Scott's Run Voices
Interview with: SR 4
Interviewed by: Kirk Hazen
Transcribed by: Erica Flowers
Edited by: Laura Brady

Water

But during those times it was you know and we had to carry water. I first remember that we had to go to the well and carry water. Because we didn’t always have water in our houses, you know. Then when the coal mining, the coal company [came], they put up an old fashioned pump.

The hand pumps. Yeah . . . about every six houses, they put a pump. So we still had to carry water. I remember buckets of water we had to carry especially on wash days.

Monday: Wash Day and Bread Day

Monday was wash day and bread day. My Momma made bread. She’d make bread that would last the whole week. We’d wash clothes and bake. And I remember we’d come home from school and had to finish the washing cause we didn’t always have washing machines. We had the oppression--the rub board

I thank God for my raising. It has made me appreciate life so much. I can really appreciate things you know now because I knew the hard time. But everybody did their washing like that, you’d see a line clothes line because everybody because everybody had to put your clothes outside because you didn’t have a dryer

So you’d walk down the community and this row of houses and almost everybody washed Monday and you’d see just lines and lines of clothes and things were pretty and white. I remember the clothes were so white the sun would sparkle on them, you know, cause you’d wash twice and rinsed twice.

All day, you was washing all day, and we came from school. Because what my mom didn’t do, we got a chance to do. I remember when my dad bought our washing machine he said, “My God she’d about wash herself to death.” Because we finally got a washer. Everyday the washing machine was up until we got use to it.

Pursglove #2

Pursglove number two that’s where we lived. Pursglove two and over on the other hill was Pursglove number eight. They was all owned by the same man, but the little community like a little nest of houses maybe about fifty families. Maybe a little bit more than that, maybe a little less. But that was called Pursglove number two and then over on the other hill there was one called Pursglove number eight. And they had their own little school building and their own little church and that’s how it was.

Soup Lines and the WPA

I remember vaguely the soup lines right here in Osage. I remember when the WPA was first started and I must’ve been about eight years old maybe when all that started WPA then they had just a soup line. A place in Osage made big meals and you just stand in line and went and got the food. You had a hot lunch

Quakers

Okay I remember, and this was when I was in grade school, maybe second, third, fourth grade. But I remember the Quakers came here. There’s a building up the road about two miles called the Shack, have you heard anything about the shack?

There was a shack and they came together and sponsored a hot lunch program for the kids from all the schools. Okay all the schools in these communities like Pursglove, over Pursglove number eight whatever. The Quakers did that-- they sponsored a hot lunch program and the moms would come and cook everyday and so the kids everyday at lunch time we had a good hot meal, a good hot lunch.

They had certain days each mom cooked , certain days have three or four moms cook Monday, three or four moms cooked Tuesday. I remember those meals were good. We always had fruit and sometimes you didn’t get fruit at home you know, but they always had fruit. Always gave you a real nourishing meal, a hot bowl of soup and some crackers or peanut butter on nice brown thick bread and jelly

Everyday Life

My brother-in-law had a car and we just thought it was just great if we could just ride from Pursglove to Osage. That was just the greatest cause we walked everywhere. Bus fare was just about a nickel, I think. I remember candy bars were two cents. We use to sell pop bottles to get money to buy some pop, you know, candy, something sweet that we craved.

But relations were real good. Everybody knew everybody. And if anybody got sick, people call midwives. I didn’t call them that--just mothers that knew anything if anybody got sick, like pneumonia or something, they knew what to conjure up. All kinds of saps and oils

Home Remedies

Yeah, I wish I remember that stuff that my mom knew because you didn’t go to doctor all the time. First off you couldn’t afford it, and then they had one company doctor. One thing, the coal mines would provide a doctor for all, and so you needed the doctor when he was somewhere else. Mrs. Williams needed him, or the boys needed a doctor? Well he was over at Pursglove number eight so you couldn’t always get a doctor and so, but they knew what to use. You had whooping cough with pneumonia or whatever and it worked. And all kinds of teas and roots and herbs.

You kept stuff all the time. My mother kept sassafras tea and she kept all kind of roots. I can’t remember all the stuff that she did have. And when you got something, she just knew what to make. And I remember she made homemade cough syrup. This was good, now. She would take a whole lemon and cut it up the peel and all, and she would take onions and cut that up in there, and then she would take honey if she could--or even sugar, and put that in the oven and let that bake, and it came a real thick syrup. And that’s what she gave you for cough. That lemon did it and that onion. It didn’t taste very good, but it did the job.

Osage and the Company Store

In Osage, my goodness, it was a business town--had two department stores, I think. I forget how many. We had an A&P here and I don’t know how many grocery stores and a company store. Let me tell you what a company store is.

Okay. A company store, it’s owned by the man who owned the coal mines. Okay. They would have a great big store and they had almost everything in the store and what they didn’t have in the store you could get. Then what they did, like you go to the company store, okay, just like you go to a market and shop, that’s what they had, but you had credit from the company. So my dad never had any money and I’ll tell you why: because our store bill was always bigger than the money that he made, so he was always in the hole as they use to call it. There was a lot of families like that, you know. Your store bill was more than you worked cause there was a big family of us. Everybody wasn’t like that. Some people just didn’t use the company store at all. They just went to stores in Osage. Oh yes, you could, but not till we got old and began to get after-school jobs and things, and we could, you know, help out.

Family

There was nine of us in the house, seven kids and dad and mom made nine of us and we lived in a four-room house. All the houses were four rooms. And you made and you just lived good. I don’t know how you did it. Now we couldn’t do it. I’m telling you I look back now and wonder, but we had two bedrooms upstairs and one for the boys and one for the girls cause you had two big beds in every room. And everybody had the same thing. You had two big beds and girls slept over here some at the top, some at the bottom--you put two up to the top and two down to the bottom. Think about that, but it was fun.It was fun, it really was, and we had a little heater in our room. You had little coal stoves everywhere and you kept the room warm.

After we got bigger where we could get real jobs and my brothers carried the newspapers, we was able to help out at home and you really didn’t mind doing that because you saw the sacrifice that mom and dad made for you. We bought linoleums and I bought my mom a rocking chair and my sister bought my mother a rocking chair. She always wanted one. Like I said, we got linoleums on the floors and curtains and pretty bedspreads. After we got bigger and then my dad began to have some money, you know, we went to school. I had one sister that went to college. We went away. I went to Washington to work and so the family dribbled down to just two, my baby brother and baby sister, so then there was money.

Swimming

And oh my goodness. . . . I remember the swimming pool, when you first got the swimming pool in the area. The coal miners got together and had a swimming pool made, built up at the Shack. Oh it was fun. We didn’t have a swimming pool cause you could go to the river, you know. When the kids wanted to swim, they’d go to the river to swim because we didn’t have anywhere to swim, but when the coal miners got together and had a swimming pool built (it’s up at the Shack and it’s still there the swimming pool is) that’s when we got a chance to go to the swimming pool.

Or you could find a little creek and dam it up and swim in that, but that was muddy water and you didn’t know what was in it, you know. Oh God, I remember my brother-in-law threw me in one time, one of these muddy rivers, muddy ponds, just stopped it up, and it scared me to death, I tell you what, cause you don’t know what’s in mud. You don’t know whether you ‘re going to run into snakes or whatever. But you know, I didn’t get in there no more. I said. "I’ll never do that again!