Back Then

by Melissa Scott

Remembering the past can be bittersweet for some people; that’s what I felt when I interviewed my mother, a Lumbee Indian. She was born in Robeson County, North Carolina, and had nine siblings. The family lived in a two-bedroom “shotgun house” -- if you stood in the front door, you could see through the back door. The way of life was farming and sharecropping; when you were old enough, you moved away.

Living in a two-bedroom house with twelve people today would not be pleasant; however, back in the ‘40s this was normal. There were three beds in the children’s bedroom, and the baby slept in the parents’ room -- usually in a drawer because there wasn’t any cribs. Consequently, growing up with nine brothers and sisters got crowded when it was bedtime, especially when she slept in a bed with a ten-pound quilt laying over her. Getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom was out of the question. She had to hold it until morning or surprise the person lying next to her.

The family raised its own chickens, hogs, and vegetables and didn’t have a cow since they couldn’t afford one; therefore, she didn’t drink milk. Water was pumped from a well. When they killed hogs, they ate everything but the “grunt.” Out of the hog, they made sausage, pudding, and lard; soap was also made from hog's skin. From the corn kernels, corn mill was made to make flour bread and biscuits. The vegetable field grew peas, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, and potatoes. In addition, on the farm were tobacco, cotton, and corn, and the boys plowed the fields by mule. The boys were also in charge of sweeping the yards with reeds, the older girls would cook and take care of the baby, and the others would clean. After the work on the family farm was complete, the family would go work on a white man’s land and farm; his name was Mr. Humphrey. The worse part of working on his farm was that it kept Mom from attending school. “His kids went to school, and we didn’t get to go to school -- except when it rained,” Mom said. Surprisingly, on the white man’s farm, they were treated fairly well. They weren’t as bad as some people had been treated. The Humphreys allowed their children to play with Mom and the other siblings, and his wife would cook everyone dinner after work in their field was complete. “We would talk, eat, and play; she was a kind woman,” Mom said with a smile. When she became a teenager, my mom helped work in tobacco on another person’s farm and made $3.00 a day. That would buy shoes, pants, and a top, she recalled.

Mom never felt mistreated because she was taught from a child where to and not to go. The downtown area was the most racist -- more so than out in the rural “country” because most people in the country were poor people: white, Black, and Indian -- it didn’t matter because everyone was poor. An Indian or Black could go into a store and buy drink or ice cream, but they had to go outside to eat it. The Indians and Blacks were treated the same, even though Indians and Blacks didn’t associate with one another. Mom acknowledged, “When you went anywhere in town, you knew what you were supposed to do. You didn’t know any differently. If you were Black or Indian and went to the movies, you went upstairs to watch.” She knew the restaurants she wasn’t supposed to go into. Mom mostly went to an Indian restaurant that served hot dogs and hamburgers.

Mom remembers, “When television came along, people would come from everywhere because we were the first to get one. Every Saturday night we would have a crowd of people watching The Ed Sullivan Show. When Elvis was on TV the first time, we saw him. The men would come over to watch wrestling as well.”

The family stopped farming when Mom was about the age of fifteen because the boys were older and left home. “All that was left were girls, so Daddy got a job building bridges and moved out of the country into town, Ma got a job at a chicken house, and the girls who were old enough moved to Baltimore,” she recollected. “The oldest sister got married just to move away from home. When she had children, she called for Mom to come help take care of the children.”

The first hired job Mom had was in Baltimore. She worked at a clothing store owned by a Jewish family mainly in the warehouse with various clothing goods. At Easter, she made Easter baskets in the warehouse to sell in the retail stores. This brought to my mind all the incredible Easter baskets I received as a child. One of the unforgettable occasions while working in the store was when President Kennedy was shot. She stated, “I remember that as if it were yesterday. The owner closed the store until the day after the president was buried. It was a depressing time for everyone.”

When Mom moved back to North Carolina in the late ‘60s, she worked at the Converse Shoe manufacturing plant for thirty-five years until they closed the factory. She was one of the first to be hired. “I worked on production line sewing shoes,” she replied. It was hard work, but she enjoyed it.

I always knew that my mom had an excellent work ethic, and now I know why. Looking back over the past thirty-something years that she has been my mother, I understand her a little more. She has always been a great mother and did everything to make her family happy. I learned a lot from this interview and I think it helped her, too. Memories can make you laugh, cry, or sometimes help you realize how far you have come on the journey in your life.

Work Cited

Locklear Stone, Vivian. Personal interview. 9 Sep. 2010.

Note: Melissa Scott, who lives in Pinehurst, is majoring in nursing at Sandhills Community College.