[00:00:00] Speaker A: If anybody's ever familiar with the old West Virginia coal mining towns or anything like that, that's where I grew up.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to Golden Tidbits, the podcast where we explore the rich lives of everyday people, but with a unique twist. Each of our guests brings at least 70 years of life experience, with most having over 75. Together, we'll journey through their childhoods, friendships, education, and family dynamics. We'll travel down memory lane, twist through nostalgia, and arrive at a bygone era. Not all of these stories will be seen through rose colored glasses, but they're always real, honest, and deeply human, something we could all use a little bit more of in our modern times. I'm your host, Molly B. Let's dive into today's episode.
Hi, listeners. I just wanted to let you know, this week we will have part one with Vera, and next week, part two will be included as a bonus. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to give you a quick heads up. This conversation briefly touches on some sensitive topics, including loss, childhood hunger, and molestation.
We believe these stories are important and worth sharing, but we also understand that some of these subjects might not be suitable for all listeners. If you are sensitive to these topics, please feel free to skip this episode or listen when you're in the right frame of mind. Thank you for being a part of the golden Tidbits community. Let's get into the episode.
[00:01:49] Speaker C: So, hi. You are Vera?
[00:01:51] Speaker A: I am.
[00:01:52] Speaker C: And is that what your mother called you, or did you have a.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: No, actually, I have a nickname. I'm the oldest of eight children.
[00:01:59] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: And everybody calls me sissy.
Yes.
[00:02:03] Speaker C: Okay. Even. Even into your.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Even today? Yes, absolutely, yes.
[00:02:07] Speaker C: Okay. And that's what your mother called you?
[00:02:09] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:10] Speaker C: And what about your father? Did he call you that as well?
[00:02:12] Speaker A: My mother and father were never married. Oh, okay. No.
[00:02:16] Speaker C: So did you have a relationship with your father, then?
[00:02:20] Speaker A: Not really.
[00:02:21] Speaker C: Not really. Okay. And where would you say you grew up?
[00:02:26] Speaker A: I grew up in Charleston, West Virginia, up in the mountains.
I lived with my grandmother for most of my life until she passed away at the age of when I was 14.
[00:02:38] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: And so then I went to live with my aunt and uncle, and they. Most of my family all still live in West Virginia, except for the few that live in Columbus, Ohio.
[00:02:50] Speaker C: And then you ended up in South Dakota.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: And I ended up in South Dakota.
[00:02:55] Speaker C: Okay. We. I think we're gonna. We're gonna get to that.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:59] Speaker C: But let's first, how many years of life experience do you currently have? Some people call this your age.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Well, I suppose most of my life was an experience in many ways, I would say from the age of five up. And I'm going to be 80 pretty soon.
[00:03:20] Speaker C: Okay. You're going to be 80. And so that puts you born in what year?
[00:03:25] Speaker A: 1940? 419.
[00:03:25] Speaker C: 44. Okay. And so how many children were in your family?
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Eight.
[00:03:31] Speaker C: Eight, okay. But you were the oldest?
[00:03:33] Speaker A: I am the oldest.
[00:03:34] Speaker C: Okay.
So transport me to that home, I guess, the one that you lived in with your grandmother. Then.
What was the house like? What was the area like? How close were the neighbors? Just tell me all about it.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: Okay. I don't know if anybody knows too much about West Virginia, but topographically, it's very mountainous.
When I grew up, we grew up in a very poor neighborhood area, I should say not a neighborhood. And we lived in a two room house up in the mountains of West Virginia.
And it was the Charleston, West Virginia, area is where I grew up. And my grandmother raised me because my mom took off and left when I was four or when my sister was four. I'm sorry. And I was four years older than her, so I was about seven or eight.
And other than those years, I lived with my grandmother most of my life, and she was quite the lady.
[00:04:43] Speaker C: And now. So you lived, you said, up in the mountains. Right. So it was kind of. It was rural. Not in a town.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: No, it was not in a town. It was very rural. Okay.
Most of the people that lived around, like I said, were very poor, and you just kind of made do with what was there. You know, we had a garden, and my uncles lived with us, too, and they hunted a little bit, so we had rabbit and we had squirrel, and some days we didn't have anything.
[00:05:16] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: It just kind of depended on the situation, I guess.
[00:05:22] Speaker C: Right, right. And so the home was. You called it a two room shack. So it had just two separate rooms, like a bedroom and then a common room. Was that kind of how it.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: The kitchen and the.
We called it the front room because we used it as a living room space, a visiting space, and we also slept there.
[00:05:44] Speaker C: Okay. Okay. So the two rooms was basically the front room and the kitchen.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: And the kitchen. Correct.
[00:05:50] Speaker C: And running water.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: Only if you ran down the hill to get it.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: Okay. And where did you get the water from?
[00:05:58] Speaker A: We had a well.
[00:05:59] Speaker C: You had a well. Okay. And so then. So you had to go up a hill. It wasn't like just right outside the door. It wasn't like you had to jump right out.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: No. You had to go down a little bit to get it.
[00:06:07] Speaker C: Got. Got it. And how did you heat that home.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: Then we heated with wood and coal.
[00:06:12] Speaker C: Wood and coal. And so was that like. Just like a little. Was that a cooker, or was that the stove you used?
[00:06:17] Speaker A: It was a pot bellied stove. I'm sure everyone's probably familiar with something into that effect.
[00:06:23] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And then the cook stove was separate. That was a different.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: The cook stove was in the kitchen, and it was wood and coal. That's how we cooked with.
[00:06:33] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: And then there was an apparatus on the end of the stove that had a well where you could put water in it, and the oven would actually heat the water up. So we had, you know, warm water for doing dishes and stuff like that.
[00:06:48] Speaker C: Right. Okay. And I. I did not know that a lot of those stoves had that well until I started doing this. I knew that those stoves existed, but I didn't realize there was a reservoir for the water in them.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: And then across the top. I'm sorry. No, across the top of the stove. It was an l shaped affair, and the burners were on one end and the oven was on the other. And then across the top, there was a little area where you could. It was a warming center. So if you made something, you just shove it in there and keep it warm until the meal was ready.
[00:07:21] Speaker C: Okay. Okay. Maybe buns or something. And you could be cooking something else and keeping it going. So, I'm curious, were the other children living there with your grandma as well?
[00:07:32] Speaker A: No, there was just myself and my sister. My mom had another family after us.
[00:07:39] Speaker C: Oh, okay.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: And so they all lived in Ohio. Okay.
[00:07:42] Speaker C: So just the two sisters and your uncles and your grandma. My aunt Dee and your aunt. Okay.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: And my sister Vicki and myself and my two uncles. And occasionally we would have a friend who grew up in a pretty poor family, and he would come stay with us every once in a while because he was good friends with my uncles.
[00:08:06] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: So some nights, if it got really cold and late and we were working a puzzle or whatever, he would stay overnight with, and he slept on the floor because there was no place else.
[00:08:16] Speaker C: And so did you have a bed then, or how did that work in that front room?
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Well, my grandmother, that we had a. Just a regular twin size. Not a twin size, but a full size bed. And my grandmother and my aunt Dee and my sister slept in the one bede, and we had an old couch that made out into the bed. It swung part of it down. My two uncles slept there, and I had kind of a combination bed.
We had an old overstuffed chair in the living room. And my grandmother had a couple of boards, and she would bring one of the chairs in from the kitchen, and she would set it at the end, and then she would put the two boards between it, throw my feather tick mattress on there, and that's where I slept.
[00:09:04] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: That's. So when the morning time came, the boards removed, shoved under the bed, the chair went back to the kitchen, and I went wherever.
[00:09:13] Speaker C: Right, right. I mean, I think that's such an interesting story to hear about. I wonder, did you, did you, how did you feel about it? Did that, was that okay with you or did you not like it? What, what did you think?
[00:09:25] Speaker A: You know, Molly, it was okay with me because everybody else around lived in the same situation as we did.
Like I said, we had no running water, we had no electricity. We had kerosene lamps and or candles, depending upon whatever.
It just.
Everybody lived the same way. So I guess we were used to it. In the summertime, we ran around barefoot, we played in the creek, and did the same thing every kid did. You know, we grew up in poor families. Right?
[00:10:00] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: If you find value in the show, you can give your support by leaving a one time donation to help cover the costs of hosting and equipment. Find the link on our website at goldentidbits dot castos.com. that's goldentidbits dot castos castos.com or in the show notes.
[00:10:25] Speaker C: And how cold does it get there in the winter? I guess. I don't know.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: It's a four season area.
[00:10:32] Speaker C: It is?
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:10:33] Speaker C: Okay. Okay. I just wanted to make sure, you know, I didn't know what kind of temperatures you would have been dealing with.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Summers are very hot and muggy. Winters can be very cold. Falls are absolutely beautiful. The trees are breathtaking.
[00:10:47] Speaker C: So those. That's where the movie falls take place. You know, I always talk about, because in South Dakota, we do not have a nice fall. Our falls are awful. And so. But on tv, I always was confused because it's, like, beautiful and gorgeous. So that's where they're having those.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: It is. It's very beautiful. And the springtime is.
Is warm and the nights are cool, and that's when people start planting their gardens and life goes on.
[00:11:13] Speaker C: Yeah. So as far as food goes, you had a big garden, and so tell me a little bit more about that.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: Well, we always had potatoes, of course, and we had green beans and tomatoes, always cucumbers.
Just a normal garden.
[00:11:31] Speaker C: Okay. But it was probably pretty large.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: It was fairly good size. And we had neighbors that had gardens as well, so people traded off. Some people didn't grow the same thing and, you know, you might have a squash and they didn't. They had a zucchini or something, so you'd switch off. But we had a mountain area beside the house that had a hill dugout in it, and that's where my grandmother kept her potatoes and anything that wouldn't perish over the winter.
[00:12:02] Speaker C: Okay. So just like a little storehouse in there.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: It was like a little refrigerator? Yeah.
[00:12:06] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay. And that's how you kept things so that you could eat into the colder months.
Did your. So did your grandma didn't work outside of the home, right? No. Okay.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: No.
[00:12:17] Speaker C: Did your uncles work outside of the home?
[00:12:19] Speaker A: They worked seasonal construction for a gentleman that lived down the road from us. And sometimes he would pay them, sometimes he wouldn't. Like I said, sometimes we ate. I can remember days when we didn't. Didn't have any food at all.
That's the way it was.
[00:12:43] Speaker C: That was just how it went.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:12:48] Speaker C: Okay, what was bath time? What was hygiene like? What. What did that look like?
[00:12:53] Speaker A: Well, even though we lived in those little two rooms, my grandmother was meticulous about everything.
And on the weekends, like I said, we had the little reservoir beside the stove that heated up water, and we had a old tub under the house. The house was elevated on cinder blocks, so we had no basement or anything like that. Kind of where the dogs hung out and an occasional skunk.
But, you know, she would boil the water and put it in the tub and each one would take their bath, and that's the way we did it.
[00:13:33] Speaker C: And so that was on the weekend that you.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: That was usually on the weekend.
[00:13:36] Speaker C: Okay. Okay. And then what about. What did Sundays look like for you? Did you go to church or did you attend?
[00:13:43] Speaker A: Occasionally we'd go to church. There was a little church down the hill from where we lived. And the gentleman that was the minister there, he lived in the same area, and he would. Had refurbished an old garage that was alongside of the road and turned it into a church. And so that's where we went. And it was pretty much Baptiste.
[00:14:06] Speaker C: Okay, I just have to tell you, I'm tickled pink about this interview, but now I'm reeling because my questions are all out of order.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: Well, you just ask anything I know.
[00:14:16] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: If you find value in this show, you can support by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Even better, you can tell a friend.
[00:14:30] Speaker C: All right, so how far away would you say the neighbors were from the house where you grew up?
[00:14:35] Speaker A: Well, Sigmund's lived. Our house was on the side of the hill.
[00:14:38] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: Literally dug out on the side of the hill. And Sigmund's was down over the hill, kind of in the valley, and that's where most of the other people were. There was a road that ran out to the top of the mountain, and that's where we went clear out the end of the road to catch another friends road going down over the hill to get to the bus. So it was kind of just. It was an old mountain area.
[00:15:08] Speaker C: Right, right.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: And if anybody's ever familiar with the old west Virginia coal mining towns or anything like that, that's where I grew up.
[00:15:17] Speaker C: Right. Okay. Were there a lot of children in the area that you could play with or they were friends with? Oh, yeah. Do you remember any particular friends or any games?
[00:15:26] Speaker A: Well, Lois Washington Sigmund was one of the girls that I play with because she was the closest. And then there was Donnie Stamper and James Sigmund. And there was a whole bunch of us on that road, just four old kids that we got together and just played normal games. You know, none of us had any of the fancy things that kids have today.
We built swings on the trees and swung out over the creek, and I. We dammed up the creek one time and got in big trouble over that. But it was a hot day, and we would lay on our stomachs and pull crawdads out of the creek and turtles and an occasional snake.
[00:16:12] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: Not anything that I touched, but the boys were usually the ones that would do things like that. And we just every. Like I said, everybody around us lived the same.
[00:16:23] Speaker C: Right, right.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: And we just made do with what we had.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:28] Speaker C: So do you remember, how did you get. How did you get clothes and how did you get shoes? You said you went barefoot most of the summer, but where did you. Where did you get those things from?
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Well, my Aunt Dee, who lived with us, would occasionally clean houses for some of the ladies that lived way up in the more affluent area.
[00:16:49] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: And she would go into Charleston, and she had one lady that she worked for most of the time, and she would clean house for her once a week. And Dee would go to the Salvation army or the goodwill store, and she would pick up clothes for us there and shoot.
[00:17:06] Speaker C: Okay. Okay. Yeah. You know, I think that's interesting because it sounds like there was more population closer, you know, where a lot of people who grew up out in this area didn't have. They didn't have Salvation army, you know, and so they, you know, they did they.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: Well, they were probably 20 miles away from us, you know. Right. In a town called south Charleston.
[00:17:30] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: And she would have to take the bus, like I said, she would have to walk out off the mountain and catch the bus at the bottom of the bottom of the mountain and go from there. Got it. Or walk.
[00:17:42] Speaker C: Got it. And so these roads coming up to the house, those were all. Were those, like, dirt?
[00:17:47] Speaker A: They were all dirt roads, yeah.
[00:17:49] Speaker C: Right. Okay. And so the nearest highway that would have been paved was the one where you're talking about at the end.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: It was probably 2 miles away.
[00:17:57] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:58] Speaker C: What was school like? Was there a country school or what?
[00:18:03] Speaker A: We had an elementary school that went from first grade to 6th grade, and that was a mile and a half away from where we lived. And there were no bus services or anything. You walked to school and you walked home?
It's the same school that my mom's family, her siblings, grew up and went to school there, and so did I. And some of the teachers that taught me, taught my mom.
[00:18:27] Speaker C: Okay. Now, was first grade, like in its own classroom with a bunch of other first graders, or was it?
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Yes. No, we had our individual classroom.
[00:18:36] Speaker C: Okay, so you had. It must have been a pretty big school, then, in terms of attendance.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: I think there was probably maybe 15 kids in the class, kids in each class, you know, and we walked from wherever. Some days it would be a full class if it was really snowy out. I mean, we had to cross the mountains, you know, to get to the school because it was on the other side of the hill where we live.
[00:19:01] Speaker C: Oh.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: And we have to walk up one hill and down the other to get there, so. And, you know, like I said, there were days that I didn't go to school because I didn't have the clothing, the boots or anything, the gloves or anything like that to get there, so.
[00:19:19] Speaker C: Right, right. Did you. Did you like school? Do you remember enjoying it or.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: I liked. Yeah, I liked school, I think.
[00:19:29] Speaker C: Did you hate any particular subject or did you love any particular.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: Hated math.
[00:19:34] Speaker C: Hated math. Not a fan of math.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: No. I liked history, and I still like history.
A little bit of English was okay, but I liked history and social studies.
[00:19:47] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Yeah, they were two of my favorites.
[00:19:51] Speaker C: Do you remember causing any mischief either at school or at home? And what did you do? I can tell now that you have done some. And what were the consequences?
[00:20:04] Speaker A: Well, I was in the fifth grade, and our fifth grade teacher's name was Misses Boggs, and she had been the principal at that school from time beginning. I mean, she was just always there.
And in her. In our classrooms, the windows were pretty big, and we had big window sills that were all wooden. And she had flower pots all in her classroom. That was her thing. She had flower pots. And she went out of the schoolroom one day to take care of business elsewhere. And me and a couple of the girls got up and out of our seats and went into the coat room to converse gossip or whatever. And so we heard misses boggs coming back, and we all ran to get back in our seats, and I ran by and just swung my arm out, and I caught one of her flower pots, and it blew up all over the floor just as she entered the classroom. And I was in big trouble.
[00:21:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:15] Speaker A: So I was put on suspension for a day.
[00:21:19] Speaker C: Oh, my word.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Because you didn't do things like that. When I grew up, it was very strict in the classroom.
[00:21:27] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: So we were not allowed to wear slacks. We wore dresses to school, and if it was cold out, you could wear a pair of pants or something underneath your dress until you got to school and you had to take that off. Really? Yeah.
[00:21:42] Speaker C: What. What was the. Did you have, like, a playground at your school, and what was that like?
[00:21:48] Speaker A: Yeah, we had a playground. It wasn't much. I mean, the school wasn't much either. I mean, it sounds, you know, big, but it was just the normal run of the mill school in those areas.
[00:21:57] Speaker C: Right, right.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: And it's torn down now. It doesn't exist anymore.
Yeah. We had a little bit of a playground. There was a swing set, and it was all gravel, dirt area, and we had a merry go round.
[00:22:13] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: And that's all I can remember.
[00:22:16] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay. Did you have to take lunch to school?
[00:22:20] Speaker A: Yes. Okay.
[00:22:22] Speaker C: And so you had to have a packed lunch and take it.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:24] Speaker C: What about water? Did. Was there water at the school?
[00:22:27] Speaker A: There was water at the school, yeah, we had heat and water at the school. And electricity.
[00:22:32] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:33] Speaker C: That's not necessarily the standard, depending on them, but you're still pretty young for, you know what I mean, thinking of the age range, because you would have been into the fifties, you know, early fifties, when you were going to school, and that could have been just as equally.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Looked like there were towns around, you know, that had nicer schools and stuff like that. But we lived back in the mountains, you know, we didn't live out where people were. And, you know, sometimes, you know, you just never went to town because we didn't have any way to get there except walking.
[00:23:11] Speaker C: Right. And even if you got there, you didn't have, obviously, a lot of money.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: No.
[00:23:15] Speaker C: To be spending. So what would you, what would you do, necessarily?
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Well, my aunt moved into town after she got married, and so we would walk over and visit with her. Oh, okay.
[00:23:29] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: But we walked everywhere because, you know, you didn't, like I said, we didn't have a car, no transportation any other than the bus. And if you wanted to make a phone call, you had to go into town and find a phone booth.
[00:23:45] Speaker C: Right.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: So, yeah, we lived kind of on the fringe of a city, I should say, or the town, not a city, but we were just poor old mountain folks.
[00:24:00] Speaker C: How did you keep in touch with people then? And how did you get. Right, you wrote letters.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: Wrote letters, yes.
[00:24:06] Speaker C: Okay. You didn't have a telephone, I think you said that.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: No, we had no telephone. We had no form of communications other than just word of mouth down the.
[00:24:16] Speaker C: Road, you know, and definitely didn't have a radio.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: Had no radio, no electricity, no nothing. Okay.
[00:24:22] Speaker C: So if you got news, it was because somebody told you about it. Okay. Okay. Wow.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Or we heard it at school, you know, like I said, you know, sometimes you could hear things at school that would come in and they would inform us of whatever was going on in the community.
[00:24:41] Speaker C: What about, like, nationwide? Do you remember really ever getting news about anything going on outside of that area?
[00:24:47] Speaker A: No. Wow.
[00:24:49] Speaker C: Okay.
Um, did, so what kind of a role did religion play in your life?
[00:24:54] Speaker A: Big role. Okay.
You, you said my grandmother was a very devout.
We never went to church very often because we had no way to get there.
[00:25:07] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: But when Mister Smith set up the church in our neighborhood, I would walk there and my sister would come with me, but Granny was crippled up. She couldn't get off the hill to. Oh, okay. So because we literally had a little path down the mountain to get to the gravel road and walk out that way, but she couldn't get down there.
[00:25:30] Speaker C: So there is not like a road up to the house that you grew up on. There's not like a driveway.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: No.
[00:25:35] Speaker C: So you get to.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: It was a path going up the hill.
[00:25:37] Speaker C: Okay. So you get to the end of this dry or the road, and then you would walk up a path that was, you know, just like a walking path.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:25:46] Speaker C: Size. Okay. And get up to the house.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:25:49] Speaker C: Okay.
How did you celebrate holidays? Did you, how did you celebrate Christmas, for example?
[00:25:56] Speaker A: Well, it depended on whether or not Aunt Dee made any money to buy a gift or something. There were Christmases when we didn't have, you know, a gift or anything.
[00:26:10] Speaker C: Did you ever decorate or do anything?
[00:26:12] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. We had a Christmas tree. We may have to go out in the woods and, you know, tear it down.
We didn't buy a tree or anything like that, and we just. We had decorations, but they were so old. They came from my grandmother, and I'm sure she must have had them from when she was married and a young girl. Right, right. But she grew up in the hills of Virginia before it became split and became two states in West Virginia. And. Yeah, she was born in 1896, so she lived in part and then some in the. In the other state, but she had six children and her husband died at the age of 42 from tuberculosis, and he had been a minor, so they don't know if it was something that he contacted during that time or not. But he left her with six small children and she never remarried. She took in other people's laundry and I just made do with whatever she could do. That's how she raised her kids. And not one of them graduated from school. They all quit when they were 16, so they could go get a job.
[00:27:31] Speaker C: I'm sure that was kind of a hard life.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:34] Speaker C: And so they were looking for a way out, potentially, with. I mean, financially, it would have been really challenging.
Do you remember celebrating, like, thanksgiving or anything like that? Was that something you guys celebrated?
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, we would. You know, it might not be a turkey, but it might be a chicken.
[00:27:52] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: Or it could be a rabbit or a squirrel, you know, depending upon whatever. And my grandmother was an excellent cook. She made the best biscuits in the whole wide world.
And sometimes I would take biscuits with fried potatoes on a sandwich to school. That's what we ate.
And.
[00:28:13] Speaker C: Okay, so help me understand this. So the potatoes would be fried.
[00:28:17] Speaker A: Fried potatoes. And my grandmother would take a biscuit and cut it in half, and she would put butter on it and the potatoes would be normally cold, and so wrap them up in wax paper. And that's what I took to school for your lunch.
[00:28:33] Speaker C: Huh?
Do you remember?
Well, oh, actually, let me ask this one. What? How did you celebrate in the summer for like 4 July? Like Independence day? Don't remember celebrating it at all, no.
[00:28:48] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:28:50] Speaker C: Okay. What about. When did you. Do you remember when you first got paid to work?
[00:28:55] Speaker A: Yes.
I got a job when I was 14 at the valley Bella, and I think my first check was like $15 and something. I dipped ice cream for people that came into the store, and that's the first job that I ever had.
[00:29:17] Speaker C: So it was a dairy, and then.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: They had their own they made their own ice cream right there.
[00:29:22] Speaker C: Okay. And then, so they had like, a little ice cream shop, and then that's where you.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: And that's where I worked. Yeah.
[00:29:28] Speaker C: And do you have any idea what you got paid to work that job?
[00:29:32] Speaker A: I don't know. I think it was like maybe $0.50 an hour, and I didn't work every day, you know, just the shifts that they gave me. And it was only a couple of two or 3 hours, so.
[00:29:42] Speaker C: Yeah. And how old were you, do you think?
[00:29:44] Speaker A: 14.
[00:29:44] Speaker C: Oh, 14. I'm sorry.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: Hey there, listeners. I hope you're enjoying this episode of Golden Tidbits. If you're loving the stories and insights from our incredible guests, I've got some exciting news for you. Did you know that there's even more to these conversations than what you're hearing right now? Thats right. By subscribing to our extended episodes, youll get access to our full, uncut interviews, where we dive even deeper into the lives of our guests. We explore their stories in more detail, uncover more wisdom, and share those priceless moments that dont make it into the free version. Plus, as a subscriber, youll enjoy these episodes with no interruptions like this one, completely ad free. It's a perfect way to immerse yourself fully in these rich, nostalgic tales for less than the cost of a cup of coffee. You can join our community of subscribers who value the legacy and history of our elder generations. Your support helps us continue to bring these incredible stories to life. So if you want to hear more, experience more, and connect more deeply with the past, head over to Goldentidbits dot castos.com or Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Thank you for listening and supporting golden tidbits.
[00:31:05] Speaker C: Were you ever, do you remember ever being, like, awful at a job? Like, do you remember getting a job as a young person and thinking you're terrible at it? Or. That's just.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: I never really gave that a whole lot of thought. But I may have been terrible in a lot of areas, but no, I don't actually remember anything, you know, that I disliked. I was just happy to have a job if it wasn't that. My grandmother passed away when I was 14 and we had to move into town because she was so ill and the doctors could not get to her, so we had to take her.
[00:31:45] Speaker C: Was that your aunt Dee that you moved in with?
[00:31:47] Speaker A: No, no, we moved, well, she was with us, but we moved into a town called North Charleston and we rented a little house there. And my grandmother was very ill, and she had a disease that caused her legs to swell, and she had big sores on them. We had no air conditioning, all we had. We did have electricity there, but we had a fan. And I hate to say this, but she got maggots underneath her toenails, and my uncle Lawrence had to.
He had to take a mouth from under her toenail.
And she died a few days later.
[00:32:40] Speaker C: I'm so sorry. That must have been. That must have been really impactful in your life. I mean, how that.
[00:32:52] Speaker A: Well, she was my mom, right? The only mom I ever knew.
I mean, I knew I had a mother, but.
[00:33:03] Speaker C: Right.
[00:33:04] Speaker A: She was never there, and my grandmother always, so.
And I miss her even today.
[00:33:15] Speaker C: I can't imagine that would be so hard. And especially as young as you were, you know.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: She would get up, 334 o'clock in the morning, fire up that old kitchen stove, and she would start cooking breakfast if we had anything to cook.
And most mornings it was oatmeal or biscuits and gravy and.
But, you know, most people in our area lived the same way. You know, none of us had big, fancy meals, you know, you had what was available, and sometimes we had nothing to eat.
And I would take Vicki down the hill to Sigmund's house, and Mister Sigmund had a job, so they always had something to eat.
Nothing fancy, but something.
And I can remember standing by their table with Vicki up against the wall, waiting on them to finish eating so I could help Laura Lois clean the table and eat the leftovers. So kids today don't understand trying to.
[00:34:34] Speaker C: Be respectful of them eating, but like, wanting them to not eat all of their food, you know, so that you could have some.
Wow. That you're right. Kids don't. And I also think some of the parenting that we do nowadays is so overprotective that we don't allow kids to have responsibilities or to have chores or to have.
You know what I mean? They just don't. They don't. They don't have to grow up in any fashion until they become adults, and then they. They can't figure out how to adult and they can't figure out why they would, you know, what's missing? And it's like, well, they. They never had to learn anything or struggle at all their youth, so how would you expect them to know how to do these things, you know?
[00:35:23] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's just it. And, you know, the lady was here prior to me. She and I have talked about it many times, you know, about the fact that we had things we had to do. You know, I had to go out and help get the coal. We had to walk up the mountain and get the coal and bring it back, and we would go out and we would pick blackberries. In the summertime, Granny would make BlackBerry cobblers. And she was, like I said, she was an excellent cook, and she never really canned things because she had no ability to do it with, you know, no jars or no equipment to do canning with. So we ate what was available out of the garden, and then she would save what she could for the winter months.
And I don't know. Kids have no idea.
And, you know, I was.
I was molested when I was six by a neighbor, and that was tough because I never said anything to anybody.
[00:36:34] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:34] Speaker A: You just never done that.
And I was scared of him, and I would not go around him.
And he was a grandfather of a girl that I went to school with, and I didn't want nothing to do with it.
[00:36:55] Speaker C: Do you think, like, part of the reason why you didn't tell is because you felt shame on yourself as well? Like, it was less about him being in trouble, but more about you were involved in.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: Well, and, you know, I think you feel so degraded and so ashamed that this happened to you. You don't want anybody to know, you know, you don't want to tell anybody.
[00:37:24] Speaker C: It's a story, and it's almost like it made you lower or less or something.
[00:37:29] Speaker A: It.
It affects your being the rest of your life. And it still bothers me, probably, especially.
[00:37:36] Speaker C: If it was a grandfather.
Um, really messes with your trust of anybody else. You know? I can't trust you. I can't. You know? Um.
Yeah, I.
I think it's people who don't know what that's like is really a wonderful thing because it's best to not have to experience that. You know what I mean?
[00:38:04] Speaker B: It's very hard on me.
[00:38:07] Speaker A: It's hard on me when I see stories on tv or hear them otherwise from other people about men molesting children. And it's just. It's heart wrenching for me because I know what they're going through.
And like I say, it affects you throughout your life.
You're very leery about certain people. Even today, certain older men bother me. I'm.
[00:38:40] Speaker C: And they almost trigger.
[00:38:41] Speaker A: I shy away.
Yeah.
And some of them just don't bother me at all. They're just great people. But there's some that make me very leery of them, and it has to.
[00:38:55] Speaker C: There's a man because of him or a wave beach or.
[00:38:59] Speaker A: Yeah, or a look or something, you know? And to this day, I can still remember his face.
There were other kids in that area that went through the same thing.
Fathers molested daughters, granddaughters, grandfather's molested kids. I mean, you know, it just read back through the mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky and Tennessee, and you will find them on every corner throughout the country.
[00:39:27] Speaker C: That's really sad, too.
If he did that to a neighbor child, what was happening in his own house?
[00:39:38] Speaker A: They all lived in the same house, one room house. That's what we all had around there. Living room, a kitchen. That was about it. And they all slept together, so God only knows what went on. You know, my two uncles, nah, never in a million years.
They were.
[00:39:58] Speaker C: They were. If you would have told them to. What, what, how that would have happened.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: I have no idea. My uncle Lawrence probably would have went right after, but I just. I was so ashamed.
[00:40:11] Speaker C: But, yeah, I can understand that. I think it's.
Yeah.
[00:40:15] Speaker A: And it was all for a quarter to buy candy or buy food with, you know, that you do those.
[00:40:21] Speaker C: That's awful.
Exploiting people, too, you know, that are mean.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: Thank you for joining me on this journey through time with today's guest. I hope this story touched you as much as it did me. I'd love to hear how this episode resonated with you. If a particular story or memory struck a chord, or if it reminded you of your own experiences, please send in your thoughts or stories. Find us on the web at goldentidbits dot castos.com. or you can send us a message on our fan
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