| Summary: | (5:27) Mrs. Mussleman tells about living near the Tennessee River, going to shcool and seeing President Roosevelt during the early 1900s in Florence, Alabama.Florence- Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Helen Mussleman
March 4, 2008
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Freda Daily
Clip 1
Freda Daily: We’re here with Mrs. Helen Mussleman and we’re going to talk about her childhood and
how she grew up in Lauderdale County. And she’s going to tell you how old she is and then just tell us about her childhood.
Helen Mussleman: Well, I’m ninety years old and I will be ninety- one in, if I live, in the sixteenth of this month, ninety- one.
FD: And this month is March—
HM: March—
FD: — of 2008
HM: — 2008. And I grew up during the construction of Wilson Dam. We had boarders at our house that walked from our house over to the Wilson Dam through the woods. We lived out from, ah Huntsville Road. I don’t know exactly what they call the place now, they say they have houses out there now; I haven’t been out to see. And everybody carried water from a spring down in the holler on every hill over there. But we had these boarders and two of them married two of my sisters and then they lived with us part of the time and then we moved down to East Florence on the creek and, ah, we had boarders there and I was around, that was before I ever went to school and I started when I was six years old at Weeden Heights School, the old Weeden Heights School though, and walked, I don’t know how far it was through Weeden’s pasture, across the creek and across the foot log and over the sties, the fences and to the Weeden Heights School. You know where the Broadway Recreation Center is, that’s where the old schoolhouse sits. And that’s where I started, in the Primer.
FD: How big was the school?
HM: Well, we had three rooms, three, it was three school, you know, classrooms at that time. And I was in the Primer, they called it the Primer and I had the Little Red Hen book and that was our lessons, was the Little Red Hen book. But we, ah, and then we lived up by Wilson Dam Road, this side of Wilson Dam Road, on the old highway in the, in the pines, all around us, and the house is still there but they bricked it, but it’s homes all in there now and across the road was fields and everything and then Weeden Heights subdivision started down below, we had a ball diamond down there and then Weeden Heights subdivision started down there. But we lived there when President Roosevelt was elected and he came out of Wilson Dam Road, right below my house, and I stood right on the gravel as he come by my house going into Florence and I have the picture of him in, in this car. He was sitting in a two seated car with his top throwed back and he was sitting up on top with his feet in the seat holding his hat in one hand and holding on with the other, and he was going into Florence, Alabama.
FD: The men who worked and, and, and boarded with you—
HM: Yes.
FD: — ah, they’re, how old were they and were they experienced or local boys or—
HM: Yeah, they were local boys and they, ah, you know, just helped construction of the Wilson Dam. One of my, my sister’s husbands went on to make an, a foreman, and then he followed these works, you know, where, where they built the Pickwick, you know, and that, they followed those down, and the constructions of those dams.
FD: Do you remember how the river looked before the dam and how after, any difference?
HM: Well, yeah, the river you know was just, just like a big wide river, but then when they started, you know the dam was dug out down there [ inaudible] I don’t know how they did it to stop the water to dig out, but they dug out down there and there was some man buried in concrete in that, that, in there and they couldn’t get him out. I don’t know his name, but I just knew that they talked about it. They have names down there, they say, on the power house, there where you go down to the power house they have names of people that died that worked on that Wilson Dam. I’ve been down in the power house, but it’s been a long time ago; I went to the power house.
FD: And, uh, I’m, I’m thinking about, how, how deep was the river back then when you were a little girl?
HM: Oh, I don’t know. They had places they could ford it. I don’t know exactly, you know, how deep it was, but I know they had some places they could cross it.
FD: Did you ever, ah, fish or anybody in your family fish?
HM: Oh, yeah. We’d go down there and fish and swim, too, in the slough. Oh, yeah, in that nasty water. Didn’t think about it being nasty back then, but we did.
FD: Yeah, and it probably wasn’t as dirty as now.
HM: No, oh, no, no. It wasn’t as much stuff in it then as it is now, but, oh, yes, we fished below the dam, Wilson Dam. They called it the Rock Pile.
FD: Then they called it the Rock Pile?
HM: Called it the Rock Pile, there’s lots of rocks, you know, and we’d sit there and fish. Oh yeah.
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