| Summary: | (6:04) Mrs. Faulkner discusses her courtship, marriage and the birth of her children in the mid to late 1940s in Florence, Alabama. 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 Della Faulkner
May 14, 2009
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Juliann Losey and Rhonda Haygood
(Also present: Joy Weekly)
Clip 2 of 8
Juliann Losey: Now, you mentioned your husband was in the Army?
Della Faulkner: Yes.
JL: What war would that have been around?
DF: The second, that was in the forties, he went. And he was there for, he went overseas and he was there for four and a half years overseas. And he guarded Eisenhower’s office while he was there.
JL: What was it like while he was away?
DF: Well, I had a room, as I said, up there in the Phillips home on Georgia Avenue and I worked at the knitting mill and I worked the whole time he was gone. And so my time passed, but I did, did most of my studying at that time, about the Bible, learning what it has to say and how, how I could help other people.
JL: Did you have any children?
DF: No. Not then.
JL: When did you have your first child?
DF: In 1952, I think it was, Tiny was born in ’52, wasn’t he? Or was it ’48? Forty-eight, yeah, 1948 is when Tiny was born, right after he come back from the Army. About a year after he come back, we had our first child. We’d been married four and half years. I was twenty-seven years old.
JL: What was childbirth like?
DF: Whew [laughs]. Well, it, it was, I carried—he, he was my first one, Tiny was and it was a little bit rough, but I made it. And they was all precious. I had four children and they were wonderful.
JL: Did you give birth at home?
DF: No, I went to the hospital.
JL: Which, which hospital?
DF: ECM. Two of them was born here. Two was borned in Ohio.
JL: What was ECM like?
DF: Well, it was a nice place to be at that time.
JL: You said somebody in your family worked at the Wagon Works?
DF: Yeah, my husband’s daddy. I got that book over there that tells about the Wagon Factory. Yeah, John Faulkner and his daddy was named John. There was two John Faulkners worked at the Wagon Factory. And they were, they come from Germany to Georgia and that’s where, from, from Georgia they were sent here to the Wagon Factory. That’s how come my husband here.
JL: Did you ever get to go to the Wagon Factory?
DF: Not—you know it closed in ’41. When I first come down here, the Wagon Factory closed. I never did get to go. But we had a wagon, my daddy did. It’s up at my brother’s, Emory’s, now. We used to go out in the service in the wagon. We would go from door to door, go, you know, have Bible studies. Go in the wagon.
JL: How far would you go?
DF: Sometimes three or four miles.
JL: How long would that take, in the wagon?
DF: Well it’d take a long time, like walking [laughs].
JL: So, how did you meet your husband?
DF: Well, I went to the fair one time and he knew me, but I didn’t know him. And there was a person from Collinwood running a little penny thing where you pitch pennies and he handed me a handful of pennies, said “Pitch these pennies so I—we’ll draw the crowd”. And while I was pitching pennies, he come up and pitched pennies, got some pennies and then he asked me to ride the, the Ferris wheel with him. We rode the Ferris wheel. And, we, there, there was two girls with, with us. And that’s when he told me who he was and how he knew me.
JL: And how did he know you?
DF: Well, I, he, his mother, I was renting that house with his mother and he was in the yard sometimes when we’d go back and forth to work. He picked me out of three girls [laughs].
JL: So, did you, did you walk to work?
DF: Yeah.
JL: How, how far would that have been?
DF: You know it, you know that big ol’ house on—behind the drugstore in East Florence? It ain’t far, you just walk down the hill and it was right down in there. Just as you cross the railroad tracks, it was right there.
JL: So, when did you guys get married?
DF: In ’42.
JL: Did you have a big wedding?
DF: No. We went up to the courthouse and got married.
JL: How much did it cost back then?
DF: Seem like seven dollars [laughs] I think our li—our marriage, they married us for that, I think. I forgot now. But my sister and my mother-in-law was with us.
Rhonda Haygood: Did you get a special dress, or—?
DF: No, I was just casually dre—well, right up there I am. [Mrs. Faulkner points to a picture on the wall]
Joy Weekly: That’s their wedding picture.
DF: I married a soldier.
RH: How long before he shipped out after you married?
DF: It wasn’t long. I went one time to Pennsylvania to visit him and wasn’t long after that till he was shipped overseas.
RH: How did you keep in contact during the years that he was—?
DF: We just wrote to each other, yeah.
RH: How long was it before you saw him again after he left?
DF: It was fi—, four and a half years. We didn’t hardly know each other, you know, at that time. Had to learn each other again, didn’t we?
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