| Summary: | (7:10) Mr. Gibbs tells about growing up during the great Depression. 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 Lewis Gibbs
July 29, 2009
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 2 of 5
Clint Alley: Well, did y’all play any kinda games when you were a child?
Lewis Gibbs: Oh yeah, oh yeah. We, we played baseball and marbles and rode horses and mules. My father put us in the cattle business one time, my brother and I. We had a Jersey calf born to the milk cow and he gave it to us and said, “If you boys take care of that, well, you can have it.” And we raised the little old calf and got him up about half-grown and sold him to Mr. Threet, got three dollars for him.
[laughter]
LG: That’s when I ended my cattle farming company.
[laughter]
LG: And we hunted, we had hunting, hunting dogs and had a, some close neighbors that we thought the world of and loved and I wrote my life’s history and I included the little community. But we had some good neighbors and some boys that were good friends of ours.
CA: So y’all did a lot of things outdoors?
LG: Outdoors. Everything was outdoors.
CA: Well do you remember, ah, when y’all got electricity?
LG: Yes, sir.
CA: Remember about what year it was?
LG: Ah, about ’30, 1930. I remember when they built the lines. We rigged us up a safety belt and we’d climb trees like the linemen did, you know.
[laughter]
LG: And that was about 1930.
CA: Um hm. So was that part of the New Deal, was that with TVA?
LG: That was, well that was before TVA. There was a dairy farm in our neighborhood, and they built a power line in to him, and we was on the, on the route, so we got power. And then the TVA took over. When I was a little small child, I used to hear my father say, “Someday they’ll pump power down here from Wilson Dam.” And it wasn’t but a few years till I seen it.
CA: Um hm. Well do you remember when FDR came to the Shoals?
LG: Yes, sir.
CA: Did you go to hear him speak?
LG: No, I didn’t. But, the second trip that he came here, he went to Tupelo, Mississippi. We went to the Barton Depot to see the train pass, and that’s the closest I got to FDR. I voted for him once, the first year I was married, 1944 I voted for FDR.
CA: So you got to vote for him on his last, his last run for office?
LG: His last run for office, and he died a short time after he was elected. I helped put his monument over in Florence [Sheffield]. I was on the committee that helped, I done a small part in raising that monument that they, put there in Sheffield.
CA: Okay. Well, did you serve in the military?
LG: Yes, sir. I had a physical defect and I didn’t serve in the early part of the war, until it was nearly over, and they took me, physical defect and all, put me in the military.
CA: Oh, okay.
LG: And I stayed in the military twelve, thirteen months.
CA: What branch was it?
LG: I was trained in the infantry, and I went into the military police patrolling in, in Japan. I was in the Company B [A], of the 800th MP Battalion.
CA: So you, were you sent over there after the war was over?
LG: After the war was over, yes.
CA: So you were on occupation duty?
LG: Occupational Army, right.
CA: But, do you, what do you remember about the Depression? I guess those were your coming-up years.
LG: Yeah, the main thing I remember was money was so scarce. I remember my father and his brothers talking about raising cotton, and I made this speech at UNA. Cotton was a nickel a pound, five cents a pound. And the average farmer—two-horse farmer, that’s what the average was—could raise about five bales or three, three-to-five bales. And that was $25 a bale, so that’d be $125 that he’d have to make his crop, feed his family, and take care of all the expenses. And I, I remember that being so, money was so scarce. And I’m conservative to this day on account of it.
CA: Um hm.
LG: Young people can’t understand it, they can’t understand why. My own children, my own kids can’t understand it. But that’s the basis of it right there. There just wasn’t anything to waste in my childhood and I still got that trend.
CA: Well do you remember when the, when the banks failed and the stock market crashed?
LG: Yes, sir, yes, sir I do. The banks failed after Roosevelt took over. He, he done about what’s been done now, he just wiped them out and then started new with the banks. But he didn’t, he didn’t loan any corporations money like this group has. But I remember well when the banks closed.
CA: Well, were you, were you still at home when all that happened?
LG: Yeah, yeah. I made the biggest mistake I ever made in my life, I, I dropped out of high school. I was a big, healthy boy, and I had to stay out in the fall to help my father gather the crop. And we changed schools. I went from the Barton Elementary School to Cherokee to the high school. And I guess I was afraid and bashful and behind and I dropped out of high school, and I’ve been trying to educate myself ever since. And I guess I’ve been going to ILR at UNA sixteen years. So I guess I pretty well got a college education now.
[laughter]
CA: Did, so you were a freshman when you quit school?
LG: I was eighth grade. Which was not unusual for a country boy in those days. I mean it, it gets back to the money problem. I thought that my father needed me to help him raise, take care of the family. He finally got a little pension, which was, helped a lot in those days. It was about $20 a month, and you could buy a lot of things for $20 during the Depression.
CA: So you worked, you worked on the farm throughout the Depression, then. Did you stay—
LG: Yeah.
CA: —Okay.
LG: Yeah, and after I quit school, I hired out. That was all there was for a country boy to do, is to hire out somebody that needs somebody to farm for them. And about fifty cents a day was the going wage for a growing boy.
CA: Fifty cents a day.
LG: I worked for my uncle, W.J. Blankenship, and he paid me a dollar a day. So I was really in the money.
[laughter]
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