00:00:01
Sara Wood: And I’ll just go ahead and—. So today is April 25, 2017. I’m sitting
here with Mr. Wayne Riley in London, Kentucky. We’re at the Laurel County African American Heritage Center. And we’re sitting here back in another room of the Center which is an old farm—piece of an old farmhouse building. So Mr. Riley I’m going to have you say hello and introduce yourself. Tell me who you are and what you do here.00:00:28
Wayne Riley: My name is Wayne Riley, and I’m the Director of the Laurel County
African American Heritage Center. And I’m the Site Coordinator for our Grow Appalachia Program.00:00:39
Sara Wood: Can you tell me a little bit about your upbringing, where are you
from? What’s your birth date for the record?00:00:44
Wayne Riley: July 10, 1953.
00:00:48
Sara Wood: And could you tell me, if you don’t mind, a little bit about where
you grew up and what it was like?00:00:54
Wayne Riley: I actually grew up, part of my life I grew up in East Bernstadt,
which is kind of north of London, a little ways north of here, and then my mom passed away, and then I came to actually live at London with my sister Joyce.00:01:10
Sara Wood: And what was your mother’s name?
00:01:12
Wayne Riley: Rosetta.
00:01:14
Sara Wood: Rosetta Riley?
00:01:14
Wayne Riley: Rosetta Riley, yes.
00:01:17
Sara Wood: And so could you talk a little bit about what you remember in both
places, East Bernstadt and London growing up? What was it like?00:01:26
Wayne Riley: I don’t know. I, you know, I tell people all the time, I think we
thought, you know, back then we thought maybe thought times were hard but I— I actually believe that really we’re living in harder times now than what it was then.00:01:42
I don’t know. The people in the community actually stuck together. They worked
together on the farms. They traded stuff back and forth. They traded labor. Some people— I had a uncle that raised hogs, and he would always share that with the rest of the family or the neighbors— people in the community, not so much family, but I mean just people in the community that were part of that, I guess, circle.00:02:13
Sara Wood: Uh-hm; did you-all do like a hog-killing where you— all the community
would come out?00:02:20
Wayne Riley: Yes. My uncles worked in the coal mines in Harlan County, so
usually when they would come home on the weekends was when we— was when they would actually slaughter the hogs. And then the smaller game like the chickens and things like that my aunts and my mom and them did took care of that part of it.00:02:45
Sara Wood: You said your uncles raised hogs and they also worked in the coal
mine; could you tell me some— their names for the record?00:02:53
Wayne Riley: Well, my— I guess my uncle that was around us the most, his name
was WJ Riley but we called him Son Riley, and then had an Uncle George that worked in the coal mines, had another Uncle John that worked in the coal mines. Uncle Frank worked in the coal mines until he lost his eyesight and had another uncle, Uncle Jim. He worked in the coal mine, so—and all of this was kind of in Harlan County.00:03:29
And before that, I guess I should say that actually in East Bernstadt when the
coal boom was big at that time, my grandfather actually had I guess— they were what we call shallow mines in East Bernstadt where he actually had coal mines there in East Bernstadt.00:03:51
Sara Wood: And they were called shallow mines?
00:03:53
Wayne Riley: Yeah. They’re not—you know, they were just— they were not very deep
so they were shallow. They were called shallow mine ‘cause they were not really deep into the ground like some of your mines that are in the mountains of Harlan County and places like that.00:04:10
Sara Wood: And what was your grandfather’s name?
00:04:12
Wayne Riley: Kip Riley.
00:04:14
Sara Wood: So did your family— so did they live in East Bernstadt and they
commuted to Harlan or did they live in Harlan?00:04:21
Wayne Riley: Well, at that time they— it was kind of a combination of both. They
lived in Harlan County, some of them did, and then some of them commuted back and forth.00:04:30
Sara Wood: Do you know the name of the mines that they worked at by any chance?
00:04:34
Wayne Riley: Most of them worked in Lynch, Kentucky, which was part of US Steel.
00:04:41
Sara Wood: I’m curious as to— from your memory growing up here and your family,
did most folks— did most of the men— was industry mostly coal here for people making a living?00:04:54
Wayne Riley: Yes. I think for the biggest part that was the only industry. You
know, and then and a lot— like I say, a lot of them did farm work, and my father actually worked on a dairy farm after he came back here from the coal mines. So, you know, I think probably the biggest industry would have been the coal industry.00:05:25
Sara Wood: Do you know the name of dairy farm? This is me being very specific
about oral history, but do you know or remember the name of the dairy— ?00:05:31
Wayne Riley: I don’t know the exact name of the farm but it was owned by Boyd
Boggs, who at that time was a County Judge here.00:05:41
Sara Wood: And it was here in London?
00:05:42
Wayne Riley: In London, yes.
00:05:44
Sara Wood: Oh wow. What kinds of things did he do?
00:05:46
Wayne Riley: They did a little bit of everything. They milked the cows. I mean
they cut the hay. I mean just everything that needed to be done around the farm out there.00:05:58
Sara Wood: And your father’s name for the record?
00:05:59
Wayne Riley: Charles Riley.
00:06:01
Sara Wood: Great; so could you— I want to go back to the food for a moment. Can
you talk about some of the things or the dishes or the meals that you grew up with that you have a fondness for or that really hold tight in your memories?00:06:15
Wayne Riley: [Laughter] Well, my special, I guess, is— fried chicken was always
a Sunday dinner and then sometimes even in the morning sometimes chicken was a meat of the morning for breakfast you know. But the main part of it was probably on Sunday and chicken and dumplings was a favorite, one of the favorite meals— dishes, I guess, that you would have.00:06:54
And then along with that, you know, I mean just your normal vegetables. We just—
plain vegetables, not a lot of things like we eat today— like green beans, corn, mashed potatoes, things like that.00:07:08
Sara Wood: Did y'all do preserves? Did you can— did your mother and aunts can or anything?
00:07:13
Wayne Riley: Yes. They always canned green beans, corn, they salted a lot of
meat, potatoes. We actually buried our potatoes in the wintertime you know to preserve them and then we’d just go out and take out whatever you needed whenever you needed them.00:07:38
And we had— we canned jellies and apples. We had an apple orchard and pears and
peach trees on the farm that we lived on.00:07:52
Sara Wood: Wow; did you grow up helping with all of that?
00:07:55
Wayne Riley: Yes.
00:07:59
Sara Wood: Can I ask you, I know that you lived in East Bernstadt and then lived
here in London, but when you were growing up, in terms of the racial relationship between whites and blacks, how did that look to you?00:08:15
Wayne Riley: You know, I guess it’s kind of strange. You know I mean I know we
always knew that there was a tension here, but it was never, I guess, it was kind of something that was kept kind of intact or on track or something like that. You know, we knew that we went to a one-room school and it was a one-room school that only the blacks went to. There was certain restaurants here in London that we could go to the back door and get something to eat but we could not go in and sit down and eat.00:08:53
The main one was— was probably the two pool rooms that were here at that time—
was Weaver’s Pool room and House’s Pool room. But I don’t think that there was ever any— probably the only visible racial thing that came out was when the schools were integrated. There was a gentleman that had sent word that the black kids were not going into the— the colored kids is what they called them back then— were not going to be able to integrate the London Elementary School.00:09:38
So I think that was probably the only incident, but it never really materialized
or anything ever happened in the school; it went ahead and integrated and we went on, you know.00:09:54
Sara Wood: Wow. Okay going back to the segregated restaurants, where there— to
your remember, were there any black-owned restaurants here in London or East Bernstadt that— can you think of— ?00:10:08
Wayne Riley: [Laughter]
00:10:10
Sara Wood: I’m just curious.
00:10:11
Wayne Riley: Yeah. There was a restaurant that Russ McKee had that was actually
a restaurant that he had inside his house, I guess that’s what it was, yeah.00:10:30
Sara Wood: Did you eat there?
00:10:32
Wayne Riley: Yeah, and then my uncle in East Bernstadt, Bill Word, he always had
some kind of little restaurant-type club thing that he had to entertain, as well.00:10:44
Sara Wood: Was that in his home?
00:10:45
Wayne Riley: Yes.
00:10:46
Sara Wood: Did— what— were there names for the places or would they just say
we’re going to Bill’s place, going to Russ’s Place?00:10:52
Wayne Riley: No. None of them ever had a real name or anything.
00:10:56
Sara Wood: What kinds of things would they fix in both places for your uncles
and Russ’s?00:11:01
Wayne Riley: Well in Uncle Bill’s— Uncle Bill’s place was more of a— it just
kind of an entertainment place, so I mean Uncle Bill always had hotdogs and chili and potato chips and things like that. Uncle Russ’ place was— Uncle Russ was more of a— I guess today we would call him a chef, because Uncle Russ just cooked anything. You know he fried turtle, chicken, [Laughter] groundhog, I mean just— Uncle Russ cooked a variety of different things.00:11:36
Sara Wood: I’ve never heard of fried turtle or groundhog.
00:11:38
Wayne Riley: Oh.
00:11:39
Sara Wood: Would he roast the groundhog or would he fry it?
00:11:42
Wayne Riley: Roast it; bake him.
00:11:45
Sara Wood: Now, can you tell me any— what can you tell me about the chili
because I know chili— there seems to be such a strong— like this— the tie between Eastern Kentucky and chili?00:11:58
Wayne Riley: I— I think chili is just— was or is a— a fast fix, and it’s
something that is easy to fix and it’s a good calling card I guess for a— just a small get-together. We sit— we do chili dogs at the Pittsburgh Homecoming, which is a homecoming that my family has been a part of since the beginning in the early 1900s. But and then we used to have a picnic, a Fourth of July picnic at my aunt’s and that picnic was actually— we now know that we didn’t know it at the time— we thought they were just greedy raising money, but they actually were raising money to help take care of the cemetery, so that was their contribution. They had— they had that Fourth of July picnic and they sold fish and chili dogs and hotdogs and just all kind of food— chicken and dumplings— and all of that money that was raised was then turned over to the cemetery committee to help upkeep the cemetery.00:13:23
Sara Wood: Was that for the family cemetery?
00:13:24
Wayne Riley: No. It’s— it’s actually— it’s a community cemetery. There’s a lot
of different families buried there. There’s a— it’s probably one of the biggest interracial cemeteries in this— in the— in this county, the Pittsburgh Cemetery. I mean it’s— there’s— yeah, at one time they used to say that one side of it was black and one side was white but it was never that way, really.00:13:57
After we really thought about it because there’s more whites over on this side
where the blacks are buried, and I think the old side that originally everybody considered the whites’ part of the cemetery was probably the original part of the cemetery.00:14:14
Sara Wood: And this is just— it’s called the Pittsburgh Cemetery?
00:14:16
Wayne Riley: Pittsburgh Cemetery; yeah.
00:14:17
Sara Wood: What can you tell me about the homecoming that you were talking about
that your family was involved in since the early 1900s?00:14:23
Wayne Riley: It’s Labor Day weekend every year and people come— just come back
home from all over, you know. Every year they actually give away an award to the person that comes the furthest home, and usually, it’s kind of funny because my cousin, Delbert Riley, which he lives in Washington, DC, now, and he for the last probably about the last eight or ten years he’s probably been the oldest one that’s actually came the furthest distance. There’s some people that actually come that are older than Doodgie but— but he’s probably the one who travels the furthest.00:15:10
Sara Wood: How many people come out for it?
00:15:13
Wayne Riley: The numbers are dropping, so I’d say anywhere from probably about
seventy five to a hundred people.00:15:22
Sara Wood: How come the numbers are dropping?
00:15:23
Wayne Riley: I think the older people are dying off and the younger people don’t
have an interest in preserving their heritage or history and I think that we’re in a time of when people die and we bury them and we miss them until we get them in the ground and probably a few months after that, but then after that, people just don’t visit the cemetery like we used to.00:15:56
We used to have to go with my aunt and my grandfather and help clean that
cemetery. And now, we try— we have to try to raise money to pay somebody, because the younger generation of people are just not interested in that.00:16:11
Sara Wood: And this is the Pittsburgh Cemetery?
00:16:12
Wayne Riley: Yes. And not just the Pittsburgh Cemetery; I think most of our
cemeteries and— are having that same issue to where I think in Laurel County, if it was not for the work release program at the jail, then a lot of our cemeteries probably would not get mowed and would not get taken care of because the jail has a crew that actually takes care of those, the what we consider the less fortunate or the abandoned cemeteries that, they usually take care of those.00:16:48
Sara Wood: Wow. So Mr. Riley, I’m wondering, just one more question about the
homecoming in Pittsburgh. What kind of— you know you mentioned for the Fourth of July to help the— to help raise money for the cemetery, but in terms of the food for the homecoming what do you see there? Or do you help with it?00:17:10
Wayne Riley: Well on— let’s see, I— on Friday and Saturday night, it’s usually
just simple stuff. It’s like hot chili dogs and hamburgers. I do a fish fry, and things like that, you know, just simple stuff. But then on Sunday it’s— we have a Sunday service that ends the homecoming and on that day, we have a potluck dinner. And on the potluck dinner, people bring just a variety of things.00:17:46
Green beans, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, macaroni salad, macaroni,
potato salad, so there’s just a— there’s never the same menu. It just kind of depends on what— The only consistency I think that we know that we’re going to have for sure is we always have chicken and ham, are the two meats that we usually have. But the dinner can be a— just a variety of anything because people bring I guess kind of what they like or what their specialty is at home, you know.00:18:34
Sara Wood: Is there—[Dog scratches at door] it’s Prince trying to get in. Is
there— do y'all have a tradition of curing meat in your family?00:18:43
Wayne Riley: Yeah; you know they— not anymore we don’t do it, but you know I
mean because there’s a lot— so many legal things like— but years ago you know we used to smoke a lot of meat. We used to salt a lot of meat and things like that. And then, you know, I mean then we did cut you know— as time came on, you know, people did start cutting meat up, hogs, and cows and things like that, and they would freeze them. But most of it was done right there at the farm, you know,, back in my time when I was a kid you know.00:19:20
Sara Wood: And Mr. Riley, I’m curious as to you know how— there was a lot of
time that passed between you growing up on— and helping with some of the farming but— and now here at the Heritage Center. What did you stay in Laurel County after you— ?00:19:40
Wayne Riley: No. I left Kentucky in 1974 and went to Washington, DC.
00:19:47
Sara Wood: To do what?
00:19:48
Wayne Riley: I worked on a— a Federal program which was a HUD program. It was
the first HUD program in the DC area and in the United States where the Federal government was going in and remodeling and low-income houses and things like that. And I got in on the beginning of it in DC when they were doing like down around the Navy base, Southeast and Northeast DC, which were probably the poorest parts of the District. And a lot of those houses, there was no real bathrooms. Some of Them you would find one and it would have like somebody would have put a toilet in a closet or something like that, but no real sanitary bathrooms where you had a toilet and a face bowl and a tub in the same room.00:20:47
So that’s, I went there doing that. I did that for a while, and then I left
there in 1:00 70— 2:00 80, 3:0087, and I came to the Cleveland area because my sister had had a son that got drowned, so I came there to kind of help her out. And then I just kind of stayed in that area and I was— between Cleveland; Columbus, Ohio; and Cincinnati, Ohio. And then in 1999, I came back to Kentucky.00:21:33
Sara Wood: Before you left for DC, was it a desire of yours to get out of
Kentucky or how did that happen?00:21:40
Wayne Riley: Yeah. I mean I had other family that was already up there. There
was no work per se here unless you were working in the coal mine. And so I went there looking for work and a better opportunity, you know, so.00:21:56
Sara Wood: Was there ever a part of you that thought you might take work in a
coal mine or was that something that was out of the question for you?00:22:03
Wayne Riley: [Laughter] Yeah. I went to work in a coal mines, and I worked about
four hours. I went in that morning and I come out at lunch, and I ain't been back. [Laughter] So yeah. I never had to— I thought I had that desire but that’s not— it takes a special person to be able to live that life underground. That’s just my opinion. You know I mean I don’t think all the money in the world—the money was great, but it wasn’t great enough for me.00:22:36
Sara Wood: Do you remember what it was like there that— for those four hours?
Could you describe it from memory?00:22:42
Wayne Riley: Well, it was just a lot of tension because I didn’t like being
confined underground like that. So I mean I— it just an uneasy feeling is the best way I could describe it. I mean, you could hear— you could hear the ground above you rumbling and rattle around, you know, so I mean I— it was just not for me.00:23:06
Sara Wood: So how did you— how did you end up coming back to Laurel County? What
drove you back?00:23:12
Wayne Riley: Actually I came back. My brother had some issues, some health
issues and stuff and some business issues, and I came back. My plan was originally just to come back and help him and get him straight and then be gone again. And I actually came back and I stayed with him and helped him out for a while, and then I left and went to Nashville to work over there. I worked over there for probably about a year and a half. And then I came and then I actually, really to be truthful, I came home one weekend and my aunt was talking about how we don’t really do anything with the kids in the community and how we don’t go to church and things like that.00:24:03
And so I actually came home just to visit and then after she passed, it was kind
of like I could hear her in my sleep, you know, talking about what we don’t— what they used to do for us versus what we do now for the community. And I came back just to save this church that we now have the center in. And it just kind of went from there. I mean I’ve never left. I went back long enough to tell the guy at Nashville that I wasn’t coming back, and then, so I came back here and started the center, so that’s kind of how it started.00:24:47
Sara Wood: And what were you doing in Nashville?
00:24:48
Wayne Riley: You know, I’m a carpenter by trade and I’ve— wherever I’ve always
had some kind of contractor’s business. And so I focused mostly on rehab— rehabing houses and apartments and things like that.00:25:05
Sara Wood: Well that explains— I want to ask you about this add-on in a little
bit, but you were talking about this place is a church. Can you talk a little bit about the history of this church and how you came to make this the—?00:25:19
Wayne Riley: [Laughter] This--this is actually the oldest Baptist church in the
county, not the building that we’re in now but the--at--at that time it was called First Baptist— the Colored— First Colored Baptist Church. And it was built in— shortly after the Civil War and it actually set back on the far corner of this lot. And it sat on the far corner of this lot and—00:26:09
Sara Wood: If you need to get that I can pause it. It’s no problem. [Long Pause]
00:26:13
Wayne Riley: I just need to—
00:26:28
And— and then after m mom you know, and then—it was a vital part of the
community, of the African American community. I think, you know, years ago the church was the heart of the African American population, you know. This is— this church was where everybody came to, you know, we talk about this all the time even in the African American community, even the bootleggers showed up to church to help in some kind of way. They may have not came to Sunday service, but they came to the homecomings or the basket dinners or the repairs on the church or whatever, so everybody the focus of the community was the church, so this was actually the Baptist Church and then you know there was other churches— other denominations just like in everything else that they were part of the community.00:27:31
But this was actually in 1965 or
4:0066, somewhere around there, they changed the name of it to— from the First Baptist Church to Mill Street Baptist Church, and that was about the time when I actually came to London to live with my sister. And there was a preacher that came from Jeffersonville, Indiana, Reverend Richard Hill, who was actually the pastor here. We done a lot of things. I mean, we had a lot of— believe it or not, this was actually the first integrated church in the city and in the county really.00:28:14
Reverend Hill had a different— he was from the city, so he had a— kind of a
different outlook. He did a lot of things with the youth, as well as with adults. He was a very strong mentor and a very— just an exceptionally good preacher. You know I mean I— I remember probably about fifteen years ago I was talking to him, and he told me that I have a hard time with preachers because I try to put all preachers on the same level that he was on. And you know he used to tell me sometimes, you know you shouldn’t judge people like that. But we— he just brought a lot of things to the community. I think he is actually the one that actually brought the women in the community out of the housecleaning jobs and got them actually jobs in factories and the nursing homes and the hospitals and things like that.00:29:23
So I think he was instrumental in doing that.
00:29:27
Sara Wood: And so he was the preacher here while you were probably what ten?
Were you a teenager?00:29:35
Wayne Riley: I was nine years— I was about nine when Reverend Hill came in.
00:29:38
Sara Wood: And how long was he with the church?
00:29:41
Wayne Riley: [Laughter] I think Reverend Hill left here in about 1975 I think.
Yeah. about 1975.00:29:54
Sara Wood: So Mr. Riley, before you were talking about him and that church you
had talked about your aunt and she had passed and she— you could hear her in your sleep talking about doing something. Why did you decide to make the center from the church? What drove you to do that?00:30:17
Wayne Riley: Well before I went to Nashville, the church had kind of, I was one
of the last trustees here at the church but the church had closed up. The older— the younger people had moved away. The older ones were dying off, and there was just really no membership here. So I actually came back because the city was going to condemn it and tear it down. So my plan was just to save the building, and I don’t know. I— like I said, I could— I heard what Aunt Lou Tish was saying and I thought about what she was saying and it was true. You know, I mean they used to do everything with us and for us, and I can remember not just in the black community, but I can remember when I was— came to London to live with my sister, and we were going to school at London Elementary School, everything up Main Street, all of the storefronts were—had businesses in them. So somebody up and down that street knew everybody. So people looked out for you in a different way than the way we look out for people today.00:31:27
Sometimes we don’t even know who our neighbors are. But so her core thing with
that was that we had got to the point of— her exact words, I’ll give you that part of it, we were talking about one thing and she shifts to this conversation. And I don’t even remember what we were talking about in the first place, but anyway, the end conversation being was that she was talking about her family and she says, I don’t understand y'all. She said y'all are the most lazy, trifling people I know. And she said, you don’t do anything in the community with the kids and the young people and you’re too lazy to get up on Sunday morning and walk across the street to the church. At that time I was living right across from the church at East Bernstadt. And so, I went back to Nashville and I told my niece, I said Aunt Lou Tish, her mind is going. She’s talked plumb crazy to me.00:32:29
And I didn’t think a whole lot about it, and then I guess, it was a couple of
months later that she passed and that’s when I heard her. And I came back, never had any intention on staying; it was just to save this little building which was the church that I grew up in and go on back to my normal life. But, you know, not being churchy about it, but I guess this is where the Good Lord planned on me being because we started this with nothing and every year from 2004, the growth has just progressed little by little. It’s not been easy because we didn’t— we don’t have any money, but I guess I’m a scavenger-type person, so when— where we’re sitting at now there was a big building on here, a big two-story building.00:33:33
And it had some structural problems, but at the time we had a mayor that wanted
the land so bad that where he only gave me 30 days to either remove the building or fix it. And with no money, my cheapest choice was to remove it. So we removed it. And we sat here doing nothing with just the front part of the building with no bathrooms and Dr. Maxie actually bought the farm that this house was on and he actually gave it to another lady who was with an organization called Heavenly Helpers. And Teresa decided that she couldn’t do anything with it, so she gave it to me. And I went over there and tore everything from around it and hauled these two rooms here, which is now the kitchen, the dining room, and the bathroom.00:34:30
Sara Wood: And when was that? When did that happen?
00:34:32
Wayne Riley: [Laughter] That’s easy; that happened— it— actually the process of
it actually started about nine and a half years ago, okay, and what happened is— the reason why I can remember that so well was because when I started to Grow Appalachia Program eight years ago, we didn’t have a bathroom. In fact, when Laura did that Youth Program we didn’t have a bathroom. So we used to go to the gas station. She would line all the kids up and take them to the gas station at different times to use the bathroom, so. So it’s been a— it’s been a hard struggle, but a great struggle. Yeah, I mean it’s been a meaningful struggle. And I don’t think that it would mean as much to us or to the community if somebody would have just gave us a whole bunch of money and told us to go do it. I think it’s more meaningful because we’ve had to work at getting to where we’re at today.00:35:37
Sara Wood: Can you talk a little bit about when you first you know you came back
and you saved the church, the building, did you have in your mind what this place, what you wanted to do with this place or what the purpose you wanted it to serve?00:35:54
Wayne Riley: No. [Laughter] No, I didn’t. I had no idea. We just— we actually
just— we actually came up with an idea of putting a museum in it just to have something in it to keep the city off of us, okay. I mean, like I said, I’m a carpenter by trade, so I don’t know nothing about a museum or anything like that. So we just kind of have done that to satisfy the city, really. And we met a lady named Nicole that used to work for the State of Kentucky that actually came up from Frankfort and kind of helped us organize things and get things going.00:36:34
I, you know, I’ve always wanted, I guess, my idea of, if I really would have
thought about what I wanted to do with this, what I’ve always wanted to do, would’ve been been a soup kitchen like type thing. And it works out to where we, it’s not an everyday soup kitchen but we do feed in it— out of it, so I think it’s just— maybe we’ve been directed a different way to do a lot of different things instead of just feed people.00:37:12
Sara Wood: And I mean how— what— can you talk just briefly a little bit about
the evolution of this place? So it’s a heritage center, and you have all of these archives and photographs. Where did this all come from?00:37:25
Wayne Riley: Some of it the pictures and the archives and stuff like that in the
beginning in 2004, I started, Nicole said that the best place to find history is at funerals. So I would go to different funerals, and in the black community, there’s always a gathering that, you know, for a day or two before the funeral or something like that at the family’s house or something like that. So I would take a scanner, and I would, we, they’re always looking through photo albums and things like that, so I would take that scanner and I’d actually scan pictures and bring them back here.00:38:13
And then I would get copies of any obituaries. Obituaries tell a lot of history
because that obituary will list a name of kids and grandkids and things like that so it’s like a, kind of like a road map of gaining history. I guess you could say from the dead because every--that’s the point in people’s lives when part of their history gets written down. And so I did that and then I started mailing out flyers and letters to people that I knew that were from here that had moved away and then they started telling people about it and people started sending stuff in, and it just kind of grew from there.00:39:09
Uh I don’t know; I guess the whole thing just started kind of like that, and
it’s just been a slow growth of different things. I can see the growth of the center from the garden program because it’s a garden— with the garden program, I started going different places and people— so we started getting, being put more out there in the public eye, people talking about it because I’d share the information with people and then they would bring a group by to see it or they’d talk to some— tell somebody about it and it just kind of growed from there from that standpoint of it.00:40:02
Sara Wood: How did the garden program start? How did you start the garden program?
00:40:06
Wayne Riley: [Laughter] Well I--I actually had a wild hare eight years ago, nine
years ago, and I was going to do this little youth program, and I wanted to do gardening with it. And there’s an organization that this church used to be a part of. It’s called the London District Association. And the London District Association was started in 1897 and it was— it’s the Colored Baptist Churches in Laurel County, Clay County, Harlan County, Bell County, and Whitley County, and it was just the Baptist Churches in those five counties.00:40:51
And so they own a piece of property over in Barbourville and I was going to do a
garden over there. And we didn’t really have nothing to work with really. And about that time there was a professor at Berea College. His name was Bill Turner, and Bill called me and told me that he said man, he said, David Cook has got a bunch of money down here to do gardens. He said, don’t you want to be a part of it?00:41:15
So that’s just kind of how it happened. Bill put me in touch with David. And
David come down and talked to me about it. And that’s about the way it happened. I mean it’s just history after that. We— and we’ve been a part of it for eight years, yeah.00:41:33
Sara Wood: And what did you start— what— what do you grow in the garden and
what— ?00:41:37
Wayne Riley: Everything. It’s not like the— I guess it’s not the traditional
garden that I grew up growing. There’s so many different things that people eat today that we didn’t even know nothing about. We grow herbs. We grow tomatillos. We grow all kinds of beans, not just one kind of bean like we were used to growing, tomatoes, I mean just about anything that you could imagine at some point or somebody in our program actually grows in their garden. It may not be in our garden on the hill but it might be at somebody’s personal garden at home.00:42:23
Sara Wood: And Mr. Riley, I just have a couple more questions for you. One is
about your cooking traditions and you’re sort of known--I feel like when I’ve read about you or heard someone talk about you they also refer to you as a foodways historian. So I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about your work in foodways here in the county and the region and if that— does that tie back to your family you know the— you know, you talk about your Uncle Bill having a spot and?00:42:57
Wayne Riley: Yeah. I mean we’ve always I think you know like I said, I mean with
Uncle Bill and the Fourth of July picnic and Uncle Russ and just yeah, the churches, you know, we used to have like fifth Sunday basket dinners and that would be a thing would be of all of the churches, not just the Baptist churches. It would be the Colored Christian Church, the Holiness Church, the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church. They would all— there was actually two Baptist churches— and they would all come together on the fifth Sunday and have this big dinner.00:43:36
So it’s just always been, as I’ve said before, the church has always been the
hub of the community. And it was not necessarily the fifth Sunday of the month. It was every fifth Sunday, so you counted five Sundays. You know it wasn’t the fifth, five calendar— you know it wasn’t the fifth calendar Sunday of the month, you know so it was just every fifth Sunday of the year that they rotated that around. And they went from church to church to church you know. So it would be at one church this Sunday and next church would be at Altamonte and the next one it would be at the Christian Church and next Sunday it would be at the Methodist Church, so it just rotated around.00:44:19
And so with that I mean I— when my mom died, I come to London to live with my
sister. And we had lots of chores, okay and I never really liked doing— carrying water in and carrying coal in, or carrying wood in. And I had an older nephew— well, he’s younger than me but he was— he was the oldest of Joyce’s kids. Bill never liked cooking and cleaning. So on the days when he was supposed to cook and clean, he didn’t want to do it, so I actually did it for him and so I just— that’s where I picked up the cooking at.00:45:01
Sara Wood: What are some of your favorite things to make?
00:45:05
Wayne Riley: You know I don’t really have a favorite. I just like to cook. I
like to cook anything and it seems like with the Garden Program I find myself cooking even things that I never even thought I would be fixing. But I guess I like to fry a lot of fish ‘cause that’s what my kids like. I like to fry a lot of chicken. We fry a lot of pork chops, as far as meat. I like green beans and sometimes I just like to mix a whole bunch of vegetables together, carrots, green beans, corn, broccoli, I just throw it all together and then put it in a pot, put a piece of meat in it, and just let it kind of simmer and cook in it, so.00:45:55
I mean I don’t really have a— I don’t— I guess I don’t really have a favorite
dish I guess. I just like to cook anything.00:46:05
Sara Wood: What kind of fish do you usually fry? Does it depend?
00:46:08
Wayne Riley: I like Alaskan Pollock, and I like catfish. Most of the catfish
that I cook is actually a catfish from now that I like ‘cause it’s a real good catfish and it’s not a— don’t have a real taste to it is— comes from Vietnam. It’s called pollock, I mean basa; the catfish is called basa. That’s— those are usually— and then sometimes my daughter comes from Cincinnati, and I have to cook some crazy something. She likes whiting and she likes perch and stuff like that, so we cook some of that whenever they come in.00:46:55
Sara Wood: Can you tell me about what’s next for the center because Selina was
telling me about the commercial kitchen? Can you tell me what you— what you hope?00:47:06
Wayne Riley: Well I guess the commercial kitchen is kind of probably as close to
a soup kitchen as I’ll get. [Laughter] But you know it’s going to be a kitchen that will benefit the people in the community. It’ll actually be a commercial kitchen, and we’ll be able to can and stuff in it like right now anything that we can you can only consume it or give it away. And once we get that commercial kitchen done, then people will be able to can stuff there and then be able to put a label on it and sell it in the grocery store or little community corner store or whatever they want to do with it— sell it at the farmers’ market.00:47:52
I think the big picture of that is that my goal is that it will help some of our
lower income people be able to supplement their income with some of the stuff that they grow. The hard part about it is— is getting people in our community, and not just in our community, but in Southeast Kentucky with a— we’ve seen this with our Grow Appalachia Program is a lot of people are just not used to selling. They’re used to more giving it to their neighbor or sharing it with their friends.00:48:29
So we have to work on that concept of they’re trying to get people more involved
in selling.00:48:41
It— it’s going to be a big asset to our Garden Program and to our community at
the same time.00:48:52
Sara Wood: Just a quick question, How long— when did the center become partners
with Grow Appalachia? How did that work?00:48:58
Wayne Riley: Eight years ago.
00:49:00
Sara Wood: And was that something—how does that work, getting together with Grow Appalachia?
00:49:06
Wayne Riley: How does it work?
00:49:07
Sara Wood: Yeah, at least for the center?
00:49:10
Wayne Riley: Well you know it started with four sites in Kentucky, and every
year, you know, you have to submit a proposal to the— Grow Appalachia is actually headquartered through Berea College, and so Berea College administers the money through— for the Grow Appalachia site.00:49:33
And so, you submit a proposal and David decides whether or not you’re worthy of
that proposal— or proposal or not, yeah.00:49:42
Sara Wood: And so you guys have been partners for eight years you said?
00:49:45
Wayne Riley: I am the last of the original sites.
00:49:50
Sara Wood: Now do y'all have— now Selina was pointing to the— she said there’s a
couple of raised beds— but then she said the garden is actually a few blocks from here.00:50:00
Wayne Riley: Yes. The garden is actually on a piece of property on— at 14th and
Griffin and that property is actually not owned by the center. It’s actually donated space that my cousin who lives in Atlanta allows us to utilize, and we’ve been up there for— we’ve been up there for five years, on the hill up there.00:50:27
Sara Wood: Just I have one more question for you and it’s about chili buns. When
you were growing up was that a big deal? I mean and you know you mentioned chili dogs and you talked a little bit about chili itself. But do you have a recollection of people eating chili buns?00:50:46
Wayne Riley: Yeah; I, like I said, I think it was— I think it was just kind of
like a quick fix, but at the same time a hearty, tasty type of snack food. Whereas, you know, we didn’t have all of the fast food restaurants we have now. So I think that the chili was something that was easy and quick to fix and it was kind of like a treat for the weekend when— kind of gave your parents a break from cooking this full course meal that they usually cooked all week long. And so, you got a chili dog and maybe a pop on the weekend or something like that or a hot— it was more chili dogs than it was you know— because back then you know I mean a lot of people didn’t have money to buy a hotdog, but everybody had ground beef and pork and stuff like that. So that’s— I think that’s why and where the chili came into place with it.00:52:05
Sara Wood: Do you yourself, do you eat chili buns?
00:52:09
Wayne Riley: I do eat chili buns. I like— I like any— I mean like I said, I mean
I just like anything. I like chili. I like chili buns. I don’t— I don’t know of anything too much that I wouldn’t probably try. I actually really— I remember my sister and she’s passed away now, but I had got this bright idea that we had had a young lady named Angelica that was part of our Garden Program from Mexico, and Angelica showed us how to make salsa out of those tomatillos. And so I— she’s telling me how to fix it, you know how to— how to take the salsa and fix a meal with it, so I called my sister and I told her I was going to fix dinner you know. And so she was going to come up.00:53:04
So I filled— I took these boneless pork chops and this boneless chicken and just
like Angelica had told me, you know, and you put it in a skillet and you, you don’t fry it; you kind of start to cook it a little bit with water and let it cook a little bit on one side and then you flip it over and you let it cook a little bit on the other side. And then you take and cut you some vegetables, whatever kind of vegetables you want and put them in it. Then dump this sauce on top of it and let it simmer and cook all through the meat. And I was trying to figure out; I said now I wonder what is she going to think about this.00:53:43
So we actually made two of them. We made one mild and we made one hot because my
niece likes really hot stuff, so we made one mild and one hot and invited Joyce up to eat. So I think when I grew up, I grew up eating just basic food, pork chops, chicken, you know chili buns, hamburger. Every now and then we’d get a hamburger or something like that, but things like that and then you know just vegetables— corn and green beans and potatoes and greens and things like that. We didn’t even— we didn’t even— I don’t even remember eating a whole lot of lettuce because you know lettuce is a cool weather crop, and back then you know we planted a garden you know, after derby day, after—in May, you know, we just put a garden out. So we never really did what we call cool weather crops. So we didn’t eat a lot of that.00:54:48
So I don’t know; I think growing up that was the kind of things that we ate, yeah.
00:54:59
Sara Wood: Are there anybody that you know of in the African American
communities in the county or even in the region who have, maybe they’re a restaurant entrepreneur and they have their own spot and they serve chili buns as part of the menu that you were— that you’re— ?00:55:15
Wayne Riley: Say that again now.
00:55:16
Sara Wood: I’m basically looking for any black owned restaurants, they could be
here in London or in the county or in a nearby county that serve chili buns as part of their menu.00:55:31
Wayne Riley: You know, I guess I would almost have to say that we would probably
have to go to either Lexington or Danville. I had an uncle that used to have one in [Laughter]— in Barbourville but it’s long gone, too.00:55:52
Sara Wood: He had a restaurant in Barbourville?
00:55:54
Wayne Riley: Uh-hm.
00:55:55
Sara Wood: What was it called?
00:55:56
Wayne Riley: Zeno’s Place. But—
00:56:04
Sara Wood: Was he— is he still around or is he— ?
00:56:06
Wayne Riley: No, no, no he’s— he’s gone.
00:56:08
Sara Wood: What was his name?
00:56:10
Wayne Riley: Zeno Word, yeah. Yeah but I don’t know. I don’t know of any place
close by that would actually— where you could actually get— I’d have to call somebody and find out. I know my cousin Terry could probably find something in Lexington probably. But in this area, around here I don’t think there’s—there’s not anything around, left around.00:56:40
Sara Wood: Well Mr. Riley you’ve been really generous with your time with me
this morning, and I just wanted to ask you if there’s anything else that you would like to add about your work here at the center or your history that I didn’t ask you about that you think is important?00:56:55
Wayne Riley: No; I mean I’m just— like I say, I’m just glad to be a part of it
and be able to do what I do for my community and the people of my community.00:57:05
Sara Wood: And well actually okay I lied. I have one more question. So we’re
sitting back here. There’s a kitchen back here. Do you— do you cook for functions here at the center? How do y'all use this space?00:57:17
Wayne Riley: Yeah. I actually—we cook for different things. We do dinners where
we sell dinners for, as a fund-raiser and then we just do dinners to where we just cook for people that come through that visit the center. Sometime, you know, we’ll cook a dinner for that.00:57:38
We’ll— sometimes we cook food for someone’s family who’s passed away and they
don’t really have a place to actually feed the family, so we cook for things like that. So we just try—and then— and then people are allowed to come and like have a birthday party or baby shower or something like that and use the kitchen with that— for that.00:58:03
Sara Wood: Well thank you for your time this morning. I appreciate it, Mr. Riley.
00:58:07
Wayne Riley: Thank you for coming.
00:58:10
Sara Wood: Okay I’m just going to—we just going to sit here for like 10 seconds
and get the sound of the room just for the—.00:58:50
[End of Interview]
5:00