| Summary: | (6:03) Mrs. Faulkner describes the East Florence area, schools and her interest in music during the early to mid 1900s. 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 4 of 8
Juliann Losey: What were some of your hobbies when you were, when you moved here? Did you cook or sew?
Della Faulkner: I sewed, yeah.
JL: Where did you get your fabric?
DF: Well, in the stores. They had them down at Penney’s; they had fabric you could buy to make clothes.
JL: Where was Penney’s?
DF: Up-town. It’s, see, it’s over here at the mall now.
JL: Where was it back then?
DF: It was up-town, somewhere up there in Florence, in Florence.
JL: What were, what was Florence like during some of the later wars? Like the, the Vietnam—?
DF: Well, you know East Florence was booming at that time, when we were there, here, when I come down here. But all them stores was open on each side, the banks and everything, you know. And East Florence was a good place to be, really. And then that, the knitting mill was down there. A lot of people worked, you know, down there, going and coming. It was a busy place.
Joy Weekly: They had the Five and Dime store—
DF: Yeah.
JW: —that they no longer have anymore. The drug store on the corner. All of that was alive and going really well.
DF: Yeah, we had a—it was alive there. We still have the Pool Room down there and it was going, it was big then.
JL: Did your kids go down there a lot?
DF: Ah, no.
JW: We weren’t allowed. But from the big house up on the hill we could see them come out sometimes.
JL: So—
DF: Donny, Donny was busy playing ball. That was his hobby. My old—my oldest one, I had one son and three girls.
JL: Where did they go to school?
DF: Brandon. They went to kinde—in Maud Lindsay kindergarten, every one of them.
JL: What, what grades did Brandon have back then?
DF: It— they just went to the ninth, wasn’t it? Eighth or ninth.
JW: At one time and then the sixth.
DF: Sixth, yeah.
JL: So, did they go to high school?
DF: Yeah, after that they went on to high school, yeah.
JL: Where at?
DF: Coffee.
JW: And there was a Junior High, Appleby, at that time that’s gone now.
JL: So would you take them to school? Or did they, did they walk to school?
DF: We took them most of the time.
JL: Did you have a car?
DF: Yeah.
JL: What kind of car did you have?
DF: What kind did we have? [laughs]
JW: There was a ’48 Chevrolet that I can remember.
DF: Yeah, we had all kinds of cars, yeah.
JW: I wasn’t born until ’52, so—.
DF: We’ve had several new cars, but we a lot of—.
JL: What was the first car you got? Do you remember?
DF: No.
JW: What did you go to Ohio in? Tell the story about that car that was, ah, y’all had to make work or had to get home in.
DF: From Michigan? Yeah we used to haul all of our stuff in it, going back and forth. We went up there and back a lot of times. That was a Ford, I think. It wa—it sure did run good, took us all them places. It was a old car, but it run good. And when we started home one time, Carrol’s brother was up there and he bought him a car to come home on, and we all made it home. And after we got home, Carrol took his car and cut it off and made him a truck. [laughs]
Rhonda Haygood: I see a picture on the wall with a lady with a, a guitar. Is that you?
DF: Which one?
RH: The lady sitting holding the guitar.
DF: Yeah, yeah, that’s me.That’s me when we lived down to Dick Mack Holler. Now there’s where we lived in—long time ago, when we had—lived in that house there.
RH: Now where, where was that one taken with the guitar? Where is that?
DF: In Tennessee.
RH: In Tennessee?
DF: In the Dick Mack Holler.
RH: Okay.
JW: Before she was married.
DF: Right after that, I left home. Come home and I went, and went to work, yeah.
RH: Do you still play? The guitar?
DF: What?
RH: Do you still play the guitar?
DF: Well, my hands are sore now, I don’t even try.
JL: Where did you get that guitar?
DF: I don’t know. It was, it belonged to us, there at the house.
JW: They all played. Her whole family played—
DF: Yeah, yeah.
JW: —some kind of musical instrument.
DF: Archie and Holland.
JL: What was your favorite kind of music back then?
DF: Well, I loved singing. We all sung. We used to have [inaudible] quartet. We played. We went to all the fifth Sunday singings. Did all that.
JL: Did y’all have a radio?
DF: Well, we got one when they, when they come out. Yeah. We used to hear the Grand Ole Opry on it. That’s where we heard your grandma. We used to sing like she did.
JL: Like Patsy Montana?
DF: Um-hm.
JL: Do you ever, do you ever try to yodel?
DF: Yeah, I can yodel [laughs].
RH: So, who taught you to play?
DF: Well, I, myself. I just learned from—
RH: Did you?
JL: What year did y’all—did the radio come out? Or, when did you get it?
DF: I forgot just when it—when it first come out, I think in ’31, wasn’t it? I think it was about around then.
JL: And that’s when y’all got one?
DF: Yeah.
JL: So, did you listen to anything else? Other than the Grand Ole Opry?
DF: Well, yeah, we always listened some, anything we could find on it.
JL: Who—?
DF: It ain’t like it is today, all kinds of music.
JL: What kind of stuff would you listen to? Like, who, who did you like to listen to?
DF: Well, I always liked to hear Stella Dallas on, on the TV, on the radio. We used to listen at stories, you know, they told.
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