Grandma and Ethel and Andy, Derby Weekend, 1977
E: What was your father's name?
G: Kyle
E: First name?
G: They called him Ed Kyle, I don't know whether it was Thomas Edward Kyle or whether it was just Edward Kyle.
E: Do you know what your father's father's name was?
G: I have no idea.
E: Did he come from Paducah?
G: He was raised on the farm by people, you know, for work for room and board. From the time he was a child he worked for the family. They were German. In that locality they all spoke German. Momma said he could speak German very fluently. I wouldn't know that, I was too little.
E: Do you s'pose he was an orphan?
G: At that time, yes. He had a brother Bob and one named "L". I don't know what the L was for, whether it was just "L" like they did, or whether it had another name. Bob Kyle and another brother went to Texas, and never came back to Paducah that I ever knew. Momma read in the paper somewhere that the one called "L" had been lost in a snow storm in Texas. You know how quick some of those snow storms come up? He was found later frozen to death. But I don't know anything about him. Momma wasn't one to write and keep up with anybody.
E: Did your father have a sister?
G: Bett -- B-e-t-t, Bett Kyle.
E: and what was your Mother's maiden name?
G: My mother's maiden name was Ogden, Ida Mae Ogden Kyle Donovan.
E: and your Mother's Mother's name was?
G: Luvina Cordelia Bierley, she married Tom Ogden. I don't know what the "E" was but he was always known as "T.E. Ogden".
E: Did you know any of his people?
G: No, I didn't know anything about his people. It was on his side that the Holland Dutch was supposed to come in. They spelled their name O-g-d-o-n. There were other Ogdens in the touwn, no relation, I guess, they had originally come from Tennessee. They spelled their name O-g-d-e-n, but my grandfather spelled his O-g-d-o-n. That's where the Holland Dutch is supposed to come in, Momma said they were Holland Dutch.
E: Grandma Ogdon was a Bierley?
G: Yes, she was German and Irish.
E: and her Father's name was?
G: Bierley, Levi, no Eli. Now I don't know whether Grandma's father's name was Eli or Levi. They were twins who married twins, and Pat's mother was ...
E: Now let's finish with Grandma Bierley Ogdon, what was her name?
G: Schoolfield, must have been Lucindy because my Grandmother was Livna, there were twins, Luckindy and Luvina. They were twins, Lucindy and Luvina.
E: Well, then your grandmother's name was ...
G: Luvina Cordelia Ogdon, Luvina Cordelia Bierley Ogdon. (Some confusion in the tape here Mother, is it Schoolfield, Bierley or Ogdon?)
E: And they came from McCracken County?
G: No they all came form Marshall County. Benton. (The only town in Kentucky where Joe Creason was born.)
E: Daddy's mother's name was ...
G: Bierley
E: Daddy's mother? Was she Lizzie Bierley?
G: Her mother was a Schoolfield, she married a Bierley. She married Leander Stinnett.
E: And Lizzie Bierley's nother's name was what?
G: Well, she must have been Lucindy, that's what I said! Because mine was Luvina. Lucindy Schoolfield. They were twins, and they married Eli and Levi Bierley.
E: So Lizzie Bierley Stinnett's mother was on of the twins?
G: Uncle Levi, I think that's what -- and my grandmother's father's name must have been Eli. The other one that used to come and visit us was named Levi, and that was Grandma Stinnett's father. So that's why we were doubly related. That's why they way we are such idiots!
E: Yeah. -- Then Grandpa Stinnett's father's name was what
G: Roger probably would, but I don't.
E: Grandpa always said his father was one of twelve boys from Christian County.
G: Roger's father was Charles and his grandfather was Uncle Fidella.
E: How many of Daddy's father's brothers did you know?
G: Just Uncle Fidella.
E: He was the only one in that part of the country?
G: Yes
E: Daddy had how many brothers?
G: Jim, Tilden, Reno, and George. They had one half sister, Maude.
E: You have one real sister -- Edna --
G: I had more than that, but she is the only one who lived. She was Edna Paschall, now it's Hooper.
E: And the Donovans -- James
G: James' mother and my mother were the same, Grandma and Mr. Donovan were married in 1910.
E: Did you have any brothers and sisters who I never heard of?
G: I had a sister older than I was, Maudie. And a sister Gladys, they both died. Gladys was about 1 1/2 or 2 years old when she died. Maudie died about a week after my father died. She had a bowel obstruction and died. My mother had had Edna and she was in bed. Momma always felt that if she had been up and around that Maudie might not have had this obstruction. She would have taken care of her and would have noticed.
E: You wouldn't think a thing like that would be so bad would you ?
G: It isn't simple. Look what happened when Dad had it! Two weeks he was on the pump. So it's not so simple!
E: You would think there would be something they could do.
G. Yes, but in those days they didn't. I remember my mother and others talking about one of the things that they could get to move their bowels if nothing else would was quicksilver. And they were supposed to have given her quick silver, but the obstruction was so great that it didn't work.
E: Now you told us that when you and Dad got married in 1915, how did you make the trip to Nevada, from Paducah -- did you go by train? And where did you go first?
G: Yes, we went to Ely, that's where he was working for the Nevada Consolidated Copper Company. When he finished school and went out west to work he first went to Binham Utah for the copper company.
E: But when you went out with Dad you were in Ely all the time ?
G: Ely and McGill. Ely is the county seat of White Pine County, and when we got there we had to put in for a company house. The company owned all the rental property. Ruth was a company town and McGill was a company town but Ely was an independent town. When we got married Dad rented a little house in Ely and we went there to live. But then we bought a place when we were married about a year, Dad always wanted to have his own house. Then when he put in his application for McGill, that's the town he worked in, where the mill and smelter were. The mines were in a little town called Ruth. They were all there close together. Ruth was 14 miles from Ely and McGill was 16 miles from Ely.
E: How did he get to work?
G: train. If you worked in the mines and went to Ruth you went by ore train. They had passenger cars that hooked on the end to carry the workers to and from work. When we got the company house in McGill we sold the house we bought. We had our own furniture and everything. During the war when he wanted to back east we sold the furniture. Dad saw in the paper -- we took the Salt Lake City Tribune -- that if you would sign up by a certain time that you could get in the engineering corps. If you went to Fort Sam Houston and signed up by a certain time. He had already been drafted but they excused him because he was pregnant I was pregnant - (started a precedent there!) The draft board exempted him until after the baby was born. So when he saw this in the paper he hurried and got in touch with his draft board. And they said yes, they would release him if he wanted to do it that way. We hurried and sold everything we had. We had pretty nice furniture, because when people would move out they couldn't ship their stuff on to wherever they were going, they just sold it off. So, I had a bedroom suite and a living room suite and kitchen set. We had three rooms, bedroom, living room, and kitchen-dining room all in one. We didn't have any trouble, we sold everything we had, and had to be ready to go to Salt Lake by the deadline. To get in on this inlistment. When we got to Salt Lake City there was trouble over his papers. Just like in the other was, no one knew what he was doing, you know? So, anyhow they needed men in Nitro, West Virginia. To work in the powder Plant there. Dad asked what was he supposed to do, he had his wife and baby there, and they were saying they wouldn't take him, we wondered what to do. Well they said they needed men, and were making up a train for men to go to Nitro, W. Va. and that if he would go there and work until they got the paper work at straightened out.
E: I don't understand, where would he go if he signed up with the engineers?
G: Texas, Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
E: So instead of there he went to Nitro, West Virginia
G: And got the flu. And he thought he was going to die. He was too sick to write or anything else. I was down in Kentucky. Nothing would do but I had to go to his mother's and I didn't like his mother too well. She was on a farm and I'd never lived on a farm. anyhow, Dad thought Paducah was a wicked city, and he didn't want me and the baby in Paducah. He wanted me on the farm with his mother. His mother was a good mother, she was good to the baby and they were real good to me, but I couldn't stand it. I was never raised out in the country like that.
G: So we didn't hear from him and didn't hear, and I didn't know what the dickens to think.
G: Well, Dad woke up one morning, he was real sick and they had put him back in the corner to die. The sun was shining this one morning and he decided "The Hell with that stuff". He was getting out of that place before he did die!
G: So, he just got his stuff together -- the doctor didn't want to release him, they said he would surely kill himself. He said he didn't care, hhe was going to leave, he said "Either you release me or I'll go AWOL, I'm not going to stay here!". So he came to Paducah. He knew I was at my mother's.
E: So you left Grandma Stinnett's and went to your mother's?
G: His mother and her husband had some land they had traded some farm country for.
E: So at the time she was married to Mr Parks.
G: They had traded their farm in on some colored rental property there in Paducah. There were about eight houses. To rent to colored people was good money because if you got them on pay day they always paid their rent.
G: So Dada came home and we bundled up and went down to Aunt Eulah's. He just said "I'm coming" and that was that! Ant Eulah -- they were good that way, Tilden was like that. Families stuck together, and where the heck was he going to go? He just looked like the wrath of God, he had been sick and lost so much weight. We went down and lived with them -- that was before Christmas, and we stayed with them until clear up until Spring. We stayed there and cooked and ate off of them. Dad helped strip tobacco.I helped Eulah cook, wash dishes and take care of the kids while she stripped. We had a real good time, playing cards all evening, after we'd get through supper you know, that's when they would have fun and play cards, in the wintertime.
G: Then when the Spring came and Dad could help Jim out on the farm -- he didn't have any help either because you couldn't get help them. Dad went over and stayed with Uncle Jim and Aunt Alma and helped with the harvesting was all caught up. Then we left there and came to Akron and got himself a job. First he got a job in Columbus, and he didn't like Columbus.
E: When did you go to Mobile Alabama?
G: That was before Christmas, and he took me, and there was a big strike called because, you see, the war was over. And they didn't need all the business at the Alabama Drydocks, things were really getting tight. After the war there were no jobs any place, and people who had jobs were laid off. Well, we stayed with Eulah and her family, then he went to Mobile and in May they called the big strike.
E: Then you came back to Aunt Eulah's place?
G: Then we came back to Uncle Jim's and stayed until after the harvesting. Then Dad and Reno and a friend of Reno's went to Akron and got rooms. Three rooms, Reno and his friend slept in the bedroom and Dad and Patricia and I slept in what was like a closed in back porch.
E: Was that in Kenmore?
G: No that was before we went to Kenmore. We paid $12.00 a week for the rooms. On Hazel Street, there back of City Hospital.
E: What year did you move to Lakemore?
G: 1920. By Mrs. Schwartz. Lutz's lived on one side and Schwartz's on the other.
E: And then you bought the cottage by Gover's Grocery Store?
G: Right
E: and that's where Rita was born?
G: Right
E: And when did you the house where you are living now?
G: 1924. The cottage next to Gover's is the one we bought from Mr. Wear's father. You remember he asked me if I remembered who I bought the house from?
E: Who did you buy the hose on Josephine from?
G: A man who was a bootlegger and his still blew up. He had the still up in where the bathroom is now and he had a pipe that ran down through the kitchn to the basement. There is a hole still there in the floor. So he had to have money to pay a fine or else he had to go the Pen. Walter Kuhn wanted Dad to buy it. He didn't want to buy the house himself but he told Dad if he wanted to buy it he would give him the money, because he had to have cacsh. Well, Walt could get cash, but of course Dad wasn't that well known and he bought the house and moved in. And lived there all that time.
E: What did you have to pay for the house back in 1924?
G: $1500.00
E: So Mr. Kuhn held the mortgage on your house?
G: No the bank. The bank let Mr. Kuhn have the money on his credit, so the bank was the ones who held the mortgage. They were the ones that insurance and everything was made out to, until we got it paid for.
E: So where was the fire, upstears where the still was?
G: Yes, it blew up. Overheated or something, becasue that floor was all chared under there.
E: It's a wonder it didn't burn the house down.
G: Well, for years it stunk. Every time it would rain, or when we would go out and come back after the house had been closed up, it would just smell like a still. For years and years, and I'll bet if I'd walk in that house to this day it would smell like a darn still. It was a sour mashy smell.
E: Just like the whiskey barrels, it's in there forever.
E: Where was Patricia born?
G: In East Ely, in the company hospital. The company doctor was the head of this hospital and his wife was also a doctor. she took care of me. They kept me in the hospital for over two weeks because I was just a young girl and didn't have any family. She was so good to me! She would come in and give me lectures on how I should take care of PAtricia and not spoil her. One day she had the colic and she bawled and bawled and bawled. She would double up and push herself against Mrs. Bowdle's stomach. And she had told me I wasn't supposed to pick her up. I wasn't supposed to do this or that -- She walked the floor with that kid, she patted her backside, she did everything, she wasn't supposed to do she did. She kept giving her warm water to drink and more warm water to drink to bring up the gas and stuff, you know. She said "Now, that's an exception, she had colic". Here she was doing all the things she had given me all these lectures on not doing. They sure were crazy about Patricia. They never had any children. You would have though she was their own.
E: How old was Patricia when you all had to leave?
G: Seven months old.
E: The Army was pretty lenient to give you such a generous deferrment.
G: That's what I said. It was a small place and Dad was an Odd Fellow and the man on the draft board was an Odd Fellow. He liked dad. Dad would have him down for dinner on the Fourth of July. Fourth of July was a big holiday then. The plant never closed down but a few days a year -- like the Fourth of July and Labor Day. Dad asked him and some other friends from the Odd Fellows Lodge to dinner. They used to parade and have a big time. They used to come to the house to see us. We were just kids.
E: Did a you really just walk out the door when you got married and not quite close it so they wouldn't know you were slipping out?
G: Thats right.
E: And you never went back?
G. Sure we went back, we went back that night! I stayed all night with a friend of mine from church who lived next door to my mothen. She had asked me to spend the night because Mr. Donovan was raising Hell. He was so mad because we got married -- because we had run array and Dad had done it the way he did. Mr Donovan was drunk and he was always raising (some kind of a stink) (making some kind of excuse) He didn't like the way Dad had done it. He thought he should have talked to him like a man. When he was drunk you couldn't talk to him like a man. And he was mad because we were going to go right away. Dad had no intention of staying, he came to get me we got married and that was it. We were on our way. We did go out and stay all night with his brother Tilden and his wife and Pat's mother came over and stayed all night. The next day we took a train and left just like that. Dad had to get back to work.
E: How long did it a take by train to get to Ely?
G: Five days, and five nights. Sitting up in a day coach, we didn't have enough money for a sleeper. Some place in Colorado there were snow plows and two engines pulling and two engines pushing us up the mountain. New Years Day we were in Denver and they had voted in prohibition You never saw such a mess of drunks as there was that day. They had to drink it up and beat the deadline if they could.
G: Patricia was born in 1918 and that summer the whole country went dry. When I went home to visit Dad had some whiskey stashed away in Tilden's attic. You know that old iron trunk in the attic? Well he had that full of liquor. Well, when I went home to visit after prohibition was over I took this liquor home to Dad on the train. Dad had brought some little tiny glasses that hold about a thimble full. Tilden didn't drink or use liquor at all but Dad still had me leave some there. In case everything wouldn't go all right he would still have some back. He used to bring out these bottles, and Charlie Merrill and Lutes and some of them were there and he said he was going to give them a treat. He opened a bottle of his pre-prohibition liquor, and he got out that little glass and gave all of them a little glass. Ard Charlie Merrill got so darn mad about it he wouldn't drink it (because it was such a tiny glass). He offered him another drink and he wouldn't take it. Boy, that was in the days when they made a man stand on his own two feet or else!
G: Well, I'll tell you, you can't imagine how many women got to be drunkards during that prohibition. They thought it was smart to drink. Everybody made liquor. Made whiskey or beer or did something -- and they never did that before. Always before you went and got it and you had it and that was it. If you didn't want it you didn't have to buy it. But when Roosevelt went in everything went -- it passed that time no ifs and ands about it. That's when they had the bank holiday and everything. Roosevelt was a saviour, I'll tell you.
G: Well, it was in Ely that I got to know the squaws. We were afraid of them because we gals from the east had never been around any of them before. There was this one squaw who was real nice. Her name was Susie. She used to wash for Mrs. Gallagher -- with her papoose on her back. She wore this papoose in this basket, you know, and there was a strap around her forehead. She did her washing, rubbing it on the board and everything with her papoose on her back.
A: Was it fixed around her waist too?
G: No, it was fastened around her shoulders.
A: Where did she do her wash?
G: In the kitchen.
A: Did she live near you at all?
G: No, she lived up several blocks, but she used to wash for Mrs. Gallagher all the time. Like down where I came from the colored people did the washing. And there in Ely the Indian women worked around, helped with the housework for people who would hire them. That one was Susie, and we liked her real well. She would talk with us when she did the washing. Tell us about her family and things. Then Annie, an older woman, was mean, and she knew we were afraid of her. She would come to our houses and tell us "Me want this." She just pointed out. And we like darn fools gave it to her because we were afraid not to! We didn't know what she would do to us. Till Mrs. Gallagher found out what was happening and she just tod her to "Leave, go away, don't bother them anymore!" So she quit coming to the house. She was mean.
A: xxxx (because we were friends of h
G: Money to spend -- they had half grown kids. They sold pine nuts. They would gather the pine nuts. They would gather the pine cones and pick out the nuts. Little tiny things like that.
A: Were they good like ___
G: Yes. I didn't like them very well. But that's the way they made some money. They could sell them, you know. They had towork for them -- had to go out and pick the pine cones and get the stuff out of them. Dad used to tell about them when they first went out there they could get them for 10 - 15 cents a pound. Dad said well why, we used to get them for 10 cents. They would answer "Yeah, but the War, the War." It didn't cost them any more to get them but then well it cost more for everything else. Like everything else, wartime -- you pay more.
G: So now what do you want to know?
A: Well I wan tot ogo back to the point where Grampa got the job in the bank and then decided to go West.
G: Yeah, he went out west instead of going to work in a bank, he didn't want to work in town. He didn't like inside work.
A: Who was he working for when he got that job at the bank.
G: Well that would have been for the First National Bank.
A: Who did he know in the bank?
G: The president of the bank was a friend of his father's.
A: How come he went to Valporaiso to college.
G: It was cheaper. Cheaper than what other colleges cost.
A: He didn't want to go to a trade school or become an apprentice?
G: No, he wanted to do book work, he liked that.
A: He liked the mathematics part?
G: He was a good bookkeeper.
A: Where did he go to high school, in Paducah?
G: He never went to high school. They didn't have high schools. You would go to the eighth grade, at the old country school. The teacher that taught there taught eight grades there. If he wanted to go to a high school, he would have to leave out in the country and go to Paducah. AND LIVE with somebody in Paducah, paying room and board, and get a job. Sometimes they would have a teacher in the country who was real smart and would help them a lot. So he never actually went to high school, but his teacher tutored him and he passed his grades and everything and he got his diploma.
A: He had to pay room and board, in Valporaiso, how did he do that?
G: He worked his way through, washing windows, scrubbing floors on Saturdays. Helping with the cleaning, sometimes he would help serve meals in the dining room. He worked his way through school, paid his own way through school.
A: And then he came back and went to work at the bank.
G: No he never did go to work at the bank.
A: He never did go to work at the bank even though a man had offered him a job?
G: No. He didn't want to work inside.
A: Well how did you meet Grandpa if he lived in the country and you lived in Paducah?
G:. My gosh we were cousins.
A: Oh, you were cousins? Tell me about that.
G: Dad and I were related -- His mother's mother or grandmother was a twin and his grandfather and my grandfather were twins. These twin boys and twin girls married -- so -- that was my great grandfather and his greatgrand father or something, anyhow that's how we were related.
A: What was the name of this grandfather?
G: Byerly, and the twin girls were named Schoolfield. So that's why we are doubly related. Ethel says that's why we are idiots.
A: When grandpa came back from college -- when did he ask you to mary him?
G: Oh, no, he had been out of school. His father died in 1912 and we got married in 1915. And all that time we were writing back and forth.
A: When did he go to the war?
G: Oh, he never did go to war. That was in 1918.
A: OK, so he went out west and he got a job and came back and got you and your mother objected?
G: He wrote and asked me to marry him and I said yes, my mother didn't say yes, I said yes. So he took my word for it.
A: You went to the county clerk's office?
G: Yes, we went to my minister and we got married by the minister of my church, the Presbyterian church.
A: Then you went to visit Grandpa's family?
G: We just went out there to see them to tell them goodbye. We were leaving.
A: You just went to see his folks, you were leaving?
G: His mother. She was a widow.
A: Did you tell your mother goodbye?
G: Why sure, we told her goodbye when we left because we knew when were going down to see Dad's mother that we would go right on from there to Nevada. To go back to Paducah would just be retracing our steps.
A: So after you caught the trolley from your mom's house and went out and got married --
G: Train!
A: You came back to your house. You said your mom was sitting in the living room when he came and she knew what he had come for.
G: Yes, well we got married that day and went to church that night. I went home with a friend of mine who lived next door to my mother, and stayed all night with her. That was the first night we were married. Then, the next day we took the train and went down to see his mother and brothers. We left ther the following morning and went out west, and I never got back to for three years.
A: It was winter because you got married on Christmas.
G: Christmas day. 1915. On he second of January, 1916 is when we got to Ely, Nevada and we went into housekeeping. Dad had the house all rented.
A: What kind of job did he have?
G: He was working for the Nevada Consolidated Copper Company. He was what they called a "Mill Man". In the town we lived in was a mill and smelter -- McGill, Nevada. When we first got married we went to Ely, Nevada and he worked in McGill. McGill was 15 miles from Ely. The mine was at Ruth, and that was 14 miles the other side of Ely. He worked at Ruth a little while, but not after I went there. They had ore trains that took the men back and forth to work.
A: They were like commuter trains now?
G: Right. And then -- that's a long time ago!
A: How did they teach him to be a diamond drill man?
G: He just did it himself. They needed the men to do it and he did it.
A: Did you ahve to move when he got the diamond drill job?
G: No that was before we were married. I never lived in Ruth, because Ruth as a company town. Ely was the county seat of White Pine Count, Nevada. So you didn't even have towork for the company to live in Ely. But if you lived in Ruth or McGill you had to work for the company and rent a company house.
A: So all the money went back to the company?
G: No, you paid rent, but it wasn't that expensive.
A: Would it have been cheaper to live in a company house?
G: Well, it was the only thing you could do.
A: If you lived in McGill or Ruth. But, Grandpa had decided to rent the house in Ely. Why there and not a company house?
G: Because he wasn't married, you had to be married to get a house.
A: Did you enjoy your time in Nevada?
G: Sure, had a good time.
A: Why did you like the snow?
G: I liked the altitude, and I liked the people.
A: You didn't mind the squaws?
G: There weren't that many.
A: Grandpa did the job as mill man for the three years you were out in Nevada?
G: Right, for the time we lived there.
A: What made you decide to come back this way?
G: That was when he thought he was going to go into the service, wrold war One. He was out there, people out there were from everywhere. All over the country. People just moved in, you know, and you got to know people from everywhere. Just like a big club, everybody was from someplace else.
A: When did Grandpa find he had to go into the service?
G: I was pregnant. Out there, it was a small place, and Dad belonged to the Odd Fellows Lodge. The man who was head of the draft board was a big lodge man and he liked Dad. And here when I though he was to be drafted, and I was pregnant, and my folks lived clear back in Kentucky. Dad just couldn't see leaving me there all by myself, or sending me back home by myself. So they gave him a deferrment for a while. Then he saw in the paper where if by a certain date he would go and apply at Fort Sam Houston, texas he could get in the engineering corps. That's what he wanted to do. You could go there and then you wouldn't have to wait for the draft, instead of going in and taking just wahtever came up. We sold our furniture and stuf and went to Salt Lake City where you had to sign up. They told him there he didn't have a release from his draft board and they needed men in Nitro, West Virginia in a powder plant. They were making up a train then and he could go there. He coudl get my ticket and sent me back to Kentucky. He would get a train and go to Nitro, W. Va. and work there until this thing came through from Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
A: So he couldn't go to Fort Sam Houston until he got a release from his Nevada draft board?
G: Right. Read tape, a lot of red tape. So here got in this flu epidemic. Did you hear about that during the first war? Called the Spanish Influenza. People were dying like flies. Dad got real sick and they thought he was going to die, and they had him pushed off to one side, with the curtains around him, you know, to die, and he didn't do it. Mean old devil! It had rained and rained and rained -- down in West Virginia. Nitro. He woke up one morning and the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day, so he told whoever was in charge to get his clothes, he was leaving. Dad said "I don't care, I'm going!" By gosh, they got him his clothes, and he left and took the train back to Paducah.
A: So he wasn't in the Army?
G: He never was in the Army. Ethel said when they were over at the funeral home and were trying to get these thing straightened out, Rita knew something, and Patricia knew something else. Patricia was positive she knew what was what. Ha, ha, I'm glad I wasn't there! I'll bet it was funny.
G: So now where were we and waht else do you want to know?
A: What happened when Grandpa came back to Paducah? Had you already had Patricia?
G: Yes, Patricia was seven months old when we came back east. She was born March 24, 1918.
A: What did you do when you came back to Paducah?
G: I went to my mother's. Dad didn't want me to stay in Paducah, because, you see, he was raised on the farm, and he didn't want me to go to Paducah. He made me promise that I would go to his mother's. So I was at his mother's when he was in Nitro with the flu. Then when he came home, the first thing he did was go right to Paducah to pick Patrica and me up.
A: You were at the farm.
G: Yes, then we went to Aunt Eulah's and Uncle Tilden's. We just went down there and parked till Dad got well. WhenDad commenced to get better he helped them strip tobacco. We had the best time that winter. We played cards at night.
A: Aunt Eulah was a good card player! Did she make a burnt sugar cake for you? Oh, I love those things!
G: Yes. If I ever get so I can cook again I'm going to bake one. I've got the recipe.
G: We stayed there and then he decided he could get a job in Mobile Alabama at the Alabama dry docks. So he went down and got a job down there, and sent for Patricia and me and went down. I wasn't there 3 weeks when my mother got sick and we though she wasn't going to live so Patrica and I went back to Paducah. Then I stayed with my mother for al ong time because she was sick and I took care of her. Pat worked in Mobile until they had a big strike. The war was over and the need for men wasn't great any more. It was getting close to time for harvesting in Ballard County where Uncle Jim and Uncle Tilden lived. He went down and helped them make hay and stuff like that, because when they came with this big strike down there he was out of work -- he wouldn't break a strike. So we went back to the country, and Aunt Alma and part with AuntEulah and Uncle Tilden.
A: When did you have Aunt Rita
G: 1923
A: Was that when you were living in Paducah?
G: No we were living in Lakemore.
A: Now, we never made the transition from Paducah to Lakemore.
G: Well, wehnt eh strikes was going on in Mobile, rubber shops were going full blast in Akron -- that was in 1918 and 1919. So he and Uncle Reno heard work was real good up in Akron. Reno was driving a taxi cab. Dad came up and got himself a job and told Reno to come. Reno wasn't married then. I came up on the train with Patricia, Uncle reno, and a friend of his. They both got jobs. Dad had rented a three room place with a closed in back porch. We gave the sleeping room to Reno and this friend of his. Cause you just couldn't get rooms in Akron for love nor money. Rooms, or anything, they could get any price they wanted for it. We paid $50.00 a week for the three rooms and split the rent with Reno and his friend.
A: How much money were they making?
G: Oh, I don't know, but they were making good money.
A: When was this?
G: We came up in August of 1919. Then Dad and I got two light hosekeeping rooms in Kenmore, Reno went to himself, and this other fellow went to himself.
A: Where is Kenmore, in relation to Lakemore?
G: do you know wehre the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company is? It's right out in that area.
A: When did you move to Lakemore?
g: 1919
A: Was there new housing there?
G: We rented a house.
A: With an option to buy it?
G: No, there was a man who died and his sons wanted to rent the house. This was next door to Mrs. Schwartz's. Do you remember Mrs. Schwartz?