Linda Whitener
Alright, we'll start with if you could say what your name is.
Linda Gay Whitener.
And when were you born?
March 11th, 1953.
And where were you born?
At St.
Mary's, over in Arkin, Missouri.
And if you could just start by telling us what you remember of your early childhood.
Where you lived and just what it was like growing up.
It was real easy to know where I lived because I lived in the same place all my life until 6th grade and I was only away from that home for one semester of school and moved back and I just left 15 years ago to move in with my significant other and that was on High Street right down three, I see two, really two houses down from the auditorium of the elementary school and my parents moved in there and I can remember setting in, well I did live on Z Highway but I don't remember that because, you know, I was just born.
But when I was three, my parents moved in to 310 High Street.
Who were your parents?
George Robert Whitener and Helen Mabel, like the tree, Miller Whitener.
And I can remember setting because our driveway at that time was dirt and we had a set of gray couch and chair and you see them a lot in these older pictures, the same brand I'm sure.
And I sat there with my dog at the time named Pepe, which is a black and white Chihuahua, and him sitting in a chair while the rest of them worked, we didn't do anything.
My dad would bring me water and a snack or something but unless I had to go to the restroom, I stayed parked in the chair because that's what I did when my dad asked me to do something.
That's my first memory there and then I remember going out to my aunt's house and my mom sometimes worked, she never really had to work because she liked to work every once in a while, so she would go to work at Brown Shoe Company and she was a cementer because she always had little dots of cement stuck all over them and they were gray and they wouldn't come off and some evenings we'd spend time just picking them off.
And so we would, whenever she worked, my aunt kept me because my aunt had to stay at home, my uncle wouldn't let her work, and I had a cousin that was born three months before I was born, and so I never had any brothers or sisters, so he's the only sibling that I ever had.
And she had no water at the house when I started staying out there.
They had a pump and it was on the porch and she had the old time ringer washer and I can remember her pumping like crazy to get that done, and they had no bathroom, well goodness.
Now what address was this?
That was Z Highway, and I didn't really have an address.
It's where the city of Fredericktown owns the property now, but they have a shooting range out there.
But I had never not known a house without a bathroom, and so- This was in the 1950s?
Uh, 50s, and right at, well when I first started going out there, it was probably 1957, right in there somewhere.
And so we had, she had no steps up to her house, and there was like a high embankment, and my uncle had cut steps out of the dirt and packed it down, and you had to go up them.
Well, that wasn't happening either, because it scared me.
So my mom would walk me all the way up the driveway to the barn, and at the barn it connected to the garden, which was flat, and we walked the length of the garden back into the yard, because, you know, I didn't know.
And so I was basically felt like a prisoner once I got there, because how am I going to get away?
There, you know, there's stuff all around me.
And so I stayed with her a lot, and me and my cousin grew up very close.
In fact, I don't remember hardly a day that I didn't see him until he went to the Marine Corps, and we built houses out of slabs, and most of the time he built it with me in it, and then he locked me in, and my aunt had to come get me out.
Slabs of?
Of wood, you know, like the old-time slabs, and we'd stack them up and make like, like they did the wooden fences, and then we'd stack them and make a square, and then we put them over the top.
Well, he was supposed to leave one to get me out, well, he dropped one on there, and I couldn't get it, because I couldn't get enough push to get it off.
So I would scream, and she would come and get me.
We were raised together, and like I said, I had a great childhood.
And then I remember, you know, playing out in the yard, you know, at night, because we'd all get out there and we'd chase lightning bugs, because back then there were lightning bugs.
I mean, some nights you couldn't beat them off, I mean, they were in my hair, and back when I was young, my hair went down way past my waist, and it was natural curly, and they'd get in it, and of course they couldn't get out, and so I looked like a, like a star princess when I'd go in.
My mom or my dad would stand there and pick them out, and, but it also didn't work well for cuckaburs either, because when I'd stay with my aunt, we'd go down the creek, and I'd come back with a load of cuckaburs, you know.
So finally we started twisting it up and putting it up, and only if Stevie hit me and pushed me in the bush did I ever have to worry about him after that.
Next door neighbors, they were two girls, lived over there, and their dad liked to talk on the radio, and so a lot of times at night we couldn't watch TV anyway, because he was talking on his shortwave radio all night long, so it was coming in our house, and so me and the girls would just go out and play, or do whatever, and not worry about it, but yeah, we could hear him just clear, I could leave my bedroom window up, and we could hear their dads talking on the radio in the house, and so that was our nights, and it was funny, and so we just played outside and did whatever, because you could go outside and play.
You didn't have to worry about getting kidnapped, because who would want to kidnap six or seven kids in the backyard screaming and carrying on?
They'd have to be mentally ill to try to catch one of us and take us, because we were so noisy and had so much fun.
We'd build stuff and move stuff and carry on, so we had a swing set, and the neighbors had a swing set, and so everybody was in between yards playing and doing stuff, and then our neighbor down the street, they had about five kids, four or five, and they would come up, and their dad helped build the arch in St.
Louis, and he fell through two subfloors and broke both of his legs and whatever, and his last name was Bacon, I can't remember his first name.
You worked on the arch?
He worked on the arch, uh-huh, you know, I can't remember a time when I was unhappy and I was spoiled rotten and got everything I wanted.
My mom could be pretty firm with me, my dad was a piece of cake, you know, just start those tears and I got it, so.
You know, my, again, my family's been here forever, there's probably not but three names in this town from 10 years ago that I don't have a bloodline to in some ways, I even went to Bullinger County, my grandmother was a, great-great-great-grandmother was a Bullinger.
We've been here, you've been here forever, and so, it's not like they didn't know where you lived, and you seldom saw anybody that had been here for any length of time that would mess somebody out of something, would take something, but again, you didn't see them steal like you see now, because all you had to do was ask, if you were hungry, you know, my mom told my German babysitter, who could speak no English, her husband had to tell her, that if some, if a hobo came from the railroad track and sometimes they got all the way over to High Street and knocked on the door, give them some food and give them some milk or something healthy, do not give them just water, you know, give them something that is nutritious, but she said, do not let them lay down and go to sleep or do whatever, you know, she said, tell them to move on, because you need to be outside of the day playing and your friends need to be over there, and we can have some stranger we don't know lurking around, and so, she would do that, and my little German babysitter, oh my gosh, she was funny anyway, and one guy wouldn't leave, he kept knocking on the door, and he didn't want food, he just wanted to be, yeah, and she got a broom, and she was talking in German, and she had that, and she went, popped him right on the rear end, like go, go, go, go, and she chased him down the yard around the house, so when my mom got home, I said, Beanie attacked a hobo, and my mom goes, what did she do, I go, she beat him up with a broom, and my mom said, oh, she said, I don't really think that she would hurt somebody, and I go, she didn't hurt him, she hurt his feelings, because he could really travel when she couldn't too, she's a little bit short now, I don't know what she said, because it was German, but she told her husband, you know, again, I always had a good time, our world was small back then, it was the highway and high street, and a big trip for my family would be going down to 12 Mile to see my aunt and uncle, or my grandparents, or going, Arnton was a big trip for us, very seldom in my early childhood, I ever remember going to Cape Girardeau, and St.
Louis was like a horror story to me, we went a couple times because my grandma and grandpa lived up there, but I never came out of the floorboard most of the time, because, man, there's all these cars, all these people, and back then, you had your windows down in the summertime, because it's hot, and they'd be screaming and yelling, and I'm like, holy cow, you know, what kind of place is this, and so it was just, you know, we didn't travel a lot, my mom hated to travel, she got carsick, and you know, in later years, when my dad lived in Viburnum and worked on the weekends, came home on the weekends, we had to sedate her, almost, with motion sickness stuff, she had to sit in the front with a bag to even get her over to see my dad over there, and so she didn't want to travel until later years, and then she liked to go to Oklahoma, where my cousin was at, so we didn't travel, we didn't camp out, I hate camping anyways, that involves bugs and heat and stuff, so we didn't do a lot of that, probably our biggest trip was to Illinois to see my mom's youngest brother, Paul, and his family, and you know, we just stayed in our own little world.
Was there a grocery store on this side of the college?
There was, there was, further out the street from us, but I don't know when it started, because again, I have no clue where she grocery shopped, it wasn't in my daily, you know, I never had to worry about it because back then roles were very defined, you know, now my mother wouldn't stand to be bossed around or anything, I mean they had a good marriage, they talked things over and stuff, but my mom did the shopping, and she did it a lot of times when she got off work, or whatever, she never took me, I never went to a grocery store, why, you know, I had everything brought to me, and as far as clothes, we ordered them or had them made, I've always been extremely heavy, so a lot of my clothes were made, because back then you couldn't buy chubby clothes for kids, and so a lot of my stuff was made, so.
In town, somebody made it, some seamstresses.
I made them, or we bought adult clothes and just had her, you know, take them in or whatever, my aunt had eggs, so we got eggs for my aunt, she had a cow, she had pigs, you know, they had those kind of stuff, so we could get that, and so I'm assuming that my mother went to some place like Mr. Barry's, that's by the cell barn, Truman Barry used to have a store there, I don't believe that like, County Mart or Town and Country, whatever they call that one, was there at the time, because there used to be a beautiful old antique, it was a Queen Anne, I'm pretty sure it was a Victorian, was there, and then it was filled, and then there was the railroad track, I don't remember any, oh, grocery store, down, you know where Sheets is at, well you know where the New Era Bank is, right down from New Era Bank, there used to be Sheets on that side, on the other side of the parking lot where the bookstore is, right in there somewhere, I believe, used to be a grocery store, and that's where my mom and dad went to the grocery store, now what it was called, have no clue, but I vaguely remember it being there, so I'm pretty sure she probably shopped there, but most people had gardens, we had a little garden, my aunt had two acres or three acres worth of garden, because they lived off of it out there, and so we had chicken from her house, that's when I learned that bad kids, chickens with no heads chase, because me and my cousin were sitting on a wagon eating an apple, and we'd been doing some honoree things that day, and my aunt said to me, do you know chickens can tell when they're dying, no head, who's evil and who's not, about that time, a dead chicken, I mean a chicken with no head landed between us, and threw blood all over us, and you talk about two kids, we went all the way to the house and went into his room, shut the door and barricaded it, because we thought the chickens were going to get us, and so that's what I learned, never do evil on the day you're going to get chickens, it scared me into more compliance, but not totally, because you know, what about school, elementary school, I went to where it's torn down now, it was the old schools that used to be the colleges, and I was in the second building, the one in the middle, I never saw the first, you know Marvin had two houses, I mean two big buildings right, one in front of the other, the second one was gone when I went to school there, or they were getting ready to tear it down or something, I can't really visually see it, but the second of those two is the ones I went to, I went to kindergarten there and went all the way through school, all but that one semester of school did I go to Viburnum schools, but the rest of my life was in that elementary, that junior high, that high school, in 1971 I graduated from high school, I went through with most everybody that I started out with, you know we were in same classes, doing everything, now my cousin that I was raised with around quite a bit, he didn't go to school with me for the first little bit because he went to, they had a school out there by Z Highway, a little further out, it was in a crook of a road out there, he went there for a little while, my aunt took him and put him in with me, and so then we finished school together, and so like I said, it was alright in school, I didn't, in high school I was kinda like in a middle world, I knew all the kids that were in the clique that ran around that their parents were higher maybe, you know what, status and all that stuff, but then I also ran around with the kids that parents were poor or whatever, yeah so I was kinda torn because sometimes when I was wanting to hang out here, they were heft about it, and then when I was over here, this bunch would say, well you're just sucking up, and you know so sometimes it was difficult and yet I never felt like I belonged to either, I was okay in school, it wasn't the biggest thing, the biggest part of my high school thing was I could look out the high school window and see my horse in the field across from the high school, from the up story window and I could watch him in the field, and he was behind the dock, Newcombe's building, and so every morning before school and every evening after school, I was with, I'd get to go see my horse, you know, so that was my best part of school, was a horse.
What was the height, did you go to the new high school, the current high school, so your high school was the one that burnt down?
The one that burnt down.
You graduated in 71?
71, yeah.
So you lived on High Street, did you have television during those years?
We first started out with one of those little brown jobs, you know, and I vaguely remember it because my dad worked for St.
Joel Ed and he made a good living, and so we always were allowed to go to Sundermans, the furniture store, and my dad didn't have, we didn't have to pay for anything until, you know, my dad got home on the weekend, so we'd go up there and if me and my mom needed something, we'd just go in there and tell Bill my daddy would be home on the weekend and he'd pay for it.
Bill would load it up, bring it over, whatever we wanted.
What did they sell there?
They sold TV sets, wash machines, back at first they didn't have a dryer, but then later on they had microwaves, just anything you wanted, CB radios, radios, anything, and because I remember years later, we went and bought a new microwave because we never had one before, and we bought a brand new colored TV and my dad watched it all weekend before he goes, there's something wrong with that TV, and my mom said, yeah, it's colored, and he goes, where'd you get that at?
And mom said, Sundermans, and he goes, okay, and that was the end of that, he just went up there the next day on his, you know, and paid for it, it was like, you know, whatever, but Sundermans you could get, if they knew you and knew what kind of person you were, you could go in there and credit was just, same way with Sheetz Motor Company, I bought three cars in a row, my dad never saw them, and because I bought one, then I went down through there and I saw another one I liked, so I went in and told him, I'm dying, I have to have that one, I'm gonna die, and he said, I said, my dad will come in and fix it, because this one didn't even have a title on it then, the first one didn't have a title, because I just bought it while my dad was over there, and then a day and a half later, this next one come in, oh, it gets better, and so I had to have it, and then a few days later, it had been in Germany, and they hadn't driven it, it had 2,600 of my miles on it, it was really, you know, but then when I opened the trunk, the sea salt from them bringing it back from Germany had ate the whole bottom underneath the thing out, so I took it back and I traded for another one, which was not this one, and so in a matter of a few days, I had had three different cars, and my dad, all he had was phone calls from Bill going, I traded, and he goes, just give her what she wants and we'll get it lined out when we get there, and that car I drove for 15 years, and it got wrecked, they wouldn't fix it, I bought a clip, I had it fixed, it got hit again, and my dad said, please, do not fix that thing again, buy you a new one, but my dad never lived to see it, it came after he, so, but it was fun, but you know, and again, you could go somewhere, and your name was good back then, you could buy stuff and you could deal with people if you had been good in the past, and we've lost that here, how many places do you know now you can walk in and do that?
How many car dealerships?
Yeah, I think, well, is that, do you think because back then, people just took more time to get to know each other, or what would you?
I think it was just closer then, you know, a lot of people didn't come from like California and move here, or they didn't, they didn't overextend their self like they do now, you know, there wasn't all these credit cards, and you could have money on that, you know, farmers around here were tight with their money because they grew up in a time when there was no money, and when somebody said, I'm gonna buy this and give you a handshake, you could bet your dollar that if you didn't mean to sell it, you were SOL, because it was sold.
Well, I know you said your dad took part in a strike as well.
I think I was probably about 10 or 12, so they had been in the 60s sometime, and St.
Joe's seldom had strikes, but when they did have them, you know, it was pretty rough.
And because, you know, a lot of people didn't have, you know, they just lived paycheck to paycheck, and my mom would go back to work, which we didn't always have that money because my dad said, stay home, you know, raise her, but every once in a while, my mom wanted to go work, and she worked at Brown Shoe Company.
She was a cementer.
She cemented souls.
And so when my dad went on strike, she just went back to work.
And I went to my country, to my Aunt May's house, and stayed with her and Stevie all day long.
I remember you talking about bunning bread, and so that had something to do with the strike.
Yeah, we could never, my dad would never allow it in the house, because they had something to do with the strike, but I don't know how.
Or maybe they wouldn't donate to the, you know, food bank thing that we had.
They might have refused to give, so my dad, you know, because my dad was really so kind and even tempered, never saw him mad.
This really upset him, this strike, you know, and bunning bread, it was never allowed in the house.
I think the first time I bought it, he'd probably been dead ten years or something, because you know, it's automatically, you just go buy it too.
And but that was a hard time, but we were lucky.
My dad managed money really well, and our house was secure, but some people lost all their stuff, you know.
From the mine strike.
So he was, I guess there was a union?
He was a union?
Oh yeah.
What was it called?
Steelworkers, I think, or something like that.
I still get the book, because I like to read and do all that, but he was an avid unit.
I mean, union was everything to those guys, and so when they went out, we went out.
And there may have been another one, a short one, after that, but my dad worked for them his whole working life after he got out of the Navy.
He never, you know, he worked at the pig when he was on strike, but his main job, the whole, his whole life was St.
Joe led, so.
How was the pig different from back when he worked in the 60s?
Well, it moved.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Yes, it was in the, I don't think there's a building there anymore, is there?
It was right by the bowling alley, going towards the new pig now.
And it was a white building, and it sat right next to the bowling alley building.
Same size?
A blue?
Yeah, sorta, and it had the doors and stuff on this side, as I recall.
And I don't even remember it having like a little tarp roof thing, but it may have.
Again, I was really young when that all happened, but that's the original pig, and I don't think there's anything there.
I think it tore it down.
Is the bowling alley still there?
Yeah.
And I think that's...
A blank space right there.
And then they moved it to their current location, and it used to have the drive-in part of it used to be the other way, towards the highway, the real highway, I call it, not that little roundabout thing.
And it was long, and us kids would pull up to it, and then if your friend pulled up on the other side, you just moved the trash can and just drove over it, because it wasn't that high.
It was just a little thing.
And so you'd look around, make sure nobody major was anywhere close, and then you just...
Somebody'd run up there and move the trash can, you'd go over, they'd move the trash can back.
You were cool.
You were just headed in the other direction.
Yeah.
And it was fun that way.
And that was a big thing for us, once we would drive.
We'd drive the pig, turn around, go all the way through town, go around the courthouse, depending on who was up there, which way we'd go around the courthouse.
And then we would go down maybe East Main, or we would go down South Main, or we'd go back down West Main, and just go down to where the library used to be, and turn and go back.
Or we'd go down the next road, right in front of the Catholic Church, and turn to our left, and go down, because the second or third house down was a picture of this lady, and when they had the door open, it was a great big picture of a lady.
And we always were afraid, everybody was always going, she moved, her eyes moved.
So some Saturdays we'd all take turns going down there real slow to see if there was anyone.
You know the first person I've heard say that house is haunted.
And so it was, and then finally the people would, I guess, walk by or do something and see a strange kid out, car out there going real slow, and they'd shut the door.
And so that was a big thing, you know.
When did Country Mart appear?
Because I'm thinking a lot of kids just go there in the parking lot.
Oh, today, yeah?
Yeah.
When did it all change?
Well, it's the town and the country.
Yeah.
And it was there.
I spent a lot of time in that parking lot when I was a kid, because we'd go there, but it's not the parking lot like it is now.
You know, County Mart was different, it was more flat.
And a lot of kids hung out there.
And next door, where that little car place is and garage and everything, we could sit there too.
So if you didn't particularly like a bunch over here, you just went over there.
And so we would sit there a lot.
I have sat there and talked to a friend, and the next thing I know it's daylight.
But that was only on nights my dad wasn't home, because he stayed in Viburnum.
We had a trailer over there, and we're during the week.
My mom would not come out to look for me, because she thought, I know where she's at.
She's there or she's at the pig.
And so my mom wouldn't worry.
But now if my dad was home at 11 o'clock, he'd come out looking for me, and everybody knew him.
And so I would come pulling in and go, hey, your dad's looking for you.
And so, man, I'd shoot home, or just as I was pulling out, there he is.
And he goes, I'm worried about you.
Somebody could take you, could kill you, could whatever.
And he'd be really upset.
And so I'd go home.
And my mom would go, if you're that upset with her, take her keys and do not let her go out for a couple nights, and she'll learn.
And my dad goes, mm-mm.
He said, I can't do that to her, because she likes it.
So you were a teen going into the late 60s and 70s.
So what were the 60s and 70s like in Feathertown?
Not real exciting.
There were people here that had the long hair and the flowers.
And we didn't have a whole lot of them.
And the ones that we did have were, I didn't see a whole lot of them, but we did have a few, I can recall.
Was it mostly, as opposed to Motown or British rock, was it mostly country music here?
Mm-hmm.
And psychedelic music?
Sort of.
Now, I always liked like Steppenwolf and all those.
How did you listen to it?
On the radio.
Which channel?
Or station?
Oh, I don't remember.
Probably just one of the rock stations at the time.
Was it in Cape?
I mean, because it wasn't in Frederictown.
Oh no.
Did you get reception?
St.
Louis.
She's going to get reception from St.
Louis?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And because you had to turn, sometimes you had to turn your car a certain way, and sometimes you had to put a little bit of aluminum around on your antenna or something.
Don't even remember when Farmington finally got a station.
And then of course, when we got one, it was out there in a little white house going out 00.
Right.
That somebody lives in there.
Was that country, always country, or was it?
No, they had some rock and roll on there, too.
But mostly they have religious programs, Sunday and sometimes at night.
And then they'd have a lot of country, and then they would have rock and roll and stuff.
Sometimes they had jazz or something.
This is all the local stations?
Mm-hmm.
But far and few in between, because, you know, St.
Louis was the home of— Did that local station, did they operate 24-7, were there DJs that came in, or was it just— There was DJs, and did they stay open?
I can't remember, I doubt they did, because the town pretty well was dead by the time the bars got out.
Oh, so they operated up until almost 2000.
Uh-huh.
Wow.
Yeah.
So it was pretty interesting.
They used to broadcast the football games.
Mm-hmm.
How about movies?
The movie theater in town?
They— The variety?
Mm-hmm.
They did, and it was a big thing to go Friday and Saturday night and go with your friends or go with your boyfriend or whatever.
And we had a section—the kids pretty well had a section, like pretty close to the front, but in the middle, and then the rest of them were in the last row, the whole last few rows up against the back, because it was darker up there, yeah, because you get away a lot more up there.
Do you remember the moon landing?
Vaguely, yeah.
I do remember it, and I saw—I think I saw, like, pictures or something on TV.
TV was fine, but it wasn't my world and news I really didn't care about.
I had way too much to worry about my horse and going to school and my dog, Peppy, and those kind of things.
I didn't worry about, like, the world going by.
My dad never told me about the news or whatever.
He just wanted me to go to school and be happy, and so that's what I did, you know, stuff.
So I knew about the world out there, but not a lot, and I thought it was, like I said, big bride to go to St.
Louis or to Cape, but we did go to Wisconsin, went to the Dell Reservation up there in Wisconsin, and I'd been to Illinois, and that was it, Missouri.
So not until I—well, I haven't been very far since then either.
I just never had a desire to go anywhere.
I like it here.
Well, my dad was really—he didn't judge anybody, and he didn't talk about anybody, and he didn't, you know, because a lot of people back then were very racist about not only black, but also about Jewish people, and oh, gosh, I don't even know who else was here.
But a lot of— Well, you mentioned country.
Yeah, and, you know, he never—he never acted like anybody was—unless they did something to him, and then, you know, he'd go judge people by their character, not by their skin, or not by who they believe in or what they believe in.
He said, now, if you have a chicken and somebody cuts his head off for, you know, some kind of ceremony, you can be mad because your chicken got killed, but you can't judge because his God—he may believe that's what he needs to do, you know.
I think it's interesting that you—that it does seem like in America, country areas, rural areas, typically seem to be more conservative, and oftentimes with that also more racist.
It's more closed.
Any thoughts?
Any new people coming in or any new whatever—if somebody would open up a new church here that is not around here already, they would probably stroke out around here, you know, and it's not—I'm not judging them, but it's hard for them to get away from, like you said, the conservative, the judgmental fear of what they don't know.
I think that's the biggest thing.
You know, again, the quality of taking the time to get to know something that is not in your comfort zone is not a big thing in every rural area.
Because I think for a long, long time people feared the Mennonites and, you know, the Amish because they didn't understand that they don't value what we value.
They don't need what we've got.
And so when we had the Mennonites go up here, I read about them because I don't want to do anything to dishonor whatever they believe.
And so when I go to the store, you know, I'm very cognitive of that, you know, there's some things you don't do or you don't ask.
And I've been in line before and people ask questions that are none of their business and stuff, you know.
And I'm like, why?
You wouldn't ask that to your Baptist friend or you wouldn't ask somebody in your church about that.
Yeah, there's a there's a balance there between being respectfully curious and wanting to understand something, but also being there's a way to go about it.
But I think that's it.
I think a lot of fear, fear of the unknown and not having a willingness to learn to learn.
You don't want to be caught over there.
You know, back then it was real important that you didn't mess your name up.
And of course, oh my gosh, if I had my dad would have had a stroke.
And so you were very careful.
I never went into a bar that was up here on town around the courthouse square.
Never till I was in my 40s or 50s did I even know what it looked like in there.
Because women did not, a good woman or whatever, when you were raised a certain way, you did not go into a bar and you especially didn't go into that one or the one where the IBS used to be.
There was a bar there.
You were not to be seen and if you keep from it, you were not to park within several spaces close to where it was at because that was not acceptable.
And it's not that I didn't want to go because I wanted to see what they were doing in there.
Well, I wouldn't yet because everybody had to tell you're not going in there.
But I never did.
And the other bar, I was 21 years old when I went in there because we went in a drink.
I'd had drinks before, but not a lot of them.
And so we decided to go in there.
And that was the first time I ever saw it in there too.
But you just didn't, you know, you didn't want to be seen.
If you wanted to do something like that, there were bars way out in the woods.
And if you always had some friend that knew exactly where it was at and you could go out there and they'd be playing music and they'd be drinking.
And if you wanted to drink, no matter how old you were, you could have one.
And I was never a drinker, so I'm sitting there with my friends and they've got beer and I have nothing.
And this guy goes, you want a beer and I said, no, but I'll take a soda.
And so every time he came by and he was drunk and drunk all the time, he goes, you want a soda?
And he'd go, get her a soda.
I never had a chance.
I had a whole row.
And so the lady told me, she said, after the second one, she said, I just want to pop the top on him.
And she said, I'll get you a bag.
And so I took three bags of soda home because he kept buying them for me and go, oh, how do you have another?
And I go, I didn't get to say anything, it just went on.
So it was an interesting sort of thing going on there where you had bars in town, but you had to be careful.
You couldn't be seen.
You couldn't go there.
I guess just the men could go there or women that had bad reputations.
So the bars in town for men and women with bad reputations had such a weird.
Yeah, it was a weird world, but back then they had cultural beliefs that, you know.
You would drive down some country road and there would be like a commercial bar.
Or was it just a garage or what?
Well, the best ones that I ever saw, you went down, you went over towards Arden, you went down this road.
And I mean, it was an old road and you go and you go and you think we're going to die back here because there's going to be some kind of deliverance or something going on.
And then you pull in and there'd be a rough cut woods that was cut down.
And there'd be little roads all around all these tree stumps.
And then when you turned to look like over to your left shoulder, you turn around and there was a giant wood building with metal top on it.
I guess it was an old barn or some kind.
And they had a bar in there.
And it had tables and chairs and all kinds of stuff.
No advertising, no name or anything?
You just had to know it was there.
You just had to know it.
And so you could walk in there and they were dancing.
They had a band there.
And they had like a room that had a big floor and then, you know, a bar on this side.
And then it kind of looped around and there was a space to go in that and there was another little bar thing.
And people everywhere, they were everywhere outside.
They were everywhere in here, you know.
And so I got to watch because I'm always the driver, you know.
I always try to keep everybody on their ass out and not let anybody outside with somebody strange.
It might be a serial killer or something.
And so it was very interesting.
Was there any stigma to going to those places?
Nobody knew.
But the ones that were with you, and anybody you happened to run into that knew you.
Were there people from the town there?
Yeah.
And, you know, I've been standing, I've been, that night that guy was buying me all these, he kept going by and finally I heard somebody say, Whitener.
I'm like, wasn't anybody I could think of and he goes, Linda Whitener.
And I'm going, oh Christ.
So I turned around.
It was somebody I knew and he drunk a lot and all this stuff.
Well, he'd come over and he was, he had me around the neck and he goes, I think I love you.
And I said, I think you're going to be dead, whatever, if you don't unhand me.
And he goes, okay.
He said, you're friendly as you've always been.
I said, yeah.
But I said, I'll buy you a beer if you want one.
So he crawled up there and we, you know, and I said, you wouldn't care for a soda, would you?
And he goes, oh no, that stuff's poison.
Kill you.
And I'm like, you brute loop.
And so, oh gosh, I guess I was 16.
So you guys, I'll have to figure that I was born in 53, March 11th and yes, about 16 probably because I took four people with me.
And so I drove my car that night and so it was 16.
Could you find your way out?
It surely was pitch black out there.
Well, you'd be surprised how good they are.
They had taken old shop lights and run, there was electricity everywhere.
You had to be careful, you know, but they ran lights and they had them circled around the tree, a light, and then they'd go on out and circle around the tree and go in.
Something out of a movie.
Well, they had, they made good money there, you know, and, but it was done so that if there was a whole bunch of trouble there or something happened or whatever, you could just unwind all that.
You could leave it all set there.
You could clear it out.
You could move to somebody else's bar and be up and going in no time.
You know, but that one stayed there for quite a while.
Do they still exist, places like that?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't, I doubt it, but you never know because there are some people that need that kind of.
It's almost the sort of thing a lot of people probably don't know about and unless you're in the know, how do you know?
Because you know, back when they had prohibition speakeas, not everybody knew where they were at.
Well, you couldn't because they might tell and this was basically the same thing, you know.
Did you need a password?
No.
Or anything?
If you could make it to the door you were in and there was a few that didn't quite make it.
Yeah.
There were people in the cars, but it was just, you know, you just go down and you just had to know where to turn and sometimes when you went down someplace there'd be like a, oh, the posts would be painted pink or there'd be an old rag tied sometime clue because sometimes if somebody had a few drinks they could be hunting all night trying to find their own, even if they knew it was there.
But a lot of times, no.
You could pretty well tell that road from the others because there's a lot of traffic on it, but you know, it was neat.
But I didn't go to a whole lot of them because you know what, that could scare you to death sometimes, you know, all that.
I'm thinking, what would my dad do if somebody hurt me down here and he found out I was taking these people down here and it would really hurt.
My world always revolved around trying to keep my dad from being disappointed in me, but I was thinking, I thought, no, I better not be doing a whole lot of this and so we just did other things, but it was not unusual for my friends to the younger, we were younger, to have a keg of beer in the back of the pickup or two kegs or whatever somebody bought for them, and we'd go to the creek.
So I graduated from Federtown and then my long educational career started in upper things.
My dad wanted me to go directly to school, so I did.
I didn't want to go, you know, so my first stay at Mac was not really productive, you know.
I played a lot of cards, wouldn't go, blah, blah, blah.
And so finally he let me quit with the promise to go to beauty school, which I liked better.
It was in Ironton at Barbies, so I went over there to beauty school, got a hairdressing thing, and by then he had bought me a house on Newberry Street and we put a beauty shop in it.
I and Sarah sort of lived there, but we were home, because we used to go down the alley and we were right there at our house.
And my little dog at the time, every time he'd open the door, he'd go home to my mom's house, because that's where he was raised.
And so I worked as a beautician for quite a while.
And then I went to work for Brown Shoe Company and did custom sewing on shoes.
I did it by hand, stitched patterns on them.
And then they went out of business, and so I'm not sure if this is chronological, but it gets everything covered.
And so they went out of business and they offered to let me go back to college, and they paid for it.
So I went back, I went to MAC, and got an associate, I guess is what you call it.
Then I went to Southeast Missouri, and was five hours away from an educational degree.
They went ahead and let me go ahead and do a practicum.
I did it at Farmington in the fourth grade.
Came back, started to sign up for those classes, needed an extra one.
Signed up for social work class, well bye bye education.
I know now what a little duck feels like the first time it hits the water and goes under and flaps around and all that water's flying everywhere, and it's just extremely happy.
So school?
Started over.
Sure.
Well, a lot of that came over.
And so I went in fairly advanced.
The only thing I really hated was statistics.
So the guy that was there, I went and told him, I go, I love social work, but I'm not liking this.
So he tutored me through all three classes.
I went to his office an hour before each class, and so anyway, he nurtured me through that, and so I got a bachelor's degree in social work.
Well, by then, when I did my practicum, I went to Department of Mental Health, but then I went there and met Walter Barron, who was over a program, just a mental health program, you know, you go out and see people and whatever.
And so when I went back and I graduated, he called me the day of graduation and said, you want your job back?
He said, we've got you.
Was he here in Fulton Town?
He was in Farmington.
It was a state hospital.
It was in Hockner building, and he goes, if you want the job, I said, sure.
So I went back and I thought, well, I'll have a day or two to get organized.
I walked into my old office.
He said, you're in the same office, same desk, everything.
So I walked into my old office.
There's six files on there with a set of state issued keys on top and a nice little sign that says, welcome back.
We missed you for the two weeks you were gone, hit the road.
So I just picked up my charts, picked up my keys, went and figured out which car was mine, and I was gone.
And so I worked for them until they moved.
They went private and they moved to Park Hills.
It was Park Hills Mental Health Services.
Still worked for Walt, still did the same thing, still stayed a bachelor.
I stayed a bachelor in social work until I came back because one of the ladies that I had met, socializing and different things, was a friend of my best friend who was an LCSW in mental health.
And so one day I'm sitting in my office at Park Hills and that job was getting ready to close down.
And she said, in the future, we may need somebody, would you consider it if a position comes open?
And I said, yeah.
And what I did was, at that time they had a position for a division of aging residential care person.
And so I just transferred over there and I had eight counties, 64 facilities, and 700 plus clients.
I had to see everybody once a year, new ones I had to see within 90 days.
Everybody had a recertification thing that was in a three-year roundabout.
So one-third of those had to be recertified, and then if they had a problem, an issue, something hadn't changed, I had to see them.
So wow, so you spent a lot of time driving and seeing people in residential...
In residential.
In residential.
What counties were...
St.
Genevieve, St.
Francis, Jefferson, Iron, Reynolds, and I can't remember who, oh, Scott City, Cape Girardeau.
Wow.
There seems to be another one.
I've been driving all over and seeing a good portion of this area, this was in the 80s into the 90s.
So you really saw this region kind of...
By myself.
Yeah, and I'm just sort of imagining what you saw during that time span as far as the region of the people and any changes that you might have seen.
The highway system got better, I can tell you that as time went on, things were easier to find.
But as far as people-wise, there's quite a difference in...
I met people who had PhDs and all that, that their mental health had declined so much that they were in care and had lost everything, and that I was the one that was providing care money for them to be cared for.
And then I saw ones that, because of some kind of health issue, that they went downhill.
I had a couple that got choked and had brain damage from air not going through.
I met all kinds of people.
I had basically never had any kind of cultural diversity in my life.
Who do you see in this part of the country, in your little thing?
And I had never saw anyone of a different skin color than my own, until my sat list visits to my grandma when I looked out the car window was my first time.
But my first time to interact with anybody, truly take the time to have to get to know them, was cultural diversity, things that they sent me to training for the state.
And I got to learn because I got to meet the Sioux Indians that were in Dances with Wolves, got to be in that whole culture, which I love.
I could live there forever.
I met my first, I went to a storytelling class one time and I thought it was Native American because I'd been in Native American stuff all day, sat there, it's African American.
And they were tickled.
I was the only person in there and they go, well, wow, and I go, wow, let's go, let's rock.
And they said, can you tell a story?
And I said, well, the only stories like these I can tell you is the Native American when I learned.
And so they all sat there.
Well, I did a Native American story for them, you know.
Fun, having a good time.
Me and a gentleman from that group who was 98 years old, he wanted to do a bell dance that Native Americans were doing in a class.
And I told him, I said, come on, he said, it may kill me.
I go, it may kill me too, but we'll try.
And so we had two other ladies from the Native American dance thing that had bells and stuff on.
They got on each side of him after we were up there a little while and bell danced with him.
Wow.
And, you know, we just had a ball.
So this was like an on-the-job cultural training.
Yes.
Because I enjoyed the, now this is going to sound odd, but I enjoyed working with my sexual offenders.
I worked with the ones that were on, I was the non-medical person on the ward.
I was the clinical staff, me, just me, on the ward and I was what they call like a ward manager or a, I managed everything that wasn't medical.
What facility was this or what was this?
This is up in Farmington at the Missouri Sex Offender Treatment Center.
Back when I started, it was the sexually violent predator unit, but it kept changing names.
And so I worked with the medically impaired and then I also worked with the ones that had MR and learning disabilities, some that just never had a chance.
We did a group, two hour group, three times a week.
The first part of it was working on their sex offenses, excuse me, and working through criminal thinking and doing all that.
Second half was school.
Great.
I'd been a school teacher, you know.
And I got every two times a week, I got the educator for the hospital to come over and she helped me and we did educational stuff.
Well, I just think that what the deal is there's still so much stigma about mental health.
One of the things I always tell anybody out in the public, you know, when they come to me and they go on this or that or their child or somebody, I go, don't be ashamed.
Tell somebody.
Do something about it.
Be the person that helps them because the only sin about mental health is if you don't get help, if you don't do something about it.
Thank you. you you