: Well, I’d say most of Ohio is made up of Kentucky people, you know, that have gone there to get jobs.

AC: Yeah, mm-hmm. Yeah, I’m from Oxford, Ohio so it’s right next to Middletown so I kind of know what you’re talking about. What, well, you already answered that. What, when you left to live in Ohio and then you came back, 7:00did you feel like things were different here when you came back? There any changes you remember?

HOUNSHELL: Well, there wasn’t that many changes at that time, but since, in the last ten years, I’d say, from 1980 up through 2003 there’s been a lot of changes here in this county.

AC: Mm-hmm. What sort of changes?

HOUNSHELL: Well, at the time I was here before we didn’t have a hospital and we didn’t have as good of roads like we do now, which we still need more roads that’s better. But there’s more 8:00people interested in education and ( ) now than there was back then. And a lot of kids drops out of school at sixteen just to get away from school.

AC: Mm-hmm. Yeah. How long did you go to school?

HOUNSHELL: I’ve got around a year and a half of college. And went up to Lees, Lees College here in Jackson.

AC: So, you said that when you went to Ohio a lot of, it was made up of people from Kentucky? That came up to. . .

HOUNSHELL: A lot of people had gone there.

AC: Mm-hmm. Do you think, do you remember any 9:00sort of changes that brought to this area? Do you think since all those people left things, like what did that mean for the people who stayed?

HOUNSHELL: Well, the people that stayed here probably worked through education, teachers, or, or working for the federal government or the county government, or back at that time there was quite a bit of coal mining going on here and they had the mines where you worked underground and mines at that time and then 10:00in the last twenty years they’ve had strip mines where they’ve stripped the coal without going under ground and they’ve pretty much taken all the coal out of this country here, out of Breathitt County. There’s no one, where they’ve done any mining in this county at one time there was probably five or six coal companies working to in this county here but they’re all gone since coal is gone.

AC: What sort of changes took place as a result of the coal being gone?

HOUNSHELL: Well it cut back on a lot of jobs that were here and 11:00of course a lot of the men that was working for different coal companies was old enough maybe to retire or take an early retirement and some of them had to leave and go other places to work.

AC: You said your father had a business. Was that the grocery?

HOUNSHELL: Yes.

AC: Oh, okay. Okay. So had he done that the whole time you were growing up? He had this grocery?

HOUNSHELL: Well, my father and mother were teachers for a while. My mother taught around thirty-five years and my father, he taught maybe around five years and then he, he had some businesses 12:00going. He had some sawmills. We had in the family we had about three sawmills at one time and he hauled lime for the federal government where the farmers would sign up for lime through the AFC office, that’s a farm office, and the government would pay most of the money for the lime and then my father had a contract and delivered the lime to different farmers in the county and then he ran the store for, had a store, 13:00probably sixty years at, you know, different locations and things, places.

AC: So how long did that store last? Like when you, I know you came back to run it.

HOUNSHELL: Well, after I, I sold it out after so many years. About eighteen years and, and there was quite a few stores, larger stores that was moving in and it was hard to compete with a supermarkets and most of the people that came to the store needed credit. If you, they traded month by month, 14:00you know, you had to charge it, a lot of it was cash, but most of it was credit. So once a month you would collect your bills from the, the grocery.

AC: What was that store called?

HOUNSHELL: Vancleve Grocery.

AC: Vancleve grocery. When you left to go to Ohio were there people, like your friends around your age who stayed here?

HOUNSHELL: Some of them stayed here and some of them went to Ohio and different places to work. 15:00My sister is retired from teaching but she taught here in Breathitt County for quite a few years and her and her husband, they went to Lebanon, Ohio and they live there now and she’s they’re retired from teaching and, and I’ve got a brother that lives in Waynesville, that’s right close to Lebanon and he works, he did work for the railroad but he works for some different outfit now. And he left here after he got out of school.

AC: Do you think most people stayed up there like your brother or that a lot of people came back like you?

HOUNSHELL: Most of them probably stayed. 16:00You know, they had maybe bought a home or they’re settled in where they’re working and maybe when they retired they just stayed on. And some of them just come back, but I’d say the majority of them are still gone.

AC: Do you know how it was for your parents when they were growing up? Did, your parents were like middle aged, did a lot of people their age go up to Ohio too, or were most of them staying around here during that time?

HOUNSHELL: During World War Two, 17:00there’s a road down here which is 15 that runs from Vancleve to Wolf County and at one time there was twenty, twenty-six families lived on that road, it was a dirt, and you’d go through the creek and, and it was more or less a dirt road and most all them people moved to Ohio.

AC: Mm-hmm.

HOUNSHELL: And when my mother taught, I went to school wherever she taught, if it was in this area and we’d walk quite a few miles everyday to get to the school. There wasn’t that many vehicles.

AC: Were there a lot of little schools? Like a lot of . . .

HOUNSHELL: Well, every community had a school here 18:00from Breathitt County. And they’ve consolidated all of them now, they mostly go into Jackson. They still, Highland, Turner, and let’s see, Riverside, that’s a Christian school, and there is Marie Roberts, Canyon Consolidated up there, I think, and that’s about the only schools that’s left out in the county. At one time, every community had one here but now they don’t. they’re a few of them left and most of them, kids comes in to Jackson 19:00there to go to LBJ and Breathitt High and places.

AC: When you were growing up, did you mostly play with those kids who you went to school with?

HOUNSHELL: Yeah we played different games. Softball and marbles when we was young and just different games like that.

AC: Did everybody who lived around you, did they all go to school?

HOUNSHELL: They all went to school at that time?

AC: Did everybody have to go to school at that time?

HOUNSHELL: Well, I don’t know what the law was but I know we had a truant, a truant officer, I guess that’s the way you speak it, 20:00that if someone didn’t go to school, they would go out and check on them and see why, I guess, they didn’t go.

AC: So the whole time that you were going to school your mother was your teacher?

HOUNSHELL: Well, I’d say mostly in grade school. She taught for so many years and I went to Mt. Carmel in the eighth grade. That was on the river here. A Christian school in the eighth grade and then when I got out of there I went to Breathitt County High School 21:00for four years and then to Lees College for about two years.

AC: Right. Okay. Do you have any memories of your family members moving away when you were younger? Moving up north? Or did most of your parents’ family stay around here?

HOUNSHELL: Well, most of them stayed around here at the time. Of course, like I say, after my sister got married and they taught, her and her husband, he was a principal at Quicksand, and she taught at Big Rock school over 22:00across on 30. And after a few years they decided to move to Ohio to teach.

AC: When you were growing up were most of your family members really close to where you lived? Like did they live in that same kind of community?

HOUNSHELL: Same area.

AC: Okay. Okay. What did you have to do to become a teacher then?

HOUNSHELL: Well, after, at that time there wasn’t that many people that was involved in teaching. I mean, if you wanted to be a teacher, why, after you had some college 23:00if you went and taught one year, you could turn around and go to summer school and get some more hours in college, but a lot of people taught before they got a degree. The main thing is that a lot of these schools is located maybe twenty-five or thirty miles from Jackson and a lot of people didn’t want to go that far. Just like when I went up there to teach, I had to board up there all week and then I’d come home on the weekend. And many teachers didn’t want to do that because they didn’t want to stay away from home.

AC: Mm-hmm. How long have you known Hubert Hollon? 24:00HOUNSHELL: I went to high school with Hubert. And we rode the same bus and I think I was about a year ahead of him in high school. I’m a year older that Hubert.

AC: So how long have there been buses, when you started taking the bus to school?

HOUNSHELL: Well, back as far as I can remember they run, ran the buses out in the county, each district had a bus or two, you know, going out to pick the kids up and bring them in to Breathitt High. Of course a lot of them road the bus just going to grade school. But when I went to grade school 25:00there wasn’t any buses, I mean, we didn’t have any where we went to grade school.

AC: Was there a name for the little community you lived in other than Vancleve? Did you, was it called anything else or. . . ?

HOUNSHELL: Well, that was, that was where the post office was located and years ago the name of where Vancleve is now was Calley, Kentucky, but they changed the name of it and made it Vancleve. And we’re, just like we live at Vancleve now, this used to be Wheeledhurst, this community here, 26:00right where you turned off to come up here, used to be Wheeledhurst. But they don’t, it’s not called that anymore, it’s just, you live off of 205 or, you know, whatever, unless you live right at Vancleve.

AC: Do you remember when that started changing? When these sort of small communities stopped being?

HOUNSHELL: Well they’ve put a new road in from, from Winchester to Campton that was a toll road at one time. And finally they got it paid off and then they run highway 15 runs from Campton 27:00into Jackson and on into Whitesburg I guess. But this road here 205 at one time it was a gravel road and when we traveled it, it was gravel. And of course we got it, a pretty nice road now.

AC: When you were growing up did you pretty much stay put where you were or did your family ever travel around anywhere?

HOUNSHELL: Well, me and my mom would in the summer maybe go to Indiana or Wisconsin, I had an uncle that lived in Wisconsin and we’d gone there to see him and his family and 28:00then we had some people that lived in Indiana and we’d maybe go up there for a week or so. Not every summer but every once in a while.

AC: Was your, were your parents originally from Kentucky? I don’t know if you already told me that.

HOUNSHELL: My mother was from Wolfe County. That’s across the hill here. And my father was from here all the time. My grandfather and two brothers came from Virginia back in the. . . Years ago from Wise, I guess they came across the mountain or something and settled here.

END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE A BEGINNING OF TAPE ONE, SIDE B HOUNSHELL:. . . From Virginia. 29:00AC: Mm-hmm. Your aunts and uncles who lived in Indiana and Wisconsin, did they move there before you were born?

HOUNSHELL: Yeah.

AC: Yeah.. Okay.

HOUNSHELL: My uncle in Wisconsin was in the first World War. I guess that was 1918, somewhere in there, and after he came out he moved to Wisconsin and he died there. On my mother’s side, I’ve got quite a few, she was a Pence, and I’ve got a few cousins 30:00that lives in Dayton, Ohio and Middletown, and Franklin now.

AC: So the reason so many people left was mostly because of jobs right?

HOUNSHELL: Yeah, I think so.

AC: When do you think that started changing? When did people stop leaving? Or did they ever stop leaving?

HOUNSHELL: Well, this community has never had any, any factories or jobs that would hold, hold them here. Only, like I say, if they was teachers or worked for the highway department 31:00or the county, county, different things like that. That was about the only jobs that was paid enough for anyone to kindly get ahead, you know, the rest of the jobs were just minimum wage, well, at that time there wasn’t any minimum wage, you know, it was just whatever they could get. But. . .

AC: Do any politicians stick out in your mind in Breathitt County as you were growing up or from the time you’ve lived here, doing anything big 32:00for Breathitt County?

HOUNSHELL: Well, Marie R. Turner was the superintendent of Breathitt County for years and we got quite a bit of help from Frankfort and Washington too, you know, different buildings and the school, LBJ was named when Johnson, Lindon Johnson was president. Of course that was, Miss Turner helped get that put in. And then they, she was good about getting things for the county, help for the people and we have a 33:00nursing home that, named Henson. He used to be the judge. That was named after him, the nursing home. And. . .

AC: When all of those people were leaving to go to work in Ohio, did any sort of government aid come to Breathitt County or. . .

HOUNSHELL: Well, at one time, back when The Depression came, of course I can’t remember that much about it, 34:00but there wasn’t no jobs and the people didn’t have any money and president Roosevelt came in and, just like the streets in Jackson was paved when he was president. And he started programs like the three C’s for young men to go and they’d work on roads or whatever. And then we had, had a program called Happy Pappy’s which they hired, hired men to work at different jobs like cemeteries, help with cemeteries, or whatever needed to be done and they was paid 35:00by the federal government. But all, all the programs and everything was set up, Franklin Roosevelt was elected for four terms. We had a depression to start with and then when he came in he had to close the banks. They was broke. And that’s why we’ve got the FDIC. That’s for protection of your money. The social security was started under him. All the programs that’s ever been started, that’s my opinion, 36:00has been started under the democratic party. That’s for the working people, working, working class people. And just like Johnson, president Johnson come in and we got the Medicare started, you know, they didn’t have no, now they’re changing it around, I don’t know what it’ll do now, but it’s, my father always told me that when they tried to put the social security in, he said the Republican Party said this will never work! This will never work. But it’s been working for sixty-five or seventy years probably. 37:00And then my father, if an election came up, we’d, if we had a radio we’d sit up all night maybe to listen to election returns. Now, you know, they get them an hour or two after the poles close they probably know who won. So he was interested in politics and I was too because of him. And we might sit up all night and listen to it because we was interested to see who won. But young people now don’t realize who started these programs. Now they get a little bill passed, they think it’s the greatest thing there ever was. But they don’t know who started all this in the first place. 38:00When Roosevelt came in, people was catching trains, going cross country trying to find enough work to survive or get a little food. And they had all the soup lines, you know, you could see them. Now they’ll show them once in a while, they’ll show these lines where people were starving, you know, and they’d get in these lines to get a little something to eat. And. . .

AC: When you were young were times really hard like that for your family?

HOUNSHELL: Everything was hard back then. Whatever we ate, we raised it. You know, we, we’d raise 39:00a big garden every year and we’d can food, everything, you know, beans, corn, peaches. Whatever there was. My mother would can it and we’d have pickled corn and pickled beans and dried apples and we’d kill so many hogs every year and cure the meat out, have a smoke house and hang the hams from the rafters in a white bag and put the middlins on the table and salt them down and had them for, to eat, you know, the rest of the year. And 40:00raise enough corn to feed our mules and cows and chickens, you know, and everything like that. Even today, I raise a big garden right over there and we can beans, corn, tomato juice, whatever we need here. Not that I have to, but I do it because I want to. And we, we work, when the summer comes we work from sun up to afternoon. Julie, she helps me can and we work together.

AC: That’s your daught. . .

HOUNSHELL: That’s my second wife.

AC: Oh, that’s your second wife, okay. When did you marry your first wife? 41:00HOUNSHELL: 1950.

AC: 1950?

HOUNSHELL: Six or somewhere in there. I can’t remember exactly.

AC: Oh, okay. How did you meet her?

HOUNSHELL: She was from here in the county and we got acquainted and that’s how I met her.

AC: So had you known her a long time? Like as you were growing up?

HOUNSHELL: Not really. I’d been in the service and then when I came back out I met her.

AC: Do you think when most people your age, when they got married, they married people from the county?

HOUNSHELL: Pretty well, yeah, I’d say so. 42:00AC: How many children do you have?

HOUNSHELL: We have two, I have two by my first wife and two by my second wife.

AC: Do they all live around here?

HOUNSHELL: My girl, my girl in my last marriage lives right out here. She just got married in August. And I have a son that’s graduating from high school this year. And then I’ve got a son that lives in Lexington, he’s into psychiatry, and, then my daughter married Hubert’s boy. They live right on up from Hubert.

AC: 43:00So when you were younger you helped out raising food?

HOUNSHELL: Oh, yes.

AC: What else did you do? What did you do for fun?

HOUNSHELL: Well, talking about working, we, like, like I say, we tended big gardens and corn and everything like that and when I came here from school, I had jobs to do. Not like kids this day and time, you know, they don’t have nothing to do. I had to get wood in, we had a cooking stove that you burnt wood. 44:00And coal, when we had coal we had to get it in, and draw water, we had our own wells, we had to draw water. We had grates to keep warm and they don’t keep you warm, but they’ll keep you alive. But I always had things to do, I mean if it was feeding the stock or milking the cow or whatever, you know. We’d get up before daylight, you know, mom would always cook breakfast before she went out to teach and my dad would say, 45:00“you milk the cow and I’ll do the feeding.” So I’d have to milk the cow and it, maybe before daylight. And then in the night too, and of course I’d hide with my brother Fred than milk the cow but that’s the way it was. But was had a lot of things to do. And we didn’t have a lot of things that you buy out of the store, you know. If you got anything sweet, your mom would have to bake gingerbread or make a cobbler pie. And if you got any candy, it would be made probably, you know, make homemade candy 46:00and stuff like that.

AC: Do you remember when all that started changing? People started. . .

HOUNSHELL: Well, my dad, when he started running the store, we started getting different sweets and things like that. When, when pop first came out, soft drinks, I probably could have drank about half a dozen bottles at the time. [laughter] Now I can’t drink half a, half a can of soft drink. I just don’t like it. And, but, that’s the way it’s changed.

AC: Think people were healthier back then?

HOUNSHELL: Yeah, we worked more. Now I can’t wait 47:00‘til summer to come so I can get out and work, work in the garden or mow. I’ve got an acre and a half here, I guess I mow. And of course my son helps me, but I can’t wait ‘til the time comes where I can get back outside. And of course we’ve bought us a tread mill in there and I’ve been walking that everyday now and she does too. But times have changed.

AC: What did you do when it was really cold outside when you were younger? I mean, did you keep on working even though?

HOUNSHELL: Well, it’s kind of like it is now. There’s not too much you can do when it gets that cold you’ve got to get inside. 48:00Whatever you had to do, you just went on doing it and then you went in the house and got by the fire, I guess, if it was real cold.

AC: What do you think people do, like, what do you think the most popular job is now here in Breathitt County? Like what do most people do for a living today?

HOUNSHELL: Well. . .

AC: Are there too, do people do too many different things it’s hard to. . .

HOUSHELL: Well, like I said before, the jobs that pays is education 49:00or highway work or we have a Wal-mart up there, of course they don’t make too much, you know, maybe minimum wage, most of them unless they’re ( ). But there’s really not any factories that’s located here and we don’t seem to have anyone that’s interested in bringing any industry here.

AC: Yeah. Do you think most of the people, like you said one of your sons just graduated from high school? Is that right?

HOUNSHELL: He will in June.

AC: He will? Oh. Do you think most people his age are gonna stay around here or do you think. . .

HOUNSHELL: Oh he’s gonna stay and he’s gonna go to college too 50:00just as soon as it starts and he wants to get into social work, social security or whatever, he likes that kind of, and my daughter, she’s gonna be a teacher if she can find a job. She’s a real good in school and she’s interested in it.

AC: You think it’s hard to find teaching jobs?

HOUNSHELL: Well, times is tough right now. I mean they’ve cutting back on everything and like I said, I’m gonna go back for three years and we had, the economy was good. All the states was doing good. Right now is, I believe is forty-seven states that can’t balance their budget. Who’s fault? Somebody’s fault. 51:00And, but. . .

AC: Hopefully that will change.

HOUNSHELL: Hopefully it will. If you have to cut back, like the government in Frankfort, if they have to cut back, and we cut back on our teaching or whatever, or maybe lay off some of the jobs, they’ll have to balance their budget. See, the states, all of them has to balance their budget. And the county has to balance the budget. They can’t spend more than what they’re gonna have. You take California, they just put in another governor out there, 52:00California is as big as some countries. They’re having a hard time. It’s not the governor’s fault. It’s in Washington. All the, all the states that can’t balance budgets right now, they’re not getting no help. I’d say New York, who’s got a republican governor, I’d say they’re in the dead just as much as California was, but no one’s mentioned that, see. That’s the way it is. It’s, it’s like this state right here, it’s two or three hundred million dollars in debt, you know. They’re gonna have to do something to balance it. But now when times is hard, they speak of the economy picking up. 53:00They say three millions jobs, how many, three million jobs have left the states in the last two or three years? Gone over seas? We’re in really bad shape.

AC: Do you, is there any time in the past that you can compare to this time? Or is this kind of a unique time right now?

HOUNSHELL: Well, I’m not, I mean people, most people I guess are working that wants to now but they’re having a hard time of staying above ground, you know. No matter what you make, 54:00it’s costing you so much more to live. Just like my taxes this year doubled. Why? They give a tax break which don’t effect me, but they give a tax break, but still if your property tax, and my property taxes went up about 600 dollars from what it was last year. If I had got a rebate on my income tax, I’d have to pay it in property taxes. Just everything you buy, a gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, eggs is the cheapest thing you can buy, but I noticed they’re up about fifty cents on the dozen what they was which, we don’t use that many eggs, but milk always gets up, every time 55:00you turn around they’ve raised milk. Your medical bills. Everything is sky high. We, the Canada and all these other countries has got insurance, you know, they take care of the people. We’re about the only country that don’t get insurance, you know, I mean, what I draw from retirement from the state, where I worked. All that money goes to my insurance, to protect my social security insurance. If I go to the hospital, social security pays eighty percent and I have to 56:00have twenty percent through another policy to take care of the rest of my bill or my family’s bill. And, but these big, big pharmecutical companies, they put oodlins of money into politics to keep them from having things different, like Canada. You can go up to Canada they say and get drugs for about a third of what we’re paying here for them. So the big companies is, is taking care of this so that they keep it up there, the price, they want to make a lot of money. . .

END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE B BEGINNING OF TAPE TWO, SIDE A HOUNSHELL: . . . And 57:00it’s, it’s getting worse every time you turn around. Maybe I’m looking at it different than everybody else, but now it’s, it’s tough out there. We’ve got politicians, eight or ten of them on the democrat’s side, some of them, you have to help them in out of the rain, you know, they don’t know nothing. If you ain’t getting one percent of the vote, why, why would you waste your time trying to run, be on, be the nominee of the Democratic Party. There’s nine, I believe nine running. Some of them may be getting one or two percent and you know. And here Bush is running all over the world and 58:00he’s already raised a hundred million dollars. Well, no matter what you do, he’s going to spend ten times as much as anybody else will spend. Where’s the money coming from? Somebody is putting the money up.

AC: Do you think that any of the democratic nominees have a chance?

HOUNSHELL: Well, if they would ever get one of them singled out. You know, and not have all the rest of them getting on their coat tail trying to knock them down. You know, if, if we had one person in the Democratic Party that was 59:00able to go on and campaign or get nominated without eight or ten more that’s, that don’t have a chance, why, they might do something.

AC: Mm-hmm. Do you think right now times are harder on places like Breathitt County?

HOUNSHELL: No, no. Most, most of the people draws a check, you know, whether they’ve ever worked or not, you know. There’s people drawing five hundred and some dollars a month and they’ve never worked a day in their life, probably. You know. And 60:00it’s a hand out. Of course, like I say, there’s not a lot of jobs here but they’re gonna give it to whoever signs up for it.

AC: When did that start happening? Like people, when did they start handing out checks?

HOUNSHELL: Well, it’s been going on for a long time, you know, if you can prove you’re off in the head or, or sick or something, you know, that’s, you can get signed up.

AC: But that wasn’t happeneing when you were like in your twenties and thirties was it?

HOUNSHELL: When I was growing up I didn’t have 61:00no money. We couldn’t, we, when we rode the school bus, we paid a dollar a month just to ride the school bus.

AC: Mm-hmm.

HOUNSHELL: And our lunch over there was fifteen cents a day, I believe it was. But we didn’t have any money, you know. If you had a pair of shoes or a shirt and a pair of pants, that’s about all you got, you know. And there just wasn’t any money at all so people’s got it, really got it good now than what we had 62:00when we was growing up. But we was more content, you know, more happier I’d say.

AC: Yeah. But when did the government start giving out checks? Like, when did they start doing that? Was it in the seventies or, was it in the seventies?

HOUNSHELL: Probably. I can’t remember too much about it, when they started it.

AC: When you lived in Ohio did you come back to visit a lot?

HOUNSHELL: Yeah. Maybe once a month or something like that.

AC: Did you always know you were gonna come back when you were out there?

HOUNSHELL: Well, I, I 63:00figured I’d probably settle back here sometime.

AC: Do you think you’re gonna live here the rest?

HOUNSHELL: Oh yeah.

AC: Mm-hmm.

HOUNSHELL: I wouldn’t be here, but the road took my house down there about eight years ago. When the road, when the new road ( ) 205, I had a house down there right at the mouth of the road and they took it, the state did. So I own this place here and I just moved up here. Of course, we’ve got a pretty quiet place here, especially the night, you know. We don’t hear much. We’ve got neighbors 64:00over there. We don’t get along, I mean we don’t have no arguments or nothing, but we just don’t associate. I try to keep my yard pretty clean here, but they don’t care. They’re in and out. I mean, I’m not degrading them or nothing, that’s their business but. . .

AC: When you were growing up did you always live in the same house?

HOUNSHELL: Well, let’s see, I lived in two different houses when I was growing up.

AC: Okay. But they were both around. . .

HOUNSHELL: Close, within a mile and a half. The house that I was born, when I was born, was out on 15 and it’s still there. 65:00My father, I guess he sold it or something, but people that took it fixed it up and every time I got by it, I remember, you know? It’s where I was born.

AC: Yeah. Did. . .

HOUNSHELL: Watch the cord.

AC: What do you remember, like, did you have electricity and everything when you were growing up? Or do you remember that? And telephones?

HOUNSHELL: Well, let me see, it was probably in the forties before we ever got electric. 66:00And the telephone, I don’t remember ever having a telephone until I was come back from the service. And T.V., I didn’t know there was a T.V. until I was in the service and finally seen one there, you know. And. . .

AC: All right. Well, I don’t really have any more questions so, unless there’s anything else you’d like to add [laughing].

HOUNSHELL: Well, I maybe expressed myself too much on different things 67:00but I’ve had a lot of experience with seeing different things happen in my lifetime.

AC: Yeah. It’s hard to cover everything, I think, when I’m doing these interviews. One of the things I, I was really interested in was that time that people left to get jobs in Ohio so I always tend to ask more questions about that ‘cause I always wanted to know what happened to the people who never left, the people who stayed here while everybody else was leaving ‘cause my mother’s parents left when she was about three years old, like in 1945 and they 68:00moved to Indiana. She has some cousins that still live here, but she always wondered what it was like for her family members who never left here. So, I’m always asking people a lot about that.

HOUNSHELL: Well, when I, when I left to go to Middletown, Ohio, I wanted to have more than I had here, where I could make some money. And when I went to work in a paper mill there was a, times we would work seventy some hours a week and work forty hours 69:00regular time, and thrity some hours of over time. And that would go on for maybe three months at a time and never get off a day. Saturdays, Sundays. But I worked them because I didn’t want to be left out, you know, I didn’t want them to get rid of me. And I was on the making, first started out as only making a dollar and fifty some cents an hour, but we would work enough overtime that it’d be a pretty fair check, you know. ’Cause a lot of it was time and a half and Sunday was double time. But, 70:00of course things was a lot cheaper, I mean, you could buy your groceries for a tenth of what you have to pay now, and your apartment would be reasonable, you know, it wouldn’t break you up.

AC: Were you with your wife, your first wife then?

HOUNSHELL: Yes, yes.

AC: So did your children ever live there?

HOUNSHELL: Never had them ’til we came back here.

AC: Okay, all right, well, I think that’s it really. Do you know of anyone else who 71:00I might be able to interview? I mean not today, but anyone else who’s lived in Breathitt County for most of their lives?

HOUNSHELL: I know some people, I don’t know if they would agree to it.

AC: Oh, okay.

HOUNSHELL: If I could get your phone number and, and maybe I could talk to them before, and if they agree, why I, I could call you. That might be the best way to. . . I’ve got a second cousin, well there’s three of them that lives, the man and the woman, 72:00they live down on the river, they’re Millers. I might be able to talk to them and see if they would let you. But maybe a few more, I have to think, you know, think about it.

AC: Well I can just give you my phone number then ( ).

HOUNSHELL: Who’s gonna, who will hear all this?

AC: Anybody who comes to the, ’cause I work at the Historical Society. . .

HOUNSHELL: Where’s that at?

AC: It’s in Frankfort. And 73:00part of it is this, like this interview that I’m doing right now is an oral history interview and they just have a really big collection of a bunch of different ones from all over Kentucky and so anybody who’s doing, like if someone was doing research on, like coal mining in Breathitt County, maybe they would listen to the interview to see if you talked anything about that, or about politics in Breathitt County, they would come and listen to your interview. Because a lot of times you can read what’s in the history books, but that’s only from a certain perspective, it’s not from, like, everyday person’s perspective, so, 74:00yeah. After I interview, I’m interviewing about, I’m going to try to interview about twenty people and then, after that’s done, then people will be able to listen to the interviews if they’re doing some kind of research on Breathitt County.

HOUNSHELL: I’ll get you a few names.

AC: Okay. Thank you. I’m just gonna stop this.

END OF INTERVIEW