| Summary: | (6:05) Mrs. Mussleman tells a story about her early school days and also talks about her memories of local hospitals.Florence- Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Helen Mussleman
March 4, 2008
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Freda Daily
Clip 5
Freda Daily: I, I wonder about music and little songs you might remember from your childhood.
Helen Mussleman: Oh, I, I’d hear my mother hum about “Frog Went- a- Courting” and “Barbie Ellen” and my daddy would sing some songs, but I forgot how, I mean I don’t remember them.
FD: Did you, teach you, did you sing in school, and, did you, in your school days did they sing?
HM: We didn’t, didn’t do much singing in school, unuh. Man, we was down in those books where I went. J. O. Davis was the principal and we was kind of scared of him, and I got in his room, and he meant get your lessons. You had to memorize it to know it, cause he’d read, start reading blank, and you fill in the blank. And I didn’t like history, I mean, I wasn’t much on history. I liked spelling and arithmetic. You know how there used to be classes all back here and you go up on the front seat and trap, they miss a question, you get it and you trap them and go ahead and such as that. And I never will forget he wanted us to read and tell about the Marathon War in geography. Well, I had a, there’s a window beside my bed here and one at the head of my bed and course then we had them raised up, you know—
FD: Screens.
HM: -- and another screen, doors latched, and yeah, and I’m in there, and I mean I was in this room in the bed with, studying that lesson and my brother, he’s in another room, and my mama and daddy in another room. Next morning I woke up, that book was right there, my brother said he came in there at three o’clock, the lamp was on [inaudible] and blowed the lamp out. And I woke up singing that thing. I memorized it, the whole thing. And, when we, so each one had to stand up there and read, I mean tell about it, by his desk. And I got up there and I started reading on and he said, “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute.” He said, “Start over. ”I started over, of course, I was saying it word by word and that’s what he caught on to. And then we had a man, Mr. Springer, that was head over the, superintendent over all schools and he would come out there and sit up there with him and he would ask us questions, you know, that we had Mr. Davis [inaudible] and on, and I, I, as I said our knees would be knocking together and scared to death. So, one time after I went, starting working in a hospital, nursing in the hospital, after I married and fifty years old, I went to school and Humana opened up as Colonial Manor and I went to work over there. I went in one evening at three something and somebody said I was gonna work the back hall and I had a Mr. Springer had come in that day. And he came to my mind, said he was a elderly man, so I went down, you know, I was going visiting around and his wife was with him and I walked in there and started talking to him and I said, uh, “I want to ask you a question. Are you the Mr. Springer used to be superintendent over all the schools?” He said, “Yes, I am.” I said, “Did you know that you used to come to school and just scare the life out of me and have my knees a-knocking?” And I said, “I got you now. You got to do as I say.” I said, “I just may bring a enema in here.” His wife, his wife just laughed and laughed. Oh, me. Yeah, we had a lot of fun out there at that hospital. Everybody that went to the hospital out there wanted to come back.
FD: How far back do you remember the hospital, Coffee or any of them. When you were a child did you know there was one?
HM: Oh, yeah. Umhm. Oh, yeah. I was down, I went down in there. I had a friend died down in there and then my sister was in there and had surgery in there. Oh, yeah, I remember that hospital, I remember.
FD: Um, tell me about—
HM: And then they made a, [inaudible], they bought it and made a cafeteria out of it. Let’s see now, what’s their name that did that? Down in the basement.
FD: Yes.
HM: Yeah. What’s their name? Started with an S. Anyway—
FD: Over close to the new library, close to First Baptist Church.
HM: No, in that old hospital.
FD: In the old hospital?
HM: Yeah, in the old hospital, down in the basement was a cafeteria. And she rented out rooms upstairs. Oh, her son was something [but down here now] and I cannot think of their name. And then there was a nurses’ home next door, where nurses stayed and she had those rooms rented out. We’d go down there on Sunday afternoon, even after I married, people, oh, everywhere when down there and ate after church. Only one time, Dr. Cloyd, my doctor back then, he was a friend, too, he, he ate, he’d eat there too, you know. One time he says, “I’m not a- going down there,” ( I’d give anything if I could think of her name,) “and eating at that place anymore.” Said, “You know”, said, “I went in Hill’s grocery store the other day and I wanted me a pasteboard box, and they told me to go back in the back and find the kind I wanted, where they had stuff. ”Said, “I go back there and you know what she was doing?” Says, “She was back there, they had old lettuce, it was ruined,” ( you know how it’ll get bad) “and she was picking through it, picking out some pieces of good leaves.” He said, “I’m not eating down there no more.” Oh, yeah, Dr. Cloyd was something else, Thomas D. Cloyd.
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