MARY ORA HILL NORRIS b. 1915

MONOLOG

Interviewed by Joe Norris Larson on January 11, 1986

St. Mary's College of Maryland St. Mary's City, Maryland

[Mary Ora Hill Norris was born near Chaptico, St. Mary's County, Maryland, in 1915.]

In the house before I was born, when my mother was first married and came there, there wasn't but two rooms downstairs, and two rooms upstairs. There was a hall, two rooms downstairs, and the hall went upstairs. And I remember her saying when she first came there, she cooked by the fireplace and I don't know how long she was married before she had the room that she used for the kitchen built on, the chimney that was on the outside of the house that the two rooms ... they had to cut through that to make a flough hole for the pipe for the new room that they built on. Then she had a wood stove there to cook on there, I can hardly remember where everything was at. Years later she had another room built on, and she used that for the dining room, but that was, well, I was grown, I guess, when that was done. That's the room that was on the south end of the house. That's the room that she built on then. She used that room for the kitchen and the other for the dining room, and the sitting room. There wasn't no place for the sitting room, so you sat there in the dining room. Big chairs in there that we could sit in.

The bedroom was there across the hall, and then there were two bedrooms upstairs, and there was four of us children, two girls and two boys, so, the two boys had one bedroom, and Mazie, my sister, and I had the other room. Mazie was my whole sister, Lottie was my half-sister. Lottie was married and gone a month before I was born. Dan Lacey was my half-brother. Momma was married ... her first husband died. She had two children by him, Dan and Lottie. Bob Lacey, Robert Lacey. But Dan and Lottie were both married before I was born. Lottie was married in December, and I was born in January. But momma married daddy, I don't know how many years after ... I'd have to go to the Bible to find that out ... later on ... the children were still little, Lottie and Dan were, well, they weren't real little, when momma and daddy were married. And in the kitchen we had a table in the center of the kitchen and we had a wood stove ... and I can't remember what she had her dishes in. There were no wall cabinets, nothing like that. She had some kind of cupboard that she kept her dishes in ... and then years, well, I was in high school I guess, when she had the room built on the back, and then she used the room that she built on was for the kitchen; and the room that she used before we had that one built on she used for the dining room. And what we had been using for the dining room she made the sitting room, a living room out of it.

And I remember more about that than I can even before then. She had a cabinet built in the kitchen, we still didn't have running water in the house, had no running water and we had no electricity, until the REA came in the county -- it was the beginning of the electricity company, it had to be in ... it was in the '30's, I'm sure, but I'm not sure what year it was. It changed everything, it changed a lot, up until then we didn't ... well, Leo, my older brother, was clerking at Mr. Fowler's store, and he subscribed to the Evening Star, I guess, and that, until you got radio, and got the news, that was the only way you got the news was from that and the county paper, The Beacon, we got the Beacon every week. And after we got electricity in of course, we got the radio, where you could get the news, but the paper and the county paper was the only means of knowing what was going on. And if someone died in the neighborhood someone would get on horseback, and ride around to everybody and let 'em know, that they were dead and when the funeral was going to be. I can remember that very well.

We had kerosene lamps, but no, we did not go to bed with the chickens. We would sit up 'til ... well, we went to bed early, but we didn't go to bed at sundown. In the wintertime, momma would sit there by the wood stove, at that time it was the dining room. And she'd sit there and take her wool sometimes she'd have to get her wool from Mr. Lacey, her stepson, and when he sheared his sheep in the spring he'd bring her the wool. And I've seen her sit there, and of course, she had to wash it, and get all the trash out of it and everything, then she, I don't know what all she done to it, but she had to oil it, she used hogfoot oil on it, I remember that; hogfoot oil: you boil your hogfoot ... feet, and you don't put any salt in it, in 'em, you just boil 'em in clear water. And the grease from the hog feet, the fat, she'd put it into a pan and put it on the stove, and just stew the water out of it. When she got all the water out of it, she'd put it in a jar and save it, and it was her hogfoot oil. And that was what she used to oil her wool with. She'd sit there and picked her wool, and card, card her rolls, and when she got enough roles carded, she'd sit her spinning wheel up. We used to keep it upstairs in a closet, and she'd bring it downstairs and set it up and she'd spin her wool and she'd knit socks or sweaters or whatever we needed, or piece quilts.

I've seen her sit there and piece squares, and make her quilts, all done by lamplight, and daddy would go in the kitchen and he'd sit there by the old wood stove and keep the fire going until he went to bed. And he would sit there with his splinters that he had gotten to make his baskets. He'd go out into the woods and he'd get his white oak saplings about as big around maybe as a half a gallon jar, a small one, and he'd bring it to the house and get all the bark off of it. He must have done it in the spring, I guess, I can't remember if it was the spring or fall, I really can't remember that. But he ... maybe he'd get it in the fall when the sap left it, I presume, that was when he got it. It seems to me that was when he was working on it, was in the fall and winter. And he'd bring it in there and get a piece of leather or something and tie it around his leg and takes his splinters and shave 'em down with that piece of glass until he got 'em as smooth as he wanted, just a piece of broken window glass. He'd get them thin and smooth. And he'd make his baskets out of 'em. He always had something to do, him and momma very seldom sat here and held their hands, they were always doing something. I don't think I ever saw momma sit there and hold her hands and do nothing. It would be knitting or piecing up quilts in the winter, or doing something all the time. And I used to quilt. I don't remember when I started quilting, I really don't remember when the first time was when I sat down at a quilt, it wasn't that I was that young that I don't remember, but it, I just don't remember when, but I guess I was out of high school when I started quilting, she'd make a piece of quilt up and put it in the frame and I'd quilt it out for her, she wouldn't even have to touch it. I used to love to quilt. And when we got electricity, we had better light at night to see what we were doing I used to go upstairs and crochet at night by lamp light and my mother used to tell me that I'd ruin my eyes, but of course, my eyes were good then, but and I couldn't sit, I was like her, I had to be doing something, and now I'm getting to that point where I can't hardly see.

She was a wonderful woman. She'd get up in the morning by sun-up, or before sun- up, cause daddy would get up in the summertime, 4 o'clock, before morning, and he'd go up and feed his horses and water 'em and momma would cook breakfast -- it was all done on a wood stove. We'd have what you call hash browns, daddy couldn't eat eggs, and momma would have bacon or sausage or whatever. It was what you raised was what we had. 'Cause he couldn't eat eggs, he had part of his stomach taken off. Back in those days they couldn't give you an "IV," back in those days they didn't have nothing like that, and they fed him raw egg through a stomach pump, and when they pulled that stomach pump up out of his throat it would leave the taste of the raw egg in his mouth, and when he got out of that hospital he would eat, he never did eat an egg until just before, in his later years, two, three years before he died, he could eat a hard-boiled egg, but he couldn't eat an egg in any way, it would make him sick, he couldn't stand it.

And then we had, momma would go in the field and work, after breakfast, she would go in the field and work, go home and fix the dinner, and go back after dinner and work again, weeding tobacco or planting tobacco, well, she didn't plant tobacco, but she dropped plants to be planted, she worked in the field about as long as daddy did. Tobacco, corn and wheat, were the main crops he raised. And he said that the wheat field, he said there was never any crop that grew that was as pretty as a field of wheat. When it gets ripe, just before its cut, and to see that field of that wheat, that amber colored wheat waving in the breeze, he said there was nothing any prettier. Plowed, he done his plowing by horse, with horses, everything was done with horses, then, no tractors. Washing, my mother had to wash on a washboard, summer and winter, hang your clothes outside whether it was freezing weather or not. Yeah, you have to get a big tub and put it on the stove and fill it half full of water and get it hot, put it on a bench with her scrubbing board, and she didn't use washing powder, she made her own soap, she saved her fat drippings and made her lye soap, all the time and she had the prettiest white, whitest clothes you ever saw.

That lye, I guess would help to draw or bleach them or something it was, they really were white. You had to buy your lye, you bought your lye in a can. Go to the store and buy you a can of lye. And uh, it tells you on the can how you make it, but you put, the lye is put into so much water, and that lye, you have to put it in an enamel pan, because that lye will eat an aluminum pan up. You have to use an enamel pan. And it'll get so hot it will make that water just boiling hot. And you pour it into your fat, and you have that fat, momma used to put it in her big teapan, white enamel teapan, pour her fat into that, and I think you pour, you very slowly pour your lye into it and stir it the whole time that you're pouring it in there. Let it sit, have it smooth on top and let it sit, and next morning it will be hard. Go out there and take your knife and cut your bar of soap out of it. She saved all her fat, grease, the grease that was left from ... she never used beef grease. Never used any beef grease it was all hog, pork fat. Some people used [ashes], I've heard them use, but momma never did. She never used anything like that. In those foxfire books it tells you how to use ashes, but momma never did. You make your lye out of it don't you? I think you made your lye out it. I don't know how you use it, momma never did it that way.

In the summertime, of course, she raised a garden and we ate from the garden, and they butchered hogs in the fall, and she had her meat, she would garden in the summer and get her cabbage and cook her cabbage and put them on to boil with a piece of shoulder or a piece of ham or something she'd cut off and use to cook it that way, and in the spring we had out peas and string beans and everything else you's grow in the garden. And in the winter we'd have our turnips and we'd have our kale, always had a row of parsnips in the garden she could go to, and had parsnips to eat. And she used to dry her apples. She used to put trussel benches out in the boarden and lay boards on top of it. And uh, put an old sheet out there, and she'd take her apples and slice 'em and lay 'em out there and put a piece of cheesecloth or something over them to keep ... to keep the flies off 'em, in the sunshine and the air and they would dry. Dried apples is good, my father loved it, loved his dried apples.

When I was a child there was an orchard up above the stables, between the stables and the barn up there, and we had two winesap apple trees, and two or three golden kinds apple, and there were two different other kinds of apples, I never did know what they were. One was an early apple, but it was awfully sour. But I didn't know the names of them, but I've seen my daddy in the fall time of the year the winesap apple tree would be hanging with apples so full it was a picture to look at. And he'd just lay his ladder right up against the tree and gather his apples off. Put 'em in a barrel and carry 'em to the house. We had apples to eat all winter. Winesap apples would keep. Peach trees, we had peach trees. We had a big black heart cherry tree in this field back here, of our field, and a red-heart cherry tree up here between here and the grainery. And there's another red-heart cherry tree on that fence line that went from the barn down to the road out there, and then there was one in this back field. Back of that barn out here straight across. Oh, we had oodles of cherry trees! I don't think they were wild cherries. And we canned cherries, my mother canned cherries. And had them in the wintertime to make pies out of. She canned apples, peaches, we had grapes, but she didn't can them, she made wine out of them. Some of the best wine ... grape wine and blackberry wine, she used to gather, get blackberries. And my mother could make blackberry wine that was as good as any you could buy out of the store ... better. I wish I could remember how she made it. I can remember her ... it setting in the cooler out there up at the old house with a piece of cheesecloth over it working, it would work, when it stopped working she poured it into jars, jugs, and sealed it up, but I can't remember ... she didn't use any yeast or anything, it just a ... I don't know how she did it, that's what I'm saying, I would love to know how she did it, but I can't remember. When you're children, you don't think about such things, now I wish I could remember ... paid attention to what she was doing, and how, when she did do it.

And her blackberry wine was good too. Blackberries, of course the blackberries were down the fence line and all, didn't have to go far. She raised her own hens and chickens, turkeys, ginny keets. She sold her turkeys in the fall time of the year. Man would come around in a truck and would buy the turkeys. He'd get one ... some at ... some at Thanksgiving, then come back again before Christmas. She used to raise some turkeys. Hogs, cows, steers, daddy had a yoke of oxen and ox cart. I can remember that ox cart, I remember the ox cart, I was a small child, I guess I was about Rusty's age, I couldn't a been over four or five years old. I don't remember going there, but my daddy carried some chickens, put some ... had some chickens in a crate, momma had raised chickens and was going to ship them to Baltimore. And daddy put 'em in a ... put the crates on the ox cart and I went with him. And I can remember that, I had on my little sun bonnet that momma made me. I can remember that. And I rode with daddy to Bayside Wharf to meet the steamboat. And as I say, I don't remember going there and I don't remember coming back. Down here like you're going to Compton, go down here go up guy's hill, and you take that road to your ... Bayside Road down to your right there, and on down 'til you see that Bayside Farm, well that's where the Bayside Wharf was, down the hill there, down the hill on the water.

And the reason that I remember it so well, is the fact that he backed that oxcart, he had to back it down to the water, to the wharf, and that's what scared me, backing that cart down to the water. And I thought we were going in the water, and it scared me, so bad, and I guess, that's the only part about that trip that I remember is backing that cart back to that wharf, I can remember that, because I guess, it scared me so bad that r remembered it. And momma, we used to go to Bushwood, to meet the steamboat at Bushwood. Momma had four sisters at Rock Point, and Aunt Ida's children, Joe, and Hilda and Irene, the three oldest ones, used to come over and spend two or three weeks, sometimes almost a month with us, two or three weeks anyway, in the summertime. Aunt Ida would put 'em on a steamboat at Rock Point, she'd write to momma and tell her what day she was putting 'em on and what day they would get over here ... when they would get over here, and we'd go to Bushwood Wharf to meet 'em, and then when the time was up, ready for 'em to go back home, Daddy would write to aunt Ida, and take 'em down and put 'em on a steamboat, and they'd get off up at Rock Point.

Well, it's, a, I, when it was, when it was first build, when it was, when momma was living up there, there was a picture she had of John Lacey out front with his horse ... horse, whether it was a buggy, or one of those other little carts, I don't know, well, anyway, she gave it to his wife after he got married, one day when she was down home and I would loved to have had that picture, because it was a picture of the house, it was taken you know from this way, you could see the house, and then there was a white plank fence in front of the house, and the porch was there but it was not screened in. I remember when momma had that screen in. There were no dormant windows. Those dormant windows were built on after Elmer and I moved here. And I would like to have a picture, drawn of that house the way it looked then. But I ... I would like to have had that picture, I don't know whatever happened, because they're both dead and gone now, and I don't know whatever happened to the picture.

Everything was different. In the wintertime we walked to school part of the time and we didn't have anything but dirt roads out there and in the wintertime it would rain, and the cars, the people that did have cars, and the buggy tracks, horse tracks, would make indentations, you know, in the mud, and then the night would get cold enough and it would freeze, and the next morning, everything was froze, the horse couldn't hardly walk on it and ah if you went to school, you fell down, you couldn't help but skin your knee up on the frozen ground, there wasn't slacks for you to wear then, to girls, I mean, you wore stockings and dresses and that was it. We had to walk to Chaptico to the school then until we graduated and then we still had to walk to Chaptico to get on the bus. When I went to River Springs, I still had to walk to Chaptico to well, there wasn't no bus, the first year I went, Carol Wathen drove his car, we went in a car, there was only five of us ... four of us, four of us, was all there was from Chaptico that went. Yes, it was much different, even the old school houses didn't have nothing but an old wood stove in one end of 'em. The room, and then if you sat anywhere near the back of the room, you like to froze to death, your feet would get so cold, the old school houses didn't have no insulation in them.

The little school house is still there, and of course, the old school house that I went to was torn down. Mr. Fowler's store is gone and the old Gough store is gone. And the houses back, back on the other side there, facing the, across the road from Christ Church, there were two houses there, just little small houses. It was up there where it's at now, but it was a yellow house, a yellow house. When I was a child, Reverend Gibson was pastor at Christ Church at that time. His children went to school there, a big yellow house, I guess, I guess they tore it down when they built this one, I don't know, I really can't remember what happened to it. They were very nice people. Mrs. Gibson thought the world of me, the minister's wife. She was in charge of the fancy table at the church festival. And when I came, got to the festival, went to the fancy table, she told me I could have anything I wanted, pick out anything I wanted. Oh, yes, everybody got along with everybody else, no problem. There were nice, all of them were nice people, the Reeves, all of them, the Brookbanks, Davises, all of them were very nice people. Mr. Brookbank had the blacksmith shop that was across from Teddy Bear's liquor store, across the road there. Not where Jackie's store is, up further, yeah, about where that barn is at, right along in there somewhere, right across between, behind Jackie's store and that barn is, I guess is where the blacksmith shop was at. You had to have one, you couldn't get along in those days without 'em. The main store in this area was Guy's store in Chaptico [actually she was referring to Guy's Store at Clements] 'cause Mr. Fowler's store sold, I don't know, I don't know whether they sold anything like horse collars or things like that. I don't know whether they sold those things or not. They sold clothing. Men's clothing, boys clothing and women's clothing, shoes, besides the groceries but outside of that I don't think he sold the other things. Now Guy's store over in Clements, the one that burned down, you could go in that store and get anything. It didn't make any difference what you asked for, they had it. It was a shame when that store burned down. Well, it ain't been too many years ago, and yet it's been a while. I don't know what happened, what caused it, but it caught on fire and burned down. The store was in one part and their home was in the other. The home was upstairs, downstairs on the north end of the store, and the store was upstairs, Mrs. Guy's carried, ah, sold women's apparel, was all upstairs. Anything a woman wanted to wear, or a woman needed from the skin out they had it up there. And they built that one back but it was never the same. It cou1dn't compare with the one they had there with what they had into it.

I can remember as a child going to religion, they call it today, then we called it going to catechism every Sunday afternoon at three o'clock up here at Loretta house, it was Loretta chapel then. Three o'clock every Sunday afternoon. Sometimes we'd walk, sometimes daddy and momma would carry us up there. Mrs. Welch was the one that taught religion. Dr. Welch's mother. Old Mrs. Welch. They were the undertakers in Chaptico. They buried my daddy. Clarke Mattingly buried momma, but Mrs. Welch, Mr. Welch was dead at the time. Albert Davis was the one who helped her with the funeral after Mr. Welch died. No, they buried them about the third day after they died. They did something, I don't know what they did, but they did something, I guess they had a way of embalming them then. It had a little bit of everything. They had a barroom there somewhere, but I don't know nothing about that. That was before my time. Oh, I might have been born, when it was there, but it was, I was not that big enough to remember anything, I don't remember it being there, but I know there was one there in Chaptico, there were a lot of things that were there before my time, that was gone when I came along ... the inn, was there is gone, it was up there where the Gough house was at. That was gone before my time. I remember when Mr. Gough built that house there, I was about fourth or fifth grade in school when they built that. I know they were living there when I was in sixth grade.

Well, in the kitchen, we had the wood cook stove. uh, we had a stand with the wash basin on it, and soap, and the towel, was hanging there, we didn't have running water, had a bucket of water sitting there for the stand, had a closet in the corner, momma kept her jars of canned fruit most of it in there, some of it she kept upstairs in boxes, push 'em back under the bed. She had a cupboard in the kitchen, and she had there was a rack on the wall behind the door that you hung your coats up on, your coat, your cap, when you came in for the winter, and we had a table in the middle of the door in the kitchen, chairs, we ate our breakfast at. And then in the dining room, we had a wood stove in the winter, in the summer we used to take it down and carry it out, make more room, but in the wintertime you had the wood stove. And over behind the wood stove, on the ... against the wall, was a little day bed. Momma kept that there for daddy, cause daddy had had that operation, part of his stomach was taken off, and sometimes he didn't feel good and would want to go lay down, and momma would, and instead of going back and messing up the bed that she had made up, he would go in there and lay down on the little day bed. And they had a dining room table, a china closet, a buffet, chairs I guess that was about all. She usually had a stand of some kind there in front of those two windows to put plants on in the wintertime.

And in the living room we had sofa chairs, another wood stove in there. Sofa, chairs and another stands. And momma's bedroom that was across the hall, hall was next, and across the hall was momma's bedroom. She had two beds in there, daddy slept in one and she slept in one, wood stove between the two beds, the chimney, and she had dresser, chest of drawers, her wardrobe, well, there were just beds and dressers, we didn't have any wardrobe up there, but, there was something beside the wall or ... that we'd hang our clothes on, and we had the wash, the wash stand, I guess they'd call it, like David has, with the ... we had those upstairs, one in each room with a washbowl and pitcher.

Christmas was nice then. So much better than it is today. Lord, if I could only go back to those days for Christmas. It's everything, it's too commercial now, and back in those days, there was no toys in the store except at Christmas, and that's the reason you appreciated Christmas more then than you do today. There's nothing ... you can go into a store today and buy any toy that you could buy at Christmas. Christmas is every day now. Children have toys all year long and back in those days you didn't have 'em. If you got a toy at Christmas and it wore out, it wore out, and you didn't get no more 'til next Christmas. You might get a rubber ball or a jump rope, something like that you could play with, but outside of that there was no toys, no doll babies, no nothing in stores, nothing. And that is why Christmas today ... the Christmas tree, we used to have the prettiest Christmas tree, and daddy used to go out in the woods and get it and bring it in and decorate it with holly and running cedar, momma used to stuff a ham, bake a turkey, cook cakes, pies, and she made a drink. She never made eggnog, cause daddy couldn't drink it anyway, but she'd take apples, and slice 'em real thin, apple toddy, she used to call it, she'd slice the apples real thin, small pieces, small slices, and she'd cook 'em until they were tender, not until they cooked up to apple sauce, but just when they got tender, and uh, she'd let 'em sort of cook, she didn't put a lot of water into 'em so that when they were done there wasn't too much water into 'em. And you added your whiskey to it, boy that was some kind of good.

Christmas dinner? Well, we had stuffed ham, we'd have turkey. Everybody in the family was there, that was all we had. During Christmas, everybody visited everybody else. All your friends and your neighbors, everybody went to visit everybody, sometime during Christmas. Well, they visited all year round, they're not like they are today, everybody's too busy to go anywhere or visit or do anything. People used to get in their horse and buggies and go and visit. Yeah, I can remember that doll with the red dress that I got one Christmas that I wanted so bad. I saw it at the store up here at Mr. Fowler's. Told momma I wanted that doll so I got it Christmas, Santy Claus brought it to me Christmas. Pretty doll with a red dress, the whole skirt was tiny pleats. I got a little kitchen cabinet that I used to make believe I was making up bread. Had a little box of baking powder in it, had a little box of Sunkist raisins in it, I never will forget that, a little box of baking soda. 'Course, there were no electrics lights then, there were no lights on Christmas trees, no lights outside. I used to have a pretty Christmas tree, it used to have a rail fence around the bottom of the Christmas tree. I put a ... well, I don't know what I put down, but anyway I had a ... I'd go out in the woods and get my moss, green moss, and I used sand for the path, and I had my village, I had houses, and church, store and everything, had all those things, I don't know whatever happened to them. I used to have a very pretty Christmas tree. I remember Father Greenwell told me one time not to take that Christmas tree down till he saw it. Of course, by the time he got there, it was dried up from the heat in the house.

Weather was entirely different from what it is now. This time of winter we'd have a deep snow before now. A lot of difference. Winter was colder. I think the weather was colder outside, I really think it was colder. The houses were not insulated, none of them. There was no such thing as insulation back in those days. Course if you had lived in a brick house, I guess it would be a lot warmer than the others, but I thought they were colder. But it got cold, it stayed cold. But then when spring came it warmed up. My mother planted her peas in February. You could get out and get your garden plowed up and get your vegetables planted ... she always planted her peas in February. Always. Planted peas in February but you can't do it now. We have snows in March. But last, first of April, you could go to school with nothing on but a little sweater, and ten o'clock come you didn't even need that on.

And there was a little willow, birch, maybe it was a birch .. .beech? It wasn't a beech, it must have been birch. I would love to look up there, I never think about it, between ... just as you go round that little hill there before you get to west Lyon's, when you go down that little hill there? Going down, right around there in that gully, they used to grow there and had those little worm like things hanging from 'em. Have you ever seen 'em? Little, its a bloom I guess of the thing, but it looks just like a little worm, about as big around as a small, big around, a little bit bigger maybe than that nail, and about that long some of them were longer, brown and hung on that little thing and I never think to look, but I used to see them all the time in the spring time of the year, walking to school, they growed along the bank there near that gully. I was thinking about them things the other day. I haven't seen any of 'em for a long time. I don't know whether they dug 'em up, out, when they laid that road or not, I don't know.

And the beggar lice, and the Spanish needles, when they first started back to school in September, oh, I will never forget them. They had somebody to cut some of the grass in that old schoolyard, but when you came from school, home from school, playing in that school yard you had beggar's lice all over you and the Spanish needles, you sit down and pick 'em off ya. They were about that long, they got a ... on the end it's like three or four little prongs that stick out stick to ya. Green things. That's what they used to call 'em.

That's another thing. We don't have thunder storms now like we had then. We had a thunder storm just about every day. And they were bad ones. Every one. Lord, it would get so black back northwest, that you'd think the world was coming to an end. We used to have heavy, bad thunder storms, heavy lightning, thunder. There were five locust trees in that yard up there, the lightning struck every one of 'em. Momma said that when I was a baby, the men had just come out of the field and it was summertime, they used to wash up momma and daddy had a wash bench out there in the yard close to the pump, towel and soap out there and they used to wash up there before they ate, they come out the field, and course, you cooked on the wood stove summer and winter in the kitchen and house would get so hot from cooking stove, and momma sit the table, took the kitchen table out and put it on the porch and she'd sit the table out there and the men would eat it out there where it would be cooler at. And she was, I was a baby, she said she had me in her arms, an a this thunder storm was up, and the men were out there in the yard washing where the well is at, the pump's at, on this end against the fence there washing, and momma had set the table, but the storm came up before there could get there to eat, so she just took the table cloth, the ends of the table cloth and pulled it over top of the ...

I started to say about that lightning struck that locust tree and shivered it up, there were pieces as long as a fence rail that was clear up on the other side of that old stable. Remember that old stable ...? Up between the yard and the barn, about halfway up there was a stable, tall stable, and it threw pieces of that locust tree as long as a fence rail up on the other side of that stable. Momma said why it didn't kill somebody on that out in that yard, she don't know. But it shivered it up. Oh, we used to have terrible thunder storms. It rained just about every day, we had one every day or every other day anyway. All summer long you had 'em. And now if you can go, you can go almost a month without having a thunder storm or a rain. There's a big difference in the weather in the summer and the winter, from what it was when I was a child and what it is now.

And our doctor was old Dr. Palmer and he lived down at Avenue and I remember when I was a child he used to come in his horse and buggy. Finally got a car. Drove that. Later on, he got his self a Jeep. And he was one of the best doctors in this world he must have been. Lord, what a man. It didn't make any difference what hour of the night you called him whether you were black or whether you were white or how far he had to go, or whether he was going to get paid for it when he got there or whether he never got his money, it did not make any difference, when you called that man, he went. And he'd always cure you, I guarantee you he would cure. He never give me a dose of cough syrup in my life, and I from a child up, whenever I got a cold the first thing I done was start coughing. And I coughed and coughed and coughed until I got rid of the cold. And he used to give me a little pill, a little gray pill, I don't believe it was as big as the screw in that thing, a small gray pill. I'll be durned if it wouldn't stop your cough. You didn't have to go to the drug store then to get your medicine, he went to the shelf, got the bottle off, and give it to you.

Oh, there was some people that had their medicine, they'd made a lot of medicine, they new how, to, I don't know, momma never did. If you had pneumonia, they put a mustard plaster on ya. Oh, God, I'll never forget that if I live to be a thousand. Whough. Scream and cry and scream and cry from the minute they put that thing on me, Lord! Didn't want no parts of that. But that was how they broke the cold up into you. Give you, put you a mustard plaster on you. And if I had pneumonia, as often, every time that they put a mustard plaster on me, I had pneumonia many a time. When I was a child. I know that Dr. Barube, the time that I had it, was living in the old house over here, and went to the hospital with pneumonia, and when I came back and Dr. Barube took a x-ray of me up there at the office, and he asked me, he says, how many times have you had pneumonia? And I said once is all I know. This time. He said you've got a many a scar on your lungs. So evidently, every time they gave me a mustard plaster was when I had pneumonia and didn't know, of course, I don't know whether he told momma or not.

But I never will forget, you take a piece of white cloth about that square, and you put nine teaspoons of flour and one teaspoon of dried mustard, and you make it up into a paste, and you smear it all over that piece of cloth, and then they hold it up to the fire, the stove, and get it real hot, then they put it on your chest, and they cover it up with a piece of flannel or something to keep the heat in. And then they covered you up, and you stayed covered up. And oh God, burn, and it was oh bad, never will I forget that. Never forget those mustard plasters. Woodrow, he had ruptured appendix, when he was a child, they had to send him to Baltimore, not Baltimore, to Washington, to Providence Hospital for that. That was the only thing that Dr. Palmer did not believe in. He didn't believe in sending you to the hospital. He'd try everything in this world to cure you before he'd send you there, When he saw there was no show, then he would send you there, and when they sent Woodrow there, by the time they got him into Providence Hospital, his appendix had ruptured. And he was operated on on the third of June ... July, and he came home on the thirtieth. Up there a whole month. And then, it wasn't too long before he came home he had peritonitis, and liked to died all over again. It's inflammation of the lining of the stomach. You see, evidently, all of that infection he had in, when his appendix ruptured, so they put tubes in him and drained him, and evidently it all didn't get out, and later on he had what they call peritonitis, its an infection of the lining of the stomach, inflammation of the lining of the stomach, I guess they call it. We had a medical book, I never will forget that. We had a medical book. And I asked Dr. Palmer, how to spell it? Peritonitis. And he said, well, you wouldn't know what it is after I spell it for you. I said, well, spell it anyway. So he did. The next time he came I told him what it was, I had gone and got the medical book and looked it up. He looked at me and laughed. Oh, Lord, those were days, those were.

In this old grainery up here, I don't know whether those boards are still up there in that grainery or not. There used to be a tongue in groove wall right on that inside of that grainery, from the floor up, and daddy used to write on there. I remember that he wrote on there that time that we had that deep snow, the date, the year was, I think it was in January, what the date was, back in the twenties, But I don't know what year it was. I'm sure it's not on here now. But the top railing of the fence, the paling fence was about that tall, and there was a top runner here, and there was one lower down, and it was up even with the top runner of the fence. I remember standing at that front dining room window up there looking out at it.

That is one thing that I wish that you could do is to find out, and go back I don't know where to ... how to do it, because I don't know. I'd like to know something about daddy's people is what I would love to know. I don't remember anything about any of 'em. His mother died when he was a small child, his father remarried. Of course they were all dead before he and momma were married, and I don't know. I knew daddy's half brother, Uncle Perry and his half sister Aunt Violet that lived in Annapolis, but that's as far as it goes. He had an aunt Anna Goldsmith, that lived up here in Charles County. You know Nancy St. Clair. Well, she was a Goldsmith and she's related to us. She was a Goldsmith before she was married, she's one of daddy's relative. Her brother asked her to come to me and see if she could find out anything about daddy's side of the family, but see. I don't know anything, that's as far as I can go, I don't know any thing about them. I know they came from Kentucky, but whether they went from here to Kentucky, I don't know anything about that. But his grandfather, which was my great-grandfather, came from Kentucky to Maryland, brought his family here in a buckboard and that is all that I know. But daddy did come from a good family of people. They weren't wealthy people, but they were well to do people. Some of his relatives died after his grandfather came here, and money was sent from the will, he was, money that grandfather was supposed to have gotten, but it never got here. He never received it, he never got it. And then when I was in high school, I remember there was a Senator Hill from Kentucky, and daddy always wondered if he was one of his relatives or not.

[page missing] was able to really work, but he farmed after that.

He had an ulcer, and ulcer in the bottom half, the lower half of his stomach. And he was cutting wheat on the binder, and I don't know but I guess the shaking of that binder sitting on that binder riding over that field, I guess it done something to it, I don't know, but it was after that that he got so bad off that they had to send him to a hospital.

Yes, sing, my daddy had a beautiful voice, he learned every song that came out, and could sing 'em, and had a beautiful voice. He used to sing ... he was a Catholic, but he used to sing at that old Mount Zion Church, but then when they had a funeral or something like that they would want somebody to sing good, they used to get daddy to sing, that's how daddy learned and I learned from him, all those old Methodist hymns. He had a beautiful voice. To sing, a nice voice, and play the fiddle, he played the fiddle, mouth organ, he used to play a song called Wild Goose on the bar, flap your wings and fly away and I mean to tell you, you could hear the geese flapping their wings when he was playing it. He really was good. That feller down there, he's a navy man that played the violin down there, the fiddle down there at David's that time, last Christmas, remember he was in the front room playing, that man, playing the violin reminded me more of my father's than anybody I've ever heard. When I was sitting in there, when he, well, I went in there and he was just getting ready to play, and I sat there and listened to him and I told him, I said, I haven't heard anybody play a fiddle like that since my father died. It really did, the way he ... he was better than my father, but he played the same way or something it reminded me so much of daddy's playing.

Well, daddy was a young man. And where he lived, a young boy rather, I don't guess he was any man yet, he was just a young boy I guess, and where he lived there was short cuts to through to the store, just like, these people that lived over here at the Schuhearts, over on this side, if they wanted to come over here to the store at Hurry, they wouldn't go down and come up that road or come up to Chaptico and go down, they would come through the woods, come through the woods here and take our road and go on down to the store, there were short cuts. And he was going to the store, and he said this song had come out The Baggage Coach Ahead, and you know, it was a long song, and he said he had never been able to get all the words to it, and uh, he was going to the store, in this little path in the woods, and he saw this piece of paper laying in the path, and he picked it up an opened the paper up, and it was the words to The Baggage Coach Ahead. Somebody had copied them and lost them. That's where I learned it, was from my daddy.

And poetry, he could recite poetry. When I was going to Chaptico School, just a child going to Chaptico School, we had to learn every, I think it was every Friday, Mae Fowler, Zack Fowler's wife was the teacher, and every Friday, every child in the class, in the school had to learn a poem and be able to recite it to everybody after we went in from lunch, she took time out for that. And everybody had to stand up and recite their poem. And I remember daddy teaching me this ... I wish I could remember it, about the robin ... robin with the scarlet breast, in this wintery weather cold must be your nest, hopping around the window, picking up the crumbs, and I ... that's all I can remember of that verse. And then it goes on about, you were once so good to the little orphans ... sleeping in the woods. You know, how the birds came and covered them up with leaves. You ever heard that poem? It's the poem where the children went to sleep in the woods and the birds covered them up with the leaves. And I can't, that's all I can remember of that poem but I wish I could remember it, but he taught me that. And then when I got in high school and I had to ... uh, everybody in the school well, everybody didn't have to, those that wanted to they had a contest, and I, asked him what ... that was the first year of high school, and I was talking to daddy about it and daddy said, well learn the poem, recite the poem "Forty Years Ago." And he, he remembered it, and there was one verse he couldn't remember. So I went up here to Mrs. Fowler's and I asked her if she had a book of poems, that I had to learn a poem for school. So she went in there and got me three poetry books out of her bookcase, and gave 'em to me, and one of them had the poem "Forty Years Ago" in it. So I learned it and recited it. And I still remember it, I still remember that, I'm like daddy, I can remember things like the Lincoln Gettysburg Address. I can recite every word of it, and it's been almost fifty years ago since I learned that thing:

I wandered to the village Tom, I sat beneath the tree Upon the schoolhouse playground that sheltered you and me But none were there to greet me Tom, and few were left to know Who played with us upon the green, just forty years ago

The old schoolhouse is altered some, the benches are replaced by new ones Very like the same our jack-knives had disfaced But the same old bricks are in the wall, and the bell swings to and fro Its music's just the same, dear Tom, 'twas forty years ago.

The spring which bubbled 'neath the hill, close by the spreading beech 'Tis now so low, 'twas once so high that we could scarcely reach And leaning down to take a drink, dear Tom, I started so To think how very much I've changed, since forty years ago

Close by the stream, upon an elm, you know, I cut your name Your sweetheart's just beneath it, and you did mine the same Some heartless wretch has peeled the bark, 'twas dying, sure, but slow Just as she died whose name you cut there forty years ago

There's another verse that comes in there somewhere about the hill, something about the grey, master sleeps upon the hill which is coated all with snow, forded us a sliding place just forty years ago ... I can't remember how that one starts.

Some are in the churchyard lain, some sleep beneath the sea But none are left of our old class excepting you and me And when our time shall come Tom, and we are called to go I hope we'll meet with those we loved just forty years ago.

Old Louis, he was daddy's buggy horse. He used him to, the buggy, nice horse, a pretty horse. He used to work him on the farm, he used to plow some with him, work the land some, corn some with him, like I say he didn't work him too hard and uh, just before he died, I guess, he got old, I don't know what else, 'cause I don't think there was anything really seriously wrong with him. Old age I guess. And he went out in that field in back of the barn, and we had had corn into it, the corn rows were still there, and he'd go up, Old Louis would go up one row, got up to that end, and he'd turn around and he'd come back down the next one, and when he'd get back down this end he'd turn around and go back up, just like he was a plow or something, behind him, you know? And he was going up and turning around. Going up and down the rows. That was before daddy died.

To hook 'em up, you mean. No, I don't know much about it. I never, I could put a bridle on a horse that was about all I could do. My mother could hook 'em to a plow, she could hook 'em to uh, any piece of machinery, she could hook 'em to a buggy and drive 'em as good as a man could. But I never had it to do. After daddy died, a lot of times I would go up and get the, but those were not, those were work horses that we had then, they weren't horses for a buggy or anything, it was a horse, uh, farm horses. And I used to go up and put the bridle on 'em and lead 'em down to the water to get 'em some water. There wasn't nobody else around to do it. But after she rented the farm out, James Somerville was there, he used to, care, took care of 'em.

But my mother could do it. She could do anything like that. Wasn't much my mother couldn't do. And she never threw away anything in her life. She saved everything that she ever had. Whether she needed it or not, or ever thought she'd ever use it or not, it didn't make any difference, she never wouldn't throw it away. And I wish that I could remember. I did know for a long time but it's been too long, and I've forgotten. But there was somebody, was looking for something, and they had been to stores, and been to stores, and been to stores, and asked people, and nobody knew, where they could get it from, nothing about it. And she, whoever it was, was talking to Mrs. Henry Burroughs here in Chaptico one day. And Mrs. Burroughs said, you go down to Mrs. Hill's and ask her if she's got it. And they came down to mamma and momma had it. Whatever it was, momma had it. I did for a long time, remember what it was that they were after, but I done forgotten now. And she could make anything she wanted to make. I've never seen anything that she couldn't make. If she wanted a sweater knit, all you had to do was give her, she'd get your arm length, and this, your length this side, and your around here, your waist, and she could knit a sweater, any kind, all you had to do was just show her a picture of what you wanted. And she could knit it. And that, she never took a knitting lesson in her life. Knit gloves, socks, used to knit wool gloves and sell 'em for fifty cents a pair. And they were wool off the sheep's back. They weren't bought wool at that.

We didn't have those kind of places. We didn't go to barrooms, because of course, there weren't that many barrooms, 'course, there were barrooms too. But we didn't go in barrooms, things like that. Uh, it was really no places that you couldn't go. If they were, they didn't stay to themselves, they didn't, there was no problem that way. Dances, used to go to dances. They used to have house dances then, in the wintertime. Everybody in the neighborhood would pass the word around, like down here, where Colonel Simpson's at? Uh, Mr. Woodley Knott, Bryan Knott's father, used to, they rented the farm. Lived there in the house. And that big main room there the hall, where you come in off the ... those steps, you know, you go up that step and go in those two door's there? Well, that was the big room, and that's where they had their dances at. Had a fiddler and somebody'd play the guitar. And have square dances and have all kinds of fun. The Halls down there, Lin Hall? They used to have house dances. I don't know, different ones around that had a room big enough to have 'em inta. And nobody was drinking, nobody got drunk or had nothing like that. Everybody just ... everybody had a good time, that was all there was.

Shame ... times have changed, but I can't see sometimes whether they've changed for the better or not. In ways they have, of course, but in ways they haven't. Now your child goes out you worry about 'em whether they're going to get in drugs or alcohol or what's gonna happen but you didn't have to worry about that back then. Sometimes if they got old enough they smoked a cigarette, but that was about it. There's your daddy can't stop smoking. He'd love to but he can't do it. Daddy smoked a pipe or a cigar occasionally.

Well, the girls around Chaptico ... Bessie Thomas ... and Mildred Nelson ... Mildred Nelson lived right up on the hill there by where the Quade boy lives, by where Doctor Guazzo bought. And the house across from Christ Church was torn down ... where that trailer was at there? That's where Bessie Thomas lived. And uh, then there was Grace Herriman ... Granville Herriman's sister ... they lived up the road there that white house sits back of where Granville Herriman's at, you know? That white house sits back there, something, looks like something like the house up here? That was when they 1ived at were born and raised at. And uh, Lorena Downs ... Margaret Yowaiski ... 'course, Margaret Yowaiski was a little above us, she thought she was a little higher up the ladder. I guess they thought they were, I don't know. There was children that we went to school with, then we went to high school and got in with a group down there. Most of 'em were in the Seventh District because they went to high school in ... down at River Springs high school.

Well, the boys in the summer played soccer, no, in the summer they played baseball. And in the fall they played soccer. And the girls played volleyball in the summer, and in the fall they played what they called field ball. Well, you played with like a basket ... well I guess it was like a basketball. Uh you kept it in the air, you threw it from one to the other. You had one team and you had a goal, two goalposts down on that end and two goalposts up on this end, and if you came up on this end you had to throw the ball to your players, its just like football, you know, you got to throw it through that goal.

Yeah, Bessie died here ... Bessie is, uh, Donnie Oliver's mother Bessie Thomas, married Buck Oliver. Was Donnie's mother. Yeah, the only thing is they get married and get away from ya. Mildred Nelson, she married Earl St. Clair in the Seventh District. She's ... they're still living down there. Somewhere. Grace Herriman, I see her every now and then in church ... she's Virginia Mackey's sister. I see her at church once in a while. No, they've once ... a lot of them have gone away. Moved away and you don't see 'em anymore. Well, it's been a long time. I been out of high school this June it will be fifty-three years. A lot 'em that I graduated from high school with in '33 are dead. A lot of girls. Uh, Theresa Pilkerton is dead, and Jane Gass who married Thompson ... Lester Thompson, she's dead. Stephen Yates is dead.

They [black people] were treated good. I mean, they were, they uh, as far as I know they were, I know we always treated the ones around us good. And everybody else that I know of did, I don't think they treated 'em bad. Yes, they were getting educated. Going to school down here, right, right ... that tree down here by Bryan's garage? There was a school there. Black school. Children from Chaptico used to walk down there. We used to meet 'em every evening. Coming home from school, we used to, we were coming from Chaptico and they were going to school up to Chaptico. They lived all around just like they do now. Yes, they used to help out on the farm and do odd jobs ... I remember over here ... this house, there was a black family lived over there and the boy, Henry, used to work for my daddy for a dollar a day. Well, then you could go to a store with a dollar and buy something. Twenty-five cents would buy you five pounds of sugar. My momma given me a quarter many a time and sent me up to Mr. Fowler's store to get her five pounds of sugar. It was loose. He measured it out into a paper bag. Weighed it out for you.

Yeah, I was, I guess about ten ... nine ... ten ... eleven ... somewhere like that when he died, but I remember him, he was a tall thin man like Mr. Fowler, but I believe he was a little taller than Mr. Fowler. But I can remember him. Now I don't remember the Morgan that worked and owned the store with him, Fowler and Morgan or Morgan and Fowler, whichever it was, I don't remember him. When I was a child going to Chaptico school, Mr. Fowler was running the store hisself. And I won't forget when Mr. Fowler got married, he ... Mae Rite, she was, she was the school teacher down there, and uh, when they went away in the summer ... after school was out, and got married, they went to Virginia somewhere, down in the mountains somewhere, on their honeymoon and left Leo in charge of the store. Leo got the mumps, Leo got the mumps and he had to come home, and Miss Louise had to come down and run the store. I never will forget that.

I remember Leo, times were so hard during the year that I graduated in 1933, that the children in school didn't know how they were gonna get their clothes for graduation. Leo paid for mine. My graduation dress, and I never will forget I only paid five dollars for it and that dress today would cost you forty-five, fifty dollars. White eyelet, embroidered dress. Long down to the ground. And five dollars was all it cost. And it was a good dress, I mean, the material was good in it. And it ... and there were no jobs, much ... nothing you could do. Even when you got outta high school. And I had no transportation, and I had no way of goin' out and makin' ... making a living. Ruth wanted me to come to Washington, and stay up there with her and get me a good job, but I didn't like the city. I couldn't stand that.

Oh, he was nice, momma and daddy both were, they were two wonderful people. They really were. Momma, I don't think there was anything that she couldn't make ... nothing she couldn't do ... she set her mind to it ... knit a sweater, she could, and all she would have to do would be to look at it, and get your measurements, and she could knit it, right to the, just exactly like the picture in the book and same way with a dress. She used to go over here to Mrs. Guy's and go upstairs there and look at a dress, and uh, get herself a piece of material while she was over there and come home and make herself one exactly like it. All she needed was to take an old dress of hers to get the measurements. And daddy, they were, they were just as nice, I don't know, everything, anything you child, children, us, we needed we got it if it was possible to get it and if anything needed doin' for us, it was done. If you got sick, they went for a doctor for ya, or took you to a doctor and you had to go in a horse and buggy then. And sometimes, I was so sick, too sick in the wintertime to go to a doctor, poor old Dr. Palmer. I don't care how sick you were I mean, how cold it was, how ... the weather, and he was travellin' in a horse and buggy too at that time. He was down across from Holy Angels Church. Well, where the new church is built at, he's on the same side, in fact that house sits way back there. That's where Dr. Palmer's home, and he had to come all the way up here to Chaptico. Dr. Wwasn't, he hadn't uh, he was just a young boy, I guess he was in training when I was in high school. And uh, Dr. Johnson, there at Morganza, but momma did go to him once in a while, but we always went to Dr. Palmer because Dr. Dent was momma's doctor. And he was out of the Seventh District and when Dr. palmer graduated, came back here, why, he uh, she went to him. And I don't care how bad the weather was, whether it was night or day, morning, after twelve o'clock or after midnight, or when, he would come to see you whether he was, it didn't make any difference whether he knew you, he'd get paid when he got there or whether he ever got paid or not, it did not make any difference. When you called that man he came to you. He was a wonderful doctor, and he was a good doctor. And I don't know ... what else, but momma and daddy were very good, they were wonderful people. Nice as they could be.

Oh yes, they would discipline you all right, but I don't remember getting' a whuppin', or a spankin' from either one of 'em. Nobody. None of us got whipped. Well, they just told you that you weren't supposed to do it, and that was it. They told you not, to do it, they meant it. They told, and we knew that they meant us, for us not to do it. That's the way it went.

St. Mary's Hospital was there, but it was not a hospital. The only thing that they used St. Mary's Hospital for was a for somebody who was sick at home and didn't have anybody to take care of 'em, you know, they couldn't do for themselves. The doctor sometimes would send them there so the nurse could look after them and give them their medicine when they needed it. And a baby, if a, one of Virgie's babies was born premature, then they carried it down there to the hospital.

Yes, all of them [births] took place at home, there was no place else to go. No, we had a doctor. But the, but the everything was at home there was, there was no place to go, no hospital to go to. It's changed when Dr. Welch became a doctor. And came back to St. Mary's County. I was still in high school. It must have been in the early '30s. Very early '30s, because I graduated in '33. And this must have ... this was, maybe '29 or '30, something like that, it was, I was still in high school when he came back here. He graduated from school and he interned, I don't know where else he interned but I know Sibley Hospital [in Washington, D.C.] was one hospital where interned at. And uh, he came here and he uh, put a, set his office up right in his mother's home right there in Chaptico, right there, where they, who owns that house now, the one the Ripples used to own? Loker. He set his office up there. And then he built that big house up the road there that Dr. Boyd lives in now. Don't Dr. Boyd's son live there? The one on the left goin' up, after you pass, you know where William Edelen Gough lives? And that little house that Mary Rosana lived in? Well, the next house, that was Dr. Welch's house. That was his home. His office was on this side, that door on this side of that, that was where you went into his office. And I remember, uh, I don't know who she was, but I think she was a black girl, it was a girl, if I ain't mistaken. That had appendicitis. And he operated on her. And that was his first operation since, when he came down here, and after that, he couldn't stop operatin'. She pulled through with flyin' colors, and that's the, we hadn't had a doctor down here to operate or anything, you know, and I guess everybody was wonderin' whether it would, whether he could do it or not. But Dr. Welch was alright. He knew what he was doin'.

Oh yes, Allie Welch, I remember Allie Welch, he was the first undertaker.

And the first school, when they first started teaching school in Chaptico was in the hall. That, one of the pictures in that book that you had? You made? That picture that's got Dr. Welch and Mary Rosana into it? That was taken down at the hall. I carried that, I told Mary Loretta one day, I said, Mary Loretta, you got one of them books up here? She said, yeah, I said, well, let me, let me show you something. And uh, talking about that picture and I said, that picture, that was not Chaptico school house. And she said, well, what was it? And I said, it's the hall. That was, that was Chaptico hall. If I ain't mistaken, Lee went there. When he first started. Yeah, he went to school there when he first started going to school. But they soon, evidently, built the other school house because, uh, I went to school one year with Leo. But I was so young that I don't even remember my first day in school, my first year that I went to school. You see, you could, if you were big for your age you went to school. It didn't, you, you didn't have to be any age at all.

And uh, they sent me on to school, I don't even remember, I'm sure I didn't learn nothin'. At that age. But I uh, I don't remember, but I remember I went with Leo. And uh, I went one year with Mary Rosanna, and Virginia Reeves up here, Bradford's sister, I never will forget her cause she used to make me cry every single evening comin' home from school. I was a little teeny thing. And she used to make me cry, every ... uh, after she got me crying, she would leave me alone then it was all over with. But she had to make you cry. She had to do it. Take my hand, and do this with it [squeeze it] and I mean she pushed on it as hard as she could do it until she got me crying. Every single evenin'. I had to come down the road as far as their house, you see, they lived there where Bradford lives at. Sometimes momma and daddy or daddy would come up and pick us up in the, in the buggy, and of course, when that happened, I didn't have to come down the road with her. Always happy when that happened. I didn't have to come down the road with her.

Well, different times, well he used to have, oh, about four horses I guess at the time. We had an old gray horse, old Douglas, they called him. Lightning struck him, out in that back field, over there. Out there during a storm in the summer, lightning struck him and killed him. He used to have about four horses all the time. Well, you had to have 'em because you couldn't, you couldn't, when you were working the farm, you couldn't use the same horses every day. And you had to change them around. Work one and let him rest a day.

Well, uh, we had uh, I don't know, I think it was fifty some acres, what daddy used, we had this field, and the field in front of this old house up here, and all back to the woods. And John Lacey owned that other strip of land. Between us and red house. And before he died he sold it to momma. Momma bought it from him. And then we had, it was a hundred and some acres I think into it. I done forgot how many now, I used to know. I guess it's on the deed.

No, I don't remember it, I was, Woodrow was a baby, Woodrow was about six months old when daddy was operated on and World War I was going on then. I was about two. Two, two and a half year's old.

Fox and raccoons and possums, that was about it here. We didn't even have deer around here then. Deer was brought in later on, we didn't have any deer. Used to set traps, daddy used to set traps. Used to catch fox and raccoons, and he used to go out in the winter and fall and catch possums. And uh, he used to skin 'em. Save the hides, and in the spring, there was a man who used to come around and buy 'em. Buy all your hides.

He didn't do much fishing. He used to go oystering in the ... in the fall, when the oyster season came in, he'd go out oystering, but he didn't do that ... I don't remember him doin' that much fishing. He had a skiff down there at Chaptico wharf, yeah, not at the wharf, down here where what used to be, what we used to call it, Chaptico wharf, here where os ... by the Shuharts. He had a skiff down there. Used to go down there and go out into it and catch his oysters and bring 'em back and uh, and then you could leave 'em! He could leave his oysters right there, come all the way through those woods, come over here and get his ox cart or wagon, whichever, and go back down there and your oysters would be there. Today if you left 'em down there and you went back you wouldn't find 'em. Somebody would probably have been there and got 'em. But there wasn't nothing like that goin' on then.

Crabs? Once in a while. I don't know. We used to have 'em, but I don't know if daddy caught 'em or whether we bought 'em from somebody. I really can't remember. And the funny part of it was then they wouldn't let you eat a hot crab. You couldn't eat a hot crab. Wait until it cooled off. They used to hang 'em up in a basket up underneath the porch up there, let it cool off. We weren't allowed to eat a hot crab. I don't know, I don't know why it was. You couldn't eat 'em. They wouldn't let us eat 'em. They wouldn't eat 'em either. And now, that's all they eat is hot crabs.

In the summertime, when I was in high school, down here at River Springs, I don't know if I could find it, or if I would know how to get there, or not but they had a pavilion down there on the water. I know where you turn at, and that's all that I can remember. You know where that store is? It used to be Bailey's store. Isn't there a road that goes straight there, to the right? Pell, that's where we used to go, it seems to me. And I don't know, it was down there on the water it was a pavilion. Like the one that they had at Chapel Point. Just a top, you know, and a floor. And they had a little rail all the way around. And in the summertime every Saturday night, there was an orchestra that came down there and played. And everybody went down there and danced. I can remember that. That's where I first went to high school at was down there in the Seventh District. Well, there was things for people to do in the summer, well, they had movies then, movies every Saturday ... Sunday night ... I guess it was, Saturday night or Sunday night. They used to have a movie, they used to have a movie house, in the Seventh District, I guess it was, yeah, it was Ellis', and is that the hall there that the fella has hard crabs in Well, that's where they used to have a movie house there, the Ellis' run it. And uh, then Duke had one in Leonardtown. But then they had nice movies. You know somethin' you could really sit down and enjoy.

They always had cartoons. Lord, I don't remember the name of none of them now but a ... nice movies. Cartoons and they had the news reel. Then they had the movie. LaurelaHardy, I've seen some of LaurelaHardy's movies in them ... in Duke's I can remember ... oh, what was that, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonnel in what was that? The Indian Love Call? Was that the name of that? It seemed to me that that song was in it, but I can't remember if that was the name of it or not. Nelson Eddy was a mounted police ... I, uh, oh they used to have good movies. I can't remember the names of them.

Yeah, it [Leonardtown] was a lot different from what it is now. They had a hotel there and uh, Duke built that building right there on the where it is now and upstairs was where they had the movies at. There was one right across from ... the brink house? Yeah, that's where they had the first movies house at. That was the first movie house. I remember seeing, uh, the first movie that I saw there was, uh, I don't know what the name of it was but Harold Lloyd played in it. He was a football player into it, I don't remember the name of it or anything about it. Leo carried us all down there, momma and daddy and all of us.

No, though I've been to Leonardtown in a horse and buggy. Daddy and momma used to go down there. Whenever we needed. On the corner where the Maryland National Bank is, uh, Harry Jones had a millinery shop there. I been in there and bought many a dress. Things from there. That's where Harry Jones' shop was, uh, store, was right there on that corner. And Dr. Greenwell's house was over there where ... what's on that corner now? It's uh down from Raley's. You know, Raley's Furniture is here and what's on that corner over there? That's where Dr. Greenwell had his big home and office. And then on the other corner was Morgan Department Store. And then as you go down, hmmph, well that house is still standing there, it used to be a store. With that porch overhead on top? That was an old building, that was there. And then down on the other side of that somewhere was uh, Spalding had a barber shop. First National Bank stood on the corner where it is now. That was there.

Dr. Barberich? That was when we lived in Leonardtown. Kathy was a baby then. Then he, they had that place there on Route Five, going down the hill from out of Leonardtown? That's where they built. He got his wife, you see, she was over there wherever she was at. Wife, wife and daughter. Was uh, what country were they inta? And they weren't allowed out, were allowed to come out. Couldn't get 'em out. And uh, one day his daughter wrote him a letter, and told him where they were going to be on a certain day, and for some reason or they other they did not they used to, you know, uh, they go ... 'course, all the letters were read, you know, by them, before it was sent to them. But they let that go through. Instead of usually marking it out, taking it out, they let it go through. And, uh, he left from here and went over there and carried extra clothes with him and dressed as a you know, old peasant or something and went over there and met them people and carried clothes for them to put on and got 'em out of there. Before anybody knew what was going on. And brought 'em home. There was a big write-up in the paper about it. It was ah, it was in, I was nursing at St. Mary's Hospital in the early '40s.

Oh yeah, I remember that [World War II]. Daddy, he uh, died during World War II. We used to have black outs. Everybody had to put all their lights out in the area, and they had men to come around to go down up and down the road to see if anybody had lights on and I remember the night we were supposed to have the black out and it was the night that daddy died. We had every light on in the house, on the porch and everywhere else. In case of being bombed. We had, at St. Mary's Hospital in that old white building they had to have windows made shutters made out of wood so that they could put 'em up. Close the windows so that no ... and then, we'd go out at night, they would, when we first got 'em and put 'em up at night, and go out and look and see if they could see any light through a crack or anywhere you know, through any of the windows. Yep, we used to have them we used to have nights When every ... for a certain time, length of time, from such a hour to another hour every light was out. Everybody had lights out.

[Granddaddy's death:] Well, I was going and training for a nurse. And I would have gone, was gonna go. I was gonna go that fall in September, semester. And uh, daddy died in March, and I don't know, I just couldn't leave momma by herself. So I never did go, I stayed home with her. Whatever year it was that daddy died. They had, Mrs. Welch, her husband was dead then I think. Yeah, Mr. Welch was dead. And Harry, I mean, uh, Albert Davis, helped Mrs. Welch with the funerals, and they came down and got daddy's body that night, and they uh after they got it in the casket they brought it back down here we put in that back bedroom up there at the house. Momma moved her bed upstairs with me. Moved it up there, put it up there where I was. And rain ... the day my daddy was buried it poured. I mean it poured. There's an old saying, "Happy is the bride that the sun shines on and happy is the corpse that the rain falls on." And I said, well, if there was anything to it, he certainly should have been happy.

Well, it [war time] wasn't too bad, we made out pretty good. Leo was, uh I guess he was in Alexandria then. He was living ... he must have been living in Alexandria I guess. When daddy died. He uh, no he didn't have to, he went for an examination, but he didn't pass. Because he had a hernia and I don't know what else but of the other, what reason was he didn't pass, but anyway he didn't. He was married at the time and if you were married you didn't have to go. So neither one of 'em went. Leo was [working for Coca-Cola] but Woodrow was working for Capital Transit. Checker for Capital Transit. At the time yeah, lived up there on Rhode Island ... Rhode Island and T Street? I think it was Rhode Island and T Steet. St. Martin's Church was right up the hill from 'em. You could walk to Mass. I think they moved from up there down here then if I ain't mistaken, I can't remember. But I think that's where he was at. I can't remember, don't know, I know Mary Agnes came an' stayed there with us at the house for a while. While they were building the house over here that they ... Woodrow was, I don't know where he was working at then. It don't seem like to me he was in Washington. Yeah, he had come home and I didn't know him of course at that time, he and Ernest went farming down there and he bought himself a big tractor plows and everything and he went farming. Where'd I meet him? Virginia, I knew his sister Virginia and Richie Lacey, Dan'd boy, and met him through them.

Well, I don't know I guess things started changing when it [electricity] first came in. It must have been in the late '30s. I know I was out of high school. Uh, we got this state road out there but I think I was still in school when that state road was put through. Gravel road. It was a state road. They came down here and widened the road, it was a state road, but it was only of gravel. It wasn't uh ... hard top. And we didn't get the hard top until Byron Guy came on the ticket for, what was he running for? County commissioner? And he said, he told us, if I get elected he said I will see that you get a black top out here. Everybody around this area voted for him so we could get a black top road. But vote, I'd vote for Byron anyway. But uh, and he did. That's when we got our, got the black top. I guess, sometime. Well, when you got electricity in here you got your electric lights you had, you could have electric refrigerators, you could have 'lectric fans in the summer, and all of that stuff, if you could afford, you could buy 'em, you know, it would, it make a big difference. Washing machines, you could have washing machines, although we had uh washing machine, uh, Morris Riekert, used to work for bowling sold uh Maytag washing machines. For Bowling, Wilson Bowling in La Plata. Woodrow was working for Coca Cola at the time and he met Morris up there. Morris boarded at the hotel. And momma bought a Maytag washing machine from him with a gasoline motor on it. Then after we got electricity, then she had it converted over to electricity. That was a life saver. Washed 'em on a washboard. Momma did the washin'. Washed them on a washboard. Heated a tub of water, put it on the stove, Even when uh, we got the washing machine we still had to heat the water on the stove because we didn't have running water in the house. It was much easier, all you had to do was heat your water and put it in the washing machine. But when, before that you had to ... washed them by hand.

Oh, yes, and that was one thing he loved to do [firewood]. He loved to go in the woods and get his wood. He had one of the prettiest woodpiles you ever saw in your life. He always had enough to last him, he never had to go back in the woods anymore till next fall. Now we had to have wood then. Uh, you burnt wood in the wood stove, all ... cook stove all summer long. That was the only means of cooking. And Mr. Peeves used to give daddy all the ... uh, downed pine in these woods over here. Any pines that were down, he could have them. We always had, had wood. Yeah, he'd, he'd cut 'em an cut the logs and put 'em on a cart, and bring 'em to the house. And he and I used to all work on the woodpile. Of course, he'd get a saw man to come around and saw the wood. But sometimes he and I, if he needed any sawed, up, he'd put the log up on the saw there on the saw horse and he and I used to saw, I used to love to saw wood. God, I could ... he and I could really pull the old saw. Loved to do it. And I loved to carry wood in the house. When momma and I were, after daddy died, and we knew it was going to snow, we'd go out and get it and bring it in, and I'd stack it all down one side the kitchen in there, cause you never knew when it was going to snow how long it was going to last. And uh, we always had wood in the house.

Yeah, I wish I could, had sense enough to know how to play the lottery. Win myself a million dollars. I would buy that place back from Bradford Peeves. And fix it up. And it would take a million, I guess, to do it. The sills in that old house, they said, they uh, something that they had to repair, stairsteps or somethin', them sills in there were just as solid as they were when they were put in there. Daddy used to tell us stories when he was living. I wish I could remember some of them. But I can't remember any of them now. But he used to tell us some have us sitting on the edge of the chair, scare us to death. Daddy was a great storyteller. And sing, he could sing, he had a nice voice, recite poetry, had a memory like I don't know what. If he ever learned it, he remembered it. Oh, not every night, but in the winter time he used to quite often, of course, in the summer he used to sit out there on the porch and play his fiddle at night, oh, gosh, and the whippoorwills! I'll never forget, I don't know what's happened to them. I do not know. Now you very seldom ever hear one. And they'd come right to your door. We'd sit there on the porch and they'd come right in under the fence. In the uh, row, where they'd park their car at or anything, where there was no grass. They'd always light in a place where they could see. So they could see around 'em. All night long. Whippoorwills. Oh, and I don't, well, you wouldn't even be able to count 'em. There would be so many at one time. And now you never hear one. Never every seldom ever hear a whippoorwill, I don't know if something has killed them out or what.

Oh yes, and I was as scared to death of an owl as I was of the devil. I don't know, they just scared me, to hear them holler, they has such a mournful sound, and uh, and then one scared me up in the barn when I was a child, I stood up on a bunker of tobacco up there when daddy was prizing his tobacco, and something came down over my head and scared me to death, and I screamed to the top of my voice. And daddy come a running and it was a owl, flew down out of one end of the barn come over the top of my head, went up on the other side and lit. And daddy got the gun and shot him. And I don't know whether that was why I was so durn afraid of 'em or not, I don't know, but I was scared to death of an owl. They always hollered at night, you know, 'cause they're a night an ... bird. Sleep all day and come awake at night. Hear 'em down in the woods. Scared me to death, course, I was a child anyway. Scared of my own shadow.

Old Lord, black snakes and I was as afraid of them as I was the devil too. Gosh no, I don't know any snake stories 'cause they would scare me and daddy would kill them, but I had nothing to do with them. But I, God, I married before I would even attempt to kill a snake, and the only reason I killed them then was on account of you children. I was afraid you all would get tangled up into 'em sometime or the other. It had to be in the late '30s I guess. Because I think Our Lady of the Wayside was built then, 'cause I was up to Mrs. Welch's, practicing Easter hymns for high mass for Easter. And I am sure, it must have been right after Our Lady of the Wayside was built. That was I think, in '38, if I ain't mistaken. You know, there's an old, every farm they said had its landlord snake. So I guess that was ours.

So I guess that was ours. And there's some people that won't kill a black snake, just leave them alone and I guess they just grew and grew and grew. I know I had spent the night up at Mrs. Welch's. 'Cause, she didn't drive and she'd send down for me she always had somebody there that she could send down, and get me, she couldn't send me home she'd hafta, I'd spend the night with her and she'd send me back the next day. And when I got back home next day, I don't know what time it was, sometime late in the morning and daddy had killed that snake. No I didn't go see it, I didn't go out there, it was over on that old barn, on that fence line that went down, of course, none of the fields now have any fences on 'em, but that's where it was, it was a fence line from that barn on down. I don't guess I wanted to see it anyway. He said the biggest part of it was as big as a quart jar.

Well, I guess the thing of it was, there was some people that when the REA came here, came down through here, there was some people that could have it and some couldn't. You know, some people, there was as many still using kerosene lamps as there was. And your Aunt Marie is still using kerosene lamps. They've never had that that house wired, running water, nothing into it. Well, you see, they own that place now, not all of it, but he owns the house and part of, some of the land he got the house, it was divided between the children. But Tommy was supposed to have had the farm as he lived, or work it as long as he lived, or something, but the girls got some of them got so they wanted their part out of it so but they so I guess got their part where it didn't make any difference to them, you know, where it was at because they weren't going to live there anyway, and uh, so Tommy got the house and the barns the land around that an a there, around the house I guess. It was his father's, mother's and father's. He was born and raised there. For a while, was. For a while.

Not unless the horse was scared of it. That was, get out the road. Well, 'course, I used to go to Washington, when I, well I used to go up and spend a week with Ruth in the summer, week or two with her up there in the summer, when I was out of high school. 'Course they had radios and had televisions too when televisions came out. But I don't know about the rest of 'em here, momma when she ever heard one. It was uh in the '30s I guess, Leo got momma a radio. Bought momma a radio. He was working for Coca-Cola at the time. Yeah, and I should still have mine [Victrola], momma gave Woodrow ... Woody, the old one momma had is over here at Mary Agnes'.

Oh, yes. They were makin' moonshine. A lotta people made it. I don't know much about it, but uh, I can remember over here I guess I was outta high school then, I reckon I was, I don't know. In the late '30s. And Walter Woodburn lived over there at the old house Willy Beavans moved out the way when he built his. And he had a still down there in them woods somewhere there's a run, over there in them woods and that's where it was at. And that man used to carry quart jars of bootleg whiskey into two suitcases. Two big suitcases. And he'd leave his house with them suitcases, one in each arm walk out to that road, and somebody would pick him up before he got to Chaptico and he would hitchhike up there to Washington and sell, 'course he had a buyer when he got up there sell his whiskey to but uh, and never got caught. And hitchhiked! He didn't drive, he hitchhiked. The luckiest man I ever saw in my life. I never will forget that. Yeah, you weren't supposed to be selling, making bootleg whiskey or selling it either one, that was the funny part of it. What he was doing was illegal and yet he never got caught. And he hitchhiked from here to Washington. With two suitcases of bootleg whiskey.

[Swamp gas:] Yeah, I remember the Woodburn boys when they lived over here, Walter Woodburn's sons, they had, uh, they had left, been over to the house, Michael and Abell. They'd been over here to the house. They left and went home. And uh, they got up to the gate and they saw this light, coming down the road, and they thought it was Leo, used to, was clerkin' for Mr. Fowler, they thought they, uh, Leo, they used to close up about five o'clock. And it was about that time they left the house and by the time they got to the gate they saw this light comin' down the road and they thought it was Leo comin' down the road in the car, and they stood there and waited for it ... and the closer it got, they didn't hear no noise, no car, and they took out and they run from the gate up there, where we were at, the gate up there at the old house, and run down to their gate, and went in, and the light went on down the road! It was one of those bubbles of swamp gas. And them was two scared boys, I'm tellin' you! I never will forget that one. Mike, he died here last year, year before last, and Abell is still living. Abell Woodburn is. He lives below Leonardtown across there below the fairgrounds. Right across from the fairgrounds, uh, Abell has a white house and uh then there's uh, a garage or somethin' there, and Mike's house was next to it was a cinder block house. Well, Mike and his wife are both dead now. But they, they built side by side there.

[Hurricanes and storms:] Yeah, but I don't remember much about it now except that it was a bad storm. Idn't that the one that uh, that washed St. George's Island bridge away? That is one place I want to go is Point Lookout. I want to go down there, I haven 't been to Point Lookout since, God, I don't know when. I don't think, I'm sure I haven't been there since I been married. I been down to St. George's Island, but I haven't been to Point Lookout. No, I don't remember much about it, except that it was one bad storm, that's all I can remember. Yes, there was a warehouse, I can remember the warehouse, but I don't remember too much about it, but it was a low, one story building. I don't remember that I ever, I don't know, I used to go down there with daddy I guess, but I'm sure I never went into it. No, I don't remember anything about that. It was a wood structure, I remember that. It was wood.

Yes, there used to be [peddlers] uh well, I don't remember 'em comin' and selling pots and pans, but there was a man, his name was Mr. Rau. Small man, and I know he used to sell dress material, and I know momma bought me a piece of pink print dress material and it was like panji, it was a nice piece of material, soft, I can remember that. And I don't remember anybody comin' 'round with pots and pans, and then we had the, the men from the linament companies. Watkins, all kinds of linamint and uh, sold all kinds of stuff like vanilla and lemon extracts, and all that stuff. All of that kind of stuff. Salves, ointments, cough syrups.

Gypsies? Yeah, I don't remember much about them. I remember that they were here at one time. Yes, but I don't remember, it was uh, when they were here I was a very small child. They weren't here when I was old enough to remember them.

Oh, yes, we've had to put up with them [Jehovah's Witnesses] all of our lives. They used to come around with a Victrola and play records for you to listen to.

[Howard Scott and brothers:] Lived down here in that old house that they burnt down. Down here. Yeah, they were born and raised there, that was their place, home place, their mother and father lived there, I don't remember Mr. Scott. I don't remember him. I remember Mrs. Scott. Old lady, well, they were just ordinary people, tall, the old lady was tall and thin. I remember her. An there were three, three boys and Howard, Howard was the oldest, Johnson, and then Freeman. And then there was uh, I don't know whether it was one or two girls. I know there was one, but its seemed like to me there was two of 'em, but I can't remember now.

Well, they uh, they used to oyster and fish, crab, and do all of that, and that's where they made their livin' at, 'course, they worked out as hands in the fields you know, in the summertime, too, if you needed them. They would hire themselves out by the day. Yeah, they ... three of them lived together. Then, Howard got so he worked for Mary Agnes, he got staying over there with Mary Agnes. Just him, the rest of 'em didn't stutter.

Yes, catch catfish and perch and tobacco boxes, they used to call 'em, those little yellow perch. And uh, in the summer they'd catch crabs ... and uh, come by the house with them and they'd sell some to momma what they didn't want, they'd sell to momma, and uh, sometimes she'd pay um in money, some times they'd ask her for a half pint of butter, or a piece of fat meat, or some lard to fry their fish with, in other words, they were trading, fish and crabs and oysters for ... when momma paid 'em money, if they didn't have lard to fry their fish with, they'd have to go to the store and spend their money to get it, so ...

Yes, I do love a carp, and I wish I could find one. They used to bring 'em up carps, the ones that they used to bring were about well a little longer maybe than this ... some of them were as long as this thing, some of 'em were a little longer. God, they were good. Oh! I did love 'em! You had to skin 'em like you did a catfish, but of course, a catfish, I pour boiling water on him to skin him. But a carp, you just take and cut him in pieces and get hold with a knife under the skin and catch a hold of it and pull it off him. Skin him. Roll him in flour, salt and pepper and fry 'em and they were some kind of good! Why some of the carps, good Lord, I've seen them as long as this table, this table here ... where they had to take a hoe to scale 'em. Scales, would be great big scales on 'em. But I don't ever wanted one that big. I wouldn't eat one, they're too, they say they're strong. Meat's gotta got a strong taste.

[The town of Hurry, one mile east of Chaptico:] Yes, I was a small child when that was in full swing. Well, the Latham, Wheelers had a store; on this corner where Debbie Wheeler's house is there was a Hurry's had a store there, and I guess they sold whiskey there too, well, they weren't supposed to 'cause Prohibition was goin' on then and you weren't supposed to sell it, but they sold it anyway.

[Post office:] Where Bryan Knott's house is. The Gibsons used to live there. Same house. Same house. And after they, I don't know what ever happened to them people. They must, I guess they moved away from here. I don't know whether old Mr. Gibson died, seems to me one of 'em died, while they were here, and the rest of 'em moved away, there were two girls, and the post office then was down there at Mrs. Wheeler's; they kept, had the post office. It was in the store, they had a little room on this end, in the, in the one side there where they kept the post office at. Yes, there was a little house, you know that tree, sits there by the side of the road, before you get to Debby Wheeler's, Debby Hall's? There's a little tree, well, there was a little house somewhere there, and there was a barn, a well, it wasn't quite as big I don't guess as this one up here, the old barn up there. But it was a barn that stood there. And that little house, my Uncle Jimmy lived in it. Little too, had two rooms downstairs and one upstairs. Lacey. And Uncle Jimmy died and his wife had daughters that lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And they came down here and got her and carried her back up there with them.

[Knott home:] That was, that was an old house. The Wheelers lived there. One group, family of Wheelers. And uh, I don't know, Mr. Knott bought that house. Mr. Knott was livin' at uh, Notley Hall, I mean, uh, Bachelor's Hope. And he bought that house. That farm there. And he lived there up until, his lived there until the old lady died ... Mrs. Knott ... and I guess Bryan, I don't know how it worked. But I uh, I don't know if Bryan went to live there with the old man or the old man went to live there with Bryan, but I think he went and live with, Bryan went and lived with him. Mr. Knott told him that if he would come there and live with him and take care of him that he would give him the farm. And that's how Bryan got the farm. I think some of those girls for a while they weren't even speaking to Bryan, I think ... it seems to me ... a lot of stuff in that house old Mrs. Knott had, her quilts, and when Mr. Knott died, they never got a thing in the world, and I think it, I don't think some of them liked it. I think Lennie gave some of them to her mother and I think that, I don't think set right with them. And it wasn't right, if it was their mother's quilts, why they could have at least offered them some.

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