| Summary: | (11:24) Mr. Allen discusses getting his GED, teaching Sunday school and his advice to young people.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Willie Allen
October 31, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Rhonda Haygood and Patti Hannah
(Also present are: His wife, Geneva Allen
and two of his daughters,
Benita Logsdon and Sherry Allen)
Clip 8
Benita Logsdon: What made you want to go back to school? You went back and got your GED. What made you want to do that?
Willie Allen: Oh, yeah. When I had to quit school when I was in the sixth grade, oh, I cried. I wanted to go to school so bad. I hated, I hated I had to quit school. After I built this house I was about, what 49 or 50 years old the government opened up adult schools. It don’t cost you nothing. You can go to school. So me and my wife both, we went back to school and I got my GED diploma. I haven’t used it, but I got it. So.
Rhonda Haygood: Was it hard for you to go back?
WA: Unh-uh. I was smart in school, you know. I believe, you know, I’d a went right on through twelfth grade and college if I’d had the opportunity ’cause it wasn’t no trouble for me to do my math or read and remember and recite what I read and stuff like that, so my teacher kind of bragged on me a little bit, you know, for being such a good student. Before I quit I was a, well I always could read and arithmetic, I loved arithmetic, you know, I had, got into a little fractions and stuff like that when I was in sixth grade. But when I went back to school I got this refresher book. I had done forgot all that stuff that I learned at school. It had left me. I didn’t even know how to use a common denominator when I went back. See I had forgot that, you know. But this refresher book, it all came back and I was doing algebra and a lot of stuff there, you know when I got my GED diploma. But, I’ll always remember that my teacher, Mrs. Williams, Joyce Williams, she taught me in adult school. Now, she was a good teacher, too. And she would give me the GED test every once in a while and see could I do it. How was I doing, you know. Well, she bragged on me, you know. Said I ought to be a, “you ought to be a writer.” She had me writing something about my life once and she loved it and she bragged on it and you know that encouraged me. But, when I went to take the test, now Mrs. Williams had give it to me a couple of times. I know I could pass the test. But when I got out there where they give the test at, they put the clock on you. “Oh, you got so many minutes,” and ummm, “start right now.” That makes you tighten up. I had to go twice to get it. I missed it the first time because you can’t think good when you done tightened up, you know. But next time I went I was a little bit more loose. I knew what to expect, so it wasn’t no trouble. I got it. And we had a graduation at Russellville High School. That’s where I graduated at. I got my picture of my cap and my gown. I was just as excited as I would if I’d a went as a teenager and got my cap and gown.
RH: Now, your children were already up by the time you did that, right?
WA: My wife, she passed her GED the first time. We both went together. She graduated at Coffee High School. Now, she and Benita graduated the same year. Her baby girl and her graduated the same year from high school.
RH: That’s awesome.
WA: But she graduated before I did. I, mine, they had to wait till, we went to Russellville, to Russellville High School where they had the graduation down there. That shows you that you can do anything if you, if you try and don’t give up. Now you see, well I mean, I haven’t used it, the diploma but I tell you what. Learning that math, fractions and stuff all over and stuff again, it have helped me a lot when I built Sherry’s house and Sherhonda’s house over there. Cutting the rafters and angles and all that math really come in handy, you know, so I was glad I knew how to do that.
RH: Well, now the kids, if I understood Benita right, I believe she said that they kind of harassed you a little bit when you were getting ready to take your GED. They liked to tease you—
BL: Make sure the T.V. was off, asking you did you did your homework yet.
WA: Oh, well you know, I don’t know, I’m like this now when I teach Sunday school class at church and I don’t use their teacher book, I use the advanced commentary. I read over my Sunday school lesson say the first part of the week or the middle of the week and I just read it one time. I’ve got the rest of the week to just kind of meditate, think about what I read. And I get up on Sunday morning—I’ll highlight in my commentary what I want to talk about—I get up on Sunday morning before I go to church I’ll read what I got highlighted and when I get to school, Sunday school, I can remember all of that, you know, no problem. You know, I can remember, I was good at remembering things. You take, when I was in school, the little speeches and dialogues that the children recited, I still remember a lot of them just like it was yesterday and that was back when I was eight, nine years old. I tell the kids about some of them sometimes, you know.
BL: Um-hm. Do one.
WA: Especially the one about the little boy that said a speech about a little duck. The teacher wanted to know did anybody have a duck. This one boy, “I got one with wheels on it.” I told her, “Well, I’ve got one. You wind him up and he just ‘yekyekyek’ walk across the floor.” And she said, “Okay, we’ll use your duck.” So I brought my duck to school at school close. And this little boy, now he, now he never could use his English good. He’d always, she tried and tried to, he said, ‘Me’ for ‘I’ and you know he never could get that right. But anyway, he wound this little duck up and set it on the floor and the little duck started ‘yekeyekeyeke’ and he said, “Me had a little pet duck. Him said, ‘Quack, quack.’ Him ran away. Me hope him come back to me.” He never would, he, he never could get his words right. But I remember that speech just like he just said it yesterday, you know. When I tell them that they all laugh about it. But I never did have much trouble remembering things, you know. But now, something happened last week, I can’t tell you what happened last week. I can tell what happened about thirty or forty years ago, you know.
RH: Um-hm.
WA: I guess that’s life, you know. It changes. Course being born in 1934, you know where I am now, don’t you. But I guess that’s the story of my life.
RH: Well, before we turn the recorder off is there anything that you would like to say to the people that might be listening to your interview? Any words of wisdom you might have for people?
WA: Well, no I don’t guess it is. I’d just like to say if for some of the young people that is listening, I’d tell them, the best way in life is do your best on everything, even on your job. If you got a job you work that job just like it belonged to you and you’ll come out better in the long run. And don’t give up. If you have a desire to do something you work at it. You may fail quite a few times but you keep working at it and you can do it. You can do anything that you desire to do if you will work at it and don’t give up on it, you know. I learned that from experience myself. And building this house, I learned that right there. If I’d a give up, I wouldn’t have been in this house now, ’cause I couldn’t afford to hire somebody to build it, but I didn’t give up. And I built it myself. And somebody challenge you on something, that just makes you that much stronger like when my wife told me, “You know you can’t build a house.” She shouldn’t have said that.
Geneva Allen: Oh, I think I should.
WA: That made me that much stronger. I will do it. I will do it. And I did, you know. So I’d just like to tell the people especially young people that’s coming on now, if you got a job, do your best. Give it your best shot and in the end you’ll come out a lot better than you will trying to get by, you know. I worked with a lot of people that on the job they just wanted pay day and quitting time. But when I worked there I worked my job I tried to do it as the best I could and before I left Reynolds in them thirty-five years I’ve had people really appreciating the way I worked. And you know, I mean it just, it just means a lot to you. People appreciate you and you appreciate yourself better, you know, if you give, whatever you’re gonna do give it your best shot.
RH: Well, we sure do thank you for your interview. It’s been wonderful!
WA: Well, I enjoyed y’all, you know talking to you. I might have missed something that I told before, but when I talked to them boys at the church there, that’s them teenagers, you know, Brother Ryan was asking me questions and I was just answering his questions, so. I think I covered everything I told those children. But they was so excited to learn how we used to live, see. You take children nowadays they got everything, they got their little computer, they got all this stuff and everywhere they go you give them a car, they’re riding and flying and so forth and they just couldn’t hardly believe that you could live in the middle of a field in a little four room house with no power and no plumbing and stuff like that. That was really amazing to them to know that you could do that and still be happy, you know. So, I’ve experience it and I was happy. And I’m happy now with the indoor plumbing and the electricity. No, I wouldn’t give my life today. I wouldn’t want to change it at all. I like myself right now what I’m doing, the way God has blessed me. You look back and say, “Oh, boy." So much that you went through and you made it. Sometimes you wasn’t right, but you made it anyway and he just brought you on. So, I appreciate that. I thank him every day for everything he blessed me with. Still blessing me right now.
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