Willa Dean Combs

My name is Willa Dine Combs.

I was born in 1930 in rural Bullinger County.

Of course, I guess there's nothing but rural Bullinger County.

And I lived, well I think my parents moved from there right away after I was born into Madison County.

And I lived in Madison County, I mean into Bullinger County, no they moved to northern Bullinger County.

And when I grew up and was married, then I moved to Madison County and we've lived in Madison County ever since.

I said we've, my husband passed in 2017, but we have a farm on Castor River near the Amidon property and that was our home for I guess about 40 years.

You said 1930?

I was born in 1930.

What was your actual birthday if you might give me that?

May 20, 1930.

Right in the midst of the Depression.

So I'm a product of the Great Depression.

So what are some of your earliest memories of your childhood?

Well I remember when I was a very little girl.

I had a brother who was I think about 17 months younger than I. And he got into about everything a child could get into.

And I was the big sister trying to get him out of it.

So one time my mother heard a lot of screaming going on and when she went to see about it, it was my brother crying and he said, Oh, Whid hurt me.

Oh, Whid hurt me.

And she said what did she do?

He said her bided me.

So I guess when I couldn't get out, he was always into trouble and I was trying to get him out of it.

And when he didn't do what I wanted him to do, I guess I just called off and bided him.

How old were you when this happened?

I wasn't very old.

Probably I was under school age, I'm sure of that.

How many siblings did you have?

Pardon?

How many siblings did you have?

Just one.

One brother.

One sibling.

You bided.

Yes, I did.

Allegedly.

Allegedly.

I hadn't had my rabies shot either, but we played together a lot.

We lived on a farm and our main source of entertainment was playing in the pond.

It wasn't a deep pond, it was a shallow pond.

And mom knew that we couldn't drown, there was enough mud in it to hold us up.

We played there and the mail carrier passed our house every day and my dad, trying to keep my brother out of the pond, would tell him that that was a government man.

He better stay out of that pond or he'd get him.

So my brother took it in partly, but he didn't give up on the idea.

When it was time for the mailman to come by, there was a big white oak tree.

So he'd get behind that tree and as the mail carrier passed by, he'd circle the tree to get out of his sight line of view.

My brother had a knack for getting into mischief and I was the mother hen and I had a knack for always getting him into trouble.

There was just, I guess, not enough difference in our ages of what we played.

I won't say we played well together because we did quarrel a lot and it was usually me trying to get him to do what he didn't want to do.

Maybe that's why I became a school teacher, to satisfy the need of other hens.

I went to school in a rural school, it was probably about a mile and a half or maybe a little more from where we lived and I walked that distance, except the year we finally got a teacher with a car.

She drove past our house and so she'd stop and pick us up and take us to school and in the afternoon she'd bring us home.

I guess she was my teacher in grade school for about five years.

That sounds unusual.

It was more like four years because she was hired to teach at the Patton School, in the high school and she left the district that I went to a year before I graduated from there.

So when I went from grade school into high school I went back to that teacher.

She was the best teacher I ever had.

What was her name?

Grace Smith.

I had a lot of good teachers but she was the one that won my heart.

I went to grade school at South Liberty, near our home, I think I said that, walked back and forth to school except when we were old with her.

And then when I started high school that was at Patton.

I graduated there at the age of sixteen in 1946 and that summer I started school at Cape in the college.

My dad, we were not wealthy people by any means, very poor people, but my dad was determined that I have a good education and so he sent me to school that summer.

I was hired the next year, the next term, to teach in a rural school after one semester.

That was the way it was done back then, you know, it was a whole different world.

And I was sixteen years old and I can't imagine that.

I was as big a kid as some of my students were.

What grade did you teach?

I had all eight grades, grades one.

And at sixteen and a half.

Wow.

Now why do you think your father was so adamant about you getting a college education?

He knew that I liked to learn and he didn't have opportunity to get an education and he wanted me to have one.

He wanted my brother to too, but my brother wasn't interested.

We were different.

Very different.

How long did you stay at that school?

Four years.

I was in the fourth year when I met my husband and we were married.

That was November 25th, 1948 and at that time I was eighteen years old.

And I still had, that was, I'm trying to think, I think that was the fourth term that I had been there.

I'm not sure this is going to all happen, so I may be stretching it, you know, a year or two.

Did you still go to school while you were teaching?

Yes.

I would go to school in the summer at Cape and then teach in the fall.

So I taught at four years at that school and then it was the time when consolidation began and that school was consolidated in with the Patton District.

Well, by that time I was married and we lived in Madison County.

So I went to school or got a school at the junction of J and 72, the old Union School.

I don't know if either of you remember that or not, it's been gone for several years now, but it was on the right.

But I know that location.

And did you continue then to get your… I continued.

I continued.

Every summer I would go to school.

I would do correspondence courses and night courses sometimes and my husband supported me in it fully.

He wanted me to go ahead and get my education.

So you would drive at night?

At night.

I didn't drive alone, no, we carpooled, there was a number of us and among them was a man, teacher.

And so we were safe enough, you know, that way.

This would have been the late forties that you were in, late forties into the early fifties.

Yes, it would have been the late forties into the early fifties.

I didn't get my degree until, I think it was 1962 when I finally got my degree.

Well it makes sense if you, you know, it's one thing to be a full-time student and knock it out in four years, but you were teaching and just doing this and yes, wow.

It sounds unusual, but I wasn't the only one.

There were many teachers doing that.

But it was about the only way we could do it, you know, the matter of money for one thing because those were tight years.

Those were the war years and we just coming out of the depression.

What can I say?

We just, we did what we had to do.

And did you go further and get your masters?

I never did get my masters, but I had many hours toward it.

If I, you know, I should have gone on, but I didn't.

So you were teaching a man to full-time since you were 16?

I was teaching full-time since I was 16, yes.

So a total of how many years?

Thirty-nine years and three months and the three months that I subbed for a teacher.

That was during World War II.

Her husband went into service and she wanted to join him where he was stationed and I subbed three months and I didn't plan ever to go back to teaching again.

But it was after that then that I went back to teaching and taught until I got my degree in 1962.

It took a lot of years to get it.

You were very dedicated.

And your family?

You had children?

I had two daughters.

And so did they stay with you at school after school or, you know, while you were finishing up?

My mother was a very good babysitter, my mother and dad.

And so they watched our older daughter.

She passed away in 2004.

That's right.

My oldest daughter, she had cancer.

She was a great daughter.

Did you ever have any of your children, were you ever their teacher?

Yes.

Were you?

Both of my daughters had me at one time.

Was she a good teacher?

Yeah.

Was she a good student?

I couldn't get by with anything.

She couldn't get by with not being.

They were good students, both of them were, and they were good daughters.

What thinking about your love of education and thinking back to when you were young and in grade school, is there anything that stands out to you as to why that became something important to you?

I think it was a teacher that I had.

The teacher that I had in grade school.

She was to me a model teacher when she left the grade school that I was attending.

She went to Patton High School as a teacher there, and I was ready to graduate from the eighth grade.

And I don't know, I just, I loved her.

And she took me under her wing, and I think that was what led me to be a teacher.

How did your life change after the Depression?

Well, I don't know how it changed other than I think I didn't have to wear the same pair of shoes all year.

You know, it was bad then, during the Depression and during the war, when things were rationed.

And I can remember when we got one pair of shoes, if we were lucky we might get two pair of shoes during the year, but, well, let me rephrase that.

We had two pair of shoes, one to wear for Sunday and when we went out, and an older pair of shoes that we wore around home when we weren't going barefoot.

Which pair did you wear to school when you were, you also got the ride, though.

You wore the Sunday shoes to school?

Well, I guess I must have, I don't remember that.

I must have worn the same shoes.

I remember as I got older, you know, that I had a pair for Sunday or for good occasions and then whatever, whatever was left for every day.

I often quote my uncle who said during the Depression, there was plenty to buy, but no one had money.

That's right.

And during the war years, people had plenty of money, but there was not as much to buy.

Right.

Things were rationed.

So my growing up years were pretty well, I think people would consider themselves deprived now because there were too many things that were not available, you know, that were scarce or they were rationed.

But I didn't ever feel deprived.

But you had a farm so you could eat.

We had a farm.

We always ate and we always had clothes.

My mother made my dresses until I was, well even when I, I guess even when I started high school, my mother was still making most of my dresses for me.

She was pretty good seamstress and many of them were made out of feed sacks.

I don't know if you remember that or not when the chicken feed was put in bags, printed bags.

Well many of my dresses were made out of that.

So she would turn that printing to the inside and then you would have like a light colored dress?

No.

She simply took that printed bag, scrubbed it and washed it up.

Flowery.

Flowery.

Flowery feed sacks.

Yeah.

They were floral prints.

Oh.

I didn't know whether they had the name of the product on it.

Oh I, no.

No.

No.

It was a floral print that they were put in and my goodness the women would, they were really very careful about which bags, the feed they bought, you know, because they were buying.

Right.

Based on.

I wonder if the people that are putting out the flower and the feed, if they were aware of the secondary use and if that went into deciding at all, you know, how they packaged it.

It might have.

Yeah.

I don't really know.

Huh.

They had no trouble getting rid of those bags, I know.

Did you save any of those dresses?

To this day, no.

I don't have any savings.

She did quilt a quilt recently though.

Yes I did.

And I didn't even know this but as she was quilting, she was telling the story to someone that was visiting her and a lot of the pieces that's in the quilt were from dresses that, from the feed sacks that my grandma had made her and of my grandma's dresses.

So we just, she just did that recently.

And when you quilted, did you do the stitching or did you just like tie them?

No, I did the hand stitching.

Even in the nursing home I have an oval, large oval quilt frame that belonged to my mother and my grandmother and I've used that and I've quilted whole quilts on that.

I think I've heard that people would hoist the quilting frame up high so that you could work in the kitchen and then bring it down.

My mother had four screws in the ceiling spaced the length of her quilting frame and she would put the quilt on those wood frames, which were strips of wood actually, held together by a c-clamp, I don't think they even had the c-clamp then, or if they just tied them together however they could fasten them together.

And then they tied that up into the screw in the ceiling and they'd roll that up and pull it up there.

I remember we lived on a rural route and we had a neighbor who lived back off the road.

It was a young man but he stuttered and he would come to our house and sit and wait for the mail carrier to go so he'd pick up their mail.

One day, it was a real windy day, and the wind got into that quilt some way and it came loose and came down right on his head.

I remember it was often stuttering when you heard it.

Did it pull the quilt out?

It didn't hurt the quilt, it probably pulled it loose from the frame, I don't remember that.

What do you remember thinking about growing up in the area, do you remember any particular community celebrations, were you part of the church or any festivals or anything that stand out to you?

Yes, the church, we attended a rural church.

We walked to and from church and I do remember that in the war, shoes were scarce, were rationed.

We had an old pair for every day or if we didn't have an old pair for every day, we used the ones we came with.

We'd walk to church barefoot and carry our good shoes with us with a wet washcloth and we'd stop near the church, sit down, wash our feet, put our shoes on.

When we came out of church, we would stop, sit down, wash, take our shoes off and go on home.

Even in bad weather?

Even in bad weather.

I don't know at that time if we had a car, if my dad had a car or not.

He may have had, he may not, probably didn't have, and we walked.

Sometimes he would take the wagon and horses and we'd ride there in a wagon, but more often than not, if the weather was halfway decent, we walked, it was about probably a mile and a half to two miles.

During the war, did you have a radio to listen to the fireside chats?

Did that interest you?

We did have a radio, a battery-powered radio, and my dad was very conservative with that battery, so we gathered up, the radio was here, we were right up here on it almost, and would listen to it, but the program was over, the radio was turned off, and if there was advertising came on, it was turned off during the advertising and back on, and probably took more power turning it on and off than it would have if it had been left on, but we didn't know that.

Right.

So you didn't have electricity?

Not at that time we didn't.

We did not get electricity until, I think it was the year I was married, 1948, REA finally was in the area, and so we had electricity at home, and the house we lived in over in Madison County already had electricity, they got it first before Madison did, I mean before Bullinger did, I lived in Bullinger.

And did you always live on your own when you got married, did you immediately move into your own house?

Yes, we did.

What did your husband do for it?

You know, my husband worked for the gas company, propane gas company, drove a truck for them, and when they went out of business then, that was about the time the mines opened up, he got a job there, and he worked, excuse me, not underground but in the refinery, and that didn't last too many years, and when that ended then he did start farming full-time.

We raised beef cattle.

Did you rent a farm or buy it?

We bought a farm, bought it and paid for it a little at a time, you know.

How many acres?

What we bought originally was 80 acres, and then later we bought an adjoining farm when it came up for sale, and it was also 80 acres.

So I still, my husband passed in 2017, but I still own the farm, and the Frederictown High School Superintendent lives in the house now.

I don't know, I think his contract's up, isn't it, this spring, so I don't know if they'll renew his contract or if he'll retire, go back to advance where he came from.

It was in the Bullinger, I mean in Madison County, right on Caster River, near the Amidon property, if you know where that is, Long County Road 208.

It is pretty, and we love living there.

We lived there, well, most of our married life, except for those first few early years.

Was the house already built?

No.

We had an old house, the old farmhouse that was there when we bought the property.

We lived in that until one day my husband, I was at school teaching, and my husband came in from the field for lunch and found a copperhead snake stretched out in front of the kitchen range.

He first thought he wouldn't tell me about it because he knew I'd go ballistic, but he decided maybe he'd better tell me so I could be able to watch for him.

We had a crack stopping party that night, stuffed rags and paper, whatever we could find in the cracks.

It was an old farmhouse, the termites had been into the sills of the place, I guess.

We didn't realize, I think, how bad it was that we got to trying to stop the cracks.

Finally, my husband said, he started building a house right beside of it.

We lived there the rest of our lives.

And no more copperheads?

No more.

No, I wouldn't say no more copperheads.

We found a few more.

I went to—we had an old chicken house that he had turned into a grainery, and I went down there one day to get a bucket of feed for the chickens, and there was a copperhead stretched out on that grain.

I went to the house and got the 22 and gave him in.

And we just, you know, we just decided that was it, and we just started building a house.

So did you guys—did he actually build it, or did you— He built it with the help of a carpenter friend, a real good friend that was an excellent carpenter.

They did most of the work on it, plus he had an uncle that helped when he could, and some of the neighbors helped.

His carpenter friend was of church, from the same church that we attended, and he was excellent.

He was not married, and he was as particular as they come, so things had to be just right.

That was a good thing for us, but he was very generous with us.

So growing up, do you remember by chance—we had Jack Ward Skinner had told a story about there being a circus that came to town.

Do you remember that happening yet?

I remember a circus coming to town.

It seemed like there was more than one of them, maybe, and they had them up around where the old high school was.

I think so.

I think he talked about there being elephants—I think he said, did he say elephant?

I was so surprised, but do you remember some of that, or anything else that stands out?

I can't remember exactly what animals they had, but I do remember a circus coming to town and being here for—I don't know if they were here, I guess overnight maybe, maybe a few hours.

I don't remember that.

Was it before the 1980s, because I remember there were two years, I think, that a circus came and set up on the high school, the current high school on the property?

It seems to me like it was earlier than that, because— I think he had said back in the 50s.

Yes, I think that would be more like it, the time he's talking about.

I'm just trying to think of something for a point of reference as to when that was, but it was early on.

And that would have been by the park where the middle school burned down?

Yes, in that area where they always set up.

Because that middle school was the high school?

It was the high school.

Do you remember any of the—did they do the county fair or the Azealia Festival, things like that?

When did those things start?

They had—I don't remember what year the Azealia Festival was started, do you, Terri?

I'm wanting to say 63, but that may not be right.

One question again, do I remember what?

Yeah, I was just thinking back to any fairs or anything that you might remember from, you know, that you enjoyed, like celebrations.

Yes.

They usually were around Labor Day.

They had what they called a Labor Day picnic.

And sometimes there would be people bring animals in, you know, just for sight, for seeing.

Was that at Memorial Park?

Yes.

And of course there was always ice cream to be had, and that was what my brother and I were most interested in.

So do you think that was more like a county fair?

It was more like a county fair, I guess, and it was a county celebration.

It wasn't just the town.

People came in from not only Madison County, but sometimes they come from Bullinger County, too.

I don't know if they came from the far part of Bullinger County, but the part of joining Madison, I know they did.

Was there much of a business district in Bullinger County?

No.

Bullinger County, way back then, was more just little neighborhood stores, you know, or just a family store.

If they had a post office.

With like groceries and dry goods?

Groceries and dry goods, yes, but they may have had.

I don't know that.

It was the county seat, you know, Marble Hill was the county seat for Bullinger County, and I know that down there they did have some of those things.

We were there.

My dad took us down there every once in a while.

And then that's where I went when I got my teacher's certificate, went to Marble Hill for it.

I remember my mother-in-law telling me about Greenville.

Do you remember anything about that, where they flooded the town and rebuilt it?

Yes.

I don't remember seeing it.

I only remember hearing about it, but they did, they flooded the old town, and I don't remember why.

Yeah, I wonder.

The lake, I think.

The road, probably.

What, Pella Lake?

Oh, I guess that's what it was, uh-huh.

Did you say before you got the farm, where did you live before you did the farm?

We lived in the Spring Valley community, there's Longcastle River also, and then the farm we bought was probably a mile, a mile and a half up the river.

So you weren't actually, you never really lived properly, like, in Fredericktown?

No, we never lived in Fredericktown, always the rural area.

Now, my husband had been born in Colorado, grew up in the cities, but he wanted to be a farmer.

He always wanted to be a farmer.

Where did you meet him, I don't know if you said?

Well, no, I didn't say.

It was at a pie supper.

I don't know if you remember pie suppers, no, you wouldn't remember that.

They would have the schools, in order to raise money to buy books or whatever they needed, would have pie suppers.

All the women and young girls, young ladies, would make pies, make a pie, and they wouldn't put their name on it, and those pies would be auctioned off.

And the young men, or adult men, if they so wished, would bid on those pies, and the highest bidder got the pie, and then he got to eat the pie with the person that baked it.

And it was at a pie supper where I met, well, no, I met my husband at church first.

It was a revival meeting.

You don't remember, probably, the old revival meetings, but at those meetings, people would always gather around the altar, and my grandfather was a shouting man.

When he got happy, he shouted.

And I remember that night, one of my friends was at the altar, and I was standing up there, and my grandfather was standing up there, and he got one arm around me, and one arm around a young man over on the other side, and he got happy, and he popped our heads together.

I mean, literally popped our heads together.

That was my husband.

Well, that's a great start.

We saw stars when they weren't shining.

Tell them about the pie supper, then, how he ended up getting the pie.

That was before we were married, of course, and in about the same period, there was a pie supper at one of the schools.

It was down along Castor River again, near Castor Station on 72.

My husband-to-be was at the pie supper.

He didn't know which pie I had or anything, but he wanted to get my pie, and he bid on everything that came with it, spent his whole paycheck, and one of our neighbors took pity on him and told him which pie was mine.

And he took me home that night, and we started dating, and that was all she wrote.

Now, you said it was near Castor Station, so a train ran through?

No, it was not a train.

It was Castor Station, which was a gasoline station with a few groceries, and it was right along Castor River.

Highway 72, I don't know how familiar you are with it, but a few years ago, they reconstructed part of it, coming down Castor Hill, and they bypassed the station.

They moved it farther as you face Frederictown.

They moved it to the left.

Going toward Cape, they moved the road farther to the left, where I lost my train of thought.

The road used to go right by Castor Station, and it was on the right, on the original Highway 72.

Now, as you go down, you can't really see it, but it's on the left.

It's probably not more than 30 or 40 feet from where the original one was.

Why they moved it, I'm not quite sure.

Because of a curve in the road, probably.

So the road is going to Cape, the road's to the right of Castor Station now, down that hill?

Right.

There was a sharp curve as you came down the hill, a sharp curve before you crossed the river, and I think that's why they did all that.

So what was the school that had the pie supper?

It was Spring Valley.

Spring Valley School, which was right up the hill, catty-cornered from Castor Station.

And then our first home was in the house, right near, it was on Castor Hill, also, above the station.

It's where those rock posts are, I don't know if you're familiar with the road, but the old stretch of highway, there were rock pillars, two of them, and the road was right through that, and at the foot of the hill, that's the house that we lived in.

It was a two-story house that had pictures of ancestors from I don't know how far back.

I was scared to death of those pictures, I don't know, I wasn't a very brave girl, woman.

And that was our first home.

I remember before my husband would go to work of a morning, the last thing he'd have to do would be look around, be sure there wasn't anything in the house, anybody in the house, but me, I was just afraid.

So the pictures were in the house when you moved in?

Pictures were in that old two-story house hanging on the staircase, and as I passed by, I'd look up and see them looking down, and I always thought they were looking at me not approving of me.

I don't know why I thought they didn't approve of me.

But you didn't know who they were?

I didn't know who they were, and they were, you know, they were, well, you know how those old pictures were, they were, some of them were pretty stern looking.

Were these paintings or photographs?

They were, well, I guess they were photographs.

I'm not sure about that because, you know, back then, they could have been.

Did you give a type or something?

Was it some of the Starkeys?

Yes, it was some of the Starkeys.

Oh, so you could construct your own story in your head.

That's right.

Oh, yes, and I was a master at constructing stories in my head.

Well, that's a question.

Thinking about you growing up and being in school, did you have any favorite subjects or favorite things?

Like did you write or do poetry, or what were your favorite things in school to do?

I just liked school.

As far as writing stories and things like that, I did a little bit, but I don't think it was anything that really grabbed my interest.

I liked math.

Always liked math, and I always liked history.

It wasn't any subject I disliked.

Okay, so you taught at the one-room school for a while, but what subjects did you teach later?

Well, it was the same subjects.

I taught at two different one-room schools, well, actually three.

I taught at the first school I taught at was on Highway 72, near the Madison-Bloomberg County Line, and it's where they reconstructed part of the highway and bypassed some of those horrendous curves that were on there, and that was the first one that I taught at.

Rosebud.

Yes, I taught there for three years, and then they reorganized with the Patton District, and the next year I came up to where Highway Jade joins 72.

The Union School was there.

It was a two-room school.

Lloyd Piot taught the upper grades, and I taught the lower grades.

I taught there one year and had signed a contract for the second year, but in the meantime I had married, and I was expecting our first child, so I turned back my contract and didn't teach that year.

In fact, I didn't teach for two, going on three years, I guess, and our first daughter was born.

And then they came to me from the Underwood District, which was near our home, that's on Highway W between J and 208, and they wanted me to come there to teach.

Well, I intend to go back to school, you know, when my daughter was born I intended to stay home with her, but they just kept on and kept on, and they stayed all morning.

How nice.

They wouldn't leave.

And so finally my husband said, if you want to, you go ahead, and we'll make it.

He said that at that time the mines had closed down and his job was gone, and he said, I'll take care of her, and I'm sure your mother will help, and she did.

So they raised our first daughter, practically.

So usually you taught elementary grades?

I taught, I always taught elementary grades, but I taught all eight grades at one time, you know.

At one time I taught all of them, you know.

I really had to plan my schedule and I didn't have very many minutes for each subject.

It was, I don't know how I did it, I really don't, but I did.

I had been at Union before I went to Underwood.

I was at Underwood when they reorganized all those small districts, and I went into that group and I was in the school at Minelmont that was in part of the reorganization, and I taught the remainder of my years at Minelmont.

I don't really remember how many there were at the time.

So at that point, I assume you had your own car and you were… At that time, yes, after the first years I walked to school.

We lived near enough to Underwood for me to walk, or when the weather was bad my husband would take me, and a lot of times he'd pick me up at school in the afternoon, but otherwise I had my own car and drove back and forth.

You know, I bet you explained the subjects to one grade and then they had to work on it.

Then you went to the next side.

I was actually in a classroom with two different grades and we just didn't pay attention when the teacher was teaching the other grade, well, maybe we listened a little, but we had our work to do.

Right.

That's how it…I had to have just a few minutes, you know, I think if I remember right it was about 15-minute increments to introduce the subject, get them started on it, interested in it, reading.

I don't know how interested they always were, anyway, got them working, you know, and moved on.

And I think sometimes the ones that were not in that class, that were sitting back listening, they learned as much from that, you know.

It couldn't have been easy though.

It couldn't have been easy, no, and it's a wonder that they survived, but I had some really good… How are you?

I had some really good students, some that really turned out well, some that turned out to be teachers themselves, and I don't think, all in all, I don't think they were harmed too much by it.

I don't think they were too deprived, because they learned some things from that, that they didn't learn in the regular classroom.

I think when they had other classes to listen to, and they had smaller children in there, they had eighth graders in with first graders, second graders, and those bigger kids watched out for the little ones.

I was going to ask if there was any students, I would think that they would be helping each other.

They were.

They might benefit quite a bit.

And on the playground, you know, how kids get into little corals, big things to them, and sometimes those other kids would settle the fuss before it ever got to me.

I would think also that it would, if you went to a lower grade, if some of the older kids didn't remember all the steps to long division or something, it would be a review for them.

Yes, it would be.

So, somehow, you made it work.

It worked.

It worked.

I wouldn't recommend it, you know, as a full-time way to teach or way for children to be educated, but under the circumstances, you know, there wasn't money for the school districts to hire enough teachers to go around.

It was hard years, so I think, though, that sometimes hardships like that make stronger people in the long run.

If they survive, they're stronger.

Any special part of history that sticks out in your mind?

I don't remember, you know, meeting a president or anything like that.

What was something I've been asking people this past couple of interviews?

We just had the anniversary of the moon landing.

Was that something that stood out to you or something you would do later?

Yes.

I enjoyed that very much, and when all that was happening, I remember we were glued to it.

I guess it was still the radio then.

I don't think we had TV then, but anyway, we were all gathered around listening to that, and those things made a big impact on my memory.

Sure.

How about newspapers?

Did you subscribe?

We had a county paper, the county paper that we always subscribed to.

I don't think we subscribed to the, like, to the Post, Dispatch.

I don't know if it was even in business then or not, but we had, like, in Bullinger County, the Boundary Press, and of course the Democrat News in Madison County, and we had access to those papers.

And we always did, when radios, when the radio came into being, we had a radio, and we had a radio at home.

I remember when we got our first one, the battery powered, my dad guarded that.

Oh, he didn't want that battery run down.

It would have been disastrous.

And I remember that we'd gather around that radio, and I mean literally sitting elbow to elbow, head to head almost, listening because he had the volume turned down so low to keep from running his battery down.

What about Pearl Harbor, listening to that on the radio?

Yeah, Pearl Harbor, it's hard for me to even talk about that.

I remember that happened on a Sunday afternoon, and I remember my mother and dad having such somber looks on their faces.

I knew something terrible, terrible had happened, and they didn't tell me at first.

And I asked them again, what was wrong, did somebody die?

And they told me no, that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.

Well, you were only eleven.

I was eleven, but it made a big impact on me.

Those years, you know, affected our lives considerably in many ways.

Not because I didn't have a brother in service, and he was too young.

My father was the supporter of the family, and he was a farmer, and that was part of the war effort, you know, so he didn't go to war.

I had a first cousin who did, and he was wounded, and my husband's brother was wounded at Pearl Harbor.

The ship was hit, he was in the Navy, the ship was hit, and he and a buddy jumped overboard and swam around to the other side of the ship and got back on, and they made it.

His brother, my husband's brother, was injured, but it was not crucial, and not that bad.

Came home, recuperated, and went back, and he served, I don't know, between twenty and thirty years.

I don't remember how many years he served in the Navy.

So Pearl Harbor made a big impression, a big impression.

One thing I've been asking people, another sort of thing that I'm interested in, is technology.

Do you use a technology now, iPhone or computer, or are you doing things?

I'm not now, but I did before I was working.

Do you email and text with people?

I do.

Well, I email.

I did when I was home.

I don't since I'm in the nursing home.

I used a computer at home.

I researched my family and wrote a book, Family History, by Reagan Longing.

Well, you should have told us that in the beginning.

And what did you use to research?

Was it ancestry.com or something?

I did somewhat.

I started with the people that I knew, and I got what they knew, and I talked to them.

I went around and talked to people I knew and people I heard of that I didn't know.

My husband was into it as big as I was, he was really interested in it, too.

And we did a lot of moving around to find people to talk to about different things.

That's how I got the information for the book that I wrote.

Would you go out of state and talk to relatives?

No, I didn't do—I don't remember ever doing that.

We made several trips to Gatlinburg, my—Tennessee.

My ancestors, my Reagan ancestors, came from that area, and I wanted to see and walk where they had walked, and so we went down there, and I learned quite a bit about them from that trip.

I knew Gussie Reagan, but that wouldn't have been her nickname.

Did you know her?

I didn't know her.

I think she was an elderly woman and I was a little girl, but I remember the name Gussie Reagan.

How did your family happen to be in Missouri?

Do you know that story?

My great-great-grandfather emigrated to Missouri from Tennessee, and that's how they got here.

Were they English or German?

Part German, and Reagan is Irish.

I think they were Heinz 57.

They were in the mid-1830s?

Yes.

Okay.

Wow.

Some came from Lincoln County, North Carolina.

Yes, Lincoln County, North Carolina was a lot of people in this area came from Lincoln County.

Well, I think sometimes the speech patterns, when you're in a rural area, they didn't change as quickly.

The phrases that people would use, and it would carry off, especially from the, I feel like the Tennessee mountains, they used the same quotes and just expressions for a lot of generations.

I think I took pride in the fact that my ancestors came from the Tennessee area and the mountainous area.

I don't know why I felt that way about it, but it is beautiful there, but I did take pride in that.

Three of them there had fought in the Revolutionary War.

Yes.

Are you from the DAR?

I am.

Are you?

We both are.

Okay, well there you go.

So before the Revolution, did you trace it back to Plymouth?

No, I didn't get that far.

It quit, I think, before it got that far.

No, but I did a lot of tracing to get back.

It was fun.

Yeah.

It was exciting.

I probably wouldn't start the project again at my age now, but it was interesting.

It can get really involved.

Yes, it can.

I met a lot of interesting people in doing that because I'd meet people that knew that I was researching, and they'd contribute what they knew, and it's an addictive hobby to say the least.

When you were doing this before the internet, would this have been mostly via phone and written letters, or was this after email?

I think it was before email became popular.

It started about in 1983.

Yes, I guess it was around 83.

So it's a longer, when you think we take for granted now, and future generations will take for granted how quickly things can happen electronically, but that was a different world where you had to really go out there slower and a lot more effort to convince the convenience we have now that it existed.

A lot of letters.

She's in charge of remembering what I've forgotten.

What a treasure to have a book.

Yeah, it was very fulfilling, and I did it with a typewriter before I had a computer.

Book shows it too, you know, I mean you just can't type a book and make it look as professional as you can on the computer.

Well, it's another one of those things we take for granted now.

I can write a document and go back and rearrange it and change it, but when you're, you know, it's a different commitment to do it all.

Well, erasing on a typewriter, I remember cheating and using onion skin paper because you could erase.

But if you had this kind of paper, like almost a dry, you'd have a hole in it, then you'd have to type it over.

I can't tell you how many pages of paper I wasted trying to do that, trying to get that book printed.

I don't know why onion skin paper allowed you to erase.

Did you ever try that?

I don't remember if I ever did on onion skin or not.

I honestly don't remember.

So you have this book, doesn't you?

And then there's a copy in the genealogy room of the library here.

And do you have the source materials, letters and stuff that you still have?

Yeah.

That's great.

Did you make copies of the letters and put them in the book?

Well, a lot of the information did.

I always verified my information in the book, you know, gave it a source, but a lot of it I did just by, you know, word of mouth interviewing people.

So exactly what is the name of it, so that we could know which one was yours?

Just plain old Reagan family history.

Okay.

Didn't have any catchy name to it.

Well, we will definitely have that information on this interview so people can look at it.

And I don't even remember what year I published it.

It was after 87, it's after Rudy died.

Probably around 93, would you say?

I don't know.

Between 87 and 93.

I'll type right in there.

Is there anything you want to finish up with, any special thoughts, condition of the world today?

I'd hate, I think I would hate to bring up a child in today's world.

I don't think, well, maybe that's just my clouded view of things, but I just don't think it looks too promising, to tell you the truth, the way things are going and the way things are changing.

And maybe that's just because I'm old and set in my ways.

I know that we've been there before and when the situation's been very bad and survived and if the world stands, we'll be there again, probably.

But I just hate to think about trying to bring a child up in today's world.

They'd have a lot of opportunities that I didn't have, opportunities she didn't have when she was growing up, but there's a lot more pitfalls too, seems to me like.

Do you have any grandchildren?

Yes.

I had four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

So, well, I'm sure your grandchildren will do you proud.

I'm proud of them.

I think they all have their feet planted on solid ground.

Well, thank you.

Thanks again.

Well, thank you.