| Summary: | (2:59) Cleo McDaniel talks about growing up on a farm, funerals, and church. This interview is part of an oral history project funded by a grant from the Alabama Historical Records Board, managed by the Alabama Department of Archives and History staff, using funds provided by the National Historical Preservation and Records Commission.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Cleo McDaniel
May 6, 2009
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Patti Hannah and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 4 of 5
Ronda Haygood: What did you grow on your farm?
Cleo McDaniel: My dad growed cotton, and hay, and corn and—
RH: Did you have to help?
CM: I picked cotton and chopped.
RH: What was that like?
CM: That was fun.
Patti Hannah: Fun, huh?
CM: [laughs] Yeah, it was fun. I didn’t mind picking cotton.
PH: Did you not?
CM: Unh-uh. I never will, will forget about what Tur—, Junior Hannah said one time we was picking, we was picking along, and he said, “A-a-a-a, Miss Cleo” said “Y-y-y-you ain’t gonna—”, let me see, how did he say it? You know he kind of stuttered when he talked, and he said, “Y-Y-You ain’t gonna sit on your sack and beat me,” [laughs], cause I could beat nearly all of them at picking cotton. He said, said, “You ain’t gonna sit on your sack and beat me.” [laughs]
PH: Did you get to keep your money? Or did—
CM: I kept my money.
PH: From that?
CM: I got to spend my own money that I made.
PH: What did you spend it on?
CM: Mostly, mostly hose. Gosh, I was the roughest, I was the roughest thing on hose that ever was. One time we was playing up on the hill and, and I went to the house and I had on some new, new stockings and I had just tore a plug out of them, just a big plug. And these Grimes girls was with me and so they said—went in and I said “Mama, I tore a little hole in my stocking” and there it was, just a whole plug tore out, tore a little, little hole. You know the good little girls wore dresses back then, and had to wear hose.
PH: Bless your heart.
RH: Yeah, really.
CM: Yeah, I tore that, just a plug out of them in up there on that hill, climbing trees and playing around. We had a lot of fun, lot of fun. We thought we, we thought we had a hard time back then, but we didn’t. I just growed up in a big family and just got as tough as they was.
RH: What did y’all do when people got sick? Who took care of them?
CM: Well they just took care of each other, like they do now. Anybody got sick in the neighborhood, the neighbors went and helped out.
PH: What about funerals?
CM: Well, now when they had a funeral out at Pisgah somebody’d ring the bell and everybody’d gather to dig the grave. Um-hm. Yeah, people would go, you know, just ever what they was doing, they’d just quit and go cause they knew there was gonna be a grave dug. Course there ain’t no such thing as that now.
RH: Did you have much music in your home?
CM: None of us wasn’t musical inclined. We had a graph—what is, phonograph, I guess. But, one time Papa got an old, ah, banjo I think. He made like he could play it, but he couldn’t.
PH: What about church? Did y’all go to Pisgah?
CM: Um-hum. Yeah there was big crowds went out there then. Lot of people went to Pisgah.
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