Sarah Milligan 00:00
Let me do introduction and set the levels and everything. This is Sarah
Milligan, I'm interviewing Bob Gates, director of the Kentucky Folklife Program. Today is August 15th, 2011. We're here in Frankfort at the historical society and we're going to talk about the history of the Kentucky Folklife Program. So, Bob, go ahead and say your name, just so I can get the levels and everything.Bob Gates 00:26
My name is Bob Gates.
Sarah Milligan 00:30
Tell me just a little bit about yourself. Like what, let's get just a little bit
of background information on you. So, we know where you came from and how you ended up with the Folklife Program.Bob Gates 00:39
Okay. I grew up in Cincinnati area, in a small area called Delhi and went to
school there--went to high school. Went to the University of Cincinnati. Then I went to Villanova for a year till--experimental psychology and under--in at--for my master's.Sarah Milligan 00:59
That's a college then?
Bob Gates 01:00
In psychology. Yeah, Villanova University, yeah. In Philadelphia. I came back
from there, I didn't, I didn't do too well [clears throat]. I figured I wanted to do something else. And I was a roofer and police dispatcher and then I got into photography and did--taught at a community center there where I taught photography and got onto CETA [Comprehensive Employment and Training Act] project where I documented traditional Black history.Sarah Milligan 01:03
Okay. CETA is?
Bob Gates 01:27
CETA--civilian something or other, it was a federal program where they, they
paid people to do--do different jobs. This, I--first started out as a CETA employee working as a police dispatcher. And the idea was to bring local--to bring civilians into the dispatching area, which was basically the penalty box for policemen. [laughter] So, you had these guys up there who didn't deal well with the public were up there answering phones. And so, they brought civilians in and they--we weren't received very well. But it was--it was a fun experiment. I was there for three years. And that got--that got--while I was there, I worked late at night, oftentimes, on shifts. So, I got off at seven in the morning. So, I would go over to the center where I learned photography, and they'd let me use a dark room and I--so--I got really into photography a lot. And that's when they asked me to teach. So, I started teaching there. And then they said, "well you want to do a CETA project, since you're already in CETA, we got--a we sent a grant in and we're going to fund--doing an oral history project with--in the west end of Cincinnati." And so I kind of took a cut in pay, went $3,000 down just to leave this crazy job at the police dispatcher and get into something that was--seemed like it was going to be fulfilling. And I got--I did that. And I got a little training there that helped me do oral histories. The Newberry Center. They sent me there for a week.Sarah Milligan 03:00
Was there someone there you were working with that trained you how to do
interviewing and things?Bob Gates 03:06
At the Newbery. Yeah, I mean, I knew a little bit but basically, that's how I
got my first real training, I guess. So we went, it was a special thing there that they did for a week. And people from all over United States were going to it and you get kind of a certification. It taught you how to do oral history, and it was good, I came back with confidence. And I already knew how to do photography. But--so what we were doing was going around and copying old photographs that people had of the West End. And it was originally conceived as the West End was kind of like the receiving area in in Cincinnati where newcomers came in. All different--immigrants came into the West End, they settled, then they moved up--when the hills opened up, when they--they actually put incline plain--incline trains, you know, and that enabled people to actually farm up there and to live up there. So, because the hills were so steep, and so people, the rich people started moving out of the West End, and that started bringing in new people. And it was--I guess the Jews were the second last group that came in and then the African Americans followed them from--from the south and followed them in. And so you had all these big, beautiful buildings that were down in the West End and then you had a --new immigrant groups coming in and kind of making their mark on the place. And when I---so the idea was a--document that whole wide thing, but since the arts consortium where I worked was really a Black community center. It kind of became a Black history project, which was kind of weird because I was white. [laughs]Sarah Milligan 04:46
Were you only white person working on it?
Bob Gates 04:49
The director's boss, the director, who was a Bond, he was related to Julian Bond.
Sarah Milligan 04:57
Okay.
Bob Gates 04:57
And he's from Louisville. He came--they hired him and he actually suggested that
his wife might be kind of the figurehead [laughs]. So she was kind of assistant director to me and I was kind of--we kind of blurred it so the local community saw a Black face more than me. But, you know, I got accepted after a couple years, because we were doing really neat projects with it. We were, you know, I started out, nobody really would trust you with their pictures. So, we started doing little exhibits outside, and people would come up and they'd see pictures of their friends. And they said, "well, I have pictures." So we started doing that.Sarah Milligan 05:31
So, would you take a copy stained (??) out or would people bring pictures in for
you to--?Bob Gates 05:34
The first time, I was taking a four by five camera out? And walking the streets
and asking people and getting appointments and going into people's house[es] I remember one house, they had--this picture there, see that one--it's a picture of four people out in front of--an--unemployment office--unemployment office.Sarah Milligan 05:57
Yeah, in your case? Yeah.
Bob Gates 05:58
Yeah, and it's, it's [a] really high quality picture, because I took it with a
four by five.Sarah Milligan 06:04
It is.
Bob Gates 06:04
But, I had--I had magnets with me and we used the magnets to hold the picture
onto her refrigerator [laughter]. And used the light and I had took lights with me and so, we had lights coming in 45 degrees, I had polarizers on and everything, but it was a four by five camera. So--Sarah Milligan 06:19
That was smart.
Bob Gates 06:20
It was pretty cool. I mean, the guy, you know, the guy that helped me get
started with it. He was a really, kind of Renaissance photographer, historian, all this he--he--.Sarah Milligan 06:29
Do you remember his name? It's okay if you don't, I'm just curious.
Bob Gates 06:34
I can't remember it. No, he was a young guy. He actually introduced me to my
girlfriend there. Who I lived with three years--but for seven years or so.Sarah Milligan 06:43
We should probably say when this was.
Bob Gates 06:45
Yeah, this was back in. I left there in '82. And I was about four years there, I
think. It was at that time, because I was at the police department in '76, '77, '78, somewhere around there. So, we were doing--I don't know how much of this you want.Sarah Milligan 07:04
Yeah, I actually just wanted to--
Bob Gates 07:05
Okay.
Sarah Milligan 07:05
Spend a little bit of time on it.
Bob Gates 07:08
I mean, it was pretty neat. Because we did all--we did those projects. And then
we started writing grants. And we had a good assistant director, the director, Bond, he was--he was pretty good, but he was kind of [an] alcoholic too. He had his problems. But he hired an assistant director who was pretty savvy about getting grants. So, she would go through the Ohio--what was it called? It was--it was a joint grant from the Ohio Arts Council and Humanities Council, they, they had this joint thing that you could--you could apply to and we got a couple grants from that. The first one helped us do a reunion of the Cotton Club, which was really cool.Sarah Milligan 07:53
I've heard you talk about that.
Bob Gates 07:54
Yes.
Sarah Milligan 07:54
And that--that to me, you know, just listening to you talk about that--that's
why I want you to talk a little bit about this. Because all these things, it seems like you did with this project, and leading up to really, I think helped you be able to formulate ideas about how to present all this stuff and how to work with communities when you were in the folklife program. So--Bob Gates 08:11
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 08:11
--The reunion with the Cotton Club, what was it that you actually did with that like?
Bob Gates 08:17
Well, we--like I said, we had been doing exhibits, we had been making kind of an
archive of these four by five negatives and pictures and they were just small exhibits. And we said, we kept hearing these stories about the Cotton Club being important to the community then there. Everybody thought of the West End when I was a teenager, as being a slum. They didn't see it as a Black, really cohesive community, that was very strong and one time. And I-71--I--75 came through there--AND completely through that area--part--some of the people we interviewed were--told us about a--one was a photographer who's--talked about his whole collection was lost because he didn't realize that they were gonna come through. The white community--knew about it, but a lot of the people didn't really read the papers much and--and didn't see that up and date, and they were bringing this--building this big highway through West End. And it just, it just tore out the power base of the Black community. And that's why there's--if you go to Cincinnati now, there's like six or seven different communities around that are Black, primarily Black, but that was--most of them were from the West End.Sarah Milligan 09:26
But, they were displaced.
Bob Gates 09:27
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 09:28
Yeah, was it [Harriet] Tubman? No, she's not from there either. When the highway
came here--.Bob Gates 09:28
They were displaced. So I mean, the West End had a great history. The Harriet
Beecher Stowe--is that the right one, I think, no, that's not right--I can't think of her name. She--she--they had a school named after her, and she brought---she kind of met the immigrants who were coming up. This is during the Great--Black Migration. Beecher Stowe, no, no, it's not.Sarah Milligan 09:39
You might be right, either way.
Bob Gates 09:57
Anyway, So I mean, there's churches, there's the YMCA, there's all these
community things that were going on in the West End that were really important in the 20s and 30s. And one of the things that was important is--was a place called the Cotton Club. And it was named after the one in New York, I guess. But it was owned by Blacks, whereas the one in New York--in Harlem, I think, was owned by whites. And this was a place where musicians would come in town and play at white clubs. A lot of Black--Sarah Milligan 10:32
Black musicians.
Bob Gates 10:32
--Musicians. Yeah, they'd play at white clubs where Blacks couldn't go. But
when--when--their--their thing was over, they'd come to Cotton Club that night, and play. So, the Black community had--had their own place. They had a cover band, I mean, they had their own band there. And they would, they said, there were so many musicians in Cincinnati, at one time, if you wanted to do a house party, you would go down to the gate in front of the Cotton Club, and there would be musicians hanging out there and you could just pick a band for your party that night. And we actually had a picture of a musician stand in front of the thing, and we used that in our exhibit. We made a full size cut out thing of those guys. It was really cool. But so that's, that's where we found out about it and I talked to my director and said, "do you want to do this?" And he said, "yeah, let's go for it." So we--we--I think we wrote a little grant for that one. We got a grant later on that made it into a full fledged exhibit. For the actual reunion, it was more of a let's do what we can. And so, I started doing field work going around to--what do they call those? Oh, you know, the places where Army soldiers,--VFW [Veterans of Foreign Wars] halls. There are actually Black VFW halls and in Cincinnati, there was a lot of them--there's three or four. And most of were in Avondale or the West End. Avondale was another area where Blacks settled in Cincinnati. So, I'd basically go there as a white guy, and I actually had had a knee operation. So I was on crutches. So that--maybe that helped me. [laughter]Sarah Milligan 11:41
Pity points.
Bob Gates 11:42
Yeah, they--pity points, yeah. Let me come in and talk to them. And so, we
started getting people together who had been there and--and we formed a house band, got them together. Caledonia, who was in that song, Caledonia, "kinda--don't--what makes your big ass so hard," you ever heard of that song?Sarah Milligan 12:21
No. [laughs]
Bob Gates 12:21
The song was named her but, she was actually in Cincinnati--and she always made
jokes about how ugly she was. That was part of her act, but she was a good singer, and she was funny. And then we got some young dancers who, who portrayed Butterbeans and Susie, who--that a comedy act and dance act. So--so we had young people involved, and then these old guys, and then--once we had the house band together, we started inviting other performers who were around. And so we had a night at the Cotton Club, and we threw it together, had a good sound system there. And it was sold out.Sarah Milligan 12:55
Was it at the actual community center that--.
Bob Gates 12:57
It was--it was at the Arts Consortium, which was an old, it was on Lynn Street,
it's still there, I think, and it had murals on the outside. And it was an old Kroger's store that was given to the community and, and they got money from the Cincinnati Fund for the Arts. So, they had some money coming in. And they did painting, they you know did--taught a lot of arts in there, photography, and but they did exhibits too, and this is one of the things we did.Sarah Milligan 13:23
Well, that's fantastic.
Bob Gates 13:24
It was cool. And it was--really a success. We--we worked with the Cincinnati
Historic[al Society, a woman there helped write the booklet for us that we handed out to people when they came in, and it got picked up after that, you know, and they started just doing the music thing at another club in town. So--but I think we did two reunions maybe. But we went to---and got a grant to do that exhibit, a big exhibit with cutouts and things and--and that was part of--so that grant helped us get some more grants. And that's how I got kind of introduced to folklore--because we brought--one of the grants we needed, it was a Humanities Council grant. And you know, you need humanities scholars. So they recommended Jay Anderson, who was a folklorist out of Western [Kentucky University] to come up and--and be--and so he helped me with something, I can't remember what. I remember going to a German American bar with him, a dancehall bar and he and his girlfriend and mine, we were out there dancing with the polka and all that. [laughter] But, we did get some work done. But, the next consultant we got was Lynwood Montell, and he came up from Western, and he--he did an oral history workshop with some of my volunteers.Sarah Milligan 13:25
Oh, really?
Bob Gates 13:27
So, it was like, let's bring somebody from the outside to do it, although we
could have done it, I guess but, he--did a good job. Yeah, and so, he stayed overnight with us--with me and my girlfriend and he and Barbara Allen stayed with us. We were trying to cut costs I guess, but you know, so I let him stay at my house and--and I remember driving around with him, showing him to place--and so on. And so, we were up by the University of Cincinnati and his famous line was "look at the dormers, look at the door--." [laughter] He was--he was looking at these buildings. I just got a kick out of this guy from--a guy from Kentucky in my backseat, going crazy over dormers. But-- [laughter] I realize how important he was, you know really. [laughter]Sarah Milligan 15:21
Yeah.
Bob Gates 15:21
He was a--you know--he's the really, the folklorist who represented Kentucky at
that time.Sarah Milligan 15:26
Nationally known, that's right
Bob Gates 15:27
Yeah, nationally known [laughter] saga (??) courage, and all this---and all the
work he's been doing. And he was staying at my house, and that was cool. We stayed up late, and he was telling me ghost stories [laughter]. And I knew a few in my neighborhood of ghost stories--Sarah Milligan 15:42
That's funny.
Bob Gates 15:42
--I shared with him, but he just told me some great ones. And I think the next
night--next day, I said, "you know, how do I--how do you get to be a folklorist?" And he said, "well, you ought to do this, Bob, you ought to--you know." And so, he told me all about Western and how I should apply there. And he would help me do it if I wanted to. And he didn't tell me there was a place called Indiana University or anything. [laughter]Sarah Milligan 16:04
Equidistance away. [laughter]
Bob Gates 16:06
Yeah, I mean, it was closer. Actually, i's only one-hundred miles [laughter] in
[to] Cincinnati. So, he didn't tell me any of that. But he got me interested in and he actually said he could give me credit for the work I was already doing, so.Sarah Milligan 16:19
Oh, did he?
Bob Gates 16:20
Yeah, I did. I don't know if I'm supposed to tell his but--
Sarah Milligan 16:22
Well, I'm sure it's public record.
Bob Gates 16:24
Yeah--yeah I don't think the other professors were real happy about it. But he,
he recruited me basically and and gave me like fifteen--no--maybe six hours of independent study for doing what I did there.Sarah Milligan 16:38
Wow.
Bob Gates 16:39
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 16:39
That's two thirds of a semester. That's great.
Bob Gates 16:41
Well, you know, I went down there and I came--went down in the winter semester. Because--
Sarah Milligan 16:48
Yeah.
Bob Gates 16:48
I couldn't start in the fall, I wanted to finish up everything. One of the
things I was pushing them to do there, or we were doing was going for an NEA [National Educational Association] grant that would support what I--what I considered [at] that time more, more historic research than we were able to do, actually looking at all of--all Black culture in the West End and--Sarah Milligan 17:08
This was back at the community center?
Bob Gates 17:09
Yeah, so they wrote a grant, but I wasn't--I helped write the grant. And I don't
think they got it. But the grant was, at that time, they were actually going to tie it to an exhibit with--I remember, we had a consultant come in and it's kind of thing they're doing now where you push--touch the screen. And it takes you from this to this and this, and they were talking about riding through the West End with these--with a car with cameras on three sides. [chuckles]Sarah Milligan 17:33
Wow!
Bob Gates 17:33
And I was going to do that, you know, so I was really enthused, we were going to
have the first place where you could push a button that shows the Cotton Club, and then--then push another one and shows a performance and then show, you know, just--the same things we're doing here. And I was excited. So I was kind of sad to leave, because we had just started that, but I also thought and my girlfriend was actually kind of pushing me that--it kind of--kind of bothered me that I was not the fig--you know, I was doing all the work, but I wasn't. They were kind of ashamed in a sense that I was the director--Sarah Milligan 18:05
Because you were white?
Bob Gates 18:06
I was white. I mean, we worked around it a lot of times and people who knew me,
you know, I did a lot of interviews, and--Sarah Milligan 18:12
Yeah.
Bob Gates 18:13
--I felt I was accepted by the community. But the director, he was Black and he
was frontline. And he knew what people were saying behind my back. So I'm sure that's part of what it was. So in a sense, I really loved being there, in the sense that it was kind of like, am I really appreciated as much--am I--Sarah Milligan 18:29
Yeah.
Bob Gates 18:29
--Should I be--should I get the credentials in the field? And that's what was it
kind of all about, so I announced I was leaving and they gave me a farewell party and gave me a gift and all that stuff, and left the place and went down the Western.Sarah Milligan 18:45
And started in the--started in the January term--started in--
Bob Gates 18:49
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 18:49
The spring term.
Bob Gates 18:50
1982, I guess it was, because I graduated in '83, I think.
Sarah Milligan 18:54
Okay, so you started [in] the spring, who were the professors do you remember at
the time?Bob Gates 18:58
Cam Collins, J. Anderson? What's his name?
Sarah Milligan 19:08
I'm trying to think of whose down there. I'm sorry.
19:11
Oh, he's up in Connecticut now. Been there for a long time--or Massachusetts, I
can't remember. Burt Feintuch.Sarah Milligan 19:19
That's who I was thinking, yeah.
Bob Gates 19:23
And we had a Black woman there, who was there for a little while.
Sarah Milligan 19:26
Oh, I don't know who she is but--.
Bob Gates 19:27
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 19:28
Because she was just there for such a short time.
Bob Gates 19:29
Yeah, I've--her name's on the tip of my tongue.
Sarah Milligan 19:33
That's easy to go back and find out.
Bob Gates 19:35
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 19:35
I was just curious if you remembered.
Bob Gates 19:36
Cam--cam was teaching--.
Sarah Milligan 19:37
Cam was the department or the kind of program head or no Lynwood [Montell] was still.
Bob Gates 19:41
Lynwood was.
Sarah Milligan 19:42
He was still there.
Bob Gates 19:43
Yeah. And Kim was teaching public sector, she was known for her public sector--
Sarah Milligan 19:47
I see.
Bob Gates 19:48
--Work class. Lynwood taught me fieldwork J. Anderson taught museum studies. So,
I took that, he--and since I knew him and--.Sarah Milligan 20:00
Yeah.
Bob Gates 20:00
---And--and I took literature, folklore literature--
Sarah Milligan 20:03
Yeah.
20:03
The hardest thing was that came in that--and then I didn't take genres or the--history.
Sarah Milligan 20:13
Yeah.
Bob Gates 20:14
What is it called?
Sarah Milligan 20:15
Theory.
Bob Gates 20:15
Theory.
Sarah Milligan 20:16
Yeah.
Bob Gates 20:16
Theory. I didn't take very until my last semester.
Sarah Milligan 20:18
Oh.
Bob Gates 20:19
And that was really weird, because--luckily, I had a lot of people that--we had
like a study group and that helped me catch up and I you know, passed the comps and all that. But, while I was there we--kind of the weird thing is, I had been out of school for seven years. So, I was an older student, and I was coming in and they had another student there who was from the west, in part, I think Jay had kind of recruited him, who had been a museum director, also. I was kind of a museum--well, you know, it was a big--Sarah Milligan 20:52
Yeah.
Bob Gates 20:52
--Project. So, I had--an experience in public sector, at least in their view.
And this other guy did too. So, it was like this-- that semester it was, look at these two guys, they've been out there for--doing this stuff. Watch everything they do. [laughs] Listen to them, you know, and all the other students were kind of not jealous, but they were kind of, what is this about? But--Sarah Milligan 21:11
Not impressed, yeah [laughs].
Bob Gates 21:12
Well, some of them were--
Sarah Milligan 21:13
Okay.
Bob Gates 21:13
Because actually, Lynwood had me teach photography to this group. He got me
an---assistantship, instead of being--all the assistantships were gone. But he got me into the visual, the media center, which was good because I could, I learned how to develop color. I had always done black and white, but I could do slides.Sarah Milligan 21:37
Yeah.
Bob Gates 21:38
And I could do big prints. So that got J. Anderson thinking, well, let's do an
exhibit part of our class. So he and me and Eric Larson, we wrote a grant to NEA and got an exhibit. So we, and Eric Larson was a student who was--had been there for a semester before me and had gotten in close to an artist called Unto Jarvi.Sarah Milligan 21:59
Okay.
Bob Gates 21:59
Do you know who that is?
Sarah Milligan 22:00
I've heard you talk about him but--
Bob Gates 22:01
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 22:01
--I don't know who he is.
Bob Gates 22:02
He was a Scandinavian art guy who came over--his family had a hard time. And he
came over to help the family and--and was basically a lumberjack up in Michigan, and did a lot of--Sarah Milligan 22:17
He was in Kentucky?
Bob Gates 22:18
Yeah, he met a Kentucky woman and moved to Auburn. So--.
Sarah Milligan 22:23
Which is just--just west of--.
Bob Gates 22:24
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 22:24
Bowling Green. I drove there two days ago, and just--it bypasses the
Russellville Road bypass--it used to go right through and his house was right, a beautiful little house. Anyway, we did an exhibit, and that was another way I just started to. About his artwork, is that what you did in the exhibit, or what did you mean?Bob Gates 22:41
Yeah. Well, Eric had done some interviews, and he--did some more, I went out and
copied all the old photographs that Unto until had of his family and him and then I took pictures of--Unto was known for these shadow boxes. They call them shadow--I think that's what he--or dioramas. They are wooden boxes with plexiglass on the outside and inside. He had all these card figures, like that one, where is it? I can't even see it.Sarah Milligan 23:08
Oh, the one up there, the top one?
Bob Gates 23:10
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 23:10
The painted one?
Bob Gates 23:10
Yeah, that's an Unto Jarvi.
Sarah Milligan 23:12
Oh, I never realized that.
Bob Gates 23:14
He's got--he should be holding a for and a hammer. But--.
Sarah Milligan 23:17
He's doing woodworking to figure into wood carving of a person doing woodworking.
Bob Gates 23:21
Yeah, yeah. And he paint--he would paint them there were--they all kind of look
like him [laughter]. No, they'd look like people he knew, and they were memory art, basically. I guess that's how you kind of catalog, it was memory art. And he was--he did things. One was a sauna with two people in it.Sarah Milligan 23:40
Scandinavian sauna.
Bob Gates 23:41
Scandinavian sauna--
Sarah Milligan 23:42
Yeah.
Bob Gates 23:42
That, you know, and [an]other was Lumberjacks. Other ones were Western-related
things of--a wagon train going west with somebody in front and back. They were all contained in these big dioramas. And Jimmy Deemer, who owned some big supermarkets down there really liked them.Sarah Milligan 24:03
Yeah.
Bob Gates 24:03
And so, he bought a lot of these and had him in his store, at the supermarket
store up above the things and it's--one of my job[s] was to go and take a picture of all those, for the catalog. But we also had those in the exhibit. So they had the actual dioramas in the exhibit on the wall, with some pictures relating to his early life and that. I bring this up because Jimmy Dean, I just found Jimmy Deemer a couple months ago. He has--he doesn't have that store anymore, but he has a barbecue [chuckles]. It's--it's a barbecue slash storage facility.Sarah Milligan 24:37
It's out on Scottsville Road, right?
Bob Gates 24:38
Yes.
24:39
Yes, I was--I drove past his [laughter]--So I went there and I got some barbecue
and then I saw him--he had just had a heart attack not too long ago.Sarah Milligan 24:39
Yes. Does he still have the figurines?
Bob Gates 24:49
He's got some in there, but--his--the tragedy was that his--his big store burned
down and all of those were lost. So that's--Sarah Milligan 24:57
Oh, no!
Bob Gates 24:57
I you know, we've been looking for my pictures of them at home and we're also
looking at the Kentucky Museum to see if they had any.Sarah Milligan 25:06
Yeah.
Bob Gates 25:06
Because the students did a couple more things with until Unto Jarvi after I
left, but, but I did do a lot of the pictures of the--his stuff. And my girlfriend had moved down from Cincinnati. We had just a brief time when we were not together. Barbara Boeing (??) was her name, and she was a graphic artist. So she was kind of hired to do the graphics for the exhibit. So, it was kind of us working together.Sarah Milligan 25:29
Yeah.
Bob Gates 25:29
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 25:32
I didn't realize--I'm still processing Deemers--that's--because there was a few
Deemer's in--wasn't there, in Bowling Green?Bob Gates 25:40
Yeah, I get them confused with Hou--
Sarah Milligan 25:41
Houchens.
Bob Gates 25:43
Houchens. But they're not the same thing. Deemer's--
Sarah Milligan 25:46
No.
Bob Gates 25:46
Deemer's was their own super--set of supermarkets in town.
Sarah Milligan 25:49
Yeah.
Bob Gates 25:50
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 25:51
I think yeah, I think too--he had brothers. Anyway, so, you did the exhibit at
the Kentucky Museum of that?25:57
No, actually, it was in that gallery up in the--
Bob Gates 26:01
center, Fine Arts Center with the stairways going up. So, it was in there, and
it was really nice. And we did a cut out of Unto--a carving. So, I had a lot of pictures of his hands and close ups. And it was a life-sized carving that we had sitting in there. So, when you walked past, you could see that. We had a desk, kind of like what we did with the luthier thing, except these ideas keep coming back [clears throat]. But it was funny because we did a workshop with him one Saturday. And so he came up and like a lot of folklorists, he gets there early, and he walks up and he sees himself in there and he sees--he didn't realize I had done a life-size thing.Sarah Milligan 26:05
Was it?
Bob Gates 26:24
A little--
Sarah Milligan 26:33
Fine Arts Center. Oh, no.
Bob Gates 26:40
And he was really impressed. But it also was---it was in black and white, but he
had the same shirt on he was wearing that day. [laughter] So, I think we took some shots of him, doing that with it. But--it was kind of neat, because we actually used me and a couple other students. I found a brochure of it recently. So, I can give you that--show you that.Sarah Milligan 27:02
Yeah.
Bob Gates 27:02
That we did, as you know, it credits all the students, got a picture of us and,
let me see if I can find it. Yeah, Jen was like helping you look for this stuff.Sarah Milligan 27:19
Oh.
Bob Gates 27:20
See this here.
Sarah Milligan 27:21
I can't believe you still have this. This is great.
27:23
Yeah. You can see the pictures. And that was a picture of his family and him. There
Sarah Milligan 27:30
He's the small boy in the middle on the second page.
Bob Gates 27:33
--And his--yeah--and his brother died from--and some of them were starving--they
were, it was so bad over there.Sarah Milligan 27:38
Oh gosh.
Bob Gates 27:39
At one point.
Sarah Milligan 27:39
And these were oh, is that the life size?
Bob Gates 27:42
Yeah, that was the life size.
Sarah Milligan 27:43
That's funny. Here on the third page, yeah.
27:46
But I didn't realize we took this--I took a picture of the other students who
were involved, so.Sarah Milligan 27:51
Oh, that's fantastic.
Bob Gates 27:53
Cosmos was in there. Remember her?
Sarah Milligan 27:56
Names.
Bob Gates 27:57
She's--her last name is Cosmos and--
Sarah Milligan 27:59
Yeah.
Bob Gates 27:59
She's now in Michigan and works a lot with--
Sarah Milligan 28:04
Larson McDowell.
Bob Gates 28:04
--Professor--Larson McDowell. This is the guy--I can't remember, it was--who
came from the west who was a--had already done a museum. And that's J. Anderson and Eric Larson. And Unto, but I don't remember the other people.Sarah Milligan 28:17
That's fantastic.
Bob Gates 28:18
But I was always the photographer. So, I've never got in the pictures.
Sarah Milligan 28:21
The bane of being a photographer.
Bob Gates 28:22
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 28:22
This is great. We'll have to scan these in.
Bob Gates 28:24
Yeah, it was pretty cool. So, I'm trying to find this stuff for him. But when I
was at Western, that's the kind of stuff I got to do that and take the classes with, with everybody.Sarah Milligan 28:36
Yeah.
Bob Gates 28:37
I had never worked that hard. You know how hard those classes are and--and I had
a--you know, I was in the historic preservation thing, so I---.Sarah Milligan 28:46
Really?
Bob Gates 28:46
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 28:46
Not the public folklore?
Bob Gates 28:48
Well, it was--it was public folklore with his--with a something in historic
so--so I took two or three classes that were--had to do. We did a survey of Allen County. So---Sarah Milligan 29:00
Historic properties survey?
Bob Gates 29:01
Yeah, we were basically looking at buildings that had started out log cabins and
became (??) houses--Sarah Milligan 29:07
Yeah.
Bob Gates 29:07
--And other things. So I remember going out there with two other students every
day, surveying our driving home, almost getting killed, going up a hill too fast, another car coming--Sarah Milligan 29:19
Oh no.
Bob Gates 29:19
--In the opposite direction. But we came here to Frankfort, actually as a class
project to go to the Heritage Council and.Sarah Milligan 29:27
Oh, really?
Bob Gates 29:28
To see what they were doing. Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 29:30
Well, that's interesting. So, it's, I mean, I'm thinking what all is changed at
Western if the--I mean, it sounds like the classes were very similar then as to what they are now.Bob Gates 29:39
Yeah, I mean, Cam, I remember taking public sector and I think was a kind of a
challenge to her because she, here's this guy who's supposed to be out there and Lynwood brought him in, and now I have to, I have to tolerate him [laughter] kind of thing. And I was--I was going to try to prove that I could get an A in her class. You know, there's a rumor at that time that she only gave A's the women, and I didn't--so I said, "I'm gonna get an A." Well, I barely got to B. So, you're gonna give me a C, because I--part of the class was to--to do a presentation to a board of directors for a grant or something like that. You were supposed to write a grant, and then your fellow students were members of a board, you know, and so they sat around. And so, mine was a project similar to what I've done, but I used slides, which other people weren't, you know, I could do that. So, I had a slideshow, and it was all about what, what we we're gonna do, and I thought it was really good. And the students did, but at the very end of it, I put a picture of me at the beach, and so, if you give me this money, I'll do this. [laughter] So I was--trying to be funny, but she didn't--she didn't take it that way. [laughter] So, she gave me a C for that. And I saw---I went and [laughter] confronted her and--.Sarah Milligan 30:56
Don't mess with Cam!
Bob Gates 30:56
And said, "Came, come on. I was just trying to be funny." So, she raised it back
up [laughter].Sarah Milligan 31:03
Oh, that's really funny.
Bob Gates 31:04
We've had this stormy relationship--but, I think we both like each other pretty well.
Sarah Milligan 31:09
Oh, I would agree with that.
Bob Gates 31:10
Especially when I became state folklorist, and we worked together.
Sarah Milligan 31:13
Yeah. Well and she was at Western for so much longer too when she came back here too.
31:18
And at the point when we--we'll will talk about this later, but when I--when I
moved--was trying to find a home for it, I hadn't--I wasn't negotiating with her and--.Sarah Milligan 31:26
Right. So you had that--you had to bring it back in a different format.
Bob Gates 31:30
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 31:30
Well, so. Okay, so you were taking classes at Western, you did exhibits, you
wrote grants you--you were really, and you were doing surveys. I mean, you were doing all of the really out in the community, hands on, public folklore.Bob Gates 31:43
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 31:44
Experience stuff.
31:45
And then I got an internship at the Center for Southern Folklore.
Sarah Milligan 31:49
Which was where?
Bob Gates 31:51
In Memphis.
Sarah Milligan 31:52
Oh.
Bob Gates 31:53
And at that time, they--
Sarah Milligan 31:54
Is it still there?
Bob Gates 31:54
Sort of Judy--Peiser is a director that and still is kind of on and off with
that. It was very strong at that time because, they had a newsletter--a public sector newsletter that went out, Center for Southern Folklore, they were doing a lot of things with Jewish--things. And well, a lot of--Bill Ferris had started it with Judy Peiser. And it was in a house up there, right downtown--well--on the, yeah, it's downtown. Close the library, I remember that. And later on, they kind of broke. They weren't--it didn't have a relationship, but they kind of--they call--everybody in the field called it a kind of a divorce. They kind of broke--broke up the collections and Bill Ferris went back to Ole Miss and started the Center for Southern Culture.Sarah Milligan 32:03
Right. Okay.
Bob Gates 32:18
But--But at that time, it was still the Center for--I mean, he had started this
with Judy, and he had just left and Judy Sizemore and--.Sarah Milligan 33:04
Judy Sizemore? No--.
Bob Gates 33:05
Judy--Judy Peiser.
Sarah Milligan 33:07
Okay.
Bob Gates 33:09
And the reason I got this—Burt Feintuch was Jewish, and he had got me to do a
little documentation thing down in Mem-- and in Nashville. I remember going down and working with him taking the--I was taking the pictures, I guess he was doing the interviews. And I had the wear the little thing on my head, and I can't remember what it's called.Sarah Milligan 33:29
Yamaka?
Bob Gates 33:30
Yamaka. Yeah, that's the first time I ever did that. And so, Bert and I got to
know each other pretty well. And actually, Bert's always kidded me because he's only a couple years older than me, when he was teaching out there. And we would ride bicycles out in the countryside of Bowling Green and, and said, I hadn't had them in a class, that was kind of weird, thinking I was gonna have him in a class, but [laughs].Sarah Milligan 33:50
Yeah.
Bob Gates 33:51
But, getting to know him pretty well. And so he got me this summer job
with--with Judy, Judy Peiser, who was very strong in the Jewish community down there and, it was to do the first Mud Island Folk Festival, which that-it was called the Mid-South Folk Festival.Sarah Milligan 34:11
Oh, the watermelon poster.
Bob Gates 34:13
Yeah, yeah. She had some good people. They, they, they did a lot of good
graphics, they had a good photographer down there.Sarah Milligan 34:20
They did.
Bob Gates 34:22
So, they hired me to be there that summer and pulled together three areas.
Occupational folk culture of tobacco--of cotton farmers. No, not cotton farmers, cotton. Cotton farmers and the guys who sold the cotton. They would take the cotton to big place--.Sarah Milligan 34:44
Like markets.
34:45
Let me make sure.
Sarah Milligan 34:46
Or balers or whatever?
Bob Gates 34:47
Yeah, first cotton, you know, it's produced out in the--the rural area and they
take it to a place where it's--not bailed. What do you call it? A gin--cotton gin?Sarah Milligan 34:58
Oh, yeah.
Bob Gates 34:58
A cotton gin. And it's put into kind of a bale, then it's sold, and it's taken
down to a bigger place. And, and they put it into a compress. So these were kind, and they'd come make it even--even more--Sarah Milligan 35:13
Compressed.
Bob Gates 35:13
Compressed. And then there would be buyers down there that would take the cotton
and, and then try to sell it--like they are auctioneering it.Sarah Milligan 35:22
Kind of like tobacco.
Bob Gates 35:23
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 35:24
Like what they do here in Kentucky?
Bob Gates 35:24
Yeah. And--one of the things I remember they did was, they pull the fibers, and
they could see how--how good the cotton was by how well the fibers pulled.Sarah Milligan 35:24
Just by stretching it.
Bob Gates 35:28
Yeah, and these guys, we had them at the festival, and they were showing people
how they do this. So I worked with that community. I worked with lumber people. And I worked with river people. And there was--actually we had the festival on a thing called Mud Island, which is still there. And I worked with people who had lived on Mud Island. So, I was--they gave me all this stuff to do--.Sarah Milligan 35:53
Yeah.
Bob Gates 35:54
In the summer for a festival at the end of the summer, and I had like two months
to get it all together. I never worked so hard in my life.Sarah Milligan 36:00
That's crazy.
Bob Gates 36:01
It was. George McDaniels was hired, who taught at Duke. He was kind of a
festival coordinator. He was--I don't know if he ever done a festival before, but it was--he was pretty good, he was pretty organized.Sarah Milligan 36:14
And that was their first festival ever.
Bob Gates 36:16
It was our first one. Yeah. And it was on Mud Island. And they--Mud Island was
an island that was on the Wolf River, it comes out. And supposedly it was started be--Civil War--what do you call it? Ironclad boat--Union ironclad boat was parked there. And then they'd left it there, and the mud kept building up along it, and eventually built a long, muddy island there. That's--that was--and then what I got to do is interview people who had been--shot at shantyboat people, who had lived on the Mississippi River and would come down the Mississippi River and--and stop there and live. And it was kind of neat because they could actually live on that island and make it sink--one of the people told me this, they would--they would dig a hole and there was natural gas. And some of the people had natural gas. So, they were just--. What do you call that when you--when you just kind of--squatters, they were squatters. And---but they had a whole community of squatters on there. Then the city decided they wanted to get rid of the squatters and they built this air-- air--Sarah Milligan 37:17
Wow.
Bob Gates 37:31
Airstrip there. So then, the squatters came back and, and it was like, or it
might have been mixed where it was, the city tried to do this in the 30s, and the squatters who were [in their] 40s and 50s. But a lot of squatters are still there. It was really neat. So, I got to interview them, and I remember interviewing a woman down in St. Francis Lake and--and they were--she was called the Fisher woman of St. Francis Lake. Everybody told me about her, and I went to visit her at her house. And you look at her hands, and they look like alligator hands. Because she had fished so much in cold weather. Her hands were just so broken up.Sarah Milligan 37:31
Airstrip Oh, really.
Bob Gates 38:08
--Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 38:08
Just like scaly.
38:09
Scaly. Yeah, you know, real big wrinkles and her hands and just she's a nice
woman and her husband was there. And she told me about how she learned how to fish. She said that her first husband was a commercial fisherman, but he didn't want her to do anything, he just wanted to cook. So, one day he went to town and so she went out and started fishing with his stuff. And he came back and got mad and divorced her, but he had--she had learned how to fish, so she became a fish--a fisherwoman. And then--she tried to teach her husband, her new husband. And he said, I remember her saying, "you ain't gonna catch any fish on a naked hook." Because they were trot lines and they'd throw him in there without any bait on them, and it was just the shininess of the hooks. And they oi--they would oil the hook and that's what attracted them, and they would catch fish that way or snag them. But, you know, the fish would run through it. The guy said, "you never gonna catch anything on a." So, I inter--and I remember sitting there with her and she says, "you hungry?" And I, said, "Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm always hungry." [laughter]Sarah Milligan 39:12
Especially if it's donuts.
Bob Gates 39:13
Yeah, especially donuts. So, she brings out this jar. And you know, like, you
would can vegetables in, fruits or something, but this jar had bones floating around it, and fish and--what it was was carp.Sarah Milligan 39:28
Like pickled carp or just preserved carp.
39:30
Yeah, she called [it] canned carp. And it was--it tasted just like salmon to me,
but it didn't look like--it was kind of gray.Sarah Milligan 39:37
So, did you have a moment where you're like, I don't know if I wanna do that?
39:40
Oh, no. Yeah, that's what--Fred's (??) wife Anne, would talk about Brent, she'd
say, "a folklorist is somebody who has to be nice and eating at people's houses."Sarah Milligan 39:52
And eat anything.
Bob Gates 39:53
Eat anything, yeah [laughter]. And that was my trial there [laughter]. So, she
brought out crackers and we had carp. And you know, I'm from Cincinnati and even Cincinnati, you would eat--they don't even eat catfish up there. Unless the, what they say is the mud vein is taken out. And sometimes they will, but carp you know, that's the big joke. My brother actually had a group of friends that would go fishing and they call themself the Carp Crusaders. Because they never-- they would never eat carp--they just--they just called themself the Carp Crusaders just to--.Sarah Milligan 40:26
Because they're bottom feeders people don't wanna--.
40:28
Yeah--and they would go down to Lake Cumberland and rent a--what do they call
those things, a houseboat.Bob Gates 40:39
They--they were actually called--there's a thing called the Cincinnati Navy.
Because so many Cincinnati people drive down there, and, and it went so far that I---one time, I was going through Somerset that takes you down there and saw an Empress Chili.Sarah Milligan 40:39
Oh, yeah. Uh-uh.
Bob Gates 40:55
Really, Empress Chili, which is very, very rare, Skylines [Skyline Chili] are
all over the place. But Empress Chili was--somebody had started an Empress Chili's franchise on the side of the road there. And that was just for--it had to be just for Cincinnati people. So, that gives you an idea how many would go down there. But I--was, well I was talking about how--Sarah Milligan 41:15
You were talking about--.
Bob Gates 41:15
--The food is so--it was so--a revelation to me that people ate this kind of food.
Sarah Milligan 41:20
Yeah.
Bob Gates 41:20
That you could actually make--eat carp.
Sarah Milligan 41:22
Did you all have that foodways at the festival?
Bob Gates 41:25
Well, I had her scheduled to be on the narrative stage. So I was introducing I
had--I don't know.Sarah Milligan 41:31
So you were doing narrative stages?
Bob Gates 41:33
Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 41:33
That far back.
41:34
Yeah, we were--I thought I had seen that first at the Smithsonian, but it must
have been not--must not--I must--must have been something George and Judy wanted me to do. And--and so, we had it scheduled to be a narrative stage with lumbers--the lumber guys. And a guy that made boat--boats. Well, he was a commercial fisherman, across the river. And, and her and a couple other people different, we had like four different narrative stages.Sarah Milligan 42:02
Yeah.
Bob Gates 42:06
But she died, she died before the festival. Yeah, like a month before the
festival and her husband came up. And I'll never forget this because I'm on stage with him and he starts crying.Sarah Milligan 42:19
That's your first real.
Bob Gates 42:20
One of my first narrative stages, and he's crying about his wife and how he
misses her and everything. And, and I'm getting this thing. This is where I first started thinking about the effects that folklorists have on--on other people. You know, I'm starting to feel guilty that I caused this, that I put so much [many] expectations in her by inviting her to this. I--he didn't--he didn't think so. But I did write a paper later on about the influence of folklorists. And I presented that--an AFS [American Folklore Society] conference.Sarah Milligan 42:52
Oh, really?
Bob Gates 42:52
But it was more based on what happens at the Smithsonian, the artists and when
they come back, and how they, how they don't prepare the community for the artists. And when the community--when he comes back to the community, the artist sometimes thinks well, I'm a star, I was treated like a star, why is nobody treated me like this down here? And why there's so much (??) you know. But--Sarah Milligan 43:13
That was good timing for that too in the--in the discipline in the early 80s?
Bob Gates 43:17
Yeah, because it was all it's--what was that all? It's--.
Sarah Milligan 43:21
It's like performance theory it was right, just after all the performance theory stuff.
Bob Gates 43:24
Yeah. All this native and fine.
Sarah Milligan 43:26
Oh right.
Bob Gates 43:26
Was written too.
Sarah Milligan 43:27
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.
Bob Gates 43:28
And I was using that as kind of my take off. When I when--I did the (??)
Sarah Milligan 43:33
Which would be right.
Bob Gates 43:35
Yeah. I just, but I was--so that festival really was cool for me. Because even
though it rained like crazy, and it was really a Mud Island, but they had built I mean, the place is great. If you ever go down there, they still have, I think they have--had a monorail going to it. And when you got on the island, they had an exhibit about river--river lore, and Elvis and all that kind of stuff, too.Sarah Milligan 44:02
Yeah.
Bob Gates 44:02
But they had this scale model of the Mississippi River that you could walk
through. And it--it was made in such a way that they could raise the water level and lower it, it was kind of a working model that you could actually--.Sarah Milligan 44:14
That's cool.
Bob Gates 44:15
So, you could walk down this thing and then it emptied into what was supposed to
be the Gulf of Mexico. And that's where we had the festival.Sarah Milligan 44:21
Was that the Center for Folk Cultures that did that or was that just Mud Island?
Like the--.44:25
Well, Judy was really good at getting money and getting big ideas.
Sarah Milligan 44:28
So, it was that they had done that exhibit?
44:30
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 44:30
Wow.
Bob Gates 44:30
Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, no. The museum and all that was a city thing.
Sarah Milligan 44:36
Okay.
Bob Gates 44:37
Judy, may have had an input she--what I'm saying is she--she was the one who got
the festival going down there.Sarah Milligan 44:42
Right.
Bob Gates 44:42
And everything.
Sarah Milligan 44:42
Did they do it after--was that the only--
Bob Gates 44:44
They did a couple of years after that. And even when I was state folklorist
here, Judy was still doing a version of that festival, because I remember sending a couple, Larry, what's his name?Sarah Milligan 44:54
Larry Morrissey,
44:55
Larry Morrissey went down. And another student who was--two folklorists in the
parks--folklorists, I asked--Sarah Milligan 45:05
Right.
Bob Gates 45:05
--Them if they wanted to make a little extra money and work with Judy.
Sarah Milligan 45:08
Great.
Bob Gates 45:09
Larry did a great job, the other [clears throat] one got pregnant. [laughter]
Sarah Milligan 45:14
Probably didn't do anything.
Bob Gates 45:15
Well, that's how she got pregnant down--screwing around down there.
Sarah Milligan 45:18
Oh, yeah, she--.
Bob Gates 45:20
Judy told me, "well she wasn't doing much, she just kept going out with his
other guy, and she didn't do her work well."Sarah Milligan 45:25
Apparently, she was focused--
Bob Gates 45:26
I had a little--.
Sarah Milligan 45:26
--On other things.
Bob Gates 45:28
Yes. I had some problems with her.
Sarah Milligan 45:30
I can guess.
Bob Gates 45:31
She worked at Kenlake for a summer and she's the one who kind of held our stuff hostage.
Sarah Milligan 45:37
Yeah. I remember, we'll look--we'll definitely come back to that, but yeah.
Bob Gates 45:40
Okay. But.
Sarah Milligan 45:42
So, so you--that was what you worked with, and that was during the summer and
then you came back to school, and you finished?Bob Gates 45:47
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 45:48
You finished that year? And then you graduated? What else--what happened?
Bob Gates 45:54
Well, J. Anderson. I think it was J. got me a job with Robert Barron in upstate
New York or, he told me about a job. So, I--Sarah Milligan 46:07
Yeah.
Bob Gates 46:07
I call Robert and send him my resume. And Robert called me back, he says, "yeah
you can have a job. That sounds great." So, he hired me to go up and I--actually in one summer, I had three different jobs. And they were all part-time --short term projects. And I remember I made this trailer. I had a boat trailer, and I made it into a--put a little topper that you put on top of your car topper, place I bought it at a garage sale. And I bolted that down. And I made that into my trailing trailer and put my stereo, that was really important to me, my stereo, and some other things in there. Put in the back of my little--whenever I was driving then, a little car and drove up there to Watkins Glen.Sarah Milligan 46:52
In upstate New York?
Bob Gates 46:53
Yeah. First one, the guy who--well, basically, Robert was a state folklorist for
New York State. And he was working with a lot of different people helping them write grants to--to the New York State folklife program.Sarah Milligan 47:08
Right.
Bob Gates 47:08
And one of the grants was from Corning, New York, the director there, I think it
was called Schuyler--Schuyler County. That's where Corning was, really neat place, because that's where Corning--the factory is, and they put a lot of money into the YMCA and all this stuff. But, I went up there and took my trailer and camped out for a week until I found a place to stay. And I met with him and say Corning is down here, but Watkins Glen is like 30 miles north.Sarah Milligan 47:42
And Corning is like Corningware, right?
Bob Gates 47:43
Corningware, yes.
Sarah Milligan 47:45
Yeah.
Bob Gates 47:47
So that--director of that place, he was nice guy, he really didn't understand
what a folklorist did. And we really didn't write out exactly what I was supposed to do. But I--you know, I knew I was gonna do a survey and I was doing a survey of folk culture in Watkins Glen.Sarah Milligan 48:01
Okay.
Bob Gates 48:02
And I, I found a, what do they call it--a trailer I stayed in on top of the
hill. And Watkins Glen is on one of the Finger Lakes, in upstate New York. So, there's like six different Finger Lakes, Ithaca's not far from there, and--but this--this county was kind of known for the Grand Prix race was there Watkins Glen. And they would actually drive the cars through downtown, up the hill, through the countryside, and back--in the 50s and 60s.Sarah Milligan 48:37
That sounds scary.
Bob Gates 48:38
They had a museum down there. But they had a lot of other--they had
met--Mennonites and Amish and farmers and all kinds of different cultural traditions, wineries all along the lake. So, it was--it was kind of like a paradise, and was fun.Sarah Milligan 48:53
So, you went in there and--and had you ever--you hadn't done a cultural survey
by that point?Bob Gates 48:59
No, no, I hadn't done a survey before. I didn't know exactly what I was doing. I
just knew I had to find people, document them, make a report [clears throat] to them, so they could do programming with it later after I left.Sarah Milligan 49:13
Did you have a lot of supervision?
Bob Gates 49:15
No, not a lot.
Sarah Milligan 49:16
Just.
Bob Gates 49:17
There was a little misunderstanding at the end because he--"why did you include
this in there? I'm not sure that that's folk culture," and you know.Sarah Milligan 49:25
With Robert Baron or the director of the thing--? Yeah.
Bob Gates 49:27
But he liked it. --The thing is, I--I had that--right after that, I had a job at
Albion, New York, to work with stone cutters. And I wasn't finished with this one before I went to that one. So--I learned the hard way that you got to--you got to finish things before you leave. Because I had--I was working on two projects and now being--trying--did the final report for here--for this first one, but I remember being up there and the first thing I did, I thought this--I thought that was pretty smart is--I--I went out with the historian. And because I, I think--Robert might have warned me or somebody might have warned me, "well, you don't want to get him mad, you want to [chuckles], you don't want to make him feel like you're stepping on his toes." So, I called up at the first thing I said, "will you give me a tour of this county?" And he did and was my friend after that. And he showed me a lot of things. He got me on the radio, and we did a radio program, where people called in and asked--you know, they asked me questions, but people could call in. So, I was talking about a few things I already knew, and, and I said, "--I really want to interview somebody, somebody tell me about this guy out there, and I want to go out and interview him about this lumber thing." And next call was this guy saying, "what are you doing talking about me on the phone yuck (??) come on out!" [laughter] No, the director was.Sarah Milligan 50:48
That's great.
Bob Gates 50:49
It was neat. Yeah. And it was fun, because I could ride my bike out there, and
big hills. You know, you got this big lake there, and one of the traditions was trout fishing in the lake. So, I got into occupational trout fishing, things like that. Seemed like, I learned there that you make a big list, and you try to get people to help and--help with this. I had a couple of volunteers. But I learned there that I need to have people help me transcribe. So, the next job I got, he said, "how'd you like Robert Baron, " he said, "how did like that job, you want another one?? [chuckles] So, up north from there to the west on Lake Erie, I think it is yeah, it was Albion New York. And he got me a job there. And that was basically an oral history project, interviewing people about stone cutting.Sarah Milligan 51:42
Oh, okay,
Bob Gates 51:44
Because that--the way it--if I remember, right, there's a vein of, of limestone,
kind of pinkish limestone that goes from there all the way to Cleveland, or, or down to here, I think. But it's, it's kind of high and easy to--easy to--Sarah Milligan 52:05
Closer to the surface?
Bob Gates 52:06
Close to the surface, yeah. And so, they had, I guess, in the 20s, and 30s, they
had imported a lot of Italian stone cutters, from one--a couple of different villages in Italy to come there. And it was very similar to what happened on the cathedral, that big project--Sarah Milligan 52:29
--The stone, what is it called?
Bob Gates 52:31
Washington, D.C.
Sarah Milligan 52:32
Yeah, where they made the documentary and the book, and stone cutters or whatever.
Bob Gates 52:37
Yeah, so they got these guys that were good with not only Corian. And that's a
lot of what they did, but actually making it into things. A lot of the brownstones in New York City, those big rows of brownstones were made out of that stone.Sarah Milligan 52:53
Oh, interesting.
Bob Gates 52:54
And I remember Cleveland, but a lot of cities up in that corridor, up there at
Cincinnati and that, used brownstone, used that stone for curbs. Yeah. Big curves, you can see have that pink-ish look to it. The whole town of Albion was pink [laughs]. All the--all the churches there. These guys would take the stone home and make barbecues in their backyard, you know, and they had barbecue--pink barbecues. I mean, it's a--it's a nice dark kind of reddish pink, I guess. But it was a very, very neat place. And it was also the town that it was in, was known for cobblestone, because Lake Erie had all these little round stones and they're not--not big cobblestone, but little round things, about the size of my hand.Sarah Milligan 53:05
Really? Like river rocks. Yeah.
Bob Gates 53:46
Yeah, and they're all very perfectly round, almost, and they made houses out of
these things. And so my office was actually in the basement of a cobblestone house.Sarah Milligan 53:54
Neat.
Bob Gates 53:55
Yeah, sort of it's kind smelled like--it was misty.
Sarah Milligan 54:02
Mildewey?
Bob Gates 54:02
Mildewy. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. [laughter]
Sarah Milligan 54:05
Oh, God. So, is this all over the course of one summer?
Bob Gates 54:09
Pretty much, yeah. I think I started out in the fall working at the--.
Sarah Milligan 54:16
Oh, okay.
Bob Gates 54:17
No, no. Because I was in--I was in upstate New York. I mean, I was doing my
folklore and residency when it was wintertime, so it must have been summer, spring and summer. I did Albion--Albion--.Sarah Milligan 54:31
I see.
Bob Gates 54:31
--In the summer, I think. And--again I stayed at--this time I stayed at a
boarding house, and I had my stereo there [laughter]. I remember I bought my first recorder--tape recorder.Sarah Milligan 54:45
Oh, really?
Bob Gates 54:46
Yeah. I mean, this is pretty much in the middle of New York--state. And I knew
that I could get good equipment down on Canal Street in Manhattan, so I took off one day and--and drove down there and got, I don't know what I had before that when I was doing the--.Sarah Milligan 55:03
Did they provide you with some tapes?
Bob Gates 55:04
They must’ve provided--or I had cheap one, but I really wanted---a Sony, a Sony.
Sarah Milligan 55:12
TC or whatever?
Bob Gates 55:13
TC-DM5, or something like that.
Sarah Milligan 55:15
Yeah.
Bob Gates 55:15
Yeah, I--you know, I had to get one of those.
Sarah Milligan 55:18
So, you did, those were like 500 bucks.
Bob Gates 55:20
Yeah, I got a good deal down there. When I drove in so far, took the train down,
I think and then got off and went to Canal Street and bought it. I remember bringing it back and plugging it into my stereo and recording Talking Heads, "Burning Down the House." [laughter] I don't know why, it was on the radio or something and I record over there--and it was so--it sounded so good [laughter]. I said, "this is wonderful, I can record stereo and I can do great, great interviews." [laughter] So that was, you know, I had a good microphone. I learned there that it really helps to have somebody transcribe your things while you're working on it. Or at least out--yeah. So, they hired this woman with the grant. And [laughs] they always talked about her as being the town gossip. And she--so she did it really cheap because she [chuckles]Sarah Milligan 56:15
She'd want to know.
Bob Gates 56:16
She wanted to know what everything--everybody [laughter] was doing--so she
transcribed this stuff--She was pretty, that was good to have that, and I finished the--I had to make a couple trips--to the count--to Schuyler County to finish that up. I think they were happy with the report and everything. But you know, I later gave a paper at Western about that. Burt Feintuch put together a conference at Western one time, it was public sector. And so, he invited some of the former students to do and I did a little presentation about--I think it--if it's October, I must be in Schuyler County or something like that. It was based on that idea that the migrant, it was Tales of a Migrant Folklorist. So, I consider myself kind of a migrant. And I talked about how when you go up to places like this, you can't--you know, there's always--in New York, they had a lot of folklorists, but none came out to help me [chuckles]. Or step forward, a couple--a couple of them would introduce themselves. It was kind of like they were protecting their--their artists, you know. So, I talked about how that's important to try--to try to get a young folklorists in--into a community where they can learn, you know, where people are helping them out and doing that. I did go to a New York State Folklore Society meeting. And it was one of the--I remember meeting people there, but not that much. It was--it still felt like insider, outsider thing. Why is this guy coming in here? And it's part of my personality--the--I guess I didn't, I wasn't as outgoing, I stayed in the background a little bit. But, you know, I did learn--meet some people there. But there was a lot of old- timers who called themself folklorists, who had been folklorists for years, you know, they were the--they were the kind of folklorists that didn't help you out so much. --They still had this feeling that they had discovered this. This was their area to write about--Sarah Milligan 57:07
Yeah. It was their territory.
Bob Gates 58:25
Their territory. One of the things I remember, I was in the hotel, the night of
that--an earthquake happened. I could feel everything shaking in my bedroom. So that's--that was my first earthquake, I guess I was in, but it was--I felt like I was out there by myself a lot though. And you also feel like you can't make friends with--very good friends because people know you're gonna leave. Barb and I had kind of broke up sort of, but we were still kind of, but I was still trying to meet new people and you know so.Sarah Milligan 59:02
So, she didn't--you were there by yourself. She didn't--.
Bob Gates 59:04
Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 59:05
Cause you all weren't together.
Bob Gates 59:06
She did come up and meet me when I was in upstate New York and we stayed in
Manhattan for--at Christmas to new year--New Year's, I remember that. She and I had started this--this tradition of eating dumplings, Chinese dumplings on New Year's.Sarah Milligan 59:25
Oh.
Bob Gates 59:26
What's00my family still does.
Sarah Milligan 59:28
Great.
Bob Gates 59:28
Yeah, but so I remember being in New York City trying to find dumplings on New
Year's Day and she had already gone back. So, I spent like $25 just to have a plate of dumplings at a fancy Chinese restaurant in Manhattan. [laughter] But, that upstate New York thing was pretty neat. Working with those--those Italian stone cutters. I mean, some of them--were most of them were gone. But, but some of them were, you know I remember--going to this one guy and he stayed out in his truck, a lot of times. He listened to radio in his truck, and we didn't do the interview there. But it was like--he was he was--I'm starting to see these artists who are.Sarah Milligan 1:00:13
Did they consider themselves artisans?
Bob Gates 1:00:15
No, not really. But he took me out to the quarry, where it was, and showed me
the instruments he used. And he was real proud of it. So, I got to interview him. I remember, I always use this as an example, is one lady I was going to interview [clears throat] about her, her father, and she very proud of her--him--but he had been dead for years. She went, she made me write the questions out that I was going to ask her. So, I asked, I did some of that. I came the next day, to interview her, and she had written out the interview [laughter]. So, come on.Sarah Milligan 1:00:51
That's the story you always tell in workshops, right?
Bob Gates 1:00:53
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:00:54
Well then, yeah.
Bob Gates 1:00:57
But I mean, it was good that I was still photographer because I could always
copy old photographs, and that helped out with these things. I--the finished product for this one was better than Schuyler County. It just--wasn't just a written one with the thing. I actually had slides; I did a slideshow. And [clears throat] I know later on; a folklorist up there called me and had found the slideshow and my--my things and wanted to know more about what I had done.Sarah Milligan 1:01:19
Oh, that's cool.
Bob Gates 1:01:20
Yeah. So, they used that--I think it was a more usable public sector project
than the first one. In terms of, instead of a report, that's just sat on the wall--sat on the thing--this was a slideshow that I could actually show people.Sarah Milligan 1:01:32
Do you think that that stuff is still archived somewhere up there.
Bob Gates 1:01:35
Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:01:36
Do you know where?
Bob Gates 1:01:38
Actually, I went to a conference in New York City, when Madeline was pretty
young, five or six. And we drove across New York state and went through Albion, New York, and I saw, I went past it, and I said, "you know, kids, that's where I used to work. That's one of the cobblestone houses," and I saw him getting out of his car. So, we stopped and talked.Sarah Milligan 1:01:58
Did he you remember?
Bob Gates 1:01:59
Yeah, yeah. [laughter] He was a wild guy. He drove around a--when I was there,
he drove around a convertible, a T-bird convertible, an old, old T-bird. He took me to a big clam fry, the first week I was there. Tom (??) was great. He was a pretty hands-off guy. Let me do what I wanted.Sarah Milligan 1:02:20
That's good.
Bob Gates 1:02:20
But I think he liked what we did. And then after that, I got a job in, in
Roundout Valley, which is in the Catskills.Sarah Milligan 1:02:29
Oh, so you stayed up in that area.
Bob Gates 1:02:30
Yeah. Yeah. So that, you know, one was an oral history, one was a survey, and
the third one was a folklorist in school project.Sarah Milligan 1:02:38
Oh, you did do a full course in schools in the Catskills.
Bob Gates 1:02:40
Yeah. Yeah. It was really neat.
Sarah Milligan 1:02:42
Wow.
Bob Gates 1:02:42
I went up there around--It was in the wintertime, because I remember taking the
kids places in this--and I went skiing after class.Sarah Milligan 1:02:50
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:02:51
Yeah, you had cross country skiing. And there had been a folklorist before me
who had done things there. So, I was kind of replacing somebody had done it for a couple years---Sarah Milligan 1:03:00
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:03:02
Again, I had a boarding house this time, it was with a Christian, very Christian
woman who always called me in to watch Robinson on TV and things like, "you got to see this," you know. And I was pretty agnostic by that time. And I couldn't--I couldn't understand, if she was Christian. But there was another guy in this boarding house who--a young--young kid, and he got a DUI. And I was upset about it. He had to spend time in jail. And she says, "oh, he'll learn, that's what God wants him to learn." So, I went down to visited him and he was--he was actually doing okay. Yeah, I guess he liked it. [laughs]Sarah Milligan 1:03:42
He had three steady meals a day.
Bob Gates 1:03:43
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:03:45
So--so how long did you end up staying in New York altogether?
Bob Gates 1:03:47
I'm thinking it was--a [sighs] it was about a year because at the--toward the
end of that semester, working with the kids, I got a call from, I think it was either Bert or Jay, I can't remember who line--helped me line this up. But there was a big project in Tennessee called Tennessee '86 going on, and he said I ought to apply for that. And I did. And so, I got the job there. I went directly there and my girlfriend--.Sarah Milligan 1:04:23
On again, off again?
Bob Gates 1:04:24
--We-- were still in--she was in Knoxville. She had went from Bowling--Bowling
Green to Knoxville as a graphic designer, and worked for a--Esquire magazine. So, she was kind of and then that same company had a lot of--some other museums, mag--had other magazines. And she--she was doing pretty good. She--she became kind of an art director.Sarah Milligan 1:04:45
Wow.
Bob Gates 1:04:46
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:04:46
Through the Esquire labor--label--.
Bob Gates 1:04:47
Yeah--.
Sarah Milligan 1:04:48
Or whatever it was.
Bob Gates 1:04:49
Yeah, we were having this long-distance relationship, but I think we--we--it was
okay for--to date other people that was--.Sarah Milligan 1:04:57
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:04:59
We--see, we were still the love of each other's lives, supposedly. I don't know.
Sarah Milligan 1:05:04
So whenever you moved to Tennessee, and so she was in Tennessee already?
Bob Gates 1:05:07
Yeah. And that was part of the reason they thought it would be good for me to go
to Tennessee. Well, I got there for the interview, and I got the job. But they put me in northwest Tennessee, which is 400 miles away from Tiptonville [laughter]. It was like, oh, my gosh, and it's 400 away--.Sarah Milligan 1:05:10
From Knoxville.
Bob Gates 1:05:10
--Knoxville.
Sarah Milligan 1:05:12
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:05:18
So--but--but going back to the Roundout Valley thing, that was really good for
me to work with sixth grade--fifth, fourth--fifth and sixth graders. And--.Sarah Milligan 1:05:37
what did you do while you were there?
Bob Gates 1:05:41
I kind of took some of what the folklorists had done before, basically
looked--at--at the artists that, that this person had worked with, and they were contacts and basically had to get back with them, visit them again and see, just like you do with all field work is, see how they're doing now? Are they still into having kids come and visit them? Or can I--can--would you still want to come in the classroom. The way--way I was doing the Folklorist in the School was pretty much what, what the other one had done. Was that--was some of my own ideas, I guess, too. But I would work with the teachers, the fifth, sixth, and seventh, no, fourth, fifth and sixth. It was a middle school. So, I guess that's what the middle school was, right? You have elementary and then you had middle school. And these kids were great--as--the sixth graders were great, and fifth graders, mainly fifth and sixth graders is what I worked with. And they asked good questions they, they weren't afraid of, they weren't thinking of boys and girls so much, they weren't afraid to ask dumb questions at all. And my approach was to meet with these teachers and see how what--we're--what I could bring into their classroom, would work in their curriculum, how we could have visits, they want, you know, if I was gonna have a visit, have an artist come in, they wanted to make sure they got in all those classrooms. So, that was kind of hard. They wanted me to come in and do some pre things with the kids on what this tradition's about. And they wanted me to do--do visits. So, we would, I remember going to a Ukrainian restaurant with the kids and having them eat there, but also interview the cook. So, I helped facilitate that. We went to a more traditional thing. A mill that was still in operation. But a lot of what I did was bring those artists in. And I kind of--that's where I got the--my commitment--I always thought that yeah, you can do folklife things. But it's really important to bring folk artists into your classroom. And so, my thing was kind of working with the teachers on teaching them how to do that, how to present them. But I did a lot in presenting myself.Sarah Milligan 1:07:58
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:08:00
I remember one of the things--I was working, I guess I was in contact with no,
at that time. I just--one of the ideas I had was getting kids to interview people in their families and do family folklore. So, one of the things we did was, we'd get them all in a circle in the classroom, and we'd say, "okay, we're going to interview somebody in the class, who wants to be [it]--who do we want?" And a lot of times, it was somebody who was a little different than everybody else. So--Roundout Valley had a lot of you know, they have a pretty wide range---scale of families that, you know, rich and kind of poor. So, you had a mix of people in it. And it wasn't very far from New York City. So, you--probably 80 miles so you could take the train in New York City. So, you had people who were commuting. So yeah. So, there was a Jewish kid. And I remember this one particular time, we had a Jewish kid in the classroom, and he was the only one, but he was game for this. So, he left the room. And we all sat around the circle and said, "what can we ask him?" And they--you know, they all wanted to ask about Hanukkah, because they knew that he got a lot of presents, and [laughs] they wanted to see how many more presents they got--he got. Things like that and his food traditions, and that. The idea was that, you know, for 20 minutes, for 10 minutes, we developed open ended questions. And then when they came back, we sat in this big circle. And he--everybody just asked questions, and we interviewed them that way. And I was kind of the moderator. And that worked pretty well because it got them really good with other artists I'd brought in.Sarah Milligan 1:09:33
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:09:34
So.
Sarah Milligan 1:09:34
Well, that's neat.
Bob Gates 1:09:35
And I remember doing this thing where we did a food diary. And the kids kept
track of all the food they did--ate during the month. And then we kind of wrote it on the board and we said, "Thursday night," and then we put down--and then Friday night and everybody did pizza. So, we said, "that's a new family tradition in your family, isn't it?" [laughs] Sitting down on Friday nights and doing a tradition. So, it was--it was fun working there. I remember the woman, she was very strong-willed, that I worked with who had had done this project before. And I remember getting into kind of a clash with her because one time she wanted me to do something I said, "yeah, I've got pretty many hours down already." And she didn't want to hear that she wanted me to, you know, I was hired for the semester, so I should be working overtime all the time. And, and I was trying to keep track of my hours a little bit. So--.Sarah Milligan 1:10:30
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:10:31
--That kind of strained our relationship. I mean, she really took that
personally, and I said, "I didn't mean anything by it, you know, I'll work more." I mean, I worked my butt off on these things, but--.Sarah Milligan 1:10:42
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:10:42
--It made me think about that---that issue is, is how do we pay people what, and
they are on time on it. They're not on a clock some so much, but people kind of expect folklorists to just be a folklorist all hours.Sarah Milligan 1:10:58
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:10:59
Because I you know, I'd go home, I go to this boarding house, and she called me
and want me to come over and we'd dinner over there or something. But all the talk was about everything we were doing. And it's like, I was just completely worn out.Sarah Milligan 1:11:10
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:11:11
And that's got me--.
Sarah Milligan 1:11:14
That's interesting.
Bob Gates 1:11:14
Yeah. But so, I, you know, I had conversations with her later and sent her
pictures and things that I had done. I think she was very happy. She was happy overall with what we did.Sarah Milligan 1:11:25
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:11:25
But it also made me feel oh, maybe this job in Tennessee--would be a good one to
do. And so, it was kind of--kind of a rescue for me, in a sense. I remember being kind of homesick up there in New York state, too.Sarah Milligan 1:11:39
Really?
Bob Gates 1:11:40
Yeah, I went on a date with some teacher once, and that was kind of weird and--.
And I don't, I was, I was, I was long way (??). [laughter] And I remember interviewing this Ukrainian community and one of the younger women was a dancer and we--recognized each other. I think we went out for a date too. [laughter] But I remember--Sarah Milligan 1:12:09
A single folklorist. [laughter]
Bob Gates 1:12:10
Yeah, it's hard.
Sarah Milligan 1:12:12
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:12:13
I remember going to the mall in Kingston, New York, was just right above there.
It's like 15 miles or so. And walking through the mall, I'm thinking I felt a little bit more at home because I was--there.Sarah Milligan 1:12:28
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:12:28
But you know, it was--it was fun to be able to do a class at three o'clock and
get off and go up to Mohawk, I think it was called, it was a resort. And it was like a big plateau mountain--kind of plateau thing where rich people had this great resort. I got a picture at home later on; I went to his art opening where a photographer had done these par--what's it called?Sarah Milligan 1:12:54
Panoramic.
Bob Gates 1:12:54
Panoramic views, and it was of Mohawk of the--
Sarah Milligan 1:12:58
That's cool.
Bob Gates 1:12:58
--(??)--I was there. But I would go up there and ski on the track---on the
hiking trails around, cross country ski. I did it a couple of times and.Sarah Milligan 1:13:07
So, you had a lot of things going on--in activity wise, but not a lot of people
that you really were able to get close with. Partly because of the time partly, because of the job.Bob Gates 1:13:17
--Yeah, I remember doing a quilting bee. Well, I just remembered some of the
things we did. But Janet did--not Janet, Barb [laughter] met me up there. And we went down--or I met her in New York City. That's what it was. I drove down to New York City and met her down there and we spent Christmas. People at Esquire--the magazine, she worked for, had--a [an] apartment down in--.Sarah Milligan 1:13:42
Oh wow.
Bob Gates 1:13:42
--Down there, so we stayed for three days and went to--New Year's celebration.
Sarah Milligan 1:13:47
Yeah. So--got to spend some time, but still. So, you moved to Tennessee
afterwards, you took this position? What did that position have you do?Bob Gates 1:13:54
Yeah. Well, the thing was Lamar Alexander was Governor of Tennessee, and he was
leaving in '86. And he wanted to make a big splash. Celebration. So, he that was that's not how the official thing, right. But he wanted to make sure that Tennessee was open to people to come down and visit. So, he called it the homecoming. Tennessee homecoming, Tennessee. He said homecoming, I think it was what it was called. Wow. And it was like, I think I came down three years before 86. So as aSarah Milligan 1:14:35
you would have been known '84, right?
Bob Gates 1:14:38
'84, I guess, yeah. So, I graduated in '83, I was up in New York for a year came
down 84--84 85--86. So, I have three years they had already started the project. What happened was Lamar was trying to get people to do all kinds of things. Let's have a folk festival. Let's do this. Let's celebrate our local culture. Everybody invited people back in in '86 and we'll do things, and he had some money for that. But he--so he--put the head of the [Kentucky] Humanities Council, Robert Cheatham, I think was his name. He was pretty forward thinking, and he said, "well we can do, there's going to be a lot of fluff out there. It's not going to mean much, out of these celebrations. Let's--let's put something, some humanities in this programming." So, he got a big grant together and hired like seven or eight people who were anthropologists, historians, one was a folklorist, before me. He got in trouble, I think [laughs]. I don't know. I don't know if he's a folklorist or an anthropologist, but I'm not gonna say--I can't remember. But I was brought in to replace him basically. And I--see--that and he was in eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, so I thought I was going to be around Knoxville and--but--they shook it up a little bit. And they said, "we want you to be in northwest Tennessee, up in cotton area. And I remember I was--I flew in my plane was late, they were kind of aggravated because my plane went--it was my fault the plane was late. It came out of Newark and the interview was kind of weird. I remember Robert Cheatham kind of laying the sidewards almost like--.Sarah Milligan 1:16:17
Like lounging.
Bob Gates 1:16:18
Yeah, almost like a Roman bath or something [laughter] like that. I was just
kind of intimidated, I remember. And then he asked me what I thought of humanities--humanities Yeah, and I defined the I--defined it wrong, you know, not humanities, I was talking about humanity. Humanitarian and I don't know why that came to my mind. And I--probably with lost the jobs because of that, but he was--I think they were impressed with everything I had been doing. My resume look[ed] good, I'd done this, I'd been doing that. And so, they hired me and I--moved out to Tenness--so they what they were doing is they--they'd hire you for a couple years. I think our contracts would come up and we would all meet together in Nashville and see how everybody was doing and they had a coordinator there. He was a---he--was a historian and he was pretty good. He had worked at Opryland. Opryland, yeah.Sarah Milligan 1:17:29
The Grand Ole Opry--
Bob Gates 1:17:30
Yeah, when they moved the Grand Ole Opry out there and he-- --Was kind of in
charge of program--some programming. So, he looked--he jumped on this job and he was a pretty good coordinator, but kind of let everybody do---so--what they wanted to do. One of the guys was a blind historian in Clarksville and he had a whole area. And Wally, he was his name, interesting guy. He, he was--he had actually been a what do you call that when you would run liquor in Land Between the Lakes--.Sarah Milligan 1:17:32
Yeah. Oh, a bootlegger.
Bob Gates 1:18:03
Bootlegger, he was in high school and--.
Sarah Milligan 1:18:07
Was he blind then?
Bob Gates 1:18:08
--College--well, he said he was--he was trying to defend this girl who was being
harassed or maybe raped in downtown Clarksville. I'm not sure where it was. But they started beating him with sticks, these guys, and he had to go underneath a car to get away from them and they hit him so hard, he lost his sight. Basically, detached his retina, I think. But--so one of--the--they hired us, and they saw the Scholars in Residence. So, a lot of us were attached with colleges. So, I was attached to Dyersburg Community College. So, I had an office there. They didn't know what to do with me, basically. But--I kind of fit in.Sarah Milligan 1:18:53
Well, by that point, you had already done a survey and you--I mean, you'd done
several things that led you to be independent. It sounds like so-- You know, they might not have known, it sounds like you probably--were you comfortable knowing what your role was?Bob Gates 1:19:01
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I felt pretty confident and--and the fact that there was a
historian in--what--there was a lot [of] historians involved--that's an anthropologist Jerry Hurst (??), you know--you know of Jerry Hurst?Sarah Milligan 1:19:18
I mean, just the name.
Bob Gates 1:19:20
He--he's pretty famous in American Folklore Society for his, his writings about
[Benjamin] Botkin's and the early development of folk culture, folklore, and the American Folklore Center and all that, you know he's been. But he was stationed in Memphis. So, he had Memphis--ten counties below that line. I had the northern part I had eleven counties above that. And Land Between the Lakes--the Cumberland River was my boundary, Kentucky, Mississippi and the lower--around Memphis area for my cut off. A little bit north of Memphis, a couple counties was where he had, and he had all way down to the Alabama border. So, they divided the state up like that. So, we had these counties and we were supposed to contact and them, say, "you're working on Tennessee '86 projects, I'm available to help you do some things. I can help you write grants, I can help you envision what you want to do." I went out and talked to a lot of Kiwanis groups and things like that. And that was the first time I started talking with, you know, groups that were, heads up, they could get some money, they could apply for something, but they needed kind of me, to help them do it.Sarah Milligan 1:20:33
So almost as like the, like a grants manager to a certain extent, I mean, that
even though you weren't managing grants, you were--you were helping to facilitate other groups to get money for the projects--.Bob Gates 1:20:44
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:20:44
Affiliated with.
Bob Gates 1:20:44
And it could be frustrating sometimes, because you'd write this grant with them,
and they'd send it in, and you'd be talking to the Humanities Council and say, "I'm working with this group---what do you think of this idea? It's and they're gonna send this grant in," and they send it in. And the Humanities Council will send it back them, say no [laughs]. Why--and I'd call nice, "well, you told me this was gonna be a good grant, what's--what's the matter? What do you need me-- what's wrong with it?" And it's like, " well, there's too much of this in it or that." It's like--. You know, it's, and that happens, they were getting a lot of things in there. And they were getting some of them confused. And I remember going to--it's funny, this weekend, I was with my mother-in-law, and we were driving through some of the counties where I had been, and then some of these names are Gleason, and, and Milan, which is really Milan. That's how they--Sarah Milligan 1:21:10
You should have told me that (??). Okay. Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:21:37
They Paris--Paris, it was actually called Paris, so that one fit. But a lot of
them were (??) [laughter] and all these names were names, you knew that they were--they were Tennesse-ized or country-ized But I remember going to one of these ones, it might have been Milan. And thinking I was gonna give a talk to a whole library of people, and it was two people, yeah. [laughs] So, I got used to that kind of thing early.Sarah Milligan 1:22:03
Not the last time that happened [laughs].
Bob Gates 1:22:05
No, it happens all time, today. But it really helped me be like a consultant in
a way, how to deal--I remember working with a Black group in Dyersburg and they wanted to do a history of their school, which wasn't there anymore. It was a Black school, and it was--so they had a committee and I kind of learned that with Black organizations, oftentimes, it's-- women and they form a committee, but they actually wanted me to do a lot of the work [laughs]. And that kind of happened here again, recently. So, you see kind of things cropping up again, but I helped them do the interviews and videotape it--videotape some of the things and--and they were, you know, they did a neat project. Martin, Tennessee, which I went through the other day, was a place where we did a folk festival and--and I got a--I remember when I was working on it, so I you know, I helped them write grants, and I put money in there to pay some folklorists to help out. I would help out free, that was part of my job, but I tried to get other people in there. So, Martin, Tennessee, I had a folklorist near to work and so I contacted western and they said, "yeah, we got a student here who might want to work." It was Greg Hanson.Sarah Milligan 1:23:19
Oh wow. [laughter]
Bob Gates 1:23:21
So, Greg Hanson came out and and did that project with me. It's his first--first
one like that, and it was funny, he came down the first time and--met me in Tiptonville and I think I was dating Janet at the time. And so, we went out to Tiptonville to look at Reelfoot Lake and that and he said, "I just saw World War II--World War I airplane, somebody must be a collector," and it was a crop duster. [laughter] So--.Sarah Milligan 1:23:55
That's funny.
Bob Gates 1:23:58
And Greg came down again to work on--well, no, actually this was part of that
festival. We were going to use riverboat people and Reelfoot Lake was known because--let's see, sorry in '86---. I did a lot of research up there because I helped Roby [Robert "Roby"] Cogswell get ready for when Tennessee was at the Smithsonian.Sarah Milligan 1:24:27
When was that?
Bob Gates 1:24:29
I'm trying to think--
Sarah Milligan 1:24:30
Well--.
Bob Gates 1:24:30
It might have been '86 or it might have been '85.
Sarah Milligan 1:24:33
So right when you were finishing up your--.
Bob Gates 1:24:35
Well, it was in the middle of me being there. --See, I don't know if this--
Sarah Milligan 1:24:37
Okay. But Roby was a folklorist--was already the state folklorist.
Bob Gates 1:24:41
Oh, yeah. He had been there for years.
Sarah Milligan 1:24:43
Oh, okay.
Bob Gates 1:24:44
You know, Roby had worked here--.
Sarah Milligan 1:24:46
In Kentucky.
Bob Gates 1:24:47
--In Kentucky. And, and when--in fact, when I was in western as a student, he
visited and talked about some of the work he was doing in Kentucky. And so, he's one of those visiting thing. Then I think he went to Tennessee, right? A little bit--.Sarah Milligan 1:24:59
Okay.
Bob Gates 1:25:00
--After that, but I helped with the Smithsonian Festival by interviewing, duck
call hunters, turtle hunters, commercial fishermen, all--boat builder, all of them who got sent up to the Smithsonian. I was kind of amazed that I didn't get sent up with them. But I did go and visit for a day or two days, I went and stayed with up Roby. And, and got to see--that's the first time I saw a real big narrative stage and process.Sarah Milligan 1:25:29
So, was that the first time you'd been to the Smithsonian Festival,
Bob Gates 1:25:31
Yeah. Yeah, it was. It was really neat. I remember staying at Roby's hotel and
couldn't sleep because he snored so loud. [laughter] but he let me stay in his--and it was great. And so, I got kind of behind the scenes, seeing what was going on. And I just remember seeing these guys, the people who I'd interviewed, actually shown on a big stage. And, you know, they knew me a little bit. So, it was kind of neat for them to see me there. I think they--it made them feel better about being up there. And we actually sent one of the guys up there, a turtle hunter, Johnson--Bennett Johnson and his wife, with a big snapping turtle. He had--had it in a big metal, washtub and they had that on the grounds.Sarah Milligan 1:26:23
What!
Bob Gates 1:26:24
You know, we had thought, well, he could take it up there, and he could, he
could slaughter it. And but there was, they wouldn't want to do that. So, it was basically in there and must have had some kind of fence over top of it.Sarah Milligan 1:26:35
It had to have some meshing.
Bob Gates 1:26:36
Because, you know, he wasn't part of the interviews. He always--[what]--he told
me was that--he told me a story about, he was walking home, he had caught some big ones. And he was coming home, in the boat, the Reelfoot Lake stump jumper. And he had it--on over his shoulder and went through the thing and bit him in the back. The turtle did. And he--he swore that it wouldn't let loose until the thunder---then he laughed after that. That's what--part of the folklore [laughter] is that if turtle--snapping turtle gets you, it won't let loose until it hears thunder.Sarah Milligan 1:27:10
Oh, really?
Bob Gates 1:27:10
Yeah, that's--.
Sarah Milligan 1:27:12
That's what the lore is. Oh, that's interesting. I can't believe that he took
that big thing up there with him.Bob Gates 1:27:17
Yeah. He was great. He's a great storyteller, he told me about the time--he
lives on the Bayou de Chene (??) --it was like a little, a little creek, but it's a bayou. And it's--and when I was there, it almost looked like Vietnam. Because when you drove down this road, there was all these little bridges that went across. And there was [were] squatters in this whole area, limping--Sarah Milligan 1:27:44
Really?
Bob Gates 1:27:44
Along it. Yeah, and the park threw them out. During the time I was there, yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:27:50
When they did the Land Between the Lakes?
Bob Gates 1:27:52
No, no, it wasn't Land Between the Lakes, just Reelfoot Lake, they were trying
to clean up that area, and so they--Sarah Milligan 1:27:56
Oh, I see.
Bob Gates 1:27:57
--They threw all these people out. But you would take a, you'd be going down
there. And there'd be all these little houses, almost like villages at night. And you'd be on this little Reelfoot Lake stump jumper going through there.Sarah Milligan 1:28:08
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:28:08
It's cool.
Sarah Milligan 1:28:10
That is neat.
Bob Gates 1:28:11
But he--I'm sorry, I'm going too--am I going to deep into this?
Sarah Milligan 1:28:16
No, I actually think today that we can just spend as much time as we want. Just
kind of giving context. Like I said, it really does. It is--it is building up exactly to how you know all this stuff. Like how you came to Kentucky, it is important.Bob Gates 1:28:28
Well, I think at all--my career kind of build up toward this.
Sarah Milligan 1:28:32
Yeah, that--I mean, that's what you're looking at it now. I mean, I'm just
thinking in the context of all the things that I know that you've done with just in Kentucky, I mean, there's Folklorist in the Schools, there's, there's county surveys, when you're looking at specific oral history projects, you're looking at Smithsonian-grade research, statewide research. I mean, there's all these things that you had already done, that just kind of like were building upon themselves, which I think is really---is really an important part of the program itself.Bob Gates 1:29:00
Well, it was always my advantage, I think when I applied for other jobs like Louisiana--.
Sarah Milligan 1:29:04
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:29:04
Cause, I could say, I've done this, and I went into the interview saying, "I can
do this, I've done this, I know what this--how to do this. And I think I can--."Sarah Milligan 1:29:13
Right."
Bob Gates 1:29:13
"I can learn the state and apply it."
Sarah Milligan 1:29:16
Yeah, you knew--you knew the framework of what needed to be done. So let's,
let's talk a little bit more about Tennessee, and we can kind of---Bob Gates 1:29:23
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:29:23
Cause, I mean, you'd been in that region. It was--.
Bob Gates 1:29:23
Sure.
Sarah Milligan 1:29:23
--Get through that and go to Louisiana, but the um, so you moved down to
Tennessee, and you were doing all this research, and you were gathering, and you were really coordinating groups and you were getting to know community centers, or kind of knowing how to deal with those community groups. And you did the Smithsonian research. And it seems like that also tied in with what you had done with the Mid-South Folklife Festival, down at Mud Island, right?Bob Gates 1:29:50
Yeah, yeah. I hadn't gone that far up. The farthest I went up for that, for that
festival was--.Sarah Milligan 1:29:56
Right.
Bob Gates 1:29:56
--Like a county above Memphis where the--
Sarah Milligan 1:30:01
Right.
Bob Gates 1:30:02
--Where the lumber guys were.
Sarah Milligan 1:30:04
But it was still Tennessee.
Bob Gates 1:30:04
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:30:05
It was still the same--.
Bob Gates 1:30:05
Oh, yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:30:06
Same side of the state, same, right?
Bob Gates 1:30:08
And it ended up, I met somebody in Dyersburg Stevie Levy, we called him, who was
a friend of Judy Pizer. Well-yeah. And he actually help--tried to help her out, because they were all part of the same synagogue.Sarah Milligan 1:30:22
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:30:23
You know, and Stevie Levy's family was in Halls, which is a small town, south of
Dyersburg, where they're--Sarah Milligan 1:30:29
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:30:30
--The only Jewish family, they had--had the only Jewish business and, and that
was the big, big store in town, was a Jewish store.Sarah Milligan 1:30:39
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:30:40
And it was like that throughout the South, and Judy eventually did a big project
about that, about how these--the small Jewish communities--.Sarah Milligan 1:30:49
Or buildings or--.
Bob Gates 1:30:50
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:30:50
--Businesses or whatever, yeah.
Bob Gates 1:30:51
And it was kind of odd, because, you know, they were prejudiced against Blacks
and Jews, but there--here you had a big Jewish, the center of the community was--.Sarah Milligan 1:31:00
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:31:01
And I was there when Stevie's family kind of--his dad had died, and they were
selling the business. And they were moving out and moving back to Memphis at that time. So, I saw this big transition, in this family. It was a neat, because they were really leaders there, and everybody respected Stevie.Sarah Milligan 1:31:17
Oh, gosh.
Bob Gates 1:31:17
Stevie came back from Vanderbilt, you know, with a big degree and came back and
worked with his dad and kept that business going. And then he decided after that day that--he was going to be a lawyer and real estate working.Sarah Milligan 1:31:28
And do something else.
Bob Gates 1:31:29
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:31:29
So, what happened--what was the culmination of all the work you were doing for
that 1986 initiative?Bob Gates 1:31:36
Well, it was a lot of series of projects, building up that--you know, you didn't
have to do your project in '86, you could do the project before and maybe, hopefully start--start it as an annual thing.Sarah Milligan 1:31:47
So, the homecoming wasn't like, come home this year, come home this month, it
was come home.--.Bob Gates 1:31:53
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:31:54
--Now because things are going on.
Bob Gates 1:31:55
Yeah, a lot of the things were culminated. I remember one of the things I did
was--I did a narrative state between--at Reelfoot Lake, between commercial fishermen and sports fishermen. It was almost versus [lauhgs]. But it was like, it brought a lot of people in because, it's real controversial. And the idea wasn't--we weren't going to debate about who had the rights to fish, it was more like, how to--what is our culture like? What does it take to be a commercial fisherman? What does it take to be a sports fisher and it was like really neat, it worked. Yeah.Sarah Milligan 1:32:28
And during this time period, you also met Janet. So, you would your
quasi-girlfriend was on the other side of the state.Bob Gates 1:32:37
And I was visiting her every once in a while, I'd drive all the way across the
state and visit her and I could feel we were falling apart. But she wanted to keep it and I kind of wanted to keep it. We were both German American--.Sarah Milligan 1:32:49
From Cincinnati.
Bob Gates 1:32:52
--From Cincinnati, she went to a Catholic girl school, I went to Catholic boys’
school. And I didn't know that when I met her, but it--we had very similar families, very similar outlook on life, and we kind of relied on each other. And we were very, you know, it was kind of--it was a very dependent relationship that--I think. I mean, that's--when you look back on it---.Sarah Milligan 1:33:11
Yeah.--
Bob Gates 1:33:12
You analyze things, but that was probably the first time that I ever broke up
with somebody [laughter]. That was weird, because, well, in fact, the guy that was in charge of the highway, the Humanities Council project, he and I decided to go on a bicycle trip, from Murfreesboro to Cincinnati and back, on a bicycle. And it's like, all week up, it took and a week back to get back--.Sarah Milligan 1:33:43
Oh, gosh.
Bob Gates 1:33:43
And the whole time I was on it, I'm thinking about what I should do about Barb.
I mean--she doesn't deserve this. I don't --this--I shouldn't do--and I was so guilty. I hardly enjoyed the trip. Because all I could do, I'm riding a bike and I'm thinking about, "oh, my God--what am I doing to her and," you know. When I think it was good for both of us.Sarah Milligan 1:34:02
So, you all did break up and then?
Bob Gates 1:34:03
Yeah, I was kind of dating a little bit--meeting women like you know. But Janet
was--I was riding my bike to a Chinese restaurant to meet some other--you know, Stevie Levy, and--I love that name [laughs]. And--I can't think of the other--he had a lot of friends, and they were--a lot of them were teachers at Dyersburg. So, we had this thing where we would get together and eat once a week. Sometimes we go over to his place, and we'd have kind of a dinner where somebody would cook something, but we went to this Chinese restaurant a lot. And I went there and rode my bike in and Janet and her mother were sitting across the room. And I just looked at her and we looked at each other and we kind of smiled. That's how I met her and then two days later, I saw her in a fern bar--. Well, it was like a pool hall, but they had ferns in it [laughter]. So--they were trying to appeal to a higher clientele, but it was really a pool hall bar [laughs]. It was down in the square down--in Dyersburg. And I had talked to two other guys, Stevie and another guy, a teacher there, to go down, and let's just go and see what's like. And I got there, and she was sitting there in the bar with her mom. And the thing was, they were celebrating her brother’s--her brother's birthday, he was down in Memphis, going to Memphis State at the time. So that was their way of celebrating it. And they, they, for some reason, she ended up there. Two days later, I saw her at the other place, and I went up and talked to her.Sarah Milligan 1:34:54
A what? Meant to be.
Bob Gates 1:35:40
Except that her mom was, like, ten years older to me. And, and Janet's eleven
years younger than me. So, it could have went [gone] either way, I guess [laughter].Sarah Milligan 1:35:51
Oh, no!
Bob Gates 1:35:51
And so, her mom, she's just like she, I mean, she's a very good talker. She
starts coming on to me, while I'm trying to pick up Janet [laughter].Sarah Milligan 1:36:02
Don't you need to go get some drinks, lady [laughter].
Bob Gates 1:36:06
Yeah. So--you know what happened to us--I talked to her and said, "you know, I'm
going to teach a class at Dyersburg. State for adults. You might be interested in coming," and Stevie was--and I said, "Stevie you want to come too?" And so, they both came. And it was a---it was--it was based on a book that had been done about using history, and the community. I can’t think of what it is.Sarah Milligan 1:36:06
Yeah, I know this because we used it when I worked for you, but I don't
remember. It's like local history. It's like, yeah, it's some sort of local and community history.Bob Gates 1:36:44
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:36:44
We'll figure it out.
Bob Gates 1:36:44
Yeah. Each chapter was like, what an anthropologist. Another chapter is
what--[an] archaeologists does.Sarah Milligan 1:36:51
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:36:51
And you're learning what they do. But you're also saying, "well, I can do this
in my community." And that's what the class was about.Sarah Milligan 1:36:56
So, were you teaching the class as a part of the work you were doing, or was
that sort of on the side?Bob Gates 1:37:01
I wasn't getting paid anything more. It was--.
Sarah Milligan 1:37:04
It was part of the--.
Bob Gates 1:37:04
It. was part. Yeah, I thought this might be another way of reaching people. And
picking up girls [laughter], no. It was a way of--you know, I felt kind of weird at Dyersburg State, because nobody really understood what this position was about, me going out and doing this. I was not really there that much, and I thought, "well, this would help." It would help cement me in there a little bit more and help the presidency---that I'm trying to be a player here.Sarah Milligan 1:37:36
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:37:37
And.
Sarah Milligan 1:37:37
That. makes sense.
Bob Gates 1:37:38
I think it went pretty well, actually. It was a good class.
Sarah Milligan 1:37:42
Just a semester long.
Bob Gates 1:37:43
Yeah. Yeah. And I remember she was in the class, and she kept making eyes at me
while I'm trying to teach [laughter]. So, I asked her out on a date and the date was me riding my bicycle out to her place, which is 25 miles away and camping out. Because there was a big festival there. And they still do it. It's great big fest--this year, they're celebrating the anniversary of the New Madrid earthquake, 200-year anniversary, but it's called the Arts and Crafts Festival. Reelfoot Lake Arts and Crafts Festival, it's gigantic now, this. So, I rode my bike out there and got attacked by a dog-- dogs and dislocated my shoulder. And-- When I finally got there, I put the tent up, and she--she drove up in this big white car her dad had. They weren't rich, but he liked big cars. It was not a Cadillac, but it was, well bigger than a Cadillac. She drove up, and she took me--kind of nursed me and took me for a ride and we went out and ate at some place and came back and it was raining like crazy. My tent was underwater [laughter]. So, I ended up--my sleeping bag was all wet, so I ended up that sleeping at her house on her couch that night. Got to meet her mom that night and everything.Sarah Milligan 1:38:21
Oh my gosh, Bob. Again.
Bob Gates 1:38:57
Again. Yeah, [laughter] that's right again. But--
Sarah Milligan 1:39:01
Oh, that's nice.
Bob Gates 1:39:02
--The culmination of all this stuff was a lot of programs. Like we did a folk
festival at Martin, we did a folk festival at Reelfoot Lake. We did this Black project, we did--and I consulted with different groups who added like a component of folk culture to their local festivals. I gave talks. I copied photographs a lot.Sarah Milligan 1:39:26
Still.
Bob Gates 1:39:27
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:39:27
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:39:27
I remember going to Wally, I told you about that historian in Clarksville, I
went to his place and spent three days there--so it was kind of my specialty. So, I worked with Jerry--Jerry Hurst in Memphis area doing that kind of stuff too. So, it was kind of like the different community scholars would help each other out with different things, then we'd come and meet and we share what we did. IT was kind of--I hated it in some ways because it's kind of a show and tell. Oh, look what I did look what I did, you know kind of thing, and I don't like doing that stuff. But--but we--we got to see what other people were doing and borrow techniques from them. Some--some of the historians would get into one big project, you know, that was their big thing. Mine was trying to do a lot of different things. So, I guess that's how I got into this. Always active trying to come up with--no idea's, not too bad.Sarah Milligan 1:40:16
Yeah, hands in everything.
Bob Gates 1:40:17
Yeah, every idea has--has some good to it [laughter]. That was the design of
this project is, you know, somebody comes in with a stupid idea and you try to figure out how to make it--Sarah Milligan 1:40:27
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:40:27
--Make it work for them.
Sarah Milligan 1:40:28
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:40:28
Stevie Levy, you know, he his town of--of--what was it? I said it before.
Sarah Milligan 1:40:36
Wade, was it? Is that what you said? Halls. Yeah, Wade Hall, sorry.
Bob Gates 1:40:41
He--the town next to it was Gates, actually [laughter]. And I have a picture of
that sign with me and---and Brent when we went down that way one time. But there was an Air Force base there during World War Two, and that's where a lot of--in Tennessee at Halls. And they had the concrete out there. Big expanses of concrete but no, nothing there anymore. They were--they were actually testing bombers there. So, during World War Two, all these bomber pilots, were learning how to fly over ten--over this area.Sarah Milligan 1:41:14
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:41:15
So, he did a--we worked with him to do a reunion of people who had worked there.
But it was a wide range of things.Sarah Milligan 1:41:23
That is very wide--.
Bob Gates 1:41:24
--It wasn't just folklore; it was history and--.
Sarah Milligan 1:41:26
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:41:26
Stuff like that.
Sarah Milligan 1:41:28
So, the culmination at the end of '86, it sounds like, where did you go from there?
Bob Gates 1:41:33
Well, after I met Janet, she had, she had just suffered from a big bout of lupus
and being at home for a year or so. And she had just started going back to school. She had been in Barton for a couple of years. At the university. Actually, was a partier for a while, yeah. That's hard to believe, isn't it?Sarah Milligan 1:41:57
Very. [laughs]
Bob Gates 1:41:59
Yeah--she talks about partying way too much and being in a sorority for a while
and but anyways, then she got lupus. It surfaced anyway, and she had bad knees. And she--her kidney was failing--she was close to death. And they got her okay, and she started changing her food diets. And then she started taking class[es] with Dyersburg. State, that's how I met her.Sarah Milligan 1:42:21
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:42:22
One of the friends that knew her and talked to her about me, I guess, or I don't
know. Said I was okay, I guess. But what was I talking about?Sarah Milligan 1:42:35
The--going to--after your--your job ended?
Bob Gates 1:42:38
Oh, okay. So, we're dating and then she starts going back to UT Martin, which is
a pretty good distance from Dyersburg. So, on weekends, I would go up and visit her and help her out and, and, and visit her family and that. We were getting along pretty well, and thoughts of marriage were coming in. And [sighs] what do we do? Oh, we went on a road trip in the summer, because I knew that a job was open in Mississippi, for state folklorist. And I had heard--I read about it, and somebody told me about it, too. And I called down there and said, "can you--try to do an interview? I'm coming through." Well, we--our road trip was to go to Biloxi and--and spend a week there and actually go out on an island and stay on an island for a couple of days, camping, and my brother was going to meet us and all this stuff. So, I, Jan and I drove down there, and it's like when it's a road trip, "we're on our way. We're gonna be there in about ten minutes, can we still do the interview?" [chuckles] So, like, I get in my good clothes and go in there [laughs]. I guess that was the main part of the trip--was that and then we added on all these other things. And so, they interviewed me and said, "yeah, you're great, but we just hired somebody yesterday. We'd love to have you. But we just hired a woman," who I later met--later--was Sherry, somebody I can't think of her name. But she got the job, and so, I went on down to Louisiana, and I knew that they were looking for somebody. So--I called there and Derek Corden (??), who was the director of the [Louisiana] Arts Council said, "yeah, come on in. We'll do it." And he was pretty laid back, so I went in and interviewed there. And Nick Spitzer had just left to go to the Smithsonian. And so, he said, "yeah, maybe I'll give you a call later on." So, we went up there. So, I had the interview there. And that was the one where I had--really had to change clothes and I remember, the guy that was above him, Derek Gordon. He was like, appointed by the Governor, I had to go see him. And he was this. He made fun of me. He was a funny guy. [laughs] Later on he was like, "I couldn't believe you just came in like that. Your hair was a mess and everything." [laughter] It was a really hot day [laughter]. But--so we did that, and then we went on our Biloxi vacation, came back. And at the same time, we knew--so I Tennessee '86 was--was winding down. And so I--some of the other community sch--not community scholars, Scholars in Residence. We talked about, "well, maybe we could do--this another project." Cincinnati's Bicentennial was coming up. So, I, I sent a letter and I, and I guess I called this guy who was in charge of their bicentennial celebration. And I wrote a proposal saying that Cincinnati's made of like 150, neighborhoods, Delhi, Priceville, all these different--and then people say they're from there. So, I said--I proposed that we could--me and this group of the guys would work--would go and document every community and help put a sign up and have some kind of celebration. And I didn't think it would go anyplace. So, he calls me and says, "you want the job?"Sarah Milligan 1:45:21
Oh, really.
Bob Gates 1:45:34
He said, "I--we got it here in Cincinnati if you want it." And I wasn't too sure
about it. You know, how much I was going to do. At the same time, Derek Gordon called me and said, "you got the job here if you want it." [sighs] So I got to make these--this big decision among these two things. And I actually, I said, I picked up Janet that day and said, "I gotta make a big decision, I got three decisions. Do I take this one? Do I take this? And do you want to marry me?" [laughter] So that's how I proposed her. [laughter]Sarah Milligan 1:46:54
Way to go Bob, roll it all up into--my life's a whirlwind, would you like to be
part of it? [laughs]Bob Gates 1:46:59
Well, I mean she was a part of it. She knew she was, but she wasn't gonna go
with me unless we were married. And I knew that. I guess we talked about it. And I said, "okay." I said--.Sarah Milligan 1:47:10
So, she said yes?
Bob Gates 1:47:11
Yeah. She said yes and I said--.
Sarah Milligan 1:47:13
Did she think about it?
Bob Gates 1:47:14
Yeah. No. [laughter] She, she was pretty happy. And we also that night, we
discussed which job I should take. And I asked some people too--other people. And at Humanities Council, I asked Tony who worked there. I remember him saying--he was the assistant director, he said, "it's more of prestige to be state folklorist, and to get that and to go a job that you don't know what you're doing--a contract job." And I said, "you're right, this would be a better steppingstone for me." So, I took it, and--and '86 wound down and, I moved down there. I'm not sure how I did that. I think we got married at in '86, so.Sarah Milligan 1:47:59
You got married before you moved down there, right?
Bob Gates 1:48:01
Yeah, in August.
Sarah Milligan 1:48:01
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:48:02
No, actually, I was down there for like a month--.
Sarah Milligan 1:48:05
Oh, okay.
Bob Gates 1:48:05
--Working. And because I remember, maybe two weeks or three weeks because Derek
let me stay at his house in his--in a room there. --His significant other--he was gay, and it was fine with them that I stayed there. And, and I remember Derek, it was kind of weird because Derek was pre--I found out later was kind of strong, almost feared director.Sarah Milligan 1:48:28
Oh, really?
Bob Gates 1:48:29
And then he was letting me stay at his house and, and that staff probably
thought, "what's going on there?" You know, I guess he--he seemed nice, but he--.Sarah Milligan 1:48:40
Put the hammer down.
Bob Gates 1:48:41
He had hammer, yeah. But anyway, he--I remember that--during that time, I found
an apartment not far from where he was, and it was a nice apartment. So--she and Janet and I picked it out. She went back to Tennessee and started to prepare--she had to graduate. She was graduating, I missed her graduation. But she--and she pulled the wedding together pretty much with her friends. And I took a train up like three days before the wedding, and Stevie Leavy met me in Memphis, we got on a train the--sp--City of New Orleans.Sarah Milligan 1:49:13
The train.
Bob Gates 1:49:13
Yeah, the train, the City of New Orleans. It went from New Orleans up to--well,
I actually picked it up outside of New Orleans and I can't remember the town--the town, it was on the way. And she and I went on a train together before that. And then I went back up that way and it was really neat, yeah.Sarah Milligan 1:49:33
Cool.
Bob Gates 1:49:33
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:49:34
You rode a train into town for your wedding.
Bob Gates 1:49:38
Yeah--and it got into Dyersburg like one o'clock in the morning and left me off
in the Black section of town. Me and Stevie and she had fallen asleep at the apartment and there was [were] no cell phones, and I'm trying to wake her up on the phone. And finally, she came--which I had to find the phone to call her [laughter] and she came. But you know, she had done all this work, and I invited my whole family down to Tiptonville, Tennessee for the wedding. All these German Americans coming down [laughter], and her family, they're all Baptists and my family is all Catholic. It was really kind of neat.Sarah Milligan 1:50:08
A big blending.
Bob Gates 1:50:09
Yeah. Yeah, it was fun.
Sarah Milligan 1:50:12
That's good. So, you all got married and you immediately--.
Bob Gates 1:50:15
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:50:15
Went back right--.
Bob Gates 1:50:16
--Two days after the wedding, we packed up the apartment--headed down there.
Started, I mean we ever had a, what do you call it, a honeymoon?Sarah Milligan 1:50:24
Oh, yeah. Still never.
Bob Gates 1:50:25
Well, like five, four years later, I guess we had a conference in Oakland. I
remember going and--.Sarah Milligan 1:50:35
You took your wife to a conference for your honeymoon.
Bob Gates 1:50:37
Robert was--oh, yeah. [laughter] What I've always done [laughter]. That's why I
have so much vacation time. [laughter] Robert was old enough to stay with my mother-in--law. And so, we--we took him up there. I mean, we went up and spent a week in the wine country, and that was kind of our honeymoon.Sarah Milligan 1:51:00
That's nice. That is nice.
Bob Gates 1:51:02
You know, I never gave her a wedding--engagement ring either. She told me not--.
Sarah Milligan 1:51:07
I do remember that. I do remember that. So, you all--moved to Louisiana, and you
were the Louisiana State Folklorist.Bob Gates 1:51:15
Yep.
Sarah Milligan 1:51:15
For a time and what did you do while you were there--what--what was some of your
big things you were working on while you were there?Bob Gates 1:51:22
I didn't do anything.
Sarah Milligan 1:51:23
I don't believe that. [laughter]
Bob Gates 1:51:26
Well, you know, you get down there and you're walking into--Nick Spencer's shoes.
Sarah Milligan 1:51:31
Big shoes.
Bob Gates 1:51:32
Big shoes. You know, he had--national name. Everybody knew him. He'd written and--.
Sarah Milligan 1:51:36
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:51:37
Been on a lot of programs and.
Sarah Milligan 1:51:39
Now has--what is his radio program with PRI [Public Radio International]? It's
like American Roots, right.Bob Gates 1:51:45
American Roots, yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:51:46
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:51:47
He was--he had done the Smithsonian by the time I had already--I guess he was
director of the whole Smithsonian, I think he--he was up there--he brought Louisiana up there, as a state. He had also had the state, oh what is that called? World's Fair, was in New Orleans, and Louisiana folklore was featured at that. A great exhibit was down there that later got put into the state capitol.Sarah Milligan 1:52:17
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:52:18
And it was commissioned when he was there. And he brought a lot.
Sarah Milligan 1:52:20
Well, and the Louisiana Folklife Festival, was that going on while he was there, too?
Bob Gates 1:52:24
Well, it was part of the state fair for--I don't know--how long is the state
fair go or year, maybe?Sarah Milligan 1:52:30
The World's Fair, you mean?
Bob Gates 1:52:31
The World's Fair? Yeah, the World's Fair. And then he--I think he--God, I can't
even remember. He must have done it again. It was--when I was there it was--they were going to do it as part of th--it was in combination in--in Baton Rouge with the--with a big crafts festival. So, you had a crafts festival and folk festival together in the same thing.Sarah Milligan 1:53:01
Okay.
Bob Gates 1:53:02
And I argued that if we're gonna do it, okay, I'll do it with you. But we gotta
have signage, and they got to be separate. You can't have both of them together on top of each other. So, the year after that, we--we argued that let's make it a separate festival. And I think we had an in--as a separate festival in Baton Rouge. And then we said, "let's move it to other parts of the state."Sarah Milligan 1:53:24
The Folklife Festival?
Bob Gates 1:53:26
Folklife, so we took it to Eunice, and, and that was in the Cajun
area--Atchafalaya Basin area and outside of Lafayette. Beautiful place, and the mayor was great. And, and, and they had just done a project with the National Park Service to revitalize a theater there, and to broadcast a weekly show in Cajun.Sarah Milligan 1:53:54
Cool.
Bob Gates 1:53:55
Yeah. So, Berry Ancelet was very---you know, a Cajun folklorist, taught at
Lafayette. He was very involved in that. But it was kind of intimidating when I first got there because Berry Ancelet, all these folklorists who worked there all knew Nick. And didn't you know, who was this young guy? Well, I was kind of young then. Had never heard of, coming in there to do this. And I think part of them hiring me was that---to tell you the truth, I think Derek Gordon and this guy--Derek Gordon may have had a hard time with Nick. You know two strong, very strong-willed people. And I think he was looking for somebody who wasn't big name, who could do the work, but wasn't going to fight him. And he didn't think I was gonna fight him on things and I didn't really, too much, but I did eventually. One of the things the folklife program had down there was a governor-appointed advisory group, kind of like what the oral history [Kentucky Oral History Commission] has. Like--there's like twenty people on this thing. It included the humanities council director. And always-- he was always on there. Included a lot of people, and it was good. I should have kept it here. I started here in Berea. I didn't, I was told I shouldn't have that if I'm in state government, but you got it. And I should have gotten it. [clears throat] But, when it was down there it was--it was very influential in keeping the program going. Because, if anything happened to--and the arts council was given--everybody in the arts council was given pink slips one year, like my second year there, I think, we were all out for two weeks. And, and there was so much up cry about that. And part of it was the folklife people crying about it, but it was also everybody who had worked with the arts council. And they--we came back stronger after that. The legislature brought us back.Sarah Milligan 1:55:52
Wow.
Bob Gates 1:55:53
But it was always--that threat every year, this---that kind of drove me to
think, "I need to find a better place."Sarah Milligan 1:56:00
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:56:01
At that point. I felt like my job there was trying to take some of the things
that Nick had done and enlarge on them, but also do some things that I thought were important that they hadn't thought of. And also, I felt like there was some people who were alienated by Nick, too. Like the--Natchitoches, there was a festival in Natchitoches. And they had always felt like--I mean the feeling I had felt was that they weren't folklorists they, so, they weren't doing a good job, so we shouldn't work with them. So--my first job thing was to get the guy from Natchitoches to be on a folk arts panel, grant panel, so he felt like he was involved and that he, he saw what we were doing and had a relationship. So, I was trying to do some of those ends mending. But I also followed up on working with native--I think my--what I liked doing there was contacting all the folklorists, like there was a folklorist who worked with Native Americans. He was Native American; I can't think of his name right now. There was a folklorist who worked with boat builders. Bresure (??) he was a great--he's a great guy, you know, he went in--he went to Missouri after a while and worked there for a while. Made--she was Maida Bergeron (??) at the time, not a Maida Owens.Sarah Milligan 1:57:25
Maida Owens now.
Bob Gates 1:57:27
Yeah. I could feel a little tension when I first got there because she was an
anthropologist, she wasn't really a folklorist, didn't call herself a folklorist. But she thought she, I mean, I think she thought she should be hired. And I thought, "she probably should have been," and she was after I left.Sarah Milligan 1:57:41
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:57:42
But--so, she was--kind of put in charge of what was similar to a crafts market
here. What we have here--only she was-- kind of started this crafts program there. Put out a great book that, that that's kind of why we butted heads here when I came in, and beginning with the craft market because, there they made she--Maida and I worked real closely and made sure that the book that she put together defined what folk culture was, and, you know, had a special area in the crafts market, but they did that folklife was this and--.Sarah Milligan 1:58:15
Traditional arts.
Bob Gates 1:58:16
There, they kind of watered it down, when I got here. They had two good people
working on arts and education, there--at--in Louisiana.Sarah Milligan 1:58:29
Through the arts council?
Bob Gates 1:58:30
Yeah, you know, we had John Benjamin here, but arts educations--was--were really
well funded. And I learned there that it's, it's, it's kind of a it's kind of a battle to get folklorists in arts and education programs, because they're always seen as taking away from the artists, illegitimate artists [chuckles]. Well, you know, and--.Sarah Milligan 1:58:51
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:58:51
So, you had to do a lot of education with them. And, and that was a challenge. I
don't think Nick ever cared that much about arts in education. But since I had done it in upstate New York, and I saw how important it was. It was a real push that I brought to Louisiana, is to get our folklorists on the roster, get them out knowing folk artists, and then get folklorists to present them too. I thought that and the regional--working with the regional folklorists was something I--.Sarah Milligan 1:59:20
Well, it seems like Louisiana is similar to Kentucky, it has a lot of
folklorists in it. Well, I mean per capita, there's is lot and the folklorists in Louisiana seem to be fairly, as you said, kind of spread out into regions.Bob Gates 1:59:32
Yeah, it was and that's what wasn't here. We had folklorists, but they're all
around western or maybe Appalshop. But that's where all--.Sarah Milligan 1:59:39
In Lexington.
Bob Gates 1:59:40
--The stuff--or Lexington. Yeah, but they--but in Louisiana, it was like every
part of the state, you could have--there was an expert there.Sarah Milligan 1:59:47
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:59:48
And--and New Orleans, there was a guy that worked really well with the Mardi
Gras Indians. He wasn't a folklorist. He was a great photographer and he--he--but he's the one that took that picture.Sarah Milligan 2:00:02
Oh, the Louisiana Folklife Festival.
Bob Gates 2:00:03
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 2:00:03
Oh yeah, the Eunice post[er], yeah.
Bob Gates 2:00:05
Yeah. And he's the one that taught me that you gotta step lightly with other
people's stuff. You know, I, I was on set pins--pins and needles before, when I, when our designer said, "let's take this and do this." I had to show it to him and say, "are you sure the Mardi Gras Indians are okay with this? Are you okay with this?" You know.Sarah Milligan 2:00:26
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:00:26
You know, and we--.
Sarah Milligan 2:00:29
When they defined the image from a photograph to like a--.
Bob Gates 2:00:33
Yeah, one of his photographs.
Sarah Milligan 2:00:34
A lithograph almost, right?
Bob Gates 2:00:35
Yeah. And he liked it. But I had to build a relationship with him. And it was
kind of hard because Ben--but it was good. Ben Sandmill (??) was a friend of mine from Cincinnati, who worked on the river for years. And I, I got introduced to him by Nick, when I was at the Smithsonian, actually. Because I guess when I went to Smithsonian, I had already been hired or something. Because I remember--Sarah Milligan 2:01:05
There could have been some overlap there--. Oh, if only.
Bob Gates 2:01:07
Yeah, I guess that's what it--. Because I remember meeting Nick there and said,
"you ought to meet this guy, Ben, Sandmill, when you go back and he's from Cincinnati, you should know him, he's good." And he was good--he was a writer. And he stopped and after working on the river, he stopped there. And so, he became a good friend. We hit baseball together a lot. And he started--when we did the folk festival there--he was our--my music guy. He's the guy that did all the music. But Roach, what's your name? Susan Roach, west northern, and then we hit the Indian one. We had the guy in Natchitoches. We had lots of people in Lafayette and New Orleans. So, when you did a folk festival, all had to do was say, "who do you want to bring this year? What do you want--what's your topic from your area you want to present?" What narrative stages do you want to do? You know.Sarah Milligan 2:02:00
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:02:00
And it was--pretty easy. But we always--when we did the--we did the folk
festival in Baton Rouge. And then we moved it to Eunice. With the idea that we'd probably move it all over the place. And then after I left it went to New Orleans, actually outside of New Orleans.Sarah Milligan 2:02:22
Did it?
Bob Gates 2:02:22
Yeah, and then ended up in Monroe.
Sarah Milligan 2:02:25
Okay. So, you were there for two festivals then? And---and were you just--were
you there two or three years, I guess?Bob Gates 2:02:33
About three years, almost three years.
Sarah Milligan 2:02:36
And then what happened after you--how did you leave Louisiana?
Bob Gates 2:02:40
Well, we had had Robert, my mom and--had come down and stayed with us for a
week. And Jante's mom came down, you know, but we kind of missed having no support, I guess, was part of it. I missed--well, the budget thing was--was--a sudden--kind of--.Sarah Milligan 2:02:59
I'd never heard that. The uncertainty of--.
Bob Gates 2:03:04
Uncertainty of that.
Sarah Milligan 2:03:05
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:03:05
Janet worked as a library's assistant at--in Baton Rouge, and that's how she
found out she was pregnant. She was walking to her car and fainted and didn't know why, and she found out that day, and by the end of night, I had announced it to everybody [laughter].Sarah Milligan 2:03:28
Bob.
Bob Gates 2:03:34
Classic--Bob.
Sarah Milligan 2:03:34
Yeah. [laughter]
Bob Gates 2:03:34
We liked Baton Rouge, we actually--we moved there--in that one apartment after
about a year to--who are the two folklorists who taught at Western---at the university--the Keros (??). They had a great apartment on the--right near the campus, you know, golf course and Lake and everything. Right down the street was--a great place that sold--it was like a convenience store, but they also did crawfish.Sarah Milligan 2:04:07
Oh my gosh. yeah.
Bob Gates 2:04:08
So, you could go there and get a bag of crawfish and eat it on your back porch.
And the back porch was--had all these bamboo plants and had a sunroom there. And Janet was just--gotten pregnant and I had these visions of us sitting in our sunroom reading when she says, "oh, it's time to go Bob, let's go." [laughter]Sarah Milligan 2:04:29
Because that's how it goes.
Bob Gates 2:04:33
Well.
Sarah Milligan 2:04:33
I think it's time. [laughter]
Bob Gates 2:04:35
You know, we did the Lamaze thing, and we were all ready for all that and then
two days before she was supposed to go in, we had gotten a new refrigerator--we had boughten [bought] a used refrigerator from somebody and I guess I had my trailer or something and I parked it and moved the refrigerator in and then we were--needed something. So, we were riding down the street to get some things from the hardware store and this lady pulls out in front of me and we wreck--wreck into her and--.Sarah Milligan 2:05:00
Oh no.
Bob Gates 2:05:01
And the cops come and, "I said she's pregnant. You know, she's just about due,"
and they, they put her on one of these boards and strap her down and take her in. And she was already high-risk cause of her lupus. So, we knew she was going to be induced, but it made it even more--.Sarah Milligan 2:05:17
Oh, that's terrifying.
Bob Gates 2:05:18
--Scarry. It's like only two days before, but--. Yeah. Well, she was okay. They
said she was okay. And we went back, and the induced thing broke my fantasy of us sitting in the sunroom and all that [laughter].Sarah Milligan 2:05:31
Oh, my water just broke.
Bob Gates 2:05:32
Yeah, so, it was a long day--when you're induced, it's like--because I brought
my tape recorder in [laughter] and my camera. I didn't have a video camera then.Sarah Milligan 2:05:43
Oh, I'm not surprised [laughter].
Bob Gates 2:05:46
So, I took pictures, and we were there [laughter]. And I remember her getting
hooked up. And--about ten minutes later it shows [makes a gushing noise].Sarah Milligan 2:05:53
Just up.
Bob Gates 2:05:55
"Oh, I felt it, that that wasn't too bad. That's it." I said, "oh, this is gonna
be easy." [laughter] and then by the end of the day, she--she was holding my hand. You know, we're doing the Catalina--the breathing exercise and she held my hand so tight, I couldn't even move it afterwards. [laughter]Sarah Milligan 2:06:13
It's probably like, turn that stupid recorder off.
Bob Gates 2:06:17
Well, you know, every once in a while, I'd say, "how are we doing now?" "Not too
good, Bob." [laughter] "I'm not doing good." [laughter] by the time we had--she had the baby, I actually took pictures of it and we have pictures of really gross stuff, I guess.Sarah Milligan 2:06:32
I'm sure Robert wants us--.
Bob Gates 2:06:33
Yeah, so we bring those out every time he's being bad, "look, what you put your
mother through [laughter], listen to this tape!" [laughter]Sarah Milligan 2:06:42
Set it up to a montage--a photo montage? [laughter]
Bob Gates 2:06:44
Yeah, no wonder he's messed up, no. [laughter]
Sarah Milligan 2:06:48
No!
Bob Gates 2:06:48
He's okay.
Sarah Milligan 2:06:49
He is okay. So, you all--you have a small child and your family's far away. Both
of your families are far away.Bob Gates 2:06:54
Yeah, I think that's part of it, and then, the job opened up. I heard Tom Rankin
had been interviewed for the job. Do you know who Tom Rankin is? He was really known for his photography, he's a folklorist. He had worked in Tipton--he had worked in Tiptonville, as part of when Bobby Fulcher came up with the idea of folklorists in the parks and he had folklorists in all these parks. And this is really ironic that he hired Tom Rankin as a folklorist to work up there, because some of the people he interviewed were people who had been--associated with the Knight Riders. And the Knight Riders were a big deal in Tiptonville. They had, they were actually commercial fishermen who, unlike other places, where they were farmers and--.Sarah Milligan 2:06:54
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:07:17
--These were commercial fishermen who banded together because the lake they were
working on, Reelfoot Lake, was bought up by this rich guy who owned--who was going to charge them to fish, when it was--had been free for all their lives.Sarah Milligan 2:08:03
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:08:03
And there was a lot of other things in involved. So, but-- so they had the
lawyers of these owners came down to--there was a big trial. I forget was about actually, what brought that trial. But no, it was before the trial. There was [were] lawyers in there, and these lawyers were trying to serve notices to the commercial fishermen, the commercial fishermen kidnapped them, basically. And one of the guys was named Rankin. He was one of the lawyers. And one of them was hung and the other guy got away and lives in--a swamp for two days and emerged later on, alive but bitten up and everything, really in bad shape. Mosquitoes and snakes and all that stuff. And he got to run--ran away. And it was down in that place where I said--said it look like Vietnam, it was in that area, where it was--happened. And his name was Rankin. So, this folklorist comes in and says, "I'm Tom Rankin," and he's interviewing people and it's like, "are you related to the guy we kill--they kill? Or tried to kill?"Sarah Milligan 2:09:10
They tried to kill.
Bob Gates 2:09:11
Or I don't know if the Rankin guy was killed or the other guy was--but anyway,
Tom Rankin, he later taught at Ole Miss.Sarah Milligan 2:09:20
Okay.
Bob Gates 2:09:21
Yeah, and I think he went to Duke--and other--I mean he’s; you could find him if
you look him up.Sarah Milligan 2:09:26
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:09:27
--He's--anyway, he had applied for the job here in Kentucky and when they told
him that it--he had to write his NEA grant every year for it, he didn't want anything to do with it.Sarah Milligan 2:09:37
Really?
Bob Gates 2:09:38
That's--that's the story I got.
Sarah Milligan 2:09:39
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:09:39
So, they reopened it again. And when I found it was reopened again I--and
that's--the same thing happened to Mississippi, they had reopened it again too.Sarah Milligan 2:09:47
Oh.
Bob Gates 2:09:48
So, that's why I felt okay about applying--.
Sarah Milligan 2:09:51
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:09:51
You know, applying to them. So, I applied in a--it was a consortium of--Betsey
Adler had written a grant.Sarah Milligan 2:10:00
The NEA grant?
Bob Gates 2:10:01
The NEA grant, she worked at the humanities council and the humanities council,
she was like one of the chief--how would they call, grants?Sarah Milligan 2:10:14
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:10:15
Grants, people, help people write grants.
Sarah Milligan 2:10:17
Oh, okay.
Bob Gates 2:10:18
So--she, she wrote this grant, and she had a, what they call a--consort, when
they wrote the grant, it was--was with a consortium of groups that were--wanted to see this happen, that they said they needed to a state folklorist.Sarah Milligan 2:10:32
So, was that like the Kentucky Folklife Society? Was that still on intact at
that point?Bob Gates 2:10:36
No, I think that was gone--
Sarah Milligan 2:10:37
It was gone.
Bob Gates 2:10:38
-By then. But like, the Land Between the Lakes, TVA [Tennessee Valley
Authority], they had somebody assigned on from there--who wanted--and as part of the consortium, the historic society, I think, or maybe just the oral history commission, I think was the historic society, too.Sarah Milligan 2:10:53
Yeah, we would have been, we would have been separate. But yeah.
Bob Gates 2:10:58
Yeah, yeah. It was separate--it was over there in the--
Sarah Milligan 2:11:00
Late 80s--we're talking late 80s, right?
Bob Gates 2:11:02
Yeah. So, that's how I met Kim Lady Smith after that. I knew the historic
society because Mary Winter, and Kim Lady Smith came down to see me after it was hired.Sarah Milligan 2:11:12
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:11:14
So, this consortium had written a grant, and they were kind of--kind of what
made up the advisory council, I guess, after I got here. I used them and other people, like the Center for the Arts. I think the Center for the Arts was involved, now, there was a state folklorist here before me in--.Sarah Milligan 2:11:31
I didn't know that.
Bob Gates 2:11:32
'85 '86, '87, yeah, and he worked out of the Center for the Arts. It was the
same guy that had done the--this--the World's Fair in--Dick Van Kleeck, I can't believe I'm remembering this stuff. The-Dick Van Kleeck, he coordinated the folklife area of--the of the world's fair, when it was in Chattanooga.Sarah Milligan 2:12:01
Okay.
Bob Gates 2:12:02
No, not Chattanooga, Knoxville.
Sarah Milligan 2:12:03
Okay, yeah.
Bob Gates 2:12:05
And--.
Sarah Milligan 2:12:05
So, there was this--there and he had like the position of state folklorist just
to c--basically coordinate that.Bob Gates 2:12:12
No, no, he had that position down there in Knoxville. And then after that was
over, he was hired by the Center for the Arts. They wrote a grant to NEA because Beth--no, what's her name.Sarah Milligan 2:12:24
Betsy? Or who.
Bob Gates 2:12:26
No, who's--who was at NEA at the time? Beth Halls.
Sarah Milligan 2:12:30
Oh, Haas.
Bob Gates 2:12:31
Beth---Beth Haas.
Sarah Milligan 2:12:32
Lomax (??) Haas. Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:12:34
Bess--.
Sarah Milligan 2:12:34
Right.
Bob Gates 2:12:34
Bess Lomax Haas, or--.
Sarah Milligan 2:12:36
Haas, yeah.
Bob Gates 2:12:37
--Who was that on the Andy Griffith Show.
Sarah Milligan 2:12:43
[Laughs] I don't know.
Bob Gates 2:12:44
You know, the woman on the Andy Griffith Show.
Sarah Milligan 2:12:48
The--
Bob Gates 2:12:48
--Everybody said she looked like her.
Sarah Milligan 2:12:49
Oh, okay. [laughter]
Bob Gates 2:12:54
Not, Aunty Em--I can't think of her name, anyway. Anyway, she was really into
getting NEA--getting folklife--state folklife program started.Sarah Milligan 2:13:02
Yes.
Bob Gates 2:13:02
And she, you know, she got, I think the Louisiana was the--oldest one. And she
had gotten Nick there. And she got the other one started in other places, Alabama, and this and that. Well, she--she got it started here by giving--she liked Van Kleeck. Van Kleeck didn't even have a degree in folklife, but he was a musician. But he, he, he knew how to do things, he knew how to do field work and that. So, he got hired and he was working at the Center for the Arts, and they actually did two folk festivals on the grounds of the--.Sarah Milligan 2:13:37
In Louisville?
Bob Gates 2:13:38
Yeah. Yeah, on the--.
Sarah Milligan 2:13:39
Down by the waterfront?
Bob Gates 2:13:39
On the Belvedere.
Sarah Milligan 2:13:40
No.
Bob Gates 2:13:41
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 2:13:41
Really?
Bob Gates 2:13:43
We had--I had a booklet of one of them here. And that's how I met Raymond Hicks was--.
Sarah Milligan 2:13:51
Really?
Bob Gates 2:13:53
And I believe, yeah, we talked about Greg Hanson.
Sarah Milligan 2:13:59
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:13:59
Well, after he worked with me, he worked with Deke Van Kleeck. So, so he worked
and did some research up in northern Kentucky and Carrollton. So the festival was really about that area.Sarah Milligan 2:14:13
Okay.
Bob Gates 2:14:13
It was about---.
Sarah Milligan 2:14:13
The river.
Bob Gates 2:14:14
--They had, they had the oom oom pah band from--from Covington, they had the guy
who did this--carvings using my slideshow. Some of those slides came from that.Sarah Milligan 2:14:33
Oh, okay, so why was it--why was it out of the Center for Performing Arts--do
you know?Bob Gates 2:14:40
That was the biggest institution then, I guess, for performing things and Dick
Van Kleeck was about performing things, and he put the festival together. What was kind of moronic about it was, after I was hired, I had Dick on my advisory board or somebody, you know, he was there. And his boss, they both came to Berea and talked about what the folklife program--I remember his boss saying to me, "you know, you gotta have a business plan. If you want to get any-buy any--," he was right, I should have had a business plan, I guess, but you know. I think it was down there because it was the performing arts center, and it was one of the things they could do. But what I think happened, I think Roby wanted the job, too. And he didn't get it, and Dick Van Kleeck did. And that wasn't very cool for Roby. But Dick got more integrated in what they were doing at the center and started doing this series there. In one of the theaters, the Bomhard, I think it was, and it was a monthly series, and it was all about different artists that--and most of them weren't folk artists. By the time I got here., I said, "you know, there's some great artists in town--you ought to--that I've heard about, like Eddie Pennington, and these thumb pickers." And he said, "well, we're only going to put quality==really high-quality people on our stage." And he said something like that, I said, "what?"Sarah Milligan 2:16:10
And he was the state folklorist for three years.
Bob Gates 2:16:12
Yeah, but he wasn't anymore. But by the time I got here.
Sarah Milligan 2:16:15
What happened? I mean, if he was a state folklorist for three years, why did he
choose not to--not to stay in that position?Bob Gates 2:16:22
I think it just kind of evolved into him getting--him being director that thing
and him shaped--changing his focus on what he was doing. It was never really go out and document all over the state, it was more driven by doing a festival or doing this. So, every--all their field work was about doing that, you know.Sarah Milligan 2:16:45
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:16:45
Where, when I came, it was like, what can we do to reach the whole state?
Sarah Milligan 2:16:49
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:16:50
And.
Sarah Milligan 2:16:51
Who hired--I mean, who interviewed you? Do you remember when you came up to?
Bob Gates 2:16:56
I think it was some of the people on that committee on the consortium because I
remember after I was interviewed, then I was taken to see the president of Berea, [John B.] Stephenson, but he wasn't in the committee that interviewed me. He was just there to--.Sarah Milligan 2:17:14
Because that's where it was gonna be housed.
Bob Gates 2:17:15
Yeah. Berea was the fiscal agent for it.
Sarah Milligan 2:17:19
Okay.
Bob Gates 2:17:19
They would put, they would put me in as a, [clears throat] as a[n] employee
there, I had the benefits, I could use the swimming pool and stuff like that, you know, tennis courts, and I had an office and my--kind of supervisor was Loyal Jones. But they didn't really have an office on campus, I had an office right across the street, which wasn't unusual because they owned all the buildings in the area. So, I was in a little building above the pizza parlor there, a little room above the pizza parlor. I mean, it wasn't really little, it was gigantic. It was, it had been a newspaper office at one time, so.Sarah Milligan 2:17:56
So, what were their expectations? I mean, once they hired you, I'm guessing it
was Betsy Adler, kind of spearheaded and it sounds like.Bob Gates 2:18:02
Yeah, you know, I remember being in the room. One of the questions [was] were,
"do you want to do a folk festival?" And I said, "no. I've done a lot in Louisiana, and I like them. But I think what the state probably needs--from what I've seen, is to do more research first." And I said, "maybe down the road, we could do one, but right now it really needs to get, find your regional folklorist, do survey work, do--and reach out through this whole state." Because I realized how big the state was. And I also felt like, you know, I knew a lot about Appal--I knew something about Appalshop. And I knew that they had done a lot in that area, that I needed to reach out the opposite direction, work with them, but reach out. And also,[sighs] Berea had just been named the folk arts capital of Kentucky. So, there was some expectation from the president that I was going to do that. And Sabas Carnes (??). And they said, "what do you want to name it, too? And I said, "I'd like to call it the folklife--folklife, not folklore project." And they all said, "fine."Sarah Milligan 2:19:16
So you were the one that--?
Bob Gates 2:19:17
--Folklife program.
Sarah Milligan 2:19:17
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:19:18
Yeah. Will be in charge. I mean, yeah, they were kind of taken aback, I think
because, they want it to be folklore. But--and I said, "that's what worked in Louisiana, and we're bigger than just art. Folk Art--it's occupation, it's this and that," and they bought that. And that was the nice thing about coming from another program is that you could, you could say, what, what you had done there and work from that. It wasn't like somebody coming in brand new and saying, "what do you want me to do here?" You know, it was like I could--I wasn't that in love with coming here. I wanted to and I liked the idea of being closer to my family, you know. And Berea was really close, and it sounded like a great place to work. At the same time, I grew up in Cincinnati, where Kentucky was looked down on all my life, you know. So, it was like--going to be a big learning experience for me. I went to school here and I loved you know, I love Western. I loved what I knew about it, but I just never thought I'd work here. You know what I mean? [laughs] Yeah.Sarah Milligan 2:19:22
So--their--their initial expectations were really just do something, it sounds like.
Bob Gates 2:19:41
Well, you know, they were all--since this was a consortium from all over the
state land--I keep saying Land Between the Lakes, but that was pretty strong back then. The director there wanted, you know, they wanted--.Sarah Milligan 2:20:41
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:20:41
--Me to reach out that far. And I knew Western had things going on, but I didn't
know how far they--.Sarah Milligan 2:20:47
Not so far.
Bob Gates 2:20:49
So yeah, and so I was gonna, that's why we formed this advisory committee. And
we met--I remember the first meeting was at the tavern up there.Sarah Milligan 2:20:59
Boone Tavern?
Bob Gates 2:21:00
Boone Tavern, and dinner was included, lunch was included, but it was, like 15
people. And--.Sarah Milligan 2:21:07
And that was your choice to have that group. Is that true or--?
Bob Gates 2:21:10
Yeah, but Betsy, you know, Betsy was kind of, you know, once I was hired, she
took me around. She was kind of my mentor, in a way she, she--Loyal really didn't know what to expect.Sarah Milligan 2:21:22
Really?
Bob Gates 2:21:22
Yeah. He was kind of hands off. He helped me--helped me find a place---a place
to live and helped me with things. But it wasn't like he was telling me what to do on a day-to-day basis. It was making it up as we're going along. What--what are other states doing? What does this state need? What do people--an advisory committee think I should be doing? And, you know, we all kind of agreed to--survey work was the first thing. And you know, it wasn't too long after I had been here that Barry Bergy (??) called me up and said that there was a grant that Dick Van Kleeck had written for the Kentucky River. And it was based on--he had--he had known Raymond Hicks. And the idea of the grant was basically that Raymond Hicks was going to build a boat, a river boat that everybody would--people would get on, and it would go up and down the Kentucky River and stop at different places and have a folk festival. In that local community.Sarah Milligan 2:22:24
Raymond Hicks would build a boat that big?
Bob Gates 2:22:26
Yeah, I mean, when I got here, Raymond was talking about this boat, and he
actually built a boat that Van Kleeck bought from him. I don't know how high a price he got for it, but it was--it was kind of a bigger boat, but not--not a little boat, but a---a wheel driven boat.Sarah Milligan 2:22:44
Oh, really?
Bob Gates 2:22:44
Yeah. Like a--see--.
Sarah Milligan 2:22:47
Like a paddle boat? Like one of those.
Bob Gates 2:22:49
Yeah, Raymond--Raymond's dad had built the ferry, down at Aurora, Indiana. So,
it was-it was one of those paddle-driven ones.Sarah Milligan 2:22:58
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:22:59
And that's what he was--I never got the full story on what, what Van Kleeck got
from him. But it sounded like he started on that boat, maybe figured he couldn't do the project, so he bought the boat from Raymond. And he was going to return the grant to NEA. So, this was a grant and I--and he said, "Bob, you want this? I know you're new there. You--can use this?" I said, "yeah let me think about it." And I said, "well, maybe let's do a survey of the Kentucky River and we'll put--make an exhibit out of it." So, that's what I wrote.Sarah Milligan 2:23:32
And that was the Ohio River Portrait?
Bob Gates 2:23:36
No.
Sarah Milligan 2:23:36
Always a river?
Bob Gates 2:23:37
No, this was the Kentucky River Project.
Sarah Milligan 2:23:39
Oh, Kentucky or Ohio?
Bob Gates 2:23:41
Kentucky--.
Sarah Milligan 2:23:42
It was the Kentucky?
Bob Gates 2:23:42
Kentucky River.
Sarah Milligan 2:23:43
Oh, it was the Kentucky River.
Bob Gates 2:23:44
The Ohio River project was done a couple years later based on--piggybacking on
Always a River.Sarah Milligan 2:23:50
That's right.
Bob Gates 2:23:52
But the Kentucky River was--was the first one and that was the one where we
hired two folklorists from Western to work with work study students, during the summer at Berea. And one of them was Theresa Hollingsworth.Sarah Milligan 2:24:07
Theresa Hollingsworth, yeah.
Bob Gates 2:24:07
Yeah. Can I take a break and go to the bathroom?
Sarah Milligan 2:24:09
Yeah, I was gonna---I was actually going to ask, it's been about two and a half
hours. Do you want to take this point and starting and later? Do you want to come back this afternoon, it's--. I mean, I plan on--I'll pause it real[ly] quickly. 1:00