| Summary: | [8:13] Mrs. James discusses life in the Shoals area during the early 1900s.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Ella Ruth Carter James
January 15, 2009
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Patti Hannah and Rhonda Haygood
(Also present: Martha James, Susan Anderson, Becky Jones)
Clip 2 of 2
Rhonda Haygood: Can you tell us some of what it was like during the war years? You had some stamps here.
Martha James: Ration stamps.
RH: Ration stamps. What was that like? What did you have to do with those?
Ella James: Oh, we had that card, you know, just get so much―sugar was the, what we had to do without. We hated to have to do without sugar. You know, we just had, could get, allowed so many pounds of―I don’t know how long, how often we could, have to go get that, but that was the main thing is sugar. I can remember we wouldn’t have sugar to sweeten our coffee or anything, whatever we had to sweeten, you know. Now we don’t think anything about that, do we?
Patti Hannah: Unh-uh
Susan Anderson: Well what about other food? What did you do for other food? Would you trade food with a neighbor, or how, or would you just depend on what you could grow to be yours?
EJ: For vegetables?
SA: Um-hm
EJ: Oh, my daddy had a sharecropper and he would, you know, divide the farm, you know, corn and cottons and the vegetables, whatever they grew in the garden and then my mother would can them.
Becky Jones: Tell them about getting your chickens, Mama Ella, out of the back yard.
MJ: Chickens
BJ: Tell them about getting your chickens out of the back yard.
EJ: Well, course then we just let them run, they go anywhere they wanted to, you know, come back to roost in that barn, big barn we had behind there. But, ah, we had, I know we had a horse and one of them was named Fred after my older brother and one horse was named Minnie after my older sister. And that’s the only two that I can remember having. And I remember they put in a new fence around our pasture to divide from the other pasture and one of the horses, I don’t remember which one it—
stepped in one of them holes they didn’t cover up, broke its leg and they had to shoot him. They had the veterinarian to come out there and put the bandage on his, splints or whatever you call them, on his leg and when he waked up from—he got up and shook all that off. And that’s when they just put it to sleep. I remember that. I remember all, we [unintelligible], we didn’t want to hear the shot.
RH: Yeah.
EJ: I can remember that.
SA: So, would you go out and ring a chicken’s neck if you wanted to get a chicken for dinner?
EJ: Yeah, we’d have to go pull a—mama did, I never did have to go out there then, when we was in the country, but mama’d just pick up a fryer, if we wanted one, ring its neck off, dress it—
BJ: I’ve heard you tell stories about that chicken running around after it didn’t have its head on.
EJ: Flop around.
MJ: Just flop.
EJ: Yeah.
MJ: Not long, honey.
EJ: Till it died. Oh, my goodness. Y’all don’t know nothing what we had to put up with.
MJ: It wouldn’t be long.
EJ: Y’all got a easy time.
RH: Did it not bother you to see that?
EJ: No.
RH: You were just used to it?
EJ: I guess so. You get used to anything, you know.
RH: Yeah.
EJ: Yeah.
BJ: Mama Ella, which, which president was it that came through Florence that you saw that time?
EJ: Who—President—
SA: The President
BJ: The President, our President of the United States.
EJ: Roosevelt
BJ: Roosevelt. When he came through when?
EJ: That was when they were building the dam. He came through and my sister lived on Huntsville Road. He came down with, I don’t know how many more in the—it was a touring car, with the top let down and he was in the back seat. I had that picture somewhere.
BJ: Roosevelt?
EJ: Yeah, with, with a hat on, sitting in the back seat of that touring car. And he came down, we all went over at my sister’s house and stayed there till that, till he came through and I had that picture. He had on a black felt hat, you know. Top hat.
SA: Course, you remember the first TV and the first—
EJ: Well, we didn’t, we didn’t have a car until after I married, then, then we bought our first car.
RH: Did you learn to drive it pretty quick?
EJ: Yeah, yeah, I used to drive. I don’t now. They won’t let me.
SA: Although she has a current driver’s license.
RH: Ok.
SA: We just got it renewed last May.
EJ: Yeah, I renewed mine because I think, well now maybe sometime I might want to drive.
BJ: Mama Ella, I just told them you went to vote in the election, too.
EJ: Yeah, well, yeah, I went down and voted.
PH: Do you remember the first time you voted?
EJ: No, I don’t.
PH: You know?
EJ: No, I don’t. I don’t remember the first and I don’t know who I voted for the first time. Unh-uh. Wish I did.
RH: Did you go downtown Florence, shopping very much? Where was your favorite place to shop?
EJ: Roger’s Department store. That’s where we’d head for. That, that was the main store. And then, talking about—they had a place in the middle of Court Street to hitch your horses to, you know, when you bring them in and my mother would drive that buggy and I don’t know how many of us would go but I remember going down to town, to, we’d call it town, then and she’d hitch the horses to that hitching post on Court Street till we got through and then we’d come back home.
BJ: How long did it take you to get downtown in the buggy?
EJ: Honey, I don’t know. I don’t know how long it’d take that horse to get—I know my mother’s sister, Aunt Sally Potts, lived at Waterloo and Aunt Ella lived at Riverton and we’d go down and spend the, maybe a night with her and we thought we were going to the other side of the world to go from here to Waterloo, you know, ‘bout like, would feel like, well, boy we’re just going to the other side of the world, to go to Waterloo to spend the night with Aunt Sally Potts.
RH: Can you tell us what it was like celebrating Christmas when you were younger.
EJ: Well, we didn’t cel—
MJ: When you were young.
EJ: Not like we do now, no. If we had one apple and one orange in our stocking, we’d hang our stockings up, if we had one apple and one orange in there we thought we was—maybe a stick of peppermint candy, that’s about all we’d get. We wouldn’t get toys like these children get today. No. My dad didn’t have that kind of money. We had kind of hard times growing up. We didn’t think about it being hard times, though, you know, you don’t think about it being—we had plenty, we had as much as we wanted to eat and everything, but wasn’t like, easy getting like it is now.
RH: What about Christmas trees? Did you have a decorated Christmas tree?
EJ: Yeah, we’d have a tree, but I can’t think of—I can’t remember, if it would be Christmas presents, it’d be some homemade Christmas presents, maybe, maybe we’d get a pair of socks, maybe something like that, you know, that would be—wouldn’t be, wouldn’t be a radio, wouldn’t be a TV. Wouldn’t be a car. Oh, my.
RH: Did you have special dress codes when you were at school?
EJ: No. No. No, just wore anything we had. My mother did all the sewing, made all my clothes. I still sew, but my eyes are getting so bad just here lately, but I can see better without my glasses to do sewing. I reckon I’m nearsighted, that would be nearsighted. I made a—I made Auburn aprons, Tennessee Aprons and, ah—
MJ: For our church bazaar she made a—
EJ: Yeah, when we had a church bazaar—
MJ: —probably twenty aprons to sell at our church bazaar.
EJ: —and Rebecca wanted me to make all of her friends one and I made, ah, I wish I had kept count of how many aprons I have made.
MJ: At least—
EJ: I’ve made, I’ve made a lot.
SA: Um-hm. And the same for quilts. All of us have quilts.
EJ: Oh, yeah. I’ve made all, I’ve made all my daughters, their children and grandchildren—
|
|---|
