{"id":9347,"date":"2023-04-20T20:41:45","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T20:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/?page_id=9347"},"modified":"2023-04-20T20:41:45","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T20:41:45","slug":"martha-s-miller-oral-history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/martha-s-miller-oral-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Martha S. Miller Oral History"},"content":{"rendered":"[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” column_element_spacing=”default” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” bg_image_animation=”none” border_type=”simple” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][divider line_type=”No Line”][vc_column_text]\n

Martha S. Miller Oral History<\/span><\/h1>\n[\/vc_column_text][divider line_type=”No Line”][page_submenu alignment=”center” sticky=”true” bg_color=”#008542″ link_color=”#ffffff”][page_link link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/manuscripts-and-guides\/” title=”Manuscripts & Subject Guides<\/strong>” id=”1682022205837-1″ tab_id=”1682022205838-4″] [\/page_link][page_link link_url=” https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/guides-to-the-collection-page\/” title=”Collections Portal<\/strong>” id=”1682022205846-4″ tab_id=”1682022205847-6″] [\/page_link][page_link title=”Visit<\/strong>” id=”1682022213056-8″ tab_id=”1682022213057-2″ link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/departments\/archives-museum\/visit\/”][\/page_link][page_link title=”Make a Request<\/strong>” id=”1682022213654-10″ tab_id=”1682022213655-6″ link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/departments\/archives-museum\/requests\/”][\/page_link][page_link title=”About Us<\/strong>” id=”1682022214592-7″ tab_id=”1682022214594-5″ link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/departments-archives-museum-about-us\/”][\/page_link][page_link title=”Yearbooks Online<\/strong>” id=”1682022215375-9″ tab_id=”1682022215377-10″ link_url=”https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/library\/departments\/archives-museum\/yearbooks-alumni-magazines-delta-state-histories\/”][\/page_link][\/page_submenu][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” column_element_spacing=”default” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” bg_image_animation=”none” border_type=”simple” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]Miller, Martha S.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tape 1 of 2\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 12\/3\/99\u00a0 OH# 255<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Molly Shaman<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is an interview for the Mississippi Oral History Program. The interview is being recorded with Ms. Martha S. Miller in her residence on December 3, 1999.\u00a0 The interviewer is Molly Shaman.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 This is Molly Shaman interviewing Martha Sissan Miller at her home in Cleveland, MS on December 3, 1999.\u00a0 Okay.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 My father\u2019s name was John William Sissan.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay and your mother\u2019s maiden name?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Mildred Merly Johnson<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay and do you know of there approximate dates of there birth?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 My father\u2019s birth date was July the 10, 1884 or 5.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And my mother\u2019s birth date was September the 25, 19, 1895.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 September 25. Okay can you tell me anything about their parents?\u00a0 Your grandparents?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 My father\u2019s father was born in Texas.\u00a0 My mother was born in, well out from Mange, MS.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 In the country.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 How did your grandparents?\u00a0 Did your grandparents come to Mississippi?\u00a0 Was your mother born here?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 My mother was born in Mange here in the United States and in Mississippi. (Laughing) And my father in Texas.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh.<\/p>\n

MM: \u00a0And in Mississippi, and in Texas, I don\u2019t know how long he had been here.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So you don\u2019t know what brought him to Mississippi.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what brought him to Mississippi.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay. Where did your parents go to school?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 My mother went to school in Indianola, MS.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And my father, what little schooling he had, was at a little country school out from Itta Bena, MS.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh. Did they both complete high school and go beyond?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 My mother completed high school, but my father did not.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how far he went.\u00a0 As long as the teacher (Laughing) teaches in one, teach in the one…<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 A one-room school.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 One teacher, one-room school taught I guess.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh that\u2019s, so they probably didn\u2019t keep\u2026<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They didn\u2019t keep records\u2026<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0\u00a0 Grade levels.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Grade levels. They just\u2026<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 You just went \u2018till you…<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 You just went \u2018till you quit.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0\u00a0 Oh. Okay you have a\u2026 You have a bird?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 That is the clock.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh it\u2019s the clock.<\/p>\n

MM: The bird clock.<\/p>\n

(Both Laughing)<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 It startled me.\u00a0 I though, she\u2019s got geese in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It startled the cat too.\u00a0 (Laughing)<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 (Laughing) Oh I bet it did. Okay, they married in January of 1915?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Uh, huh. January 14th.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay and they married in Greenwood?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 In Greenwood. Uh, huh.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 My goodness. What, what have they been doing, each been doing before they got married?\u00a0 Do you know?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Well my daddy farmed, and he also had a store.\u00a0 I guess they called it a general store.\u00a0 That\u2019s what we call it now in a little place called Quito that was out from Itta Bena.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And he also had the post office, was also in the store.\u00a0 My mother was just, did not work then, she just enjoyed life I guess. (Laughing)<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Do you have any brothers or sisters?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I have a sister, younger than I.\u00a0 She\u2019s had an interesting life. She started to teach. And the war started, and she joined the WACKS.\u00a0 And she was in the WACKS until the war was ver. And she could not go any further, wait a minute, I\u2019ve got it just backwards. She was in the WAVES. When she, when the war was over, she could not go any higher in the WAVES so she joined the WACKS. And when she retired she was Colonel, I believe it was.\u00a0 She\u2026<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 What was her, what\u2019s her name?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Doris, no, well that\u2019s her\u2026<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Real, it\u2019s her legal name\u2026<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 But that is not her real name.\u00a0 Her legal name is Dossie Gene Sissan Lattle.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 I was going to say, so she was a Colonel?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Uh, huh.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh my goodness gracious that\u2019s so…\u00a0 Do you have to address her as a Colonel, or?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, she makes me just call her Gene now.<\/p>\n

(Both laughing)<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay. So she\u2019s, you\u2019re the oldest in the family?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yes<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Older\u2026<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Older.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Because there is only two.\u00a0 Did you grow, I would call, it\u2019s not Quito (Pronounced Keeto) it\u2019s\u2026<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Quito (Pronounced Quit \u2013 O)<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0\u00a0 Quito. Did you grow up in Quito? And what was it like?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I grew, I was, daddy left Quito, daddy and mother left Quito when I was about three and half years old.\u00a0 Three I guess.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember much about it.\u00a0 The only thing I remember about Quito was that mother was sick and she had malaria.\u00a0 And I had been out in the yard and found a whole bunch of earthworms.\u00a0 I brought them in to show her, and I dumped them out on the pillow.\u00a0 She about had a fit.\u00a0 And so did the woman that was staying with us.<\/p>\n

(Both laughing)<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh my gosh, I bet they did.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Of course I always liked all sort of varmints.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Curious about them weren\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Curious, curiosity is probably my worst characteristic because I have got into trouble.<\/p>\n

MS: Oh, oh. It can also be a very good characteristic.\u00a0 You went from (coughing) excuse me, Quito to?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It was in Sunflower County about ten miles out in the country from Indianola.\u00a0 And that was an interesting experience.\u00a0 That was in the days that there were a lot of bootleggers.\u00a0 A lot of the land that my daddy had was in Virgin Timber.\u00a0 Well one day, the revenuers came by, and they saw this smoke out way in the back where my father and the people on the place were burning the trees that they have deadened.\u00a0 And they wanted to know what that smoke was.\u00a0 Why that smoke was there?\u00a0 Daddy explained why the smoke was there.\u00a0 Well they decided they\u2019d better go see for themselves.\u00a0 And daddy said well now I\u2019ll tell you just take a look at that fellow that\u2019s stretched out there behind the car and be sure you watch where you put your foot.\u00a0 The hands had killed this big old timber rattler\u2026<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 (Gasp)<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And brought it up to show daddy.\u00a0 And the thing stretched all across the back of the\u2026<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 The car.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 The car.\u00a0 The, well from one door to the other door of the garage.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Ewe that was a big one.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 That was a big one. And I don\u2019t know whether the revenuers went or not.\u00a0 I know they said a few words that weren\u2019t very nice.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 (Laughing)<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 This daddy didn\u2019t think so to be mentioned in front of his daughter.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 No, but it sounds like they didn\u2019t pursue the investigation either.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I don\u2019t think they did.\u00a0 Another thing I remember about this time, we lived right on the banks of the Sunflower River.\u00a0 It was a deep place in the river there. And the little riverboat came from Vicksburg, and it brought groceries and\u2026<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, you are kidding<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Things that you needed.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, how marvelous.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 You know, and the people would come there to get the groceries and the things for the commenceries on the plantations. And it was quite interesting to watch the men unload the boats. You know and put the groceries in the wagons.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Horse drawn aren\u2019t they?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Mules and oxen at the time.\u00a0 I go way back, see?<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well they would have been more practically in this climate probably.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yes, well you see there were no gravel roads.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh no gravel roads, even,<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh my gosh.<\/p>\n

MM: \u00a0Just dirt.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And they had built most of the roads at that time on the riverbank because it was sort of sandy.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, were there any of the roads that were like.\u00a0 I have heard of roads out in California in the desert where they were wood, wood slats.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, we didn\u2019t have any like that.\u00a0 Now in Greenwood they had some brick roads.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Yes they still do.\u00a0 So yours was a gathering place at the store.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It was a gathering place, and people would come there to get the goods that they had ordered from Vicksburg.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Imagine that though.\u00a0 That the well, water was probably an easier way to get around.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Probably because, now in the wintertime when it rained a lot and the people had tried to travel on those mud roads.\u00a0 Even the mules would bog down so that they would have trouble\u2026<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh okay.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Getting through you know.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well did that make it more isolated in the winter than?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Very isolated.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Was this in connection with any particular plantation, or you had a general store for the area?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 The biggest commencery was on Chinlock.\u00a0 That was a big plantation.\u00a0 Now daddy had a section of land.\u00a0 But most of it was not in cultivation, it was in Virgin Timber.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, okay, but he sold the timber then.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 But he sold the timber see?\u00a0 And when he sold the timber, then he put it in cotton.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well that\u2019s a natural progression then.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And the cotton grew so tall that you couldn\u2019t see a man riding a horse through it.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 You are kidding. Oh my gosh.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 But now see most of the cotton was down on the bottom.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t produce cotton all the way up to the top.\u00a0 It grew.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 It grew but it did not increase.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It grew. But boy, it grew enough because when spring came there was a lot of it that they didn\u2019t get gathered.\u00a0 It would be hard for them to plow.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0\u00a0 You know the cotton, the plow pulled by the mule was, it was hard to get it through that cotton that was on the ground.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 We are so used to now, with mechanization it\u2019s so much different.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It is so different.\u00a0 I can not believe it.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did you ever pick cotton, or would have someone else have done it then?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I picked it.\u00a0 Well the cotton got ready to pick about the time we were going to, starting to school.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 The cotton then you had, you couldn\u2019t plant it as early then as you can now cause they\u2019ve improved the seed.\u00a0 So I guess my sister and I maybe picked a hundred pounds to make us some spending money.<\/p>\n

(Both laughing)<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 There you go.\u00a0 Not easy work either.\u00a0 And if it was that tall.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No it was so tall see.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That is remarkable.\u00a0 What was your house like?\u00a0 Do you remember?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I have forgotten what you call that kind of house.\u00a0 It had a, it was\u00a0 square, almost \u00a0square.\u00a0 And it had a hall all the way through.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Uh, huh.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 The roof was wooden shingles.\u00a0 And there was a screen porch all the way across the front.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Practical.\u00a0 Did the wood shingles come from the place, or do you know?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I don\u2019t think so.\u00a0 I think they, somebody probably cut them, sawed them up somewhere else.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 What kind of things did you do growing up?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Well I skated a little bit.\u00a0 I had, we, there was no school in that area.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0\u00a0 And there were no school busses.\u00a0 And there were no little schools in our area that we could get to.\u00a0 Now there was a little school, a one room school, in the commensary on Chinlock.\u00a0 But we couldn\u2019t get there because it was about five miles away.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That was a long way for you to walk.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And that was a long way when you had to walk or you had to go in the wagon.\u00a0 Of course there were a few days when you could go in the car.\u00a0 But the manager or the owner of Chinlock hired a teacher for several months out of the year.\u00a0 Eventually, they got a gravel road.\u00a0 And then our parents drove us to Indianola to school.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh my goodness.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And we thought we\u2019d died and gone to heaven when we got that gravel road.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, well it certainly made a lot of changes.\u00a0 It made it easier to go places.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It really did. It was, well let\u2019s see, I was thinking something else. While we lived on this particular, in this particular spot, we did a lot of fishing.\u00a0 Since we were right on the bank of the river.\u00a0 We could fish.\u00a0 And, I remember that my sister got tired of fishing one day, and she was just pulling the hook with the worm on it back and forth.\u00a0 This big old catfish got on there.\u00a0 It almost pulled her in the river.\u00a0 (Laughing) But mother got there in time to save her.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 I was going to say, did somebody grab her.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 To save her and to save the fish too.\u00a0 So we had fried catfish for supper.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Saved sister that was good.\u00a0 Well that was a good place.\u00a0 I can see why you would probably played out doors a lot and with what was there.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 We played outside.\u00a0 We, I don\u2019t know, always found something to do.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Were there other children.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 We, we did have, well there were other children there, but they lived five or six miles away.\u00a0 Oh my best friend at that time was Yellow Gal and Lady.\u00a0 They lived on the farm.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, but they were right there. They were closest probably.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They were close by.\u00a0 I remember one of the people working on the place was named Sara Bell.\u00a0 And when mother went to milk the cows in the afternoon, Sara Bell would be cooking biscuits.\u00a0 Ooh, those were the best darn biscuits.\u00a0 And she would give me one.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Ooh you were lucky.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Mother would always give her some butter you know, so Sara Bell would give me a buttered biscuit.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That was a good trade.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yeah, I though so.\u00a0 Sara Bell\u2019s biscuits were better than mothers.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Of course you wouldn\u2019t tell her that.\u00a0 (Laughing)<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Oh no. (Laughing)<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So they had, so there was the timber, and ultimately cotton.\u00a0 And you had cows.\u00a0 Did you have chickens and?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Oh yes, we had chickens, and turkeys, and guineas, and pigs.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh my goodness, you had the true farm.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 You had the true farm.\u00a0 And in those days you had to raise your own food.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So you had a garden as well?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Oh we had a big garden.\u00a0 And daddy would have the people or he would plant himself vegetables that all the people could gather.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh enough for everybody.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Enough for everybody, yeah.\u00a0 So we always had plenty of vegetables, and when the vegetables were gathered if mother canned everything or dried it you know.\u00a0 And the other people if they wanted it would come get some, canned or dried, whatever.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 It was very self-sufficient.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yes and we had peaches, and apples, and grapes, and pears.\u00a0 So we had plenty to eat.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Yup.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 We probably ate better than the people in town.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well it\u2019s possible because you did have the garden.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 We had plenty of space you know.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Sure.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 The animals to farm with.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 To grow it with.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That\u2019s neat. Well then I can see where your expertise in the yard comes from.<\/p>\n

(Both laughing)<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Now mother always had flowers.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, did she too?<\/p>\n

MM: \u00a0And the thing about all those animals there, there were animals that liked feed on them.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 On the flowers?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 On the animals.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, okay.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 So we had a little dog named Sassy Susie.\u00a0 And very often Sassy Susie would bark and bark and bark. You would get up look at night.\u00a0 You would get up and look, and there would be a possum in the hen house.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Uh, oh.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And sometimes the old possum would have already caught the hen.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Uh, oh.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Then one time mother sent me to get an egg out of the hen nest.\u00a0 Well the old hen was still on the nest.\u00a0 So I put my hand under there.\u00a0 Here was this chicken snake, we called it.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh no.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Well, I about had a heart attack.\u00a0 I screamed bloody murder.\u00a0 And then one day I looked out there and here was this snake wrapped around the pole that was supporting the clothesline.\u00a0 He had these lumps in it.\u00a0 It was wrapping itself around the post to break the eggs that it had swallowed.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh my word.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that ingenious?\u00a0 You wouldn\u2019t think they.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 You wouldn\u2019t think about them doing anything like that.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 No, no that\u2019s incredible.\u00a0 What did you do for fun or social activities?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Well every now and then, we would go to Chinlock to visit Ms. Dansler.\u00a0 And she had two children.\u00a0 We would play dolls or ball.\u00a0 If there were anybody else around we would play red light or may I.\u00a0 Just little things that.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Familiar, children play.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And when there was no one else to play with, we would play, my sister and I would play dolls.\u00a0 Oh and we had goats.\u00a0 We had two goats.\u00a0 And the goats liked to play on the see saw.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, for goodness sake.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They would run up the see saw, and they would go down on the other side. Come back around, and go up and down again.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 (Laughing)<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And one day we had some company, adults.\u00a0 And my sister was showing off.\u00a0 So she was trying to nurse her goat.\u00a0 The goat didn\u2019t want to be nursed and butted her in her nose.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, no.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And I mean her nose bled.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, no.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I was terrified.\u00a0 I thought she was going to die.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Sure.<\/p>\n

MM: \u00a0\u2018Cause I never had seen much blood before.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Ewe and a bloody nose.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And it looked so terrible, you know, it had run down on her dress.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, dear.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I just thought she was in terrible shape.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 She probably was.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 She probably was.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Being scared.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I know her nose was bruised.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So it hit her hard.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 You know it hit her hard to make it bleed that much.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Yeah, yeah goodness gracious. Well then, I think on a farm there\u2019s never a dull moment.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It\u2019s not.\u00a0 We always had animals to watch.\u00a0 And sometimes if daddy was pulling corn he\u2019d let us go ride in the wagon.\u00a0 Ride in the wagon and watch \u2018em pull the corn and that kind of thing.\u00a0 And we had a horse at the time and we rode the horse.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 There\u2019s always something to do.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 There was always something.\u00a0 We really weren\u2019t lonesome.\u00a0 Mother always saw that we had books to read and things like that.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did, were you sort of, would that have been your early education then, was at home with them?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 With them uh, huh.\u00a0 Then when I was five, mother decided it was, well I was really I was four, I would have been five in September, November.\u00a0 But mother decided that I\u2019d better go on and start to school because she wanted me to be sure to finish school before I got married.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 She knew the value of.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 So, she knew the value of an education, so.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well that\u2019s wonderful. Let\u2019s see, what do you remember, let\u2019s see you would have been pretty small in W. W. I.\u00a0 What do you remember about W. W. II?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember very much about W. W. I., except I remember that my Uncle Dossie was in the army.\u00a0 I remember nanny and mother crying.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t understand why they were crying. And then I remember nanny my grandmother getting letters from him.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Now this was on your mother\u2019s side?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Uh, huh. Now nobody on my daddy\u2019s side went to the army.\u00a0 My grandfather, Sissan, was in I guess the Spanish-American War.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That\u2019s likely.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Or the Mexican War, which ever, which ever came first.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember which.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 I can\u2019t either.\u00a0 My uncle was in.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 But he was in some war. But I can\u2019t remember which one.\u00a0 It was not the civil war.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 No \u2018cause it would have been, was it the one that was in Mexico or Cuba?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Maybe Cuba.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 I don\u2019t know my history that well.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I\u2019ve forgotten.\u00a0 It\u2019s just been too long.\u00a0 Now on my mother\u2019s side, my granddaddy, Johnson, did not go to war.\u00a0 But there was a little skirmish around Mount Piela where they lived.\u00a0 They put up a white flag while Aunt Laura was being born.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 A little time out there for.<\/p>\n

(Both laughing)<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They had to have a little time out there.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that amazing though.\u00a0 So the war stopped for a little while.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 So the war stopped for a little while. And I don\u2019t know whether the people, the soldiers left or whether they stuck around so that they could start again or just what happened.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well maybe it was a good thing. It made a true break in the\u2026 Let\u2019s see do you, well you would not have been near the river in \u201927 so you wouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Oh yes I was.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay, okay, good, what do you remember about the river flooding?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Well I was at Indianola going to school.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And as I started school that morning, the fire alarm went off. And I couldn\u2019t figure out what was burning.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Because you couldn\u2019t see smoke.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t see any smoke anywhere and Indianola was just a good size village I guess you\u2019d call it. A railroad town really.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And I started back home, back to my grandmother\u2019s house.\u00a0 And she said get on to school.\u00a0 It\u2019s just the levy broke.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Just the levy broke.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 So I went on to school.\u00a0 Indianola did not get much water.\u00a0 My grandmother lived on the bank of the Jones Bayou.\u00a0 And we watched the water just slowly rise.\u00a0 And it, her house was on sort of a hill.\u00a0 And the water got, lacked about an inch getting into her yard.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh my goodness.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Now on the farm, where my, where we actually my mother and father were. Daddy, everybody said oh the water will not get here.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t get here in 1912 and however many ever years it was in 18 something, it\u2019s not gonna to get here.\u00a0 So he didn\u2019t bother.\u00a0 But he did get some timber that if the water did get up, he could put the things up.\u00a0 Well, he was in the barn shucking corn for the pigs, and he heard this roar.\u00a0 And he looked out and here is this wall of water was coming.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh my gosh.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And it was just this wall of water that came rolling down and went into the Sunflower River.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Well it so happened that there was this little ditch, drainage ditch in low spots between the barn and the house.\u00a0 And so when there was a lot of rain, you have to have a, you have to get in the boat to go across this water.\u00a0 So he had the boat tied up there close to the barn.\u00a0 So when the water sort of leveled off, he could get back to the house. But by that time, the water was getting pretty deep.\u00a0 So he got in the house, and began to get what he could up on tables and things like that.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, gosh.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 The only thing that kept the house from going into the river they said, was that it had two big stack chimneys and that\u2026<\/p>\n

MS: The weight?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 The weight of the chimneys held the house in place.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh my word isn\u2019t that amazing?\u00a0 So it could have been easily swept into the.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It could have easily been swept into it and some of the sharecropper\u2019s houses were, that were on the banks of the river you know.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, but it was just that quick.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 But it was just that quick.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, was the house like attached to the store?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No uh uh, now the store, daddy didn\u2019t have a store on this place.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, okay.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 That was in Quito where he had the store.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh, okay.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Now it was real strange too because where we were, there was a lot of water.\u00a0 On Chinlock there was not that much water.\u00a0 But they also had Indian mounds on Chinlock.\u00a0 Somehow they got the animals to these Indian mounds.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh my word.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Now I don\u2019t know what happened to the chickens.\u00a0 But the cows and mules they got there.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 They got to high ground.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 But I guess the chickens and guineas and things like that flew up in the<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Trees.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Trees and houses you know.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 As long as they weren\u2019t swept away.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 As long as they weren\u2019t swept away.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 My goodness, because that is quite a distance from the river.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yeah<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Woe. Who of your family members most influenced you or inspired you?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Probably my grandmother. (Tape cut off.)<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay this is, I think we can start here. We were talking about your grandmother being, inspiring or influencing you the most.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And she did so many things. She grew flowers, and if she had just had some education, she would have been a great person.\u00a0 She wanted to be a nurse.\u00a0 And grandpa wouldn\u2019t let her be a nurse because she\u2019d see a naked man.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh my word.<\/p>\n

MM: \u00a0But she finished she said she finished eighth grade books.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 In the one teacher school.\u00a0 And then she taught.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh my goodness.<\/p>\n

MM: \u00a0In the one teacher school as much as she knew.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well she was the educated one in a group.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And she really was the educated one even though she just finished the eighth grade you know.\u00a0 She could sew.\u00a0 Money was scarce.\u00a0 And she would go to town and look at dresses. And come home and cut out a pattern and make what ever it was that she wanted to make.\u00a0 She crocheted, and knitted beautifully. But I didn\u2019t get those talents.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 We have a lot of talents beside those.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Now my grandfather was a very gentleperson, quite, very helpful. And I think I got that feeling of being kind to people.\u00a0 And my grandmother was rather abrupt.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 But that was just her way.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 But that was her way.\u00a0 She really didn\u2019t think she was abrupt you know. (Laughing)<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 She had things to do.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yes, but there was things to done, and you better get up and get it done.\u00a0 Now granddaddy was laid back you know and he loved to read his Bible.\u00a0 He loved to go to Sunday school.\u00a0 But now my grandmother didn\u2019t want to do all of that.\u00a0 She got enough of that kind of stuff when she was growing up because all the men went to church.\u00a0 And the girls stayed at home and cooked dinner for all the people that grandpa would bring home to visit.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So that meant work.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 That was work.\u00a0 She was tired of that.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 What do you think was the most important thing you learned at home, or can you pin point?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 If you started something, finish it.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well that\u2019s good advice. Very good. Okay let\u2019s see, you told me you went to elementary school in Indianola.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Went through high school there too.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh okay, what was it like?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It was one of the better schools in the Sunflower County.\u00a0 Well really in the delta.\u00a0 Greenville and Greenwood I guess were the best ones, they were the largest ones.\u00a0 But the city school in Indianola was a good one. We had, now when mother was there, I don\u2019t, it was small.\u00a0 But when I started, there was, they just had the one first grade, one\u2026<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0\u00a0 And second grade and all, but there were enough for one.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Full.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Particular grade.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh well that\u2019s.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 We were lucky.\u00a0 We had a science lab.\u00a0 They taught general science, and biology, and chemistry, and physics.\u00a0 So it really was.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 You had a strong.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It was strong.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Background.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Now they did not teach home economics, and vocational things right at first because it was a city school and the city children were not interest in things.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That was a rural thing.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 That was a rural thing see.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Huh.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And back in those days, there were always plenty of blacks who wanted to work see.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So there was not the need.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 So there was not the need for the home economics and that sort of thing.\u00a0\u00a0 And on the farm, you see, the women would almost fight with each other to get to come to the big house to take care of the children, or cook, or wash. Cause they got little special things you know.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So it was a desirable thing.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0\u00a0 So it was a desirable thing to do.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Wow. Well that\u2019s\u2026<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 In fact, when I married, almost everybody had help after the cotton was picked.\u00a0 See in 1938, you still didn\u2019t have any cotton pickers, mechanical.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh mechanical ones, yeah.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 You see. So the women would all pick cotton.\u00a0 Those that lived here in town would pick cotton until the cotton was out.\u00a0 And then they would come keep the children or.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh to tide them over the winter. \u2018Til the next season.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Until the cotton got ready to go again see.\u00a0 And the men would come up.\u00a0 The owners of the land would drive by the house, and call or blow their horns. And those that wanted to come pick cotton or chop cotton would come running out to get in the truck to go pick.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Very simple, direct method of getting the job done.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Nothing like it is now.<\/p>\n

(Both laughing)<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 No, no, not at all.\u00a0 Were any of your teachers especially influential?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 My first grade teacher, and my third grade teacher, Ms. Coon. And I guess in high school, probably my History teacher, Martha Legrown.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Huh. And why were they especially did they just inspire you?\u00a0 Or arouse your interest in something particular?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They got me, I was interested in what they had to say.\u00a0 And they had, they seemed to know how to, they seemed to understand children.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Huh.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 That age child that they were working with.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So they weren\u2019t trying to, they could communicate well with them.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yes and they were sweet to the little county kids.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Kids.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 As well as the banker\u2019s children. And don\u2019t forget, you just remember, I think Indianola was the worst place I ever saw about that class business.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Really?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Uh, huh.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So that didn\u2019t carry over into the school though? With certain teachers?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 But with certain teachers, now with some it did.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Uh, huh. Well then that would have stood out.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And so that would sort of stood out. And I guess the reason, I remember Ms. Ruth so well, there was a great big boy in the first grade.\u00a0 I think he was probably retarded.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Probably too old.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Well, he was way too old to be in the first grade, and as tall as the teacher was.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh my goodness.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 That, that kind of thing you know. Which you know, she used him to help her with the little ones and to help them.\u00a0 He helped the little ones sharpen their pencils \u2018cause the pencil sharpener was in the window.\u00a0 So we wouldn\u2019t grind the pencil up, you know.\u00a0 But he knew how to sharpen the pencils for us.\u00a0 She made him feel needed. And I remember how kind she was to him.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Uh, huh. Didn\u2019t make him feel.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And the thing oh I was so excited.\u00a0 I invited her to my birthday party, and she came.\u00a0 And bought me a little leather book of, oh foot, not Tennisons Poems, I can\u2019t remember the name.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Let\u2019s see who else, Longfellow?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Robert Louis Stevenson\u2019s poems.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh. That would be good, yeah.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And Pricilla has that little book now.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Aw, your daughter.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 My daughter.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh isn\u2019t that marvelous.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 \u00a0I kept it all these years.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t she be pleased that you had that.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yes she would.\u00a0 And when I graduated from high school, I sent her an invitation. And she sent me a box of stationary.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 No, but that\u2019s you know, I think that\u2019s, you as a teacher to have somebody who remembers you that long.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 And another one, I remember was Elizabeth Vardaman from Greenwood.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Huh.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 We had Ms. Riggs teaching English from Greenville.\u00a0\u00a0 And all these years she had taught first graders. Well she was getting older, and Dr. Gamble thought that the thing for her to do was to teacher older children.\u00a0 He never had taught school.\u00a0 He would have known better.\u00a0\u00a0 Well bless her heart, she taught, tried to teach us like she did the first graders you know. And I can still see her now.\u00a0 She wrote the word separate on the board, and she said that this is a terrible word to learn how to spell.\u00a0 But I want you to remember, and she divided S, E, P with little letters. And then A was a great big letter. And then R, A, T, E were little letters.\u00a0 She said, \u201cYou see, there is a rat in this word.\u201d\u00a0 And you remember that, and you can always spell separate.\u00a0 Well those big old boys, there were about six big football players. And I mean they were big men.\u00a0 They were men. They weren\u2019t freshman.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Uh, huh<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They gave her a bad time.\u00a0 In fact, she had a nervous breakdown, and did not come back after for the second semester.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Awe, yeah.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Well Mr. Lockard came in, the superintendent.\u00a0 And he informed what would happen if we gave this one any trouble.\u00a0 Well, Ms. Vardaman had this short hair parted on the side, and it flapped in the breeze.\u00a0 She wore those old lady comfort shoes.\u00a0 Wide\u2026<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Lace up?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Kind of lace up, well they were sort of like oxfords. And wide she wore them wide and she wore them long.\u00a0 She was a big person.\u00a0 And she had a lisp.\u00a0 And after Mr. Lockard left, she said, \u201cOpen your literature books to page so and so and read and memorize that little poem on there.\u201d\u00a0 Well you know, we said, \u201cha, ha, ha\u201d you know.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t memorize that little poem.\u00a0 So she said she gave us about five minutes.\u00a0 She said, \u201cGet your pencils and paper out and write that little poem.\u201d<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Ooh.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Nobody had written that little poem.\u00a0 She said \u201cyou will show up in here at three-fifteen and memorize that little poem\u201d.\u00a0 One of them said \u201cI got to go to football practice.\u201d\u00a0 She said \u201cyou will not.\u00a0 You will show up in this room.\u201d\u00a0 He said \u201cCoach Green will be mad.\u201d\u00a0 She said \u201che can be very angry.\u00a0 I just don\u2019t care.\u201d\u00a0 The next day, we got that poem, a poem memorized.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 She made her point.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 She made her point.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t give her a nervous breakdown either.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t imagine.\u00a0 It may have been the other way around.\u00a0 What were your favorite subjects in school?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 My favorite subjects were reading and literature.\u00a0 I loved science.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Really, what were your extra-curricular activities?\u00a0 Did you participate?\u00a0 Were there any available?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I did not get to participate really.\u00a0 I was supposed to have a heart condition.\u00a0 So really all I got to do was that I played the piano.\u00a0 I could practice.\u00a0 I read a lot.\u00a0 I guess I must have been a sophomore when I just assumed not live if I could not do these things.\u00a0 So I started dancing.\u00a0 I did what ever I wanted to then.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Obviously, it was not bad.\u00a0 You haven\u2019t slowed down since.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I haven\u2019t slowed down since.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Who were your best friends?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Gladys Cockerel and Ally May Bryant were my later friends.\u00a0 My first friends were Robby Scott and Edith Zackerah.\u00a0 Then later they were Gladys Cockerel and Ally May Bryant.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did you keep up with them?\u00a0 Or were you able to?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I kept up with them up until both of us married.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know after the children came along.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 You get busy.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 You got busy.\u00a0 You just didn\u2019t keep up.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well people move.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They move, and your letter comes back.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did you always know that you were going to college?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, oh another thing that they let me do.\u00a0 I took expression.\u00a0 Whenever there was a field meet, they always sent me.\u00a0 As I got older, well about from third grade on, I always went to field meet to do the spelling.\u00a0 Then in high school, I did American Literature and English Literature in the field meet.\u00a0 Then my senior year, I was on the debating team.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Wonderful, can you tell us what field meet was like, and what expression was?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I guess you might call it, spoken English.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 It was the art of speaking.<\/p>\n

MM: It was the art of speaking.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Where were field meets?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 The spelling, you had the spelling book.\u00a0 You learned how to spell all the words in that book.\u00a0 You hoped that the words would come out of that book.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Not a surprise.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 A teacher would pronounce the words twice.\u00a0 They had this little book that you wrote the word in.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So it wasn\u2019t an oral thing.\u00a0 It was a written thing.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, it was a written thing.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That is interesting.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Then in the American Lit and the English Lit, it was true-false questions, or who said this.\u00a0 It was identifying quotes.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Would you have competed with other schools, or was it just with in your school?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It was with other schools.\u00a0 Now in the expression, you usually had to compete with somebody else in your school.\u00a0 Sometimes you didn\u2019t.\u00a0 Then first they had the schools in Sunflower County.\u00a0 In the elementary grades, it was just the Sunflower County schools.\u00a0 Then in high school, you went to State district.\u00a0 Then if you placed in district, then you went to State and performed.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That is great.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They would have three or five judges. They would make their selection you see.\u00a0 We though it was something.\u00a0 We though it was something.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 It was.\u00a0 It still would be.\u00a0 Why did you decide to go to college?\u00a0 Or did you decide?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Well I always wanted to go.\u00a0 Mother and my grandmother.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0\u00a0 Their determination for education.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yeah, mother, I don\u2019t think daddy was all that interested.\u00a0 It was sort of, he had.\u00a0 I can understand from his standpoint.\u00a0 He had half-brothers and sisters.\u00a0 They had a hard time too.\u00a0\u00a0 Their mother died in the flu epidemic.\u00a0 They were just little.\u00a0 One of them was just four years old.\u00a0 Grandpa was not equipped to deal with little children.\u00a0 I think he sort of loved his liquor too.\u00a0 Well, I think a lot of men did back in those days.\u00a0 They seemed to think it was the thing to do.\u00a0 He was not very good to them when he had too much to drink.\u00a0 They had a rough time, and daddy had a rough time growing up.\u00a0 I think he thought that was the way you were supposed to do your children.\u00a0 Grandpa Sissan was a high up mason.\u00a0 When Hildred, the oldest of the half sisters, grew up.\u00a0 Somebody evidently wanted her to go to college.\u00a0 She was smart.\u00a0 The mason\u2019s gave her a scholarship for the \u201cW\u201d.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh for goodness sake.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 She got her education there.\u00a0 Then when Betty Lou graduated, Hildred sent her.\u00a0 She got help to go to college.\u00a0 Betty Lou came to Delta State.\u00a0 That started the family off here.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That started the family off here.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 The half sister, then Mickey and I came here.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh he went here too.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Our children came here.\u00a0 Their children are here now as well as some of the other Shield\u2019s children.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well that is a good tradition to carry on.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 We are carrying on the tradition.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 How and why did you decide to come to Delta State?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It was the cheapest place to go.\u00a0 I went to Sunflower Junior College for two years.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Is that still here, or is it now M. D. C. C.?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It is now M. D. C. C.\u00a0 Oh it is such an improvement from what it was when it was Sunflower Junior college.\u00a0 I learned a lot.\u00a0 I got a good foundation there.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well in those days when transferring.\u00a0 Well that would have been in the forties?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Well yeah, it was coming out of the great depression.\u00a0 Believe it or not there was a school bus that ran from Indianola to Moorhead.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh for goodness sake.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 The bus was not full of Junior college students, but there was a gang of them.\u00a0 It started in Indianola, and it picked up elementary and high school students in Berrard, MS.\u00a0 It went all along all the sharecropper houses along the way.\u00a0 They took them to elementary and high school.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember when the busses started running in the elementary grades.\u00a0 It started out first with cars.\u00a0 There was a little country school, Marie, about ten miles from Indianola.\u00a0 It was between Indianola and Shaw.\u00a0 There were about six kids that came from that school to Indianola.\u00a0 At that time, we have left that place way down out from Indianola.\u00a0 We lived only about two and half miles from Indianola.\u00a0 So mother picked up four kids and my sister and I.\u00a0 She brought us into Indianola to school.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 She was a good carpooling mom.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I guess I was in the eighth grade about that time.\u00a0 We were still going through the Great Depression.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 What affect did it have?\u00a0 Did it have much of affect?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yes, so many of the stores in Indianola closed.\u00a0 The dry goods stores closed especially.\u00a0 The grocery stores sort of managed to stay open.\u00a0 Gilmer Grocery Company was the big store there.\u00a0 Gilmer had a chain of stores.\u00a0 There were some in Memphis.\u00a0 There was one in Indianola.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember if there was one in Greenwood or not.\u00a0 It seemed to me that there were a couple of other stores.\u00a0 It was sort of a chain.\u00a0 Then there were some little dirty grocery stores, but they were the cheapest.\u00a0 To get the groceries that we needed, mother would sell milk, butter, and vegetables to the merchant.\u00a0 We bartered for groceries.\u00a0 In fact there was not much money exchanged, but there were a lot of bartering. \u00a0The farmers had a terrible time.\u00a0 Daddy had sold his.\u00a0 You see all during the year, they charged the groceries and everything that they bought for the farm.\u00a0 Then when they sold their cotton, then they would go pay the merchant.\u00a0 The banks closed.\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t pay the merchant.\u00a0 They had nothing to live on.\u00a0 Daddy sold his cotton, one-day.\u00a0 He got seventeen dollars and seventy-four cents. Well he got more than that, but he bought some things.\u00a0 When the banks closed the next day, he had seventeen dollars and seventy-four cents for us to live on until the next crop was started.\u00a0 Well the banks were closed.\u00a0 How were you going to get your crops?<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Right, because you had to have money to buy the seed to get started on with.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Somehow the government furnished the banks some money so that they could borrow.\u00a0 I guess they put up their animals for security.\u00a0 I remember hearing daddy talk about well he hoped that the bank wouldn\u2019t get Mauld, Molly, and Sally.\u00a0 There were some others, but I forgotten their names.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 They wanted something tangible, not something that was intangible like the crop.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They got things going, and he made a pretty good crop the next year.\u00a0 Another thing that was bad, even before the \u201927 overflow, there was a bridge across a lake, Bay Lake.\u00a0 The water got up high, and it formed a logjam under the bridge.\u00a0 I guess it was not steel.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Probably not.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember what it looked like underneath.\u00a0 Well I don\u2019t think I ever saw it underneath.\u00a0 It was just wood on top.\u00a0 It washed the bridge away.\u00a0 Well it was time to get the cotton out.\u00a0 The cotton was being picked, but they couldn\u2019t get the cotton across the bridge because there was no bridge to get it to the gin.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh my gosh.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 So all the farmers on the other side of that bridge lost their shirts.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Because it would have too costly or too much to go around.\u00a0 You would have gone a long way.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 You would have to go to Inverness.\u00a0 Then you would have to come from Inverness to Indianola.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 My goodness.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I think there was a fairy.\u00a0 It was at Chinlock that you might get across.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 You probably had to pay something.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yeah, it was two and a half, I think.\u00a0 That was a lot of money in those days.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Those were some times.\u00a0 Did many of your friends or relatives go to college, or was it considered unusual?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 My uncle Dossy went to Mississippi State until his senior year.\u00a0 They fired the president of the college.\u00a0 It was a A&M in those days.\u00a0 The a lot of the boys got mad because they had fired him.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t going to school with this new president.\u00a0 So he didn\u2019t go that last year.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did he ever finish?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, pretty soon the war started.\u00a0 He went to the army.\u00a0 He evidently he learned enough to be a pretty good mechanic, because he worked on automobiles.\u00a0 Then he was a maintaince person for laundries and things like that.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay he was very mechanical.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 My aunt, his wife, graduated at the \u201cW\u201d.\u00a0 It was M. S. C. W. at the time.\u00a0 She was another one that pushed me to go on to school.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So you were definitely encouraged.\u00a0 It sounds if you would wanted to go to.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 So I was encouraged.\u00a0 Yeah, I wanted to go to.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 What did you hope going to college would do for you?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Well I hoped that I could get a job, and not to live in the country anymore.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did you want to be a teacher?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I wanted to be a teacher.\u00a0 I wanted to be a nurse.\u00a0 My grandparents about had a fit about that.\u00a0 I had my papers filled out to go to Greenville in training.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 They discouraged you.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They discouraged me.\u00a0 They just didn\u2019t want me to go.\u00a0 My uncle said you know I know Will Jarred.\u00a0 He was at the head of the Cooperative Cotton Association.\u00a0 He knew Will real well.\u00a0 He was an infuencial person at Delta State. \u00a0He also knew Mr. Kethley real well.\u00a0 So I got a job washing dishes at Delta State.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did you really?\u00a0 You worked your way through college.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 You know that was just about the only.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t have scholarships like they have now.\u00a0 You could work in the library if you were real smart after you had just about completed your work.\u00a0 You could be a room teacher in the Dem. School.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh over at the Hill School.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Or you could wash dishes.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 I worked the switchboard.\u00a0 I think I was lucky, I think.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 So I washed dishes until my senior year.\u00a0 I was going to be the head waitress, but I had to get out of a class ten minutes early.\u00a0 Dr. Daughtery would not let me out of class ten minutes early so I could be head waitress.\u00a0 So I was doing my. (Tape cut off.)<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Tape 2 of Martha Miller, December 3, 1999.\u00a0 We are talking about her years at Delta State.\u00a0 How a teacher would not let her out of class early to be head waitress.\u00a0 So she could have had a promotion.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 So when I told, Ms. Causy, that she would have to get somebody else to keep the class. She wanted to know why, and I told her.\u00a0 So she said, you wait a minute.\u00a0 She told Ms. Doolittle, who was the head of the Dem. School.\u00a0 Ms. Doolittle said, \u201cDon\u2019t you worry, just wait till I get back.\u201d\u00a0 So she spoke to Mr. Kethley.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what she said to Mr. Kethley, but anyhow she said that I would be room teacher.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Wonderful<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 So I got to be room teacher, as well as finishing my college career.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 As a room teacher, you probably taught about what grade level?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 That was on fourth grade level.\u00a0 I had done my first semester teaching was kindergarten.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 At the Dem. School?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 At the Dem. School.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh that is neat.\u00a0 You worked up to fourth grade.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Worked up to fourth grade.\u00a0 I advanced.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well it was.\u00a0 Was sending you to college a financial hardship for your parents?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yes, I borrowed money from the Field Cooperative Association.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh really<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I paid it back after I graduated.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Then worked as you went through.\u00a0 Can you describe your first day on campus as a student, or at Sunflower either one?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Those that were working in the cafeteria came early so that they could feed the football players.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Before the regular term.<\/p>\n

MM: \u00a0Before the regular term.\u00a0 We just got acquainted with the cafeteria.\u00a0 Well it was a dining hall in those days.\u00a0 It was not a cafeteria.\u00a0 Then the first day of school, we had registration and all of that.\u00a0 I just though it was awful.\u00a0 It was just so big.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Big<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Oh I though it was huge.\u00a0 There must have been all of fifty or sixty students in the freshman class.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember how many.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 It was a lot in those days.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Of course there were not nearly as many professors you know.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 When did you graduate?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I graduated in \u201937.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So it was before W. W. II.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yeah, oh yes.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 What was your major?\u00a0 Well your major was elementary education.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It was elementary education.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Why did you choose that?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I think I wanted to be like Ms. Ruth, my first grade teacher.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well that is a good chose.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I will tell you somebody else that had a lot of influence on me was Emma Smith.\u00a0 While I was doing my practice teaching, we had to go to one of schools.\u00a0 We had to observe one of the teachers on our grade level.\u00a0 She had fourth grade.\u00a0 She had those little boys wrapped around her finger.\u00a0 I watched how she handled them.\u00a0 When I would have a little problem.\u00a0 I would think to myself.\u00a0 I wonder what Ms. Emma would do.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well that is always good to have something to go by.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I think about what she did, and what she said to that little kid that was showing off.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did you teach after you graduated at the Hill School?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, I taught at the Hale School.\u00a0 When I graduated, I started in \u201937.\u00a0 It was in September at Hale School.\u00a0 That was an experience too.\u00a0 Hale School was supposed to be the poorest school in Sunflower County.\u00a0 I had the fourth and fifth grades, except for math.\u00a0 I taught six and seventh English while the principle of the school taught fourth and fifth math.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So you swapped.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 So we swapped.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t teach the English, so we swapped.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That was a good arrangement.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Dr. Caylor would drive by a lot of times.\u00a0 When he would go somewhere, and he would pass by the school.\u00a0 He would always stop.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Is that the one that Caylor Hall is named after.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Caylor Hall is named for.\u00a0 I had Science for elementary teachers under him.\u00a0 I always had some kind of frogs or some sort of varmint in the room.\u00a0 Every now and then the frog would get warm in the wintertime, and he would come out and crock.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 I bet the kids loved it though.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They loved it.\u00a0 The only library books, there were no library.\u00a0 The only books that the kids have were the old books that I had when I was growing up.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh for goodness sake.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 The library shelves were orange crates that the principle had nailed up on the wall.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well he was resourceful.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yes, he was.\u00a0 He was a graduate from Delta State.\u00a0 Evelyn Conger taught there.\u00a0 She was a graduate from Delta State.\u00a0 Edith Turpin, Ms. Sledge\u2019s mother, taught music and first grades.\u00a0 There were just five of us.\u00a0 Then I taught the fourth and fifth grades.\u00a0 Mr. Edwards taught the sixth and seventh grades.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Fourth and fifth were combined because of why?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Because of the size.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Not enough students.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It was small.\u00a0 There were a lot of students out in the fields, but right there where we were there were not many.\u00a0 The only recreation that we had was after school we walked across the bayou to the Italian\u2019s grocery store.\u00a0 We got a coke, and a piece of candy or a stage plank.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Those great old big things, cookies.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Ms. Fugler had told me, \u201cMartha, you may just as well find you a husband because with that little quite little voice you have you will not be able to teach.\u201d<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 My, my if she could see you.\u00a0 Did she see how things turned out?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I don\u2019t think she did because she moved away.\u00a0 She married and moved away from Delta State.\u00a0 I thought that fall; there was a gin right across the highway from the school.\u00a0 That old gin ran all of the time.\u00a0 I thought about all of that dust, all those noise, and those kids heard me.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Yes, you didn\u2019t have air conditioning then.\u00a0 You had the windows closed.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, you didn\u2019t.\u00a0 You had the windows up.\u00a0 You had the rest rooms outside.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 The whole bit.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 The whole bit.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So you had to have a voice to.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yes<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 To provided merit.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 That was quite an experience.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 How long did you teach there?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Just the one year, I married.\u00a0 Then the next year, I taught at the Chinese school.\u00a0 I started in the summer of \u201938 teaching the Chinese.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Here in Cleveland?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yes, here in Cleveland.\u00a0 It was where the old building is about to fall down.\u00a0 We were the first ones to teach in there.\u00a0 Mickey and I taught there that summer.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Both of you.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 He taught the upper grades, and I taught the little ones.\u00a0 When fall came, Beth McCain taught the little ones.\u00a0 I had the upper grades.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did you see, that was like a Hale school.\u00a0 I know sometimes would be working in the fields.\u00a0 So they wouldn\u2019t be in school the whole year.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Those, somehow, they got those kids for there for that.\u00a0 Now, when I started teaching in Junior High here, those country kids would stay out of school until the cotton was out.\u00a0 Then they would get out in early spring when the cotton was big enough to chop.\u00a0 In the seventh grade, I might have seven or eight.\u00a0 If there was a rainy day or when it got cold, you might have thirty or thirty-five.\u00a0 You worked as hard as you could to catch them up.\u00a0 They were real good about studying at home.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 They had some way to work with.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 If there was somebody that could help them at home.\u00a0 They had pretty good luck.\u00a0 They missed a lot.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 But not as much as you think.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 But not as much as you think.\u00a0 The fun things they missed.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That is too bad though.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 You could see that they got the basics.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That is good.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They probably didn\u2019t get that all that in science.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Reading<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Reading, and the basic part of math.\u00a0 They got the spelling.\u00a0 They could pretty well good.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Had the Chinese school been there long?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, see the whites would not let them come to school with them, and the blacks wouldn\u2019t let them come with them.\u00a0 So they were sort of left out on the limb.\u00a0 Somehow the county had to see that they got an education somehow.\u00a0 They hired a teacher.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know where they taught.\u00a0 Maybe they taught in the teacher\u2019s home.\u00a0 They just had these in this particular town.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 There weren\u2019t that many.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, there was a small school in Greenville for the kids there.\u00a0 They probably just had one teacher in Merigold.\u00a0 We taught the whole deal.\u00a0 We taught first grade through the twelfth.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 My word.\u00a0 What a responsibility, how did you do it?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I look back now how stupid I was.\u00a0 You know we had a pretty good little library where the state had donated some books.\u00a0 It must have been a hundred or so books. We may have had that second year, forty-five or fifty students come in.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Were the parents supportive?\u00a0 That is a lot.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Oh yes.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 I would think.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 See I had worked with the Chinese children at the Chinese mission at the Baptist church for two years.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That was your first connection.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 That was my first connection with them.\u00a0 I always wanted to be a missionary to China.\u00a0 Well, you see you couldn\u2019t go as a missionary to China because China had closed the doors.<\/p>\n

MS: By then, yes.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 So they had some trouble with some of the teachers because they didn\u2019t understand Chinese very well.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t understand the children and their culture.\u00a0 So they thought that Mickey and I would understand them a little bit better because both of us had worked with them.\u00a0 He had worked with them for four years in the mission, and I had worked two years.\u00a0 It was quite an experience.\u00a0 If they understand Chinese real well, you didn\u2019t have much trouble getting the English over.\u00a0 We had some that came from South China, and it was a different dialect from what these spoke.\u00a0 You couldn\u2019t understand them.\u00a0 So one day we had a snowstorm.\u00a0 It was snowing.\u00a0 The snow was just coming down in a hurry.\u00a0 This little boy looked out and saw this white stuff falling.\u00a0 He was scared to death.\u00a0 When he said something, I could tell he was scared.\u00a0 The boy, that was such a monkey, said, the sky is falling.\u00a0 That kid ran out of there screaming.\u00a0 See it was a boarding school.\u00a0 He ran upstairs, and he crawled under his bed.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t understand me to well, my English.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t exactly trust me.\u00a0 Well two or three boys and girls tried to talk to him and tell him what it was.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t believe them.\u00a0 I sent for the Chinese teacher.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t understand.\u00a0 He was new to the child.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t trust him.\u00a0 He was crying.\u00a0 You big boys, you move it and take it down.\u00a0 We have got to get him out from under the bed.\u00a0 So they picked up the bed, and they lifted over him.\u00a0 I grabbed him.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 You had to be quick, I gather.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 After we got him settled.\u00a0 The next day there was enough snow.\u00a0 That we made snow ice cream.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 His whole attitude changed.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 His whole attitude changed.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 It was not to be feared.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It was not to be feared.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Wasn\u2019t that strange.\u00a0 Did you live there as well?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, they had a matron.\u00a0 One of the Chinese men lived there as well.\u00a0 Then there was an English lady there.\u00a0 She was related to Ms. Eleanor.\u00a0 The one that played the organ at the First Baptist church for so many years.\u00a0 She was matron for couple of years, and then they got somebody else, a Chinese person.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 I didn\u2019t realize it was a boarding school.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I think, I read or heard somewhere, that was the only Chinese boarding school either in Mississippi or in the South.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember which one.\u00a0 The one in Greenville was not a boarding school.\u00a0 The children in this Chinese School here collected more money per capital for saving bonds during the war than in any place in Mississippi.\u00a0 When they were collected cans and scrap iron and everything.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t ask the Chinese to help.\u00a0 Well the big Chinese boys were highly insulted.\u00a0 They wanted to know why they couldn\u2019t collect scrap.\u00a0 Well the situation, being what it was.\u00a0 I talked to Mr. Ramsey the superintendent of education.\u00a0 He said, why don\u2019t they collect out there in that neighborhood.\u00a0 Of course that was in an area that might not have been good either.\u00a0 They took their cars.\u00a0 You see gas was rationed.\u00a0 They just said that we just want go anywhere else.\u00a0 We will keep it here.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Keep it in a small area.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 We will walk and use only one car.\u00a0 Then if we run short of gasoline, well we will share.\u00a0 We will just pile in one car and come to school.\u00a0 We had them coming from Duncan and Merigold.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 A long way.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Now there were children there from Rosedale that boarded there.\u00a0 There were some from Arkansas and Marks.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh my word, all over the delta.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 There were some from Drew and Ruleville.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 They would have had to have a boarding school or it wouldn\u2019t have worked.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 The Chinese collected the money through the help from the Baptist church to build that building.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Is that right.\u00a0 Is it used now?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, I have been boarded up.\u00a0 We were gone when it closed.\u00a0 It probably closed during the time that Dr. Treadway was here or when he left.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember who was here after Dr. Treadway, because we have left.\u00a0 We were here for eight years, and then we were away for sixteen years.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh for a long time.\u00a0 Do you remember when you were going to college, was there hazing of freshman?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 A little bit.\u00a0 They shaved their heads, but that is about here.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 When you lived here, did you have a roommate?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yes, Hertha Catchins was my roommate.\u00a0 We had sweetmates there in Cleveland Hall.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 A girl, Julia Birdson from Greenville was one of them.\u00a0 Alta Hood from one of the little hill towns.\u00a0 It was not Maben.\u00a0 It was not Grenada.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 It was over that way.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It was over that way.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Were there any rules about conduct or behavior?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Oh yes.\u00a0 When you went to gym you wore a skirt over your green shorts.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So it didn\u2019t appear on campus of anything that revealing.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No way.\u00a0 Now juniors could have one date during the week, and then they could have a date on Friday night.\u00a0 If you date didn\u2019t have enough money to take you to the show, then you stayed in the lobby of the dorm.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Of your dorm.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 On Saturday night, you couldn\u2019t get out.\u00a0 You had to stay in the lobby.\u00a0 You could walk home.\u00a0 You could go to church on Sunday night, but you had to come in right after church.\u00a0 You know you kind of stretch out walking from the First Baptist Church out to Delta State.\u00a0 You couldn\u2019t ride, you had to walk.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh my goodness.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 You walked.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Where the First Baptist Church is where it is now?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yes<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That is a pretty good track.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 You got used to it.\u00a0 You know.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 You were young then.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yeah, young and spry.\u00a0 There were a number of little rules and regulations.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Were they pretty well accepted?\u00a0 That was just the way things were.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Oh yeah, that was the way it was.\u00a0 You know I got to thinking about it.\u00a0 I am watching my grandkids of mine.\u00a0 I not sure it was pretty good.\u00a0 Your lights had to be out at ten-thirty.\u00a0 You had to be quite.\u00a0 Quite time was from seven to ten.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So you could study.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 So you could study.\u00a0 Then from ten to ten-thirty you could laugh and make noise.\u00a0 At ten-thirty your lights were out.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Period.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Period.\u00a0 Now, if you had a test coming up, you could get in the bathroom and close the door.\u00a0 The night watchmen couldn\u2019t see you.\u00a0 If it was a big test, you could tell Mr. Hunt that you had a test in so and so tomorrow and you need to study.\u00a0 Well he would check with the professor to see if you had a test.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 It had to go through channels.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yes, it went through channels.\u00a0 There was one car on campus.\u00a0 A girl from near Memphis, up in that direction.\u00a0 She had doctor\u2019s appointment on Saturday.\u00a0 That is when doctors would see patients on Saturday see.\u00a0 So on Sunday afternoon when she came back she would park the car in front of Cleveland hall.\u00a0 The man in charge of maintenance would come get the car and lock it up in the shop until Friday afternoon.\u00a0 Then at three o\u2019clock on Friday afternoon, he would park the car in front of Cleveland Hall, and she would go home.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So virtually there was no cars allowed on campus.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No and you know the professors didn\u2019t have many cars either.\u00a0 Ms. Brunda didn\u2019t have a car.\u00a0 Ms. Harrel did the dean of women.\u00a0 I was trying to think.\u00a0 Ms. Cane didn\u2019t at first, but they got one later.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That seems incredible now of course.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Oh yeah, all students have two out there for the looks of the cars.\u00a0 Of course the women professors lived.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did they live over by the across from the president in apartments.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, those apartments weren\u2019t there then.\u00a0 Hardy hall was where they lived.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Teachers that were unmarried.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Most of them were unmarried.\u00a0 Later Jimmy Sieglar built a house next to the house that the Jacobs live in.\u00a0 I can\u2019t think.\u00a0 Where the Gibson-Gunn Building is?<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 The aviation building.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 There were two little houses there, I think there or one.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 There was one that had glass brick in it.\u00a0 It was two story.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yeah, I think so.\u00a0 That was the one that Jimmy Sieglar built.\u00a0 I think there was another one.\u00a0 It was a little white wooden house that Beth McCain lived in.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 They were here thirty years ago when we came here.\u00a0 Not for long.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Not for long.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 My goodness.\u00a0 Well there wouldn\u2019t have been as many faculty there then.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 There were not many faculty.\u00a0 Now Ms. Doolittle had a house out in town.\u00a0 It was kind of close to where the, well the Nowel had it then.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have forgotten just where it was.\u00a0 It was in that area.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 What do you remember of the teachers and administrators while you were at Delta State?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I am supposed to care about the teachers that I didn\u2019t care about.\u00a0 I enjoyed Dr. Caylor.\u00a0 He was down to earth.\u00a0 He seemed to enjoy his students. I enjoyed Ms. Brumby.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 She seemed like a very lively and interesting woman.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 She was.\u00a0 Dr. Tatum, was a lot of fun.\u00a0 She and Ms. Doolittle worked with the Chinese at the Mission.\u00a0 Dr. Tatum worked with the women.\u00a0 She was an interesting person.\u00a0 She taught Geography.\u00a0 She was strictly an old maid.\u00a0 Do you know that she married after she left here.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh really, oh for goodness sake.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Ms. Hammit and I enjoyed Ms. Hammit too.\u00a0 I enjoyed here after I came back here.\u00a0 She had retired.\u00a0 We used to go to A. A. U. W.\u00a0 It was about that time that Ms. Tatum married.\u00a0 She said that she called me and said sit down I have something to tell you.\u00a0 Ms. Tatum said that I am going to get married.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 If she hadn\u2019t been, she was by then.\u00a0 She surprised everybody.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Surprised everybody.\u00a0 She had left here.\u00a0 She had retired here, I guess.\u00a0 She left here.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 She must have met somebody.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Must have met somebody.\u00a0 Now, another one that left, she didn\u2019t teach me.\u00a0 I knew here after we came back through A. A. U. W.\u00a0 She left here and went to North Carolina.\u00a0 The man that she had dated before she started work had lost his wife.\u00a0 They married.\u00a0 She said, when she finished college, her sister was ready to go to college.\u00a0 It was during the great depression.\u00a0 She couldn\u2019t see, not giving her sister the chance.\u00a0 He married somebody else.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 What a shame.\u00a0 She stuck to her principles.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 She stuck to her principles, and ultimately she married.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So it was meant to be eventually.\u00a0 That is something.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Eventually.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Was Dr. Kethley still?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 He was still here.\u00a0 What amused me was he was always moving the trees and the shrubs.\u00a0 We said that he needed to put them on wheels.\u00a0 He really did get this campus looking pretty.\u00a0 He started.\u00a0 He got people interested in it being pretty.\u00a0 It was pretty.\u00a0 When I first came, they had one of those funny looking lawn mower.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 It was not like a Yazoo.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Not like a Yazoo, the blade part was in the front.\u00a0 It had a steering wheel and two wheels in the back.\u00a0 I remember Roy somebody, I can\u2019t think of his name now.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Wiley?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, it was a student.\u00a0 That is the way he earned his way through.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 By mowing that lawn.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 He really kept it looking pretty.\u00a0 They used to have chrysanthemums growing out there where the laundry is now.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Okay, behind the union.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They would sometimes they would grow a few vegetables.\u00a0 We always had Chrysanthemums.\u00a0 (Tape cut off.)<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So it looked quite different then as it does now.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yes, let\u2019s see there must have been seven students and a professor at the table.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So you ate dining room style.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It was a dining room.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 In each dorm, or in the union, or the dining hall?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Dining hall, apart, I can\u2019t remember.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know which part it was, but a part of the union is including of the dining room.\u00a0 Maybe it is in the Stateroom.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That is right, because.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember.\u00a0 It might be.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 But there is a part of it that is there.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Because they didn\u2019t remodel the union until after we came.\u00a0 The campus has changed so much since the last thirty years.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It has changed a lot.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did you participate in any organizations or extra curricular activities in college?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Well the things that we had in church.\u00a0 We had morning prayer.\u00a0 You could go to a little room, and that was for early morning prayer.\u00a0 We had elementary organizations.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 For prospected teachers?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Prospected teachers.\u00a0 Some of them, well I didn\u2019t sing because I was practically a monotone.\u00a0 They did have a chorus.\u00a0 I had forgotten what they called that singing group.\u00a0 We had some intramural sports.\u00a0 I lost a tooth playing soccer.\u00a0 Ms. Cane was the P. E. teacher.\u00a0 She was yelling, \u201cSisson play your position.\u201d\u00a0 She was yelling.\u00a0 I played my position.\u00a0 The little girl, Evelyn Conger, was a little short girl.\u00a0 I am old tall lanky.\u00a0 Her head hit my mouth under there, and it broke a tooth into four pieces.\u00a0 So I had to have.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 A crown.\u00a0 Oh I bet that hurt.\u00a0\u00a0 Did they pull it?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They pulled it.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have enough money for them to put in a false tooth.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t even suggest it or offer it.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did they deaden it?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yeah, Dr. Butler pulled it.\u00a0 They just used Novocaine.\u00a0 He just stuck the needle in my mouth.\u00a0\u00a0 Listen I was so glad to get it pulled.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t go right at first to get it pulled.\u00a0 During that week it got in terrible shape.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 It must have exposed a nerve.<\/p>\n

MM: It was all split, even the roots.\u00a0 He pulled it in four different pieces.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 What an experience.\u00a0 That is not good.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I had some unfortunate experiences at Delta State.\u00a0 I was all ready swimming.\u00a0 I swam.\u00a0 I took swimming at Delta State.\u00a0 We always had a pageant in the spring.\u00a0 If you took P. E., if you didn\u2019t take P. E.\u00a0 you performed in the pageant.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 You participated in it anyway.\u00a0 Did the times, you would have graduated before W. W. II, but it was still depression years.\u00a0 It was still poor economic times.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It was still poor economic times.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did that have an influence on people at Delta State, or the way things were?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I expect it did.<\/p>\n

MS: You just didn\u2019t see it as much.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I didn\u2019t see as much as I would now.\u00a0 Oh when they got the swimming pool.\u00a0 Oh they were so happy.\u00a0 That was really the first improvement that they had made.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t before that.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t before then.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 The add of the naditorium?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0\u00a0 It was an open swimming pool?<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Not indoors?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Not indoors.\u00a0 They had some dressing rooms.\u00a0 It was not inside. It was outside.\u00a0 Ms. Cane fussed at Mickey because the boys were supposed to check to see the strength of the chlorine in the water.\u00a0 We were always complaining because we said that the water was burning our eyes.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 I bet it did, if it was too much.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It did.\u00a0 There was a lot of stuff too.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 They weren\u2019t measuring too carefully then.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Ms. Cane accused him of making it too strong.\u00a0\u00a0 He said, well if you don\u2019t want it full of all those impurities.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 You had to have one or the other.\u00a0 Were there concerts and plays?\u00a0 Did they bring in some things?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They brought in some things.\u00a0 One thing I remember was a ballet dancer.\u00a0 She performed in New York. She performed at Delta State.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember her name.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Not Maria Tcholchey for somebody like that.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, she lived.\u00a0 She had a big plantation between Cleveland and.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That wasn\u2019t Bet?\u00a0 Before her, no she was modern dance.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 She was before her.\u00a0 I remember Ms. Kethley had a reception for her.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember why we were invited.\u00a0 We were invited.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember why we were invited.\u00a0 (Tape cut off.)\u00a0 Shakespearean people came in.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh really, a travelling.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 A travelling group.\u00a0 I remember Hamlet.\u00a0 I am trying to think.\u00a0 It seems to me there was another one.\u00a0 It seems to me there was one each year that I was here.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Probably<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Probably, we had people that I remember.\u00a0 They had two grand pianos.\u00a0 They brought their own piano with them.\u00a0 This was a couple.\u00a0 They performed.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 I bet that was good too.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They were.\u00a0 They were good.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 What was Cleveland like then?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Not friendly with the university like they are now.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know whether it was because it was so small.\u00a0 Delta State was so small then.\u00a0 What it was.\u00a0 Maybe the professors were from different places.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t know how to deal with the delta people.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So there wasn\u2019t much.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 There was not.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Communication.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Communication that was one of the things that surprised me when we came back here.\u00a0 Delta State and the people with in the town were just mixing and mingling.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 It was a positive turn around.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I guess one thing was that most of the university people lived in the dorms.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t have much reason.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh so they didn\u2019t have much of a reason to.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 The only communication that I remember them having was maybe to trade in town a little, or a row of people, women from Delta State, came and sat on a pugh in the First Baptist Church.\u00a0 They usually sat on that very same pugh every Sunday.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Every Sunday.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Then they tried to start a night W. M. U.\u00a0 Most of them were from Delta State.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well that is interesting.\u00a0 I supposed after the war, many people from here had often been come back.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They often come back.\u00a0 They could mix and mingle more.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 You were gone from about?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 About 1946 to 1962.\u00a0 Anyhow it was sixteen years in there.\u00a0 I mean it had really changed.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 I can see that a lot went on in those years.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Delta State grew so fast because a lot of those men who had been in service came here for school.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 The G. I. Bill had a big effect.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It really grew.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well you met Milford here, didn\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yeah, he was here.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did you meet here at college?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yeah<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Was he from?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 He was from Leaksville.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh okay.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 He came here because, Dr. Evans, the minister of the First Baptist Church, were here.\u00a0 Nancy, Ira\u2019s wife, was Mickey\u2019s sister, older sister.\u00a0 She sort of put the b on them, the two of them.\u00a0 She sort of put the b on them to come to come to school.\u00a0 He had been off working in a rubber plant in Ackerman, Ohio until the depression came.\u00a0 They laid so many of the off so many of them in the rubber plant.\u00a0 So he was back in Leaksville.\u00a0 There is nothing to do in Leaksville.\u00a0 It was about like Boyle or worse.\u00a0 Nancy just sort of insisted that he came.\u00a0 Their children were little, and they wanted to visit a lot.\u00a0 So he could be a baby sitter.\u00a0 It worked out.\u00a0\u00a0 Then he got a job in the lab under Dr. Caylor.\u00a0 Then they started the N. Y. A., National Youth Administration.\u00a0 That started as a result of the of the depression, to give kids a chance to get to college.\u00a0 See they had jobs like, they found places where there were a lot of fossils.\u00a0 He would go there to dig.\u00a0 There was a place over at Tupelo they were going to put in a car lot.\u00a0 They got in there where they started digging.\u00a0 They found all of these fossils.\u00a0 They sent him over there with the N. Y. A. group to dig for fossils.\u00a0 Dr. Caylor had them to go frog digging.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t dig them, but they got them with the net.\u00a0 Then they preserve them for the lab.\u00a0 They wouldn\u2019t have to go buy them.\u00a0 That saved them a lot of money.\u00a0 The government was paying for the few to do those things.\u00a0 Then they studied over at the Indian mounds all over in the delta. They checked on birds.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 All kinds of things.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yeah, they found out what birds lived in this area.\u00a0 They checked fish, snakes, and all those kinds of things.\u00a0 A lot of stuff they have in the museum, he started that museum with natural history.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 In the science department?\u00a0 Yeah, the natural history.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 The natural history.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well that is interesting.\u00a0 That is a very interesting place.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 That paid for his schooling.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did you graduate at the same time?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, he graduated the year before.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did you marry then when he graduated?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, after I graduated.\u00a0 Dr. Caylor kept him on.\u00a0 For some reason, it seemed that they didn\u2019t have anybody that was interested in fooling with that kind of stuff.\u00a0 So they kept him on.\u00a0 They kind of increased it too, so it would have been hard for a student to do it.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 What is the greatest contribution of your experience at Delta State to your later life?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I guess, I think probably the understanding of children that I got from Ms. Causy and the kindergarten directors.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 And your experiences through the school?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 The experiences through them.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 What did you do after graduation?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have a job that summer.\u00a0 I began trying to collect things that I might use with teaching.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That is good.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Because I wanted a good bit of stuff for my science group.\u00a0 I really wanted to go into Chemistry at Moorhead, but the man who was in charge of Chemistry said that if your I. Q. is not a hundred and twenty-five, you just better not try it.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh pugh<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I was going into English Lit. I got here at Delta State.\u00a0 Well maybe this was my greatest thing.\u00a0 The registrar, ooh God, another English major when I went to get my schedule fixed.\u00a0 She said, that I am going to put in elementary Ed.\u00a0 She did.\u00a0\u00a0 Well you out know, I would have raised old Billy heck.\u00a0 Then I though, you don\u2019t argue with an adult.\u00a0 Martha was just so quite. She did exactly what an adult told her to do.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That was part of college.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 She didn\u2019t ask me if I could sing, or if I could tumble or do all these things you know.\u00a0 She said I am putting you in there.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So she figured out your schedule as well.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Then she said that you are going to have to come to summer school because you haven’t got a lot of these things for elementary Ed.\u00a0 So don\u2019t you try to fill out this schedule yourself.\u00a0 You come to me, and let me fill it out.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 And here you are.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Here I am after forty years of elementary.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 How do you see that the delta has changed over the years?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 They are more interested in education and cultural things.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know, maybe things were so bad and so poor.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Poor and isolated.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Once they got a little extra money.\u00a0 Maybe it was somebody in the community, or as a whole in the delta, but somebody to really push to get some cultural things going.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That is interesting that they would choose that.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Now like in Indainola, there was a girl that graduated in New York at a voice, Julliaart.\u00a0 She came back to Indianola.\u00a0 She started teaching voice.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well she wanted some of the things around that she was accustomed to.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Things around that she was accustomed to.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That had a positive effect on everything here.\u00a0 You never had taught at Delta State?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 You have taught in this whole area.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I taught one reading class at Delta State.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Oh really.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember.\u00a0 I think they had an overflow of teachers.\u00a0 It was a night class.\u00a0 So they called me, and ask me to teach that class.\u00a0 I did.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That must have been fun.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 No, wasn\u2019t much fun, because they are paying for that class.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have any problems.\u00a0 They are sitting there listening to what you got to say.\u00a0 The fun is when you got that little devil that says, \u201cI ain\u2019t gonna learn, because I ain\u2019t got no sense.\u201d\u00a0 He says that three times.\u00a0 I said look you don\u2019t tell me you ain\u2019t got no sense because you got sense.\u00a0 I have given you test young man.\u00a0 If you want to see what happens to you if you ever tell me that again you try it.\u00a0 You might be in for surprise.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t try me again.\u00a0 One day, this old tall boy came up and knocked on that door.\u00a0 He said, \u201cHi, Ms. Miller.\u201d\u00a0 He said, \u201cDon\u2019t you know me?\u201d\u00a0 I said, \u201cYou don\u2019t look like you did in first grade.\u201d\u00a0 He said, \u201cI am Dr. so and so.\u201d\u00a0 He said, \u201cYou told me, I could do anything I wanted to do if I was willing to work and do my best in this old United States of America, and I got my degree in medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that wonderful.\u00a0 That is what I would think what teaching is a marvelous too have inspired that person.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I was so thrilled.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t being very nice.\u00a0 I was talking right ugly.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 But you made an impact.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I got my point across.\u00a0 I did feel sorry for him.\u00a0 Before he lived over in Oxford way.\u00a0 There was a house dug in the hill.\u00a0 The floor was dirt.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 He may not have believed he could do unless he had somebody who believed him.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Well that mean old teacher.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Where else in the delta, here?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I taught in Cleveland.\u00a0 I taught in Rosedale, Clarksdale, and then went to Oxford.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Is that when you were gone all those years, were in Oxford?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Yeah, Clarksdale, was for eight years and Oxford for eight years.\u00a0 I have been here ever since.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Right, and haven\u2019t missed a beat as far as I can tell.\u00a0 You are still going strong with flowers.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I have had a fun life.\u00a0 I look back.\u00a0 Part of it was hard, but it was an exciting life.\u00a0 Sheldon called me, and asked me one night.\u00a0 She said, \u201cGrandma, you got to come over here.\u201d\u00a0 To Columbus that is, and talk.\u00a0 In history we are talking about the Great Depression.\u00a0 My teacher is very young, and she doesn\u2019t know anything about the Great Depression, and I told her that my grandma did.\u00a0 So I went over and talked to them.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Did you talk to his class?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I talked the class.\u00a0\u00a0 One little girl just cried.\u00a0 I said, honey what is wrong?\u00a0 She said that oh it was just terrible that you all didn\u2019t have a place to go to hang out to get you a hamburger like McDonalds.\u00a0 I said honey we had Lebella\u2019s, we could go buy a hamburger if we had a dime.\u00a0 We could buy a coke, if we had a nickel.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t hang out because we didn\u2019t have a car to drive.\u00a0 Labella\u2019s was a long way to walk.\u00a0 One of the teachers cried, and she said, \u201cHow did you all cope?\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t have cope.\u201d\u00a0 I said that you could if you were hungry and your children were hungry.\u00a0 You would find a way.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 You are dealing with what the situation is.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 You do what you had to do.\u00a0 I got to thinking.\u00a0 You know it would be hard because a lot of them know absolutely nothing about planting gardens.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 All the skills you need to.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 Well how would they grow their animals?\u00a0 Where would they get their meat?\u00a0 If you got to barter, how would you do it?<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Yes, we aren\u2019t very equipped anymore.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 We don\u2019t have the space to grow stuff like we did back then.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 I think the ice storm in \u201994.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 That made us think.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Yes, because we had to find ways with dealing with out electricity.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 We had to find ways.\u00a0 We did.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 It had a nice effect in bringing the community together.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It brought the community together.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Do you think in the depression that might have been an issue?<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I think that may have helped.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Everybody was in the same boat.\u00a0 You helped each other.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0\u00a0 I know the kids in town loved to come out to our house because we had fried chicken.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well that was pretty exciting.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I liked to go their house because they had little bought cookies.\u00a0 They had vanilla wafers.\u00a0 I had those cookies.\u00a0 Well daddy grew the wheat.\u00a0 We had the whole wheat.\u00a0 Mother took the whole wheat and the molasses that daddy had made.\u00a0 She made old homemade cookies.\u00a0 We had pecans and she would stir some pecans in there.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 It sounds good now.\u00a0 She made due with what she had.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 She used what she had.\u00a0 That is what we would do, if we had another situation.\u00a0 I hope to heaven that we don\u2019t ever have one like that.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Me too.\u00a0 That would be a bad thing.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I remember that my grandmother took her old dresses and mother\u2019s old dresses if a place got torn in them or they got to big for them.\u00a0 They made skirts or dresses for my sister and me.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 So it didn\u2019t get thrown out.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 It didn\u2019t get thrown out.\u00a0 You didn\u2019t throw anything way.\u00a0 I think that is the why I am a packrat now.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well there is a use for it somewhere.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I think well I might find a use for that.\u00a0 I know when my son used to play marbles.\u00a0 I had a whole gallon of marbles when we moved here.\u00a0 I started to throw them away.\u00a0 I thought no I am going to keep these because I might use some.\u00a0 So help me when I started teaching first grade here.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t have much equipment in those days right at that particular time.\u00a0 Mickey made me some little pegboards.\u00a0 The kids would line them up.\u00a0 I would say put ten marbles down.\u00a0 I would say put ten red marbles down, or five blue marbles.\u00a0 We would play little games like that with them.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Wonderful, you made a wonderful teaching tool with them.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I was so glad that I haven\u2019t thrown my gallon of marbles away.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 You did have a use for them.\u00a0 When you were working there. \u00a0I was in the extension service.\u00a0 You always seemed to have a delightment.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I wanted to learn how to use my hands and do those things that I had not got to do.\u00a0 I wanted to crochet and knit.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Because I have been teaching.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 I had been teaching, and I went to school all of those years.\u00a0 I got my masters while I was in Oxford.\u00a0 I had two kids to look after in addition to studying.\u00a0 It had been about fifteen years since I been to school.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t listen to the professor that long.\u00a0 When I got to Rosedale, they were trying to improve the teachers methods.\u00a0 You couldn\u2019t say you have got to school, and you don\u2019t have too.\u00a0 Everybody went to school. All I lacked was one course getting my specialist degree, and that was a required course.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t get it because of the professor\u2019s attitude toward older women.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 That is pitiful.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 That was the point.\u00a0 I thought, if you think I am going to take that course and put up with that sarcasm.\u00a0 You got another thought coming.\u00a0 Dr. Jacobs fussed at me.\u00a0 Finally after a while I told him that I wasn\u2019t going back to take that course.\u00a0 You may live to regret it.\u00a0 I said, no.\u00a0 I got only about two or three years more to teach.\u00a0 Why should I worry about that specialist\u2019s degree?\u00a0 I think that is the only thing I ever started that I didn\u2019t really finish.\u00a0 It kinds of bugs me because I didn\u2019t finish it.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 Well<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 If I had a few more years, I probably would have gone on a degree.\u00a0 One of the professors was interested in the same thing that I was.\u00a0 That would have kept me going because I would have pushed.\u00a0 He could have used my research.\u00a0 Delta State hadn\u2019t started with that type of degree.\u00a0 I started my masters.\u00a0 They did have professor to come to come from Ole Miss to teach here just in the summer.\u00a0 The next year we went to it.\u00a0 So I finished then.\u00a0 We were in Clarksdale at that time.\u00a0 Mr. Hogburg didn\u2019t much want me to come down there.\u00a0 I said, Mr.Hopburg I got two children and a husband, and I can not stay gone the entire long.\u00a0 He talked to the principle there.\u00a0 She said, that will be fine for her to go to Delta State.\u00a0 She has to have the basics.\u00a0 That is one of the basic courses.\u00a0 The man has to teach.\u00a0 The man was young.\u00a0 He had been in the army.\u00a0 He had just got that nursing degree.\u00a0 He was so sweet.\u00a0 One day he said, what do you think about a young person teaching you.\u00a0 I said, that is just great because you give me a new idea.\u00a0 Well he did.<\/p>\n

MS: Sure<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 A fresher look on teaching.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0 A stimulus.\u00a0 He was a little bit worried about having to teach a class.<\/p>\n

MM:\u00a0 He was a little worried, because this old woman had been teaching all of this years you know.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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