OK.
Am I sitting in the right spot?
You're fine.
What stories or books do you remember reading as a child?
Was there a favorite?
So that's two questions.
What stories or books do you remember reading?
My favorite books were all about The Boxcar Children.
OK.
Did you have a favorite?
I mean, of any of those did you have a favorite?
No.
I just couldn't wait to get my hands on the next one that would come out.
And, and now, today, they have a lot more than they ever had available when I was little.
Do you remember a particular color?
Right now they're all beige--
Right.
--if I'm not mistaken.
Seems to me like a lot of them were yellow.
It was like a goldish-yellow.
Not a bright, sunshine yellow, a warm gold looking--
What age were you when you started reading those, approximately?
Those books?
Uh-huh.
It would have been the first grade.
Did they have any illustrations?
I don't think they have any illustrations, do they?
No.
Not many at all.
All right.
This might sound like a different kind of question, but is there a certain type of smell that they had to them?
Just, um, just an old musty, library-type smell, you know?
Hmm.
OK.
Was there a particular place for reading that you had when you were a child?
I loved to go outside.
Our neighbors had a big pasture.
So actually I'd go sit in the pasture and read.
Sun or freezing, I loved it!
All right.
What stories or books do you remember somebody reading to you?
Well, my cousin helped me learn to read before I ever started school, and most of those were just your little, basic, I Can Read books.
That's what they're called now, I don't, I don't know what they were called then, but the Dick and Jane type books.
Yeah.
See them run.
Yeah.
Exactly.
All right.
Did you have a favorite?
Let me think
.
I can remember her helping me to read the, the books.
The main ones were like the Emperor with no clothes--
Yeah.
You know, that type books.
Absolutely.
All right.
Um, are there any illustrations that you remember from books that other people read to you?
Um, the one that stands out in my mind are the fables.
I can remember as a child looking at all the fable pictures.
OK.
Um, all right.
Is there a particular person that you liked to, I mean, that read to you that you liked to hear?
Yes, yes.
My, um, cousin Roseanne.
She lived with us at the time.
She's the one who got me interested in reading.
How old was she?
She was nine years older than me.
So
you know, it was really a good age to--
Is there a place that she read to you?
We would sit on the living room couch, by the lamp.
What stories do you remember family members telling you?
Hmm
.
There again, a lot of them were the fables
, mostly stories that had some type of moral or a catch to it, you know?
Right.
Um, were there any associations with events, the stories that they told you, with anything that happened in real life?
It doesn't have to be like stories from a book, any story.
I had an uncle that would tell me like WWII stories and that type of thing, you know.
And things that they remembered from you, uh, like from the Great Depression or the Holocaust or, you know, even though they weren't directly involved in that.
That type thing.
Um, do you remember any of those?
I mean, can you remember enough to tell any of it?
If you can't, it's not a big deal.
Well, my mother, she was just a little girl when, during the Depression.
She told about how, you know, it was so hard for them to get anything.
They had to grow everything they ate and they had nothing!
And, of course, her parents weren't one of these that had money in the bank that they actually lost anything anyway.
But of course when all the surrounding, the stores or whatever, everybody had lost money and so the whole economy was totally poor whether they actually lost money or not.
That's, uh, my grandfather talks about that, or used to talk about that.
Yeah.
They had nothing and, of course, he looks like.
( ) All right.
Um, who is the best storyteller in your family?
The best storyteller in my family?
I would have to say it would have been my Aunt Lizzy, she's deceased now, but--
Do you know why?
She, I can remember as a child, that in the, it was like she was ageless.
And it was like she was old, but she was ageless.
As a child, she never changed.
And she would like dance a little jig, you know, while she was telling stories.
She was, oh!
She was my favorite!
That's who Sara's named after.
Oh, OK.
What kind of stories, um, did she tell?
Just, a lot of times I think she would make up some of them, you know?
Or just really embellish, you know?
She would definitely add on.
But, uh, and, and there again, most of hers had morals, too.
Like she would say, "Now what did we learn from that, Debbie," you know?
And I would say, "Uh...."
And she would say, "Now that told you that...
," and she would go on.
But she would, if she was talking about rabbits, she would jump around and she's up there and she's put socks on some kind of wires and made little rabbit ears out of them, and, you know?
Yes.
Just things that my mother would never have done!
That's funny!
Aunt Lizzy would always do it, so--
So what kind of reaction would she get from you or other people that heard her?
Belly laughs!
Roll on the floor laughing!
Did they ever request for her to re-tell something?
Oh yeah!
Yeah.
If we had a family reunion or something, a lot of us would get her to re-tell a story.
Is there a particular story that you remember her telling?
There was one about a rabbit and this, I can't remember all of it, and in fact, we were talking about it at a family reunion not too awfully long ago, and a lot of them were adding bits and pieces to it.
Because I can just remember her getting up and jumping around and have you heard, uh, it's like a version of the "Little Bunny Foo-foo."
Uh huh.
That type thing?
OK.
What stories do you tell yourself to keep going through hard times?
Funny, sad, whatever.
I guess it's, um, maybe a daily thing, just whatever, depending on whatever your mood is.
If it's sad, you can always, you could always remember a story where, you know, somebody who has it a lot worse than you do!
Or if it's happy, it's a, I don't know, it's just recalling memories.
Yeah, I really like them.
I can be reading a book and be totally lost in it and think, "Wow!
I thought I was having a bad day!"
Or, you know, or you could be reading a really good book and thinking, "I wish my life were that easy," you know?
Yes.
Absolutely so.
Is there one that, um, you've read lately that's like that you're kind of lost in it?
Oh!
The best books that I've read recently were the, uh, Left Behind series.
Yeah.
Timothy LaHaye and Jenkins?
Jenkins
.
Yeah.
Oh!
I've only, we've only started the kids version of that, but, um, what, what I've had so far is good.
It's absolutely a lesson for, you know--
Oh absolutely
.
I'd like to read the kids version too, just to--
Yeah, we need to read it.
OK, well, I mean, can you sum up one of those books or something that meant something to you in the book?
Well, all of them.
You know, of course, it's talking about being raptured and it's just such a good follower of the Bible.
I mean it, it follows really closely, and, um, you can't wait till the next one comes out.
Uh, I think one of my favorite parts is when the two prophets, you know, they had the two?
You know, Elijah and Moses are at the, the Wailing Wall?
You know, if you haven't read it, I don't want to tell you about it yet, but oh!
I mean it's, it's just, it's just wonderful!
You know, it's, it's just like when the Bible says it, says that they will be there and nothing.
I mean if somebody threatens them or tries to harm them at all, they're immediately consumed in, uh, in uh burst of fire.
Uh-huh.
Well, you know, and then, of course, the Antichrist is trying to
trying to say that well, you know, that they have machine guns hidden under their clothing, and, but they're, they're absolutely wearing their tattered, same tattered clothes that they would wear in the Bible.
And it talks about them having the long scruffy beards, and they've been standing outside for days and days and days and months, and, um
, you know, without bathing and without doing anything.
Oh.
And, uh
, of course, then, like the Bible says, they're put to death again.
But, I mean, it's, you know
, God let's them, all of a sudden, one day they have no protection and, and they're killed.
And then their bodies are put out in the streets and I mean everything is just as an example--
Right.
But then, you know, they come back to life again and God takes them up to heaven.
Yeah, ( ).
Yeah.
Is there a particular story you like from the Bible?
Hmmm
, I like a lot of them from the Bible.
Umm, I think one of my favorite ones would have to be, oh goodness.
I guess one of my favorite ones would have to be, uh, the one about Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego.
I love that one.
Um, could you tell us why?
Just the fourth man in the fire, you know!
It's just cool to think that there's a fourth man in there.
Absolutely!
OK, well, is there a story that you could tell us like, you know, from your life now?
Something that isn't, doesn't have to be, you know, relevant.
Hmm.
I mean my favorite in the jalapeno story, but I don't think we'll put that on tape!
[They both Laugh]
Yeah.
Really!
For the whole world to know!
I don't want them to know about the jalapeno story.
OK
, a favorite story.
Hmmm.
I'm trying to think
.
Oh I've got plenty of stories.
You know, it's just a matter of thinking about one of them.
Uh
I can't think of one.
It'd be easier if we were all sitting around--
Oh absolutely.
If somebody, if somebody brings up a topic, it's like well, "I can do better than that!"
You know.
"Let me tell you this!"
Umm, well I could tell you that, you know, my husband is always saying that he thinks I'm a witch because I can say something and then it happens.
You've probably heard that story before.
Uh, we hadn't been married long and, and we were driving down the road one day.
I saw a box in the middle of the road, you know, and I looked over at him and, you know, men always automatically, you can just see them lining up like they're going to hit that, you know?
Yep.
Like it's a point system or something.
I mean like they'll get some points for it.
And I said, "Don't hit the box."
And he said, "Why?"
I said, "Well, if it gets, if it doesn't come out from under the car and it gets under the exhaust pipe and catch on fire."
And he's like, "Well, that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life!"
"OK," and I didn't say another word and about two miles down the road, of course, you know, it was `fwapp, fwapp, fwapp,' you know?
Yeah.
About two miles down the road he pulled over and I said, "What are you doing?"
He said, "I've got to get out and get that stupid box.
It's on fire!"
And it was.
Um, just little things like that.
So, to this day he'll, about three weeks ago he called me and he said, "You'll never guess what happened to me now."
And I said, "What?"
He said, "I's driving down the road."
And he said, "I saw this bag in the road."
It wasn't even a box and he said, "I thought, `That's weird!
' And he said, "I couldn't, it was like interstate and I couldn't, could not move over either way.
I knew I was going to run over it."
And he said, "I thought, `Now just wait and see if it does anything.
'" And he said, he looked in his mirror and it didn't clear.
And so he said, just a few minutes later, he could smell something.
He pulled over and it was hung on his exhaust pipe!
Then.
Just, just little things like that through the years.
He, um, we were in CA, and we had been in San Francisco for about three days and this is my first trip to CA.
And I was just fascinated with the big city: San Francisco life, so many cars and, and the day that we were going the shuttle bus was taking us back to um, the airport: LAX.
We were going to L.A. Well, we got on the shuttle bus and it just dawned on me, you know.
And I said, and I told him, "You know, I've been here three days and as many police cars as I've seen," I said, you know, "I've not seen a single accident."
And he was like, "Oh, don't say that, don't say that.
You'll jinx us!"
I was like, you know.
So we get to the airport.
We fly to L.A. We rent a car and he decides he wants to take me to Hollywood, drive down Rodeo Dr in Beverly Hills because he's been there before.
So I'm like, "OK," you know, "I'm all for it!"
We get in the car.
We're headed down San Diego Freeway.
Stop.
Bap!
And we get hit!
And he's like, you know, without saying, "Oh goodness," you know, "Are you all right?"
His head whips around and he says, "How's that?
Is that a good enough accident for you?"
And, of course, it was all my fault because I could have said something about it earlier.
Of course I was in the, the um, the earthquake, the last earthquake from CA.
Oh really?
Uh-huh.
I didn't know that.
Oh you didn't?
No.
I didn't know anything about that.
I'm trying to remember what year that was.
Was Sarah two?
Was either `94?
Ridgecrest?
Not Ridgecrest.
Ridge, I can't remember the name of that.
We were in Long Beach when it happened.
Northridge.
Northridge.
Yeah, um, and there again I'm such a sound sleeper that it was 4:30 in the morning and Tony woke me up.
He was saying, "Debbie, Debbie!
Wake up!
Wake up," you know, "It's an earthquake!"
I'm like, "You would say anything to wake me up," you know?
And then I, I realized that he's on his knees and the whole building is shaking.
And I didn't know it at the time, but we were on the fifteenth story of a sixteen-floor building.
And I did not know it at the time, but the hotel was built on six-foot rollers.
I mean it's built to sway and give.
Yeah, but still.
Yeah, but I mean the, the then that's another reason I know now that everything is bolted to the walls.
Everything, you know?
Because you'd hear furniture crashing, but I can remember we went straight over to the window and we still had power, but we went straight to the window and it was just, I honestly, I think, thought we were going to die.
All right, you could see transformers popping everywhere!
Just looking, that's all you could see were lights.
It looked like big flashes of light everywhere.
And, uh, we immediately got on our knees and started praying, buddy, because I knew we were goners!
Yeah, I would.
Absolutely.
So--
I didn't know you all were in that!
Oh, yeah, yeah.
It didn't really, it didn't really hit me, but later on that day, we were flying to San Francisco.
Uh-huh.
And it didn't really hit me until we got to the airport.
Well, our shuttle, the hotel shuttle bus, took us to the airport, and on the way over there, I can remember he stayed on, on his little CB thing the entire time with the dispatcher.
It was so foggy, or smoggy, probably fog, that early in the morning.
It was so foggy you couldn't see three feet in front of you, no more that ten.
And he was like, "I'm heading down to Ventura Blvd," or whatever.
And she'd say, well, "Don't go past such and such because the, the bridge is out."
There were reports, and, and after I got home
I'd see film clips on TV where like a policeman got killed.
He was going across the bridge and, you know, it was so foggy he didn't know the bridge was out and it was just there, you know, and the entire surrounding area around us was like that.
There were bridges out, just, and not necessarily just a bridge.
Just, all of a sudden there would be a sinkhole in the middle of the highway and cars were just going down into it, you know, that didn't know that it was there.
So if it hadn't been for that guy and that radio, we would never have made it to the airport.
But when we got to the airport, we were the first flight that they let leave that day and we were sitting in the US Air club lounge.
Uh-huh.
There's other people coming in and they were waiting on flights, and, you know--.
We were all sitting there.
Everybody was reliving their experiences and some talked about what happened to them.
And they were talking about armoires that were falling across their bed that weren't, you know, bolted--
Bolted
--bolted down, and, all of the sudden I noticed that everybody, we were just all sitting there just like, like this right here, like we were old people in a room full of rocking chairs, you know?
Ooh.
And then I realized.
I mean, that was that was just aftershocks and tremors from the, you know?
And I thought, "What magnitude of power it would take to move the LAX airport?"
Here we were all sitting there, you know.
And for days we felt, we felt aftershocks and tremors.
It's like a really bad case of vertigo, you know?
Yeah.
And you just, just sitting there and you just get light-headed and you just think, "Oh it's my equilibrium that's all messed up."
It was definitely an earthquake.
Were the girls with you?
No.
No, they were here with my mother.
In fact, I had called my mother and it's, it's lucky I called her as soon as I did because later on, the phones were down for hours.
But I called her and I said, "Now mother, I just wanted to let you know that we're all right," and she was like, "OK--"
"That's good."
And I thought, you know, "We're three hours behind them out there," you know.
She had no idea.
And I was, "We just had an earthquake.
I want you to know I'm fine."
And she's like, "Oh my God."
"Measured ten on the Richter Scale.
It's all right."
Absolutely.
It's a good thing that I called her when I did, because later on when, if she had heard about it on the news, then she would have been, terribly upset.
So--
Yeah, bet so.
I'm sure.
But, yeah.
You remember, um, Hurricane Hugo?
Oh yeah!
You'd never forget it.
Were you guys here?
Yes, we'd been here since July that year, `89.
Welcome present.
I was at work when it happened.
It tore my van all to pieces.
Oh really?
Yeah.
We had to stay in a hotel, a ratty hotel at that, because there was no power, no--.
The only place that was open in Hickory was, uh, Domino's Pizza.
That was really scary!
We only had power off for like three days here.
Right.
There were a lot of Duke Power people who lived down here so, I think that kind of helped us a little bit, but, oh, my worse, I kept putting off the laundry, kept putting off the laundry and I said, "I can't take it anymore!"
Drove it to the laundromat and that day our power came back on
.
You know, and, and coffee.
I couldn't get any coffee!
I was dying for coffee!
That's all I wanted was coffee!
But yeah, when Hugo hit, I was at work that day, and I worked third shift at Coca-Cola.
And, there was only, me and one other girl were the only two people in the whole building.
Of course, we were in the computer room.
Uh-huh.
And we had the generator.
The rest of the building was totally out.
She was 7 months pregnant.
Had to go to the restroom every ten minutes.
Finally, I said, "Look," you know, "we got to scrounge up the flashlight," because, you know, there were no lights in the bathroom, no anything.
And, and, you know, we had a pretty good walk, too.
So I told her, I said, "Look, we have the little area where we have all the supplies, that little computer room?"
Uh-huh.
I said, "Well, go up there.
You can use the bathroom right there, instead of going," you know.
And so that's what we did.
And she said, "What if somebody drives by?"
I'm like, "Well, you know, who do you expect to drive by in the hurricane?"
In the storm!
That's right.
And I thought, "No security patrol's going to be out here."
But uh, you know, my and, and, when I got out there to where the little dock was at for the paper, I could see my van.
I parked right beside this great big tree, and all that while I worried about my van, but not enough to where I was going to go out there and move it.
You know?
No!
And the whole time we were in there, all you could hear was
.
That's all you can hear!
Uh-huh.
And so, every little bit, I would go and stick my head out the door and, "The van's OK!"
Well, of course I worked twelve hour shift three days a week or three nights a week and that, I guess about seven o'clock was when the, the when the next people were supposed to come in.
It was about 7:30 and here come Richard.
And that's, I'll never forget it.
He came and then he said, "Shh, what happened to your van?"
I'm like, "Nice try, Richard but my van is fine.
I've been going over there all night long."
Been checking.
He said, "No man, it's just awful!"
I'm like, "Right."
Well I went out there and I looked and was like,
."
You know?
The president of the company's room, or, uh, office up on the top floor was on the end, and, I don't know if you know where the Coca-Cola building is in Charlotte, but it's kind of, I don't know, like an oval and arc type shape.
Uh-huh.
Well, his office was like right here in the middle, like right here on the end, and the windows were blown out!
All these metal aluminum blinds were wrapped around the wheels of my van!
Oh my God!
A piece of sheet rock, I don't know how large this sheet rock was, but it had blown around the curve of the building, like his office is here and mine was back here.
It had blown around, slapped the, the driver's window or my side.
For years, every time I'd put my window down and come back up, you would see little slivers, little pieces of sheet rock on the side of my window.
I mean it was awful!
And I had pieces of it, the driver's side door was all dented in.
And, and little, later on, I didn't know it until later on that, uh, I guess, probably within a year after the hurricane hit, then you could start seeing little spots all over the side of the van.
Yeah.
That was glass.
You know where it had just made little things that would--
How weird!
--that didn't show up immediately.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah!
Oh yeah, it was like $1600.00 worth of damage to my van because of Hurricane Hugo.
And then when uh, I ended up staying at Coke like sixteen hours that day because, you know, the roads were shut down and nobody was coming in.
Finally, I got to come down Tyvola; the new Tyvola above the Coliseum was pretty new at that time.
And I, I drove home that way and we'd only been here a couple of months.
I got all the way out here to the Eagle Rd at that mill?
Uh-huh.
And there was a huge tree across the street.
I couldn't make it any farther.
And I didn't know any back roads.
I didn't know how to go around and try and find.
So I just pulled the van over and at the plant parking lot and I got out and started walking and I was just, I can remember live wires being everywhere, crackling and popping.
And the first thing I saw when I got home, was my neighbor over here, two houses over.
He was outside, he was, it was really funny.
He was out and here I come walking up and looking like something the cat drug in.
And he's like, "Debbie, Have you seen my shutters?"
Every shutter on his house had blown away!
He was like, "All of a sudden we were in KS!"
And this was Dorothy!
It was like, "No Jerry, I haven't."
But it was it was really scary, the, just the scary, I mean I, I, it's weird, it's like I during the hurricane I really felt safe in that building but, driving home and all the trees that were down.
It was like I was the only person on the road.
And when I finally got here, it's like, you know, just seeing everything, and the house!
One of the first things I noticed was, when I come up from the top of the hill, was my house, it looked like it had ivy growing all over it.
Oh really?
Leaves from trees everywhere were up against the house.
Uh.
Stuck on the--
Yeah, I mean it was just like moss or something grown on everybody's houses overnight.
And all of these houses around here were new.
And this house right here was just being built and parts of the roof had blown off if it.
I'm surprised it didn't damage this over here!
I know!
We were really, really lucky!
Yeah.
You all didn't have a lot of big trees, so that's good.
No.
Uh-huh.
No.
We had, had, um, even our little peach tree, made it through everything.
Everything that ever, we had a creek in the back of the house and whenever it stormed, small storm or big storm, it just floods, come straight up.
"Get under the bed!"
Mike going to say, "Get under the bed!"
Right.
You know, I don't know why she did that.
I think because we were all pretty fascinated with, um, storms outside of the window.
We have sliding glass doors in our living room?
Right.
And we'd sit there and just watch.
But now I wasn't stupid or nothing when the lights were going `shz, shz,' you know, but she's, "Get under the bed!"
in her bedroom.
She's got one of those tall four-poster beds, like that w as going to save us, but we had to get under there a lot when I was growing up, bad storms--
Yeah.
But, no, Hugo, we had to go to Howard Johnson's or something.
No the Hickory Motor Inn!
To take a shower!
I'll tell you what!
I would have gone just to get a cup of coffee!
That's about three more days of not taking a shower!
Oh, I know!
Absolutely!
That's funny!
Um.
I'm trying to think, um, some stories that you told me that, you know, can be aired!
Without offending any members of the family!
That's right!
Which is the most important thing here!
I'm trying to think, because you're always telling stories and I just can't, my mind is gone, like your mind is gone on a Saturday.
Did Ida ever tell you any stories?
Or was she not more--.
My aunts read to me in my family.
Not my Mom a whole lot.
Well, same here.
I mean, it's, she would tell me stories about my early childhood.
Things, you know, stories about my daddy because my daddy died um, before I was three.
So I didn't hardly--
You don't remember anything, do you?
And she would tell me a lot of stories about him and, you know--
The kind of person that he was?
Right.
Just real stories, you know, things that
.
Like the first TV set, you know, when we used to have well water, and the water had to be, you know, got out every afternoon.
Just, you know--
Yeah.
The hard stuff.
--that type of thing.
What was your daddy like?
Well--
That she told you.
From stories that, from her and from, uh, other family members, I mean, everybody, they would always say that, that he would always be the first person to help you.
My mother always said that, that he would help a stranger, you know, get a car out of a ditch or whatever.
Uh-huh.
And, and it would take her three years to get him to do something for her around the house.
You know, and like she say, "OK Mac," you know, "You need to, we've got a hole in the roof," and she would use that as an example.
And, "I'll get to it.
I'll get it fixed."
And then, you know, get up at three o'clock in the morning because somebody's called because somebody's in a ditch or something.
You know?
That type of thing.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
And then, basically, everybody's always told me that he was a really big practical joker.
Uh-huh.
But, uh, actually kind of a mean practical joker!
You got some of that then!
Yeah!
Absolutely!
And you help people.
Yeah.
And I would never do anything to hurt anybody or destroy property, you know.
But, um, I mean I wouldn't take a practical joke that far, but there's nothing funnier than a real good practical joke!
Yeah.
Do you have any?
That you can share?
Like my daddy, he had five sisters, and one of them was his favorite.
I mean, they all say, you know, that she was his favorite, and she was telling about when
it was so hard for her to get to go on a date because everybody was a friend of my daddy.
Forget his daddy!
They were afraid of my daddy!
And one of them said that one day he walked out to the car and they got where they wouldn't come to the house and she had to walk down this long driveway to pick her up.
And she said my daddy come over there and she said, "He was so nice to my date!"
And her date stayed in the car.
And said, she said my daddy was leaning in over the passenger side, like where she was sitting?
Uh-huh.
And she said, "He just kept talking to us and just telling us what a good movie was playing and all this type thing.
And he was so nice!"
She said they didn't realize it until later on that evening that even while he stood there talking to him, he had painted all up and down the side of this guy's car!
Oh my goodness!
That type thing, you know?
That's--
--That's what I said, I don't destroy property, you know!
And then the sister, she just built a house, and, you know back then, I mean, uh, she had, uh, she was probably one of the first ones in the family that own a brick home, you know?
Uh-huh.
And her and her husband had built a new house and my daddy did a lot of the carpentry work.
And the house, once it was built and they got moved in, she told everybody that as soon as they got in the house to take their shoes off, well, from what I gather, it really made my daddy mad because he had helped build it, and, you know.
So he went and got one of uncle's goats and took the goat back down there with him into the house!
You know, just things like that!
I mean--
--I'm not malicious, so--
My daddy, well, he didn't want Sherry and Billy riding in his car, and he made them duck down in front of Billing's Store and when they got there, he'd push them out of the car.
[They both laugh]
Because he was so embarrassed!
But one time he ran over, they went to ( ) down in Hickory.
I don't know if you know where that is, but sort of near Longview, actually.
But they went to this snack bar one time, that's the kind of place where everybody pulled in and they had the speakers?
Right.
And, uh, he ordered something and then he got out and he was cruising around, acting cool, and everything.
But he almost killed this guy!
He turned around the curve and this guy was holding the thing like this!
He was holding, the drink he was holding was going, "shzzzz!"
Sitting there holding--
See, I love stuff like that!
I love stuff like that!
I mean, that's absolutely--
Of course, he won't tell us anything, because he won't tell us much of anything about his past because he had a Mohawk and he just--
Yeah.
He's real quiet about the things he had done.
Right.
I think we don't want to know what he did.
That's like you tell your stories to your children and it's like, "Who did you date when you were growing up?"
"I dated really nice guys.
You know, very clean-cut."
Oh my God!
If they'd seen some of the guys I used to date!
"Oh really!
They were all scholars!"
That's true.
Oh!
Absolutely!
( ) I went with him, but, I mean, you know--.
But you and Tony aren't very opposite.
I mean, not really.
No, not, I mean, oh, I don't know.
There's a lot of things we are opposites in, but it all evens out.
Compliments.
Yeah, all compliments each other.
Like, he hates to read, you know.
Mark does, too.
And I love to read.
Everybody has their own.
Absolutely.
And I'm afraid that all of them are going to be like him in the area.
I mean, at least it's not, nobody likes to read like I do.
Right.
You know?
Right.
Does Sarah like to read like you do?
Who?
Sarah and Andy?
Do they, they're, are they kind of like Don?
They've slowed down.
They're were doing really good, but--
Doing OK in school?
Absolutely!
I think a lot of it is that AR.
Yeah.
I'm all for AR, but at the same time, like right now, I had this little thing that kind of upsets me.
Like right now Sarah has to have two points a week.
On the AR?
It's hard for her to read at one, it's hard for her to read two, one-point books.
Uh-huh.
Every day it's--
Exactly because it has to be done before Friday.
Uh-huh.
And if she reads a one-point book and takes a test on it, she misses a question, she gets point-nine.
The reading another one point book, she's going to get, say she gets a 100 on it, she's still only got one-point-nine and she had to have two points.
So, every week it seems like I have to go to the library and get these little point-five books as, I call them "fillers," just to fill in.
Uh-huh.
And, and, and I think, to me, I'm afraid that I'm taking away the joy of reading.
Exactly.
If I said, "You've got to read this now!"
You know?
Exactly.
Uh-huh.
Now Amanda, she gets to read self-selected books and Sarah starting to read self-selected books.
But, um, I think it's important because not all kids are athletes, not all kids like athletic books.
Uh-huh.
I probably never read a sports book in my life!
I don't think I ever have.
As much as I like to read, sports just isn't one of the things that held any interest for me whatsoever.
I always liked books about true stories, whether it was, it could be murders, you know, those always grabbed my attention, I guess because I knew it really happened.
Right.
That's just like, historical places.
I've been to the Alamo.
I've been to Alcatraz like four times.
It's like one of my favorite places in the world.
I'd give anything if I could stay over there.
Sean Connery on The Rock?
Actually, I was there before Sean Connery.
Really?
Yeah.
It's crying shame!
The whole thing, you know!
I could not get enough information about Alcatraz!
We got to meet one of the former inmates over there and one of the former guards.
Yeah, I`ve got a bunch of pictures with him, with a man.
Actually, I bought one of his books
, but, um, I mean, it's just fascinating to me, you know!
To be on "the rock" and just--.
And the guard was, the inmate was talking about, he said, you know, he said, "They think that it's not, we're not being punished enough.
Like when we got to go outside to the exercise yard."
He said, "But if you don't think that it's not punishment.
He said, "I promise you that I could stand outside in this yard and look across the harbor where you can see the whole bay area," and he said, "If it was quiet enough, you could swear you could hear champagne glasses clinking together."
Your, I guess your imagination, you know, what all going on there, you know.
Uh-huh.
But I, oh!
I just absolutely loved it!
I mean, I wouldn't want to be incarcerated or anything.
I would love, I would love to be able to stand right over there, you know?
Just, just to see, oh!
This is wonderful!
Uh-huh.
I would have liked to have been there when men were over there, you know?
Machinegun Kelly and--.
Oh!
I would have loved it!
Love it!
When did they close that place?
Nineteen, I forget.
Nineteen sixty something.
Yeah, um--
I mean a whole, is it an island?
Absolutely.
And the whole thing's a prison?
Yeah.
Absolutely!
Well, they had warden's houses, all the officers, all the guards; they all lived there.
Oh really?
Yeah.
But there's no fresh water.
I mean every day they had to ferry a boat back and forth and bring fresh water.
You know, there's, because it's just right there in the middle, you know.
There's no fresh water and no way of getting fresh water over there, other than by boat.
Uh-huh.
And so, um, of course everything that's over there, you know how salt water damages, you know?
Uh-huh.
So everything that's over there is such, just such a hard place to upkeep.
And it was so cold and each prisoner was assigned a little light, almost like a cardigan type sweater--
Yeah.
--and a blanket.
And that's what they had year `round.
Of course, it's not supposed to be like, you know, Holiday Inn or anything.
Yeah.
I know.
There are a lot of bad things about it, its location.
That's wild.
How far is it off the--
It's like right.
Here's the Golden, you can stand right there and like pier, you get under the Fisherman's Wharf and the pier's right there in San Francisco, you can see Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, there's Oakland Bridge--
Uh-huh.
--and it's just all right there together.
Cool.
If I had the, it's probably a 15 minute ferry ride.
But, I mean, that's just a little ferry.
If I was on a motorboat, it would probably not take me five minutes to get over there.
Uh-huh.
You know, I mean, it's, you can see it, it's just right there.
It's beautiful and that's why it's called The Rock; it literally looks like a big rock just popped out of the ocean and just, you know, water all the way around it.
I mean, I'd like to go sometime, but it's not on my "Great To-Do list" or anything.
It's wonderful!
Absolutely wonderful!
I mean I'd like to go to CA and see the redwoods.
That's really what I want to see.
Yeah.
Have you been to see the redwoods?
Uh-huh.
We went to Big Bear Lake and we stayed at a friend's house in, um, Alberta?
It's a little town, Albert?
It was a little bitty town, but it's ski country and, um, they'd just finished filming a movie.
And we were right beside the city called Columbia.
Where, um, Back to the Future II had been filmed.
Uh-huh.
We went panning for gold and went horseback riding down there and, um, um, but when we went to see the trees, the trees, there was one tree.
I have pictures of this too.
You just have to see it to believe it.
I put the kids on it just so you could get an idea of about how large it was.
But this tree, it's been years, probably about six years or five years, so I don't remember the exact width or anything, but this tree was so large, and it was the first one that they had spotted, so they cut it down and there was--.
OK, this is how big it was, this tree that when the trunk part, they holed it all out and made a bowling alley out if.
I think like a four-lane bowling alley!
Ooh!
A four-lane bowling alley out of this tree!
God!
And right behind it, the stump or whatever was leveled off and they made a bar room with a dance floor out of this tree!
I mean, it was so huge!
It was unreal!
Things like that, I mean, that stuff fascinates me!
They had the trees where you could literally drive through the tree.
The tree was kind of like sculpted out and big enough for you to drive through!
How neat!
I, I have pictures, like started taking a picture and I make Tony and the girls stand like this, with their arms, you know, and still have tree on both sides of them, on either side of them.
Just amazing!
These huge trees!
And that doesn't begin to tell you how tall they were!
I just couldn't get over it!
It's just huge!
I mean, it's just huge!
That's cool.
Was that your favorite vacation spot?
CA?
My favorite vacation spot?
That would be San Francisco.
Oh really?
It's just, I mean I wouldn't want to live there.
Oh God!
Just the bustle and the, well, everyday, Tony would be working, normally, when we were there.
I've taken the girls once.
The rest of the time it would be like, everywhere.
I just couldn't wait for him to get up and go to work, wherever he had to go that day.
I was hitting the Wharf, you know, I mean, just everything from the sights, the sounds, the smells, the everything!
I just loved it all!
The cable cars, everything!
I would stop on the Wharf and get some, um, prawns for lunch or something, you know?
That's kind of cool!
It was just wonderful!
I wouldn't want to live there!
But it was just absolutely wonderful!
Every time he goes back, he has to go to San Francisco, I always try to go.
If we have enough points to go, I'll go.
I'll have to go.
Is the temperature really hot or cool?
It's pretty, well, cool.
But most of the time when I've been there, it's been around January and it's not, it doesn't seem like it's as cold as it is here, but it's always foggy and January's pretty rainy, too.
But it's never so bad that it keeps me from doing anything, you know?
I mean, I can still walk all over the city and I never remember having to walk with an umbrella.
So, but, pretty often the day is kind of cloudy and just--
And you can shop a lot?
Yeah.
Yeah and there's, you know, in CA, it's unlike it is here, they've got bread stores.
You know, you go buy a loaf of bread, it's like a loaf of bread stuck in one of the old paper popcorn holders, you know.
Yeah.
I mean it's not cellophane with a twist-tie, "There you go!"
You know?
It's like a loaf of bread that you can chew on while you're walking down the street.
Yeah.
So and, and, the things that, that are everywhere over there.
You can literally just walk down the street, you can get you a bowl of clam chowder in the scooped out bread, you know?
Oh yeah.
And I mean, just, just things that you don't get here, you know?
We have a hot dog shop where they actually do that, put soup in the bread, but it's expensive.
Oh yeah!
Absolutely!
I think that, uh, where were we?
Oh!
Disney World!
They have it there, too.
I was trying to think, the only other place I've seen it was Carowinds, but no, it was Disney World.
But yeah, I mean, just everything about it was so complex.
And then you had the people all over the street, not just begging for money.
It's not like they're just standing there asking for handouts like they do here.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
These people are doing something for the money.
And they take turns.
Where the, I think it's Market and Powel Streets?
Market, Hyde or Powel.
Those three streets all intersect somewhere where the cable cars are running.
And where they all come down and turn around, it's like these people all have scheduled show times, you know?
Like at one o'clock, you have this Black guy down there, they're playing a fiddle, and he'll play for 15 minutes, it's time for the next cable car to come in and turn around, and everybody's just gathered around there.
He passes his little hat around or his fiddle case or whatever and everybody throws money in it.
Well, then next time, it's a juggler, and the next time it's a mime, and the next time it's three guys who play guitars.
Um-hum.
But it's always something going on.
And, you know, it's just the culture and I'm always thinking, you know, it's not, at least they're not expecting, they are providing you some type of entertainment; they're doing something, you know.
Uh-huh.
And uh, that's the type thing that you really--
That's neat.
Yeah, just, it's just really nice to see all those things going on.
I can remember this guy standing there and he had this little dog.
I don't know what kind of dog it was, but it couldn't have been more than a foot tall standing on his little hind legs, and he also had a little hat and sunglasses and you could have your picture made with him for a dollar.
Just things like that.
Things that you do not see every day!
It's almost like going to Carowinds or someplace and seeing all these little, special little things, you know.
But they're all over the place.
All you have to do is open your eyes and you're there!
You have vendors that, you know, are selling homemade jewelry and there's still a lot of the old hippies, and you'd see a lot of the old hippies, too.
There's a lot of the areas like that in CA.
That's my favorite!
CA would have to be my favorite vacation spot!
Sounds like the place to go!
You got to go!
I want to go to CO for the Grand Canyon and all that.
Yeah.
See all that.
Yeah.
I'd like to do that, too.
I haven't done that yet.
There's a lot, in fact, telling about San Francisco is my favorite spot, that's my problem, see.
I get to travel so infrequently that when I do get to go, I'm always thinking, "Well maybe, I'd love to go do this and this and this."
And I think, "Well, what if I go and I don't have as much fun as I would if I had gone to," you know?
Uh-huh.
So, I know if I go here, I'll have fun if I go here!
So I'll go back there, you know?
That's what I tell Mark.
I want to go back to Chicago.
I wouldn't live there.
Right.
But, it is so awesome!
That's another place I'd like to go.
I mean, it is so busy but if you want to be alone, you can be alone.
In one of the busiest cities in the world!
Absolutely!
And nobody cares!
And then you could walk down Navy Pier and it must be a little bit like San Francisco only they don't have, well, they do have people down there making money, but they're mostly drawing people and stuff like that.
It is beyond cool!
And nobody but, you know, people say they're indifferent or whatever, but not really, it's just that it's a whole different
lifestyle!
Exactly!
Absolutely.
They don't, I don't, their driving is,
my driving, I don't know, but,
I was getting screamed at and everything else, but, it's just a different place.
Now I like Schaumburg, it's a suburb, and there's not, you know, it would be like being here, you know.
Or like Gastonia with Franklin Blvd, stuff like that.
You had everything you needed.
You didn't have to go into the city.
Right.
You could go into the city for something special, you know, that was just there, but everyday living, you could just stay in Schaumburg and never to leave.
That's one thing I liked about San Francisco.
When we stayed right there, right in the heart of it, I could walk anywhere I wanted to go.
And we weren't, I could literally walk out of my hotel and then two blocks to Fisherman's Wharf and all the piers, Pier 39 is my favorite, it had hundreds of shops on it and you know, and, and, these seals, and nobody knows why.
And I mean hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of seals just started coming to this pier.
And they've got all the little boat slips, well, they're just covered with seals all the time!
And nobody knows why, they just started coming up there, you know.
But it's just wonderful!
There's, there's so many things that you never get the chance to see anywhere else, but you can see it all just walking around.
And then, of course, you have Lombard St, the crookedest street in the world.
I've walked down that street and it's amazing, you know!
Just like those movie spots.
Absolutely the crookedest street in the world, yeah.
And all those are right there within walking distance.
Then you take a cable car and go to Chinatown.
Uh-huh.
And still that's not that far, but after walking up and down those hills!
You are ready for bed when you go to bed that night!
But it is absolutely wonderful!
There's shops, there's um, all kinds of like comedy clubs and stuff.
Um, it's just a whole different world.
I mean, everything that you can imagine seeing all at once, it's just--.
And you can smell, you have to love seafood, you can smell seafood all over the city and hot breads and go get you a bowl of chapino and a big old thing of bread and just--
What's chapino?
It's like a fisherman's stew.
Uh-huh.
We make it here.
In fact, I bought, I got the recipe from the little, where we went to eat at Fisherman's Wharf.
At the Grotto.
Uh-huh.
Got the recipe for chapino.
It's got like a tomato-based soup, and then it's got uh, oysters, it's got, um, crab claws, it's got shrimp, but nothing's peeled!
So you have to have these big bibs on.
It's not something you'd want to eat on a date, you know?
Because it makes such a mess!
But when we make it here at home, but, of course, we peel everything.
Thank God!
When we make it at home, we put like the whitefish in it, and like, uh, uh, tilapia.
Um, oysters and shrimp, you know.
I don't know if I put any crab in it.
But it's just wonderful!
Wonderful!
I think my favorite, um, food story from here is
Tony putting
pork rinds on the chicken!
Oh God!
Absolutely!
Atkins Diet!
Yeah!
Just crush up those pork rinds and roll your chicken in it!
It's much more creative really!
Yep!
That's when you get real desperate.
Tony, again, somebody was asking me from church the other day, he recently went to the men's breakfast, the one they have once a month on Saturday mornings?
And, um, Tony came back and said that, he said, "I had to fix gravy for them."
And I'm like, "Uh oh!"
He said, "What?"
I said, "I didn't know you knew how to cook!"
"But they've been asking me for a long time."
And basically that's right, they have.
But I told them, I said, "Tony is one of those people who could improvise."
So I have learned after 19 years of marriage, I have learned, "If you don't want to know, don't ask."
Don't ask!
Because he won't lie to you.
He will not lie to you.
If he tells you something, it's the truth!
I promise you, he will not lie to you!
Like, for instance, one day there was a little gravy story.
He had made gravy.
As I sat down to eat it, I thought, "We don't have any milk!"
And Tony likes powdered milk, he grew up on that welfare-type milk.
Uh-huh.
Yuck!
But anyway, with a clothespin on my nose, I was sitting there thinking, and it was white gravy, it was not water gravy.
And I said, "Tony?
How did you make gravy?"
No answer.
So then I got to thinking, "We don't have any powdered milk--."
"Yes we do!"
I said, "Tony, look me straight in my eyes and tell me you did not put baby formula in this gravy!"
And he looked at me and said, "How's it taste?"
I knew I was eating baby formula gravy!
Eeeww!
So you know, hey!
If I hadn't have known, I would have been fine, but knowing, it's like, "Ooh!"
I was glad I had quit nursing or he would have had breast milk in there!
There's some things you don't want to know!
Absolutely!
I mean it's just like, like...I've learned, if you don't want to know don't ask him!
Because he can, he can come up with stuff you wouldn't ever think about, you know?
Was it OK?
Yeah!
I mean it tasted fine, but it was just knowing that it was in there.
Eating Enfamil gravy, you know?
That's hilarious!
That's nasty, too!
Absolute ly!
Uh-huh!
Whew!
Well, Mark's told me about some of his creative stuff, but Mark's pretty creative, too.
Yeah.
Like the time he cooked, he left the--
Red vinegar?
Oh please!
Well, Mark says stuff about it too and I'm like ( ) and I'm, "No we can't!"
"Forget it!"
But, no, he um, one time put, he said, "I'm going to marinate these salmon steaks."
Neither one of us had had it in our whole married life.
"Uh-huh, that would be nice."
He's going to marinate it and cook it later, you know.
And it ended up--, and oh God!
It had the worst ( ).
It was pretty--.
I said, "What did you put in this?"
"Red vinegar."
Red vinegar and it ruined it.
It had, oh God!
It was awful!
"I'm not going to do that again!"
On salmon steak, I know.
It was nasty, man!
I don't think you put vinegar on fish.
I don't really know.
I don't think, no.
HC: Vinegar's too strong for fish.
It'll go right through it.
With oil and stuff, maybe a little vinegar.
We'll have to make a big pot of chapino and bring it out there.
Oh golly!
I'd love to!
The only time we did it was when Bubba lived here, because it's really expensive and we'll all go in together and make the ingredients.
But uh, it's, and we even made our own little, one day we all, we always made, you know, I got the bread machine and we always make a big loaf of bread.
Use it to dip in there.
Well, bread's fine, I said, "You know," I said, "I would love to have some pasta!"
So from that time on, every time we'd fix it, me and Bubba would fix a big pot of angel hair pasta.
Um-hum.
It's real thin.
Pour that chapino over it!
Man, it was delicious!
I mean it's, you use olive oil.
It's got garlic and um, I'm trying to remember what kind of peppers are in it, but it is so good!
And you have to, uh, braise the little onions and stuff, you know.
It's, it's to die for!
It's awesome!
Awesome!
Cool!
Yeah.
I've never had oysters, but--
Even my kids will eat it!
Isn't that something, too?
I mean, once you get to dipping out, you, you don't have to get an oyster, you know?
Yeah.
I don't want no oyster in it!
Amanda grew up eating oysters.
One time she was sitting in the highchair, she'd say, "That's no chicken!"
And then an oyster I bought her at the Fish Camp, and she'd, she'd bit into it and the centers are normally gray, you know?
Yeah.
She'd bite it and, "OK, just keep it."
You know?
Didn't faze her in the least!
Nate's eating, um, real food now.
He had um, well actually, we tried those Gerber ones that have the whole peas and stuff like that, a little piece of chicken in the bottom.
And um, he, he actually ate, like he'll eat baby food fruit or sometimes baby food cereal, not, you know, not all the time.
He eats fruit at the daycare.
You better watch it!
I told Tony, I said, you know, "Let me think about it."
Once you've tried table food, can you imagine sucking on one of them bottles, you know?
I know.
It won't bother me because he drinks too many bottles right now.
Well, Jasmine's down to about three bottles a day.
Really?
Yeah, um, when we kept her, I gave her, she had one about, about, well, it's always nap time like 10:30 in the morning around 10:00, one around 2:00 or 3:00 and then one at nighttime.
Well, of course, Nate has to have about six or seven or eight.
And it's getting old by about, I bet we spend $180.00 if not more dollars a month on formula.
God!
Because he, he...you know I am and he's a bottle freak!
And I don't know, but I can't afford that much longer and I figure, well he seems--
Yeah, well, he's 10 months old.
It's almost time to, to--
Well, I, from the day, I mean from the day that mine turned a year old, I started buying whole milk.
Uh-huh.
Absolutely!
Because even, and Tony said she's complaining the other day she's saying, you know, between Jasmine and Darnell, she said, "I buy...
' they drink at least one gallon of milk a day.
It's like normally they'll drink a whole gallon and start on the second every day, so...you're looking at, at least eight or nine gallons a week.
So, but, even at that at three dollars a gallon, you know?
Uh-huh.
What is that?
$27.00 a week?
Something like that.
If it was nine gallons
I must spend about $50.00 a week, usually.
So you're still saving some, but--
Well, I'm ready for it, but now he's decided he'd eat the real food.
And then, last night, my brother had this surgery and we went over there and Mark said, "Well I guess we'll take chicken because that's the fastest thing."
So he went in KFC and got one of those buckets with the slaw and everything.
And um, I shredded up little pieces of chicken and mashed potatoes and goes through these phases where he never eats and you know he never eats.
Yeah.
But he ate that up and Mark said today, "He acts like he's a little constipated."
And I said, "Well when you get in there, try and get me some fruit," because when Colleen started eating real slow, when she got hooked in cheese that was it.
