Clarence Hedgepeth interview recording, 1993 June 25
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Hasan Jeffries | First, I would like to ask you, where was your first home place? | 0:00 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | My first homeplace was about two miles from Gold Rock. You hear about a little place called Gold Rock between here and Rocky Mount? Okay. That's where I was being raised at. About nine years old, we moved away from there. Yeah, about nine years old, we moved away from there and we moved up near Nashville, North Carolina. We was about two miles out of town. We was about two miles out of town. We stayed there four years. | 0:06 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, we stayed there four years and we were farming where I left from, and we were farming when we moved. We moved to another farm and we stayed there four years and farmed, raised cotton, corn, tobacco, peanuts, and garden vegetables. Yeah. The first place we lived, we stayed there. My daddy stayed there 14 years. That's where he went when he got married. That's where I was born at. | 0:46 |
Hasan Jeffries | That was down here? | 1:18 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | That was between here and Rocky Mount, the next little town over from Whitakers. Now, that's about 22 miles from here, from where we is now. Okay. We stayed there. We left there and we went up near Nashville, North Carolina, where I was talking about a while ago, and did the same thing, we farmed there. We farmed there four years, then we left there and we came back to Battleboro from Nashville. We stayed one mile out of Battleboro town going north. Yeah. Okay. We stayed there four years. Stayed there four years, yeah. After staying there four years, our family was really getting large. In fact, it was 12 other children. | 1:19 |
Hasan Jeffries | So you had 11 brothers and sisters? | 2:20 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. I had nine sisters and two brothers. Yeah. After staying there, we moved over about two miles out of Enfield going east. We stayed there two years. We stayed there two years. We got on to the project being built in here. We wanted to try to buy one of the homes. | 2:22 |
Hasan Jeffries | When was this? About what year? Do you remember? | 2:58 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yes. 1935. Yes, was 1935. We stayed there at this place where we was at then. No, we moved in 1934. '34, '35, '36, '37. We left after four years. We left there, and when we left there, we came up here, renting the house right there. | 3:00 |
Hasan Jeffries | Across the street? | 3:32 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. Now, that's the home house we bought because when we moved, we wanted a place to put the house because we didn't have to clean up the woods, just like them woods out here. You couldn't see the house from the road, only the little place that went up to the house. We were there two, three years. After we stayed in the house, we had about three or four acres of land cleaned out around the house, and you could see the house anywhere around it. But we didn't have enough for a farm, but we still used it for farmland. We didn't have no allotment. You had to have land so long before you could get allotment for it. Then when you got allotment, it was real small. But as the years passed, it got larger and larger, and you got allotment more and more all the time. | 3:33 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | We stayed on there. And my sister, she was going to Scott College. The first year we was there, they cleaned up about two acres right around the house so we'd have a little garden space or something or other, because we didn't have nothing to work on. They had some more land up here. The government had some more land up here. We went to Halifax, out from Halifax up there. All the people who were living here wanted it, so more land that they could go up there and tend to. People who wouldn't be at home, they could go and come every day. Yeah, because the allotment they had up there for us wasn't still going to be enough, but it was going to be a help to us. So we took on to it and we was on up there and started working. | 4:30 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | After we get through planting, we come back here home and we raised hogs. Had a whole lot of hogs and we raised chickens. About four times a year we'd get 200 or 300 chickens and raise. We had a little house we had built for them, and so we raised those and sold those chickens. That was a help. It was a whole lot of work in it, but it was a lot of children who didn't have nothing to do. So they took it as play, tending to the chickens. You know what I mean? Then we was going to school. It was kind of hard, but we went to school. | 5:26 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | After we got a little land so we could farm, they gave us all so much, enough for to last us about four days working, and we could keep it clean. When the end of the year come, we had a little something to lean on through Christmas. We did that for about eight years. Yeah. | 6:09 |
Hasan Jeffries | So you were working government land? | 6:39 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. We were working government land. Yeah. But at the same time, they gave us a chance to buy the land if we wanted to. | 6:41 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. | 6:49 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Because the ones that wanted to could start buying the land and pay so much on it at the end of the year from the crop that they had. | 6:50 |
Hasan Jeffries | Is that what your parents did? | 6:58 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. Well, still, we held onto ours. And some few others, all these houses right here, these are my sisters and brothers. We the only big family that stayed here, but this fellow that was supposed to have been there with me, okay, they held onto theirs. They paid for theirs. They had a pretty good little lot because they was over there—Where their house was built, they had been tending land around there for a long time. They had some old land around there, so their allotment was over twice as big as ours was with the same unit. They had started buying into it. They continued to buy into it. | 7:00 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Their daddy died, then his mother took over. She was a real smart woman, and she didn't have nothing but him and they had a daughter there. There was three of them, and they stayed there and worked real hard. They paid for it. So they finished paying for it. This is before the mother died. The mother stayed sick there for a good while and was going back and forth to the hospital. Finally, she passed. Then there'd be nothing but just him and his daughter. His daughter, yeah. There was two of them and his mother made four. She lived about three years, then she passed. The boy and the girl, they left and didn't nobody stay there but him. | 7:47 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | It's been, I guess, about four years ago when the mother died, but the girl had left the fold. She had gone to Washington, DC, and then made a home there. She was a grown-size girl at the time she left. After she left and went, she started to working, got her a job. She started working, but she couldn't go to school and finish college. But she still got her little job and went to work. After she got her a job and went to work, she finally held on to the job and done real good, sending money home and help out with her daddy. Her dad was there. His daddy has been dead. He passed years ago. I don't think he lived eight years after they come in here. | 8:52 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | But at the same time, they was doing this like we were. They was paying on their farm. What little money they did get, they didn't get enough to live off of hardly, but they still paid enough to keep their farm and didn't lose it. We did the same thing. When my daddy passed, we had that on the road there. After he passed and mother, she had already died. Yeah, because she stayed sick off and on all the time, all the time. After she got up in age, the sixties, 60 and got to 70 years old, she stayed sick all the time. But you wouldn't believe it if you'd saw her at the time that she was 60 and 70 years old. | 9:50 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | You wouldn't have believed it. She got around just like a young girl. She had a mind that go and she didn't be still, she went. Yeah. She all the time was doing something for somebody, somebody. If anybody got sick in the neighborhood in the night, they would come and look her. She was just like a doctor. They'd come looking and they would take her back home with them. Sometimes she stayed two or three days before she'd come back. Everybody found out that she could doctor. Dr. Green, the doctor who used to be in Battleboro, he said if he had a chance and could, that he would've got a license for my mother to go out. She went out to cases where he'd give up, and he said they would never live two days. She got them well, and they got on and lived. | 10:38 |
Hasan Jeffries | Now, where did she learn her— | 11:31 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Her mother was the same way when she was coming up. Her community that she stayed in, everybody took her for the doctor. They could get those herbs and roots and things and boil them and mix something out of them and give it to you, and they'd do you more good than the stuff the doctor gave you. That's right. I remember one night one of my sisters got sick. Well, she was sick a little bit for a night, but we thought after eating her supper that she would get better, was going to get better. We could wait over there too and then carry her to the doctor, but she got bad off that night. Her fever went up. | 11:33 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | We got up, me and my daddy, and went down to the woods. I know you can tell poplar leaves, trees. They got a big leaf to them like that, a real big leaf. Well, you'd go down in the woods and you'd get you eight or 10 of those real big leaves and bring them back. You'd dip them in hot water until they got real soft. Then you would get that out. You hear on television Vicks, but you ain't never use none. You probably did, though, when you were coming up. You could rub your chest with it if you got a bad cold. You take that Vicks salve and knead your chest a little bit and put on there leaves on you and pull your shirt down, put it on your back around you like that. You would have a fever of 110. I know one night my sister had 110. | 12:19 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | We put leaves on her twice that night, about three times. Every one of them leaves dried right up, but the fever was going down all the time. When day come, she was just as normal as could be just by using them leaves and that Vicks salve. Now, if you ain't hearing tell, you were hearing somebody talk about it. Long time you come along, they was still doing little things like that, but it weren't real plentiful. But some people still use it. Now, some people use it when they can't do no better, ain't nothing else. Do you know them remedies like that was better than what the doctor do now at times because you could do it and it would do it in a few minutes, you'll feel better. | 13:14 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Let me tell you what I learned myself when I was going through it. I just went about two weeks. I was in eighth grade then. Yeah. I had a tendency every day just before school turned out, I would have a headache. I don't care how good I felt, it would come on me once a day and it'd be around from 2:00 to 4:00, around that time. I told my teacher about it. Well, she said, "I tell you what. The lady we got on campus will give you something for that, and you won't ever be troubled with it." I said, "Sure enough?" She said, "Yeah." | 14:04 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | She said, "You want to try it?" I said, "I sure do." So she told one of the other boys in the class, and he knows all about her. He's taking me down there to the lady's house and saying, "Now you stay down there to the house until the school bus children turn out. When they get on the school bus, I'll have the driver to stop by there and pick you up." I told her, "All right." This boy, he walked on back up to the campus. I went in and she said, "You sit down here by the fire, sit by the heater." Saying, "I'll fix you up, son. You'll be all right." | 14:50 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I said, "Well, will it take it long to work?" She said, "No." Said, "Within five minutes time, you'll be all right." That's the words she told me. She goes in the kitchen, leave me in there to the heater. I was wondering, "What in the world is she going to get?" She told me about it and showed me how to make it after I went in there. You guess what it was. I had the mumps. I had the mumps and I had had it for three days. It had just about went down so you couldn't see no swelling or nothing, but I still could feel it. | 15:28 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | She said, "I'm going to give you this to take now. You drink this." Saying, "Within five minutes after you drink it, you won't feel a pain." I had, what do you call it? I had the mumps and something else. But anyway, she said, "You just take it and drink it and you'll be all right within five minutes." I took it and drank it down. It was kind of hot, but I turned to drink it. Within two minutes after I'd taken it, I could feel myself just coming through just like that, coming through just like that. Within five minutes time—I had the mumps. You ever had it? | 16:10 |
Hasan Jeffries | Yes. | 17:00 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Well, you know how it works then. I got rid of that mumps right then. That was 1937, 1937, the same year we moved up here, the same year we moved up here, 1937. I drank it. And let me tell you what it was. It was two teaspoons full of black pepper in a half a pint of water, eight ounce glass of water, and a half a teaspoon full of sugar. She stirred it up until it looked like it started roping around in the glass, then you drink it. The chills and the mumps, that's what it was, it knocked it out. I ain't had chills. I ain't had the mumps since. I told, I bet you, a hundred people about it. And about every one that I told has come back and told me that it did to them just like it did me. It stopped it within two to five minutes. It stopped it just from their doing that. | 17:01 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Everybody in the community that I have ever tried it on, it worked. Now just things like that, old folks, they tried things just to see what would they do. They didn't have nothing else to do. We used to have trouble with—We had a mule that we'd work, and he couldn't pass water like he ought to. | 18:07 |
Hasan Jeffries | This is your family? | 18:31 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. Somebody, I forget who it was, seemed like it was my granddaddy, told us, "Y'all go down yonder woods and get a big oak tree. Take the ax with you and go down there and trim about a gallon bucket of that undergrowth bark off of that tree, not there on the outside where it's dry, but that kind of damp." We went and got a bucket and went down there and took our ax and trim down the tree and trim down the tree, got the bucket and went and brought it back in. He grab it, put it in a little pot on the stove a little bit at a time and boil it. When he got it boiled, it looked kind of like some water that you had put some milk in a jar and poured it out and then took the jar and rinse it out with water. That's the way it looked, like that. | 18:34 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | You could take that water and give it to a mule in a bottle. Those kids put it in a pop bottle. You can put it in the corner of his mouth and hold it out. He'll drink it right on down. The next week or two, boy, he'd be just as fine as anything you ever seen. He'd be all right. He'd be all right. You wouldn't have to get no doctor to him. The doctor would come out there because he'd charge you $25, $30. That's all he going to do when he come. He going to put a little something in a bottle and shake it up and give it to him. The mule will get all right, and that bark would do the same thing. | 19:25 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I won't tell you whether or not it's all true, but these old folks, they tried out things and see what would they do. The same thing will help me all the time won't help you. You know that, though, don't you? Now, I thought if you just was a person who was about my age that we could use the same thing, but we can't do that. You got to find out what state your body is in. That's the main thing, and then give us what we supposed to have. I won't tell you whether it's true. | 20:03 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | My mom would get up through the night. We would be bad off. But every time you get feeling bad, you just couldn't run to the doctor because you didn't have nothing to pay it with. You tried to think of, what can I do to keep from going to the doctor right now? You going to try two or three things before you go to the doctor. Then if you see they don't work, take them to the doctor and let him try. But the doctor have come to see some of us and some of us other children in the neighborhood. When he come, he give us something to take. You're going two or three days, it don't look like it's doing no good. Then you had to go out there and try to find something yourself to do. | 20:41 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | That was my mama. She would try things, and she would find out something too, she sure would. Babies, don't say nothing about babies. I've seen babies that looked like it was passing away. She got there and she got her little bottles of stuff together and mixed together and give that to the baby. That baby went on off to sleep. When they woke up, boy, he was a new baby. That's right. We're 12 of us in the family, and I've known years to pass that didn't one out of the 12 go to the doctor the whole year. That's right. | 21:29 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | My mama was there. They got feeling bad, some certain place hurt, and she'd get them different greases and things and mix them together, telling you, you won't get nothing better. That's for sure. It's amazing just to think about, how did these old people learn that and they didn't go to school? But they must've listened to somebody. Yeah. But some folks just don't believe. They don't have confidence in nothing. If it didn't come from a professor telling them it was right, they wouldn't believe it. They got to see it first. Some people, it's easy to learn. If they find out that you was trying to do them good and you going to do them good, they don't mind listening. It takes a good listener to learn. You can't say it all yourself. You got to listen to somebody sometime yourself. Yeah. | 22:04 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | In a way, these younger people, they have experience of things much more than we have, and they can do good. But it's some places that they can't do as good as we can do. Now, that's the truth. Because if they would listen to some older one and take a pattern from him a little bit, it would help them a whole lot. It sure would. But some people don't believe in taking something that a person that they're not a professor of it, but that's where you lose out at. | 23:16 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | It's just like I was talking to a cop and he said, "You know what? It's some people don't care what you do, they going to do wrong. As soon as you turn them loose next time, they going to do something else right away." If they ever have to stay in prison for any length of time, said, "He won't go home and stay. He'll soon be back. Don't even worry about it, he'll soon be back and will not be well." Now it's some that if they go in there one time, they're never doing that again because he makes up his mind he ain't going in there. In that, he got to do right. | 23:50 |
Hasan Jeffries | You just mentioned that you were talking to a cop recently. Let me ask you about growing up here in Tillery and relations with law officers, your relations with the sheriff's department. I'm sure it was segregated. It was just about all White. | 24:33 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, yeah. | 24:46 |
Hasan Jeffries | How did they treat the Black folk in the community? Were there tensions? How did that dynamic come about? | 24:48 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Oh. Well, at the time now, it's always been a thing that a Colored person has got to do right to get by, but the White can do things out of order. And if he have to pay anything, it won't be as much as you. If they going to put you in jail, they won't keep you there as long as they would that Colored person. Somehow or another, the White pull together so close that we couldn't get in. If you didn't do the right thing, you just wouldn't get in nowhere. No, you wouldn't get in nowhere because they would hold you out. | 24:53 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I remember the time that different things happened in the community, like people was trying to get things their way, the Colored was. At the same time, the White, you couldn't get by them because we was outnumbered. That was one thing, we was outnumbered in that. The White people, I think they got there before we did and got planted and got started. There was more around White people than it were Colored, especially in North Carolina. Yeah. They got things working their way and they kept them that way. Now, we could get along with the White but was some couldn't get along with them. We could get along with them because some of them was nice, just as nice as gold. If it hadn't been for them, I don't know what we would've did. | 25:37 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | But at the same time, there was more that wasn't just right. It was more that wasn't right because they didn't allow you the opportunity to do things that would help you, but you had to work for them. You had to work for them because the boss men and everything, they were pulling together to the point that we couldn't do what we wanted to do. We had to do what they wanted us to do just to live around with them, just to live with them. See, we would be around here in the community together. And ever since I've been growing up, we've been right here all the time. We've been going to places where they went, but it was kind of segregated to the point that you couldn't do like you want to. You couldn't sit where you want to. You couldn't stand where you want to. But the same place that you went that you had to do like that, the law require you to do that. | 26:36 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I said that because you been here long enough to know a little bit while back they didn't even allow you to get on the bus and to sit to the front. Just a few years ago, they didn't allow you to get in front and sit to the front. If you come in and you be Colored, you get in the back. If you'd try to do it, they're liable to throw you out of there. That worked until this thing happened. I remember the first time that we had trouble with that was two young girls. They said they weren't going to the back and they didn't go. That was— | 27:42 |
Hasan Jeffries | When was this? | 28:28 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | That was right up here in Roanoke Rapids, right up here in Roanoke Rapids. They made an attempt not to go, and somebody went and tell the driver. Somehow or another, they must've had something like a knife or something because they didn't put them out. | 28:31 |
Hasan Jeffries | Oh, the girls? | 28:41 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Uh-huh. They didn't put them out. Those two girls, they stuck out. That's the first time we had trouble. They said they had been to school and they had went shopping. And they come and get back on the bus. They told them they wasn't going to put them out and they didn't put them out. After then, they had a meeting. | 28:42 |
Hasan Jeffries | Who had a meeting? | 29:04 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | The White. The White. | 29:04 |
Hasan Jeffries | The Whites had a meeting? | 29:05 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | The White had a meeting and talked over it because it wasn't going to be nothing but a mess. Because the young boys like you who went to school with them girls and everything, they were just going up. A crowd was going to get together and go up there to turn the place out, just turn the bus station out. That was what they was making up their mind to do and what they was talking about they was going to do. They had this meeting and talk about it. After then, I know they let them sit anywhere they want to on the bus. | 29:07 |
Hasan Jeffries | What year was this? | 29:41 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I don't know exactly. Seem like it was in the '60s. I think it was in the '60s, somewhere along about '64. | 29:44 |
Hasan Jeffries | Somewhere around there. | 29:53 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. Uh-huh. | 29:54 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. | 29:58 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | That's when it was. | 29:58 |
Hasan Jeffries | Do you remember any similar incidents like that, say in the '30s or '40s or even the '50s? | 29:58 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Oh. They have had a whole lot of trouble once at least or quite a number of times about the Colored coming in and started a row because they sit in the wrong place on the bus. And they want them to move and they didn't want to move. They had an incident that happened like that pretty often. I remember some happening like that back before then. Yeah. But that was the first time that really stuck out was when those two girls up there did like they did. They did something about it. They changed, got so they could sit where they wanted to and that's it. | 30:06 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Then those cafes that you were in at that time, some cafes had places for you to sit. Then the Whites sit over here and you sit over there. Then some other places, they had the White could sit anywhere they want to, but you had to get yours and go out, take yours out. | 30:48 |
Hasan Jeffries | So growing up, did you go to these different places? | 31:07 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. | 31:09 |
Hasan Jeffries | Even though they were segregated? | 31:09 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, yeah. They would go and get the food. They knew it was like that, so they just would get on out, get their food and get on out. That's all. I know it used to be a whole lot of incidents happened like that when I was coming up. Yeah, all the way up they had those incidents that happened most everywhere, sure did. They had that Jim Crow. Some of the White was nice, just as nice as gold. They would do anything for you, but some more White close around, they didn't even hardly want to meet you. You were the ones that were doing the work for them. Yeah. The Colored didn't always wait on the White. I know. | 31:10 |
Hasan Jeffries | What was it like? First, what kind of work did you do for them? | 32:03 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Well, there wasn't much to do but farm. All the people that stayed out in the country, there wasn't nothing else for them to do but to farm. After some learned about going and getting a job, well, they took part in that too. The ones that had a little education, they would go in and put in for these jobs. Finally, they would get it. I know two of my sisters, they didn't finish college, but they still got the government jobs. Right today, they're working the same job that they were working then when they started. They're working it today, the same job. They did so well at it and learned it so well that the one that got through school can't do it as well as they can. Yeah. | 32:06 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | You can do a thing so long until it becomes a part of you. You ain't hardly got to think about what you're doing to do it. Yeah. Both of them have government jobs. They went to Washington and they started working. And they been working right there ever since, and now one of them is 54 years old. Yeah, 54. And the older sister, 57. Yeah, 57. They both had the same job ever since they finished high school. They finished high school. That's right. They went to Washington and got a job. Both of them married and got their own home. They're doing good. | 33:02 |
Hasan Jeffries | What schools did you go to from the first school that you went to? Do you remember? | 33:47 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. The first— | 33:52 |
Hasan Jeffries | How far did you go? | 33:52 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I went to the little place you call Shady Grove School that's out here. Out here from Whitakers, it's about three and a half miles going west. Yeah. The little Shady Grove School and stayed there until I was nine years old. I was nine years old when we left. We left there when I was nine. The 10th year, I was at Nashville, North Carolina, about two miles out of Nashville. Then Nashville was the second school that I went, Nashville High School. I went there four years, I believe it was. Then we moved back to Battleboro. That was in, was it '30? That was '33 or '34 we moved to Battleboro from Nashville. Yeah. We stayed there. '37, we came up here. That's right. '37, we came up here. '34, '35, '36 and '37, yeah, four years. | 33:54 |
Hasan Jeffries | Now, was Shady Grove— | 35:26 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | No, no. This was Battleboro Graded School. It wasBattleboro School. It wasn't a high school, elementary school. | 35:27 |
Hasan Jeffries | Now, were these schools segregated? | 35:39 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | No. | 35:41 |
Hasan Jeffries | They were integrated? They had both White and Black students there? | 35:42 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | No. They were segregated then. | 35:44 |
Hasan Jeffries | They were segregated. | 35:46 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | They were segregated then because we didn't have no White then with us then. No, sure didn't. Not when we moved there, we didn't have no White. It was segregated. | 35:47 |
Hasan Jeffries | So all the schools that you've been to have been segregated? | 35:59 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. Yeah, they were segregated then, sure was. It come in sometime in the '30s. We moved up here. We didn't have no White then. After they moved up here, they coming in. Yeah, they started going. After they built the school up here, Halifax High up here and Weldon High, that's the time they came in here along the time that my children was little, little small children. Both of them new schools. Because they were going out there to Pea Hill School, see, what year was it? They was going out there when I came back out of the service. I came back before the '60s. I had two children out there in '48. They were my two oldest ones, '49, '50. I've been here ever since I came out of service. 1946, I came out of the service. I mean, on the 4th of January, 1946. | 36:09 |
Hasan Jeffries | You remember that specific date. Any reason? | 37:48 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. The date 1946, the 6th of January, that's when it was I came out of the service and come home. I've been right here. I stayed over there a night or two. And after I stayed there a night or two or maybe a week or two, I moved over here with a bed and a cot. I bought me a stove and some kitchen set. I hadn't got married then, but I was going to get married. After I got two rooms set up and the kitchen, I got married. Then me and my wife moved here. Been here ever since. | 37:51 |
Hasan Jeffries | What was it like coming back from the service, coming back home? | 38:38 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I'm telling you, it was the nicest. If there's anything you enjoyed, it was just thinking about you was going to be home. That was what was fine. What was so hard about the thing, the girl that I married, I met her about a year and a half before I left to go in the service. She was a real young girl, wasn't nothing but a baby, but she talked with real good sense. That's one thing I could say. Well, I wouldn't look for one 20 years old that talked no better common sense than she talked. | 38:42 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I told her, "Listen." I told her that day, I said, "One day you going to be my wife." I didn't know nothing about it. I went in the service and stayed there about four years, four years. I come back out. When I come home, she was standing on the doorstep over there. I'd been gone all along. She gets out. I'm coming home. If that ain't something, man, I'm just telling the tale. She talked just like she did when I left and been talking that way ever since. I've been to the point, I found out about two weeks they was going to have a party over here about a mile from here, out at the corner where the house sit. They're inviting all of the people in here to the party, and I had just got married. | 39:22 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | The boys are saying, "Are you going to let your wife go and meet all the men? Them boys out there, they going to talk to her." I said, "Well, they can't eat her. They can talk all they want." I went to the party that night. I went to the party that night, and I'm telling you, we had the best time there that night, just as good as I ever had. Everybody was so loving. Everybody was just as nice as they could be. The next week, the boys said, "I saw your wife at the party the other night." I said, "Yeah." I said, "Did you get a chance to talk to her?" "No, so-and-so was talking to her." I said, "Yeah. I told them all to talk as much as they want." | 40:25 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Some of them are so jealous, they're scared that—If I was going to marry a woman and was scared for you to meet them, for another man to meet them, I don't want her if I got to be scared of her. Uh-uh. You can't do a bit on what she gets to do. You're a man. That's all she can be. If she don't let you do nothing, there ain't nothing you going to do. Some folks say, "Well, I wouldn't let my wife go from here to town with so-and-so for nothing." I would. I guarantee them, the same thing would be happening if I was sitting in the car and nothing else. That's right. But when you got common sense like that, you can trust them. If you ain't got common sense, you can't trust them. You can't trust them. | 41:12 |
Hasan Jeffries | Well, let me ask you a question. When you came back from the service being a veteran of the war, did the White community here or the White folks here treat you any differently? | 41:58 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Well, when I first came back, everybody would like to stand and talk with you. They looked like they got a kick out of your talking, telling what happened and what you saw whilst you was over there and everything, how everything got on. Everybody meet you, they were just glad to meet you because they know you'd been gone. They wanted to see what's been going on since you been gone. | 42:09 |
Hasan Jeffries | This is both White and Black? | 42:30 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, yeah. That was just, oh tell. They wanted to get with you and talk with you about that. When I first go over there, we was in such a rough spot. When we got over there, they was bombing the train. We was on a train, and this train got bombed before we got in there. It was a long train, like from here across the road and down, about three miles long. They shot all through the car. We got down on the floor. Our cots was in there just about this high off the floor up against the wall. Because we was going in a bad spot, so they had us on that train to go in there. The bunk beds, they was boards nailed up with a cot, built up with the mattress on them. | 42:31 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | We got over there close to the place that we was going to stop, and they bombed the Rhine River Bridge. The flack from that was falling where we was, all raining down. We got out and got to our little shelter and got out there and built us a hole and went in the ground. We were digging a hole from the first part of the night when it started getting dark. We got there at the time when it started getting dark. The first thing we did was hit the ground and get down below the ground. We dug and dug and dug. When 12:00 come in the night, we still was digging our place for to stay that night. That's right. Then we went in the ground and we stayed where we stayed. | 43:23 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | The shelter was about that wide and about that long where you could get up under the house and dig a hole. Then they have a little peek that look like a little grubbing hole about that long. It was about that wide. If it was this much room under there, you could get under there and dig you a hole and go in the ground. That's what we did. Of course, where I was at that night, there was so many of us right there, I took mine out in the open, me and another guy. We dug ours down and we could dig ours faster than they could. We had nothing on top of us. After you get in the ground, you hear that sound. I'm going to tell you, we had it tough when we went in Germany. We got in Germany and England. They were bombing us both places. They was bombing when we got there. | 44:18 |
Hasan Jeffries | What division or regiment were you in? | 45:09 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | 375th Engineer. | 45:11 |
Hasan Jeffries | Was it segregated? | 45:13 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | No, uh-uh. No. About half and half. Yeah, there wasn't segregation then, no sir. About half of them White, yeah. | 45:20 |
Hasan Jeffries | Where'd you do your basic training at? | 45:24 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Fort Belvoir and Camp Sutton, North Carolina. Camp Sutton and Fort Belvoir. Yeah, I took most of that in Fort Belvoir. | 45:28 |
Hasan Jeffries | How were you treated by White officers there? | 45:40 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Well, everybody like the officers, you'll be fine. All of them was mostly educated people and they were nice. They were nice. They looked out for you. They'd help you. I don't know what we would've did if it hadn't been for some of the officers. Yeah. Some folks, especially the White, they had been to their self so much until they don't care about being with nobody else. But as the time passed, looked like they come to be more fit for us because they went along with us more, much better than what they had been doing. After we got back here home, well, the ones who went overseas and they was in the service for a good while, it seemed like they looked on them a little bit because— | 45:45 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | —that we was over there. That's the onliest reason kept them from coming over here because if we hadn't been over there, they'd have come over here. And this country over here would've been messed up, sure enough. Time they come in here and if they come from the north, and they run into New York City and they busted that up, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and they only dropped one or two bombs in there. That's all they had to have done. And boy, this over here, boy, have been straight up, sure enough. I have often thought about it. How did we happen to get over there when we did? And to kept them from coming over here. But I'm glad to the end of war. | 0:03 |
Hasan Jeffries | Well, having fought and risked your life for the United States and coming back here and not being able to sit in a lunch counter or not being able to sit in a bus wherever you want, how did that make you feel? | 0:41 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | You know, we didn't feel good a bit. We didn't feel good a bit, not mad bit. Not one bit in the world. And how in the world—now we done really fight for them and done saved their lives by the people over there not coming over here. But still, we was over there being bombed out, couldn't find nowhere to sleep, and then this here, enjoying their self, getting enough money to take care of themselves and their situation was with them back then, and we wasn't get nothing but the little $90 a month. | 0:57 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | That's all we was getting, $90 a month. But they promised us when we was over there, listen, that all of us that were over there the time the bombing was going on and something else happened over there, that the people that promised them that they were going to pay them $4 an hour for all the time that they made overseas. They promised us that. And when we left from over there, they said we would get our checks and that we wouldn't get them right then. They would finally come down to it that we would get them, and we ain't got a penny yet. We ain't got nothing yet. | 1:32 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | And when we come home, they paid us our salary—three months, I think they paid us our salary, what we were getting for three months and then they cut that off. Until, they talking about till we got another job. Whether we got a job or not, you only got that check but three times. That's right. So we got our little check and because I sent a little money home when I was over there and I come back and paid down on this farm right here, and I sent my mom some to pay on that one over there where they was on. So I messed around, messed around till it looked like we didn't have enough allotment to cover our bills. I said, "Well, that's all right. When I get home, I'm going to get me a job." I said I might work on the farm a little but I said I've got to get me a job. | 2:16 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Come to find out, I got here and started farming. Well, I just was getting by. I wasn't falling in the hole or nothing but I wasn't having nothing for my family to live on, but I still was making all my payments. I wanted to change that. I said, well, if there's one thing I'm going to do, I'm going to work the farm one more year and if I don't make nothing to save that to carry it home after then, I'm going to just stop farming. So I said, "Mr. Farmer, get a public job. What do you want to do?" I said, "I'll tell you what I'll do." I said, "You can stay right here in the house." I said, "And I can go and come every week, and we won't have to farm." | 3:19 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I had made—my crop was the best crop made around this horseshoe that year. I'm the only one that made a bale of cotton to the acre. Didn't nobody else make half a bale, nobody around me. The cotton had grew, grew, grew and it kept growing. It was real wet, yeah, and mine was planted a little sooner than anybody else's, and mine got the start in the—started making before the others did, and I made 13 bales of cotton that year. I had never made about eight or nine was the highest I'd ever made, and I made 13 bales of cotton that year. I made 379 bags of peas and them peas, won't sell them for over 10 cents. | 4:10 |
Hasan Jeffries | A bag? | 4:53 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. That was $1,000 for 100 bags, so I made—I borrowed $4,000 that year for to get started off and try to get ahead, and the man in the bank told me that he would let me have what wanted, because his bet was, "You always paid us and you ain't never left us in the hole. Every year you paid out, and that's good." He said, "We'll let you have whatever you want." I said, "Well, I want $4,000." And when I got my $4,000, I could bought my fertilizer and all my stuff, the seeds and stuff for the plant, and they kept them in storage for me until I got ready to plant, up there where they sell the seeds at. | 4:56 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | The end of the year, I made better crop than I'd ever made before. I made more money, as much money as I made in two years that year, and when I went up to pay the man what I was supposed to pay him that year, I borrowed $4,000; I was supposed to keep that and pay him back one fourth of it that year, and he gave me four years to pay it back. And I paid every penny that year. | 5:50 |
Hasan Jeffries | That same year. | 6:21 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | That same year. So then he didn't have all that interest in four years through me carrying it over. He didn't want to take it, but when I got the money, I asked him, "Could I do that?" I said, "Suppose I get all the money and bring it in here the first year? I'm glad I talked with him like that. I really talked with him in the right way then. He said, "Yes, I'd take it. I'd take it. When the time comes, he said, "Well, where did you get all the money?" I said, "My cotton made good, my tobacco made good." I had five [indistinct 00:06:55] of tobacco and add that with some tips, the last pullings that I've had, and them there tips, I think they weighed 1,100 pounds, and I turned out and I think I got $577 or $578. Anyway, it sold good and that was just one [indistinct 00:07:23]. I had four more. | 6:22 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | See that little place right here? | 7:27 |
Hasan Jeffries | Yeah. | 7:28 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | There's some cotton up yonder. See it right, coming across the top of the hill? That's a line right there, and this little field right here was an acre and seven tenths. I had a tobacco out there and that tobacco weighed just about 4,000 pounds. | 7:28 |
Hasan Jeffries | So what crops were you growing? | 7:47 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Tobacco, cotton, corn, peanuts and raising a garden. | 7:49 |
Hasan Jeffries | What kind of help did you have? | 7:58 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I didn't have to have nobody but my children. I had eight children and four of them would be good size, working size children. Me and mine had two boys as large as you. I had two boys and I had two more just down below them, so all of them was able to get out there loop the field and prime tobacco off and bring it to the house. I didn't have to hire nobody to help me do that. We had 12 acres of cotton and made 13 bales and didn't nobody pick none but one lady who stayed in the house around the corner. She'd come out there some evening and pick 150 pounds or something. She could pick 300 pounds or 400 pounds a day, and she'd come over there and help me. That was the onliest help that I had harvesting that cotton. We'd pick two bales of cotton a day, just my children and me. | 8:00 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | There was not one thing wrong, we just didn't have enough. If we would have had about four of these units—what I call a unit is the land would go to four houses. The land would go to four houses. That's what we ought to had by me having a big family, see. We could work and we could have made money, but we didn't have it, so we had to get out and get us some jobs, because it was hard to get all the money then. | 8:49 |
Hasan Jeffries | What kind of jobs were you looking for, or did you have to get? | 9:15 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I wanted to work for the contractor, to help building and you know, things like that, because there was good money in that. And I worked in Virginia just about two years up there by Woodbridge. At the town that I was working, I was working with a big firm up there and I got a job that evening, 1 o clock. The man said, "Well, do you want—What kind of job would you like to have?" I said, "First, I want to ask you to point me to a job that you've got, and tell me what it is." He said, "Well, that's good too." He said, "I've got one right here now standing over for somebody." You know, the main line coming down the street that goes from—the big line that goes to each house, water line, okay, he said, "Now, all these houses have got too have this line run from the main line to the sink or the bathroom over at the house that we was building." He said, "I can put you onto that right now." | 9:20 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | He said, "If you'll decide that you'll take it, I can start you off this weekend." Said, "I've got to be going this evening but I just came here and show you where you can work at until knocking off time." Saying, "I'm going to try to be back before knocking off time. I'm going to take you as you say if you think you can do it, then I'll put you onto it right now." I told him, "Yeah, I believe I can do it." You know I had help a man do that at Newport News, over there at the women's hospital. I helped build that hospital there. I worked over there about eight months. They built that hospital. | 10:32 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Okay, after I took his job that he had, that was—The main line is as big around as this, and they run all the lines from your sink, they're like my sink here, your sink at home, them little pipes run from there. There's one running to the bowl, and one running to the bowl, and I had put them in. Out there to the road and then I had to go hook them up under the sink in the house, under the house. I worked there that first evening, four hours. He told me when he'd come back and check my work, he said, "[indistinct 00:12:06] I don't see nothing to say to you for to do it no better. Everything I see you've done, it's just as good as I had the man working every day. He can't do it no better." | 11:19 |
Hasan Jeffries | This was your first day. | 12:16 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | That's my first day. So I said to myself, "I know I could do it, but I didn't want [indistinct 00:12:27] it's something that I always liked to do was something like that. I love to do things where I can come back and look and see what I've done, and it works nice. Putting in those pipes is a nice thing to do. There ain't nobody going to bother you. He tell you what to do and you go do it. And as long as you do like he said, you're fine. Yes sir, he come out there sometime and get me, putting on a truck with me and him to leave the job, go over yonder where another job is, just walk around with him and talk to him. He either took me to be I don't know what he think it was. (laughs) | 12:18 |
Hasan Jeffries | It was a White man. | 13:05 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. But when you get to a place where you meet up with a White person that likes you, ain't long before he'll do something for you to get on your feet, if you just do like he said. But he might say something to you that you don't exactly like sometimes, but if he ain't done nothing but say it, overlook that, because you've probably said something to somebody that you don't mean at times. You had just, depending on how you're feeling at the time that they come along or they speak to you, sometime they come down there and say something to you, well, it's kind of out of order with you because you don't see it that way. So, if you will go along with it, and by you going along with it, sometimes you're glad you did. Yeah, you're glad you did. See, a whole lot of times, you can tell a thing out, but ain't no need of doing that when you can keep from doing it. I think more of you and you'll think more of me if I do. Yes, sir. So, I ain't never been to the point that I couldn't get along with nobody. | 13:05 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | If he come around and stay around me a little while, I learned what to say to him and what not to say, and I'm going to try to stay in friendship with you. I don't want to—when night comes, I'm scared to get out [indistinct 00:14:36] he's looking for me. You don't want that to happen. No. | 14:11 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I talk to my children all the time—they appreciate it now. Yeah, they appreciate it now. I've got eight children, ain't their school teacher—ain't went to school nowhere, that they went and the teacher wrote a letter or called and said, "Your child did this, he did that." I ain't never got a hearing from now doing nothing, and all of them grown and gone. | 14:36 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | And now they've been grown and gone and they've got grown children gone. Yeah. So, they learned to get along with people just like I did. I don't care what kind of children it is they're around, they can always be the ones that get along with them. The teachers always tell us, "Your children can make it with any kind of children." | 15:05 |
Hasan Jeffries | This is because what you taught them. | 15:31 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Right. | 15:33 |
Hasan Jeffries | Now, where did you get this from? Your parents or your grand— | 15:34 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | My parents. They always tell us, they'll tell you, "Before you get into any trouble, think and stay out of it. I ain't going to tell you to get in no trouble. I ain't going to tell you to do nothing to get into no trouble, but just learn how to keep your hand off of other folks's stuff. When you see things laying up, don't never bother with them. Don't have nothing to do with them, or after a while, somebody's going to miss them and then they'll say, 'Well, so-and-so got it because I saw him over there where it was.'"I said, "But if you keep your hands off of it and don't have nothing to do with it, they can't say that." | 15:37 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | So, so far they have did that. I got one that's 46 years old, one that's 45, another one's 43, another one's 39, another one's 38, another one's 36, and I've got another one younger. Two more younger, my baby boy and girl; one's that 31, I think the other one's 32. So, they're doing along fine. I know one thing, they can go anywhere they want to and won't nobody say that they got this or they got that or they need this or they need other, because they're going to tend to their business. Now, just like you said, where did they get it from? Yeah, they got it from home, just where them other people children get theirs from, right from home. | 16:16 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | And another thing, some people don't tell the children nothing until it's too late. He's going off yonder. Now, you probably can go anywhere you want to and there won't be nothing to see, but you start running around with a crowd, it ain't long before someone going to see it because somebody in the crowd going to do something, and they're going to probably put it on the one who didn't do it. But you still was in the crowd. And then when time come to settle up, you was up there just like they was. In fact, the one who did it, you didn't know they were going to do it. | 17:08 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | But after you got home [indistinct 00:17:53] by the people seeing you with him, someone's going to come and tell you, "You know so-and-so did?" And they're at him now. If you were in the crowd, they're going to be at you tomorrow, because he's going to tell that you were with him. You're just going to be tied up there. You're going to be tied up there. | 17:51 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | And when I was going around calling myself cool, I ain't never believed in a crowd. I don't mind having a friend boy. I'd have two or three friend boy but I don't want it to be close enough for him to have to go everywhere I go and everywhere he go, I go. I don't want that. I want for me and you to get together and enjoy one another, but as for you being where I am all the time, that ain't right. The greatest thing you can want to be with is your wife at the time that you were supposed to be with her. (laughs) | 18:09 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I don't want to be too close. I want to treat you right and I want you to treat me right. We want to get along and we want to enjoy ourselves, and that's the good policy is just stay out of too big a crowd anyway. They're nice, they're nice, but let him kind of look for his self and see for his self. He's going to be a man, so then he will know how to be a man if he don't get to close with the other people. Everybody got their way. Everybody got their way, and ain't their way just alike, but they've still got the way. | 18:45 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Just like you were to see two girls come along out the road there, I say two women, and before they get here, you would say in your mind, "I believe I would like so-and-so." Ain't never say nothing to them. She ain't got close to you to say nothing to her, but you got eyed her, about your eyesight when you first see them. And it'll never tell you the one out of the crowd where you make it up in your mind. You've got it in your mind already to start with. "I believe I would like her." Ain't you said a thing, bet you didn't say anything till she passed on by. She'll probably do it a couple times before you say anything to her, but finally out of eye, you'll break it down to her. Yeah. So we all just got our little ways. | 19:32 |
Hasan Jeffries | Let's talk some more about your childhood going up. Were you a member of a—you and your family member of a church? | 20:38 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. | 20:44 |
Hasan Jeffries | Really? What church? | 20:44 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I'm a member of the Crowell Church out here now, Baptist church. | 20:46 |
Hasan Jeffries | Were you always a member of that church? | 20:59 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | No. The first church I joined was a Shiloh Church in Nash County over there near 48. I believe, I don't know what it is, but two and a half mile. | 21:00 |
Hasan Jeffries | So before you move to Nashville, you wouldn't—when you were living here first, your family was never affiliated with a church? | 21:09 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Oh, yeah, always have. Always have. My people always were affiliated with a church. We went to different churches in the neighborhood. We had Shiloh Church and we had St. Mark's Church, St. John's Church, Red Hill Church and the First Baptist in Enfield. We'd go to different ones, one about every Sunday, we'd go to a different one. So Smith is out here from Enfield, so, more than often, every Sunday we go to church somewhere. | 21:16 |
Hasan Jeffries | Now, growing up, did the whole family go? | 21:45 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | More than often, the whole family went, yeah. Whole family went, the children and my mother and dad, yeah. We always did visit the church, and I tell you, I found out when I was little growing up that those children were hardly ever went to church, or went to Sunday school. They always was the ones that was being troubling in the community. They got much loose time doing nothing until they thinks about something to do wrong, and they will do it. A bunch of them together are going to do it, but now you'd catch any child that hardly stays off to his self and you don't have too much to do with the crowd of children, they always will get along. They never make too many friends like the other ones, but they have friends and they get along because there's not that crowd to pull them into things. | 21:56 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | That crowd just pulls them into things, especially boys. There's somebody in that crowd ain't going to do right. Yes, sir. I remember one night right from Weldon out yonder, my boy had brought a girlfriend here, and the boys got on a car and went to looking. Said they're going to kill him, what got my girl. So he comes here with the girl, that one left from up there with, he come here with her. He come over here with her, and it's not long before hear them boys, the ones that left in Weldon, about five or six of them in on the car and were coming down the road. They knew where I stayed and they said they were going to get together. I know the one way to get them out of my yard, if she wanted to get on the car with them, but they didn't know that. | 22:53 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I got my rifle. My boy told him, said they sure coming 'cause they left Weldon said they're coming on out there right now. I was standing right here in the door when they got here. They were starting to slow down to turn in the yard. There's four boys. Two was just about your height, just about like you, and they were real fiery, and they had passed on by and come over here and start turning in, I was standing here at the door with a rifle and somebody said, "I see you got your gun. That's all right, we're coming back." After a while, they come on back by here riding real slow. As they got down yonder by the mailbox, a little further, they come here shooting, just sounding off, and it sounded like there was two of them shooting together. And they didn't ever come back in here, I ain't never seen them come back in here no more. | 23:45 |
Hasan Jeffries | Was there any other times where you had to— | 24:42 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, but I didn't do nothing about it. I said they weren't shooting at nobody, they were just shooting to let me know that they had a gun, you know. | 24:48 |
Hasan Jeffries | Right. | 24:51 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | But they done the damnedest thing though. If they'd have turned in the yard out there. They turned in the yard and I know they had a gun. The old boy told me they had one, but I kept myself together and they went on out. They didn't come back. They didn't come back, and I went up to Weldon to approach them one night and my boy told me, "Dad, they was up here tonight." I said, "Well, they ain't going to do nothing to me. I know they ain't." So, we went in and then when we got ready to come out, there was all them little boys standing on the side of the walk there. I don't know whether they had anything or not, but I didn't say nothing to 'em. They didn't say nothing to me, they just looked at me. | 24:53 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | What do I look like now? You come in here with a girl, and I'm going to let another boy come in here and get that girl because you brought her to my house, and take her back. Her mother might have told her when she left, "You better come back with who you go with." That's the way my momma would tell my sisters. "If you leave here with a person, you come back with them. Don't go and come back with nobody else." See? You've got account of—obey those rules too. You think you can go and—and then he's riding up and down the road thinking he can get somebody to—or somebody already got grown just like he is, riding with who they want to and then he's going to get them. How's he going to get them? How he going to get them? He lose his head, surely was. | 25:46 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I thought I was going to have trouble with them afterwards because my boy didn't never stop bringing the girl here. He would always bring her here, but he never stopped. They didn't never jump him though, the girl was here. He sure got her. He said [indistinct 00:26:50] sent away from school, if they hadn't jumped him then they never did. | 26:23 |
Hasan Jeffries | Do you ever remember your father doing something similar? | 26:49 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | No. My father, you're talking about. | 26:58 |
Hasan Jeffries | Right. | 27:03 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | You know, as long as I've known my dad, as long as I've known my dad, I ain't never known him to hit a woman, curse a woman or call her out her name or say she want this or that. I ain't never hear him say, "I'm going to get you about something you did," or nothing. I ain't never hearing him say nothing to my mama like he was going to hit her or going to do something about what she did. And she would tell him what she means and he was nice to her though. He was nice to her because he would do what he felt that she wanted done, he would do it. She didn't have to worry about it because she knew he was going to do it. | 27:04 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | And when they was coming up together, they did the same thing. They did the same thing. They tried to do what one another wanted, just like the girl try to do what you want, you try to do what she want. And I think that's right. And another thing, you both are grown, as long as you look like you're trying to use common sense, I know. If I've got common sense, I know too. So, I don't think I'm so much over you. If I thought I was so much over you, I wouldn't be with you. I want somebody equalized with me. Don't you think that's better? | 27:45 |
Hasan Jeffries | Mm-hmm. | 28:36 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. Some folks, I hear some boys say, "If I could get [indistinct 00:28:37] girls, if she done finished school," or this and that and the other one, that don't make me want her a bit more if she finished or if she ain't finished. Because you found a better wife, a just as good a wife if she ain't finished school as you is if you don't, if she ain't finished. If one thing's different, she's just more sure of a job than this other girl is. But if you don't mind letting a little time pass, then this girl who hasn't finished school will be just as important as she'll be. It's according to what she got in her mind, because if she got it on her mind, she's going to do it anyway. If she don't have it, she can't do it and she won't do it, so that's it. | 28:41 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I'm always been called in the family—they call me the silly one. My family used to call me the silly one, but I never made no accounting of it, you know, I just go ahead on. By my getting along and going along, I'm getting along just as good as they is. I'm getting along just as good as they are. | 29:19 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | (knocking) Uh-huh? | 29:40 |
Speaker 3 | Time for you to water your [indistinct 00:29:47]. | 29:40 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | A what? | 29:48 |
Speaker 3 | Time for you to water your [indistinct 00:29:50]. | 29:48 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Oh yeah. I'm going up. | 29:55 |
Speaker 3 | Get your [indistinct 00:29:59] changed, get nothing with Lynn, thought you would talk all the time. | 29:58 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Lynn, I don't know where Lynn is. | 29:58 |
Speaker 3 | Going home? | 29:59 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, he going home. Oh yeah. Yeah, he's going home. Lynn talks so up and down. I don't know about Lynn. | 30:00 |
Hasan Jeffries | Let you— | 30:13 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Lynn, when you pass by—come in my yard, there was a man walking that road. | 30:14 |
Hasan Jeffries | Yeah. | 30:18 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | That was him. | 30:18 |
Hasan Jeffries | [indistinct 00:30:22] | 30:18 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | He stay in the next house. | 30:22 |
Hasan Jeffries | Oh, okay. | 30:23 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, he's on this side. There's a little trailer house, little trailer house, he's at now. Yeah, so he was going on his way back there then because I think he went to—he might have went to the doctor this morning, I don't know. I saw him pass by here earlier and he came on back a while ago, so that he was going on, trying to get back to the house, I imagine. | 30:23 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | So I'm—being raised and in the community that we was in, was about like it is here, about like it is here, and the people were real kind. If you had anything to do back then, you didn't have to worry about money so much, because I know in the time that we go out, we was killing hogs for the fall of the year, we're killing hogs [indistinct 00:31:21]. | 30:51 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | We had about four or five hogs to kill, and we didn't have to hire nobody to help us. If you let it be known when you were going to kill them, you would have four or five men come just to help you to clean them. And all he wanted to do was get him a liver out of one of the hogs, or a piece of liver. That's all he did. Didn't have to pay him any money. You didn't pay him but one dollar. And now, I can get four boys right now. I had my—had two big hogs I had to load. And I could get four boys and myself to get that hog on the truck, put them two hogs on the truck, and every one of them boys, I've got to pay them $3 or $4. That's all they did, was help lifted the hog on there. And how long did it take? About two minutes. That's now. | 31:21 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Well, long then, I could get the man to work the whole half a day in my hog and I'd give him 75 cent or either a liver, and he was just as happy as he could be. He'd get along just as good as he do now. It sounds foolish because it ain't no money involved in it, but if he got that liver and all of his people would eat off of that liver that day, maybe twice. See? And it still counted. He didn't have to do much to get it. At least he did a whole lot and didn't get but a little, but that little added up to a whole lot when he got five or six more to help him eat off of it twice. See? | 32:10 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | But some folks can't see it. They believe that they've got to get a whole lot of money. See, one thing about getting onto a whole lot of money, I don't give a [indistinct 00:33:02] about how much you got, you ain't got enough and you're going to spend it all, I don't care how much you get. You might get four times as much as I do, and four years from today, I might can show just as much as you can. You know you're going to get it, you're going to do something to put it in. You're going to put it in something, and if you get so much in the bank, they're going to take so much of it away from you anyhow, so some folks build a house and work on the house [indistinct 00:33:28] they don't know how [indistinct 00:33:29] money and they won't have to pay them taxes. | 32:52 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | You're about to pay big taxes when you've got a whole lot of money saved up. You think you're going to lay that down in a pile, it might lay down in a pile, but the thing about it, there's so much they're going to take of it. You have not one man paying off saying they paid off a $10,000 to $15,000 of income tax when another family could have lived off of that. But it ain't doing them all that much good before he got it. But after he get enough to take care of his self, the rest of it just as much—one of it is going to be left for somebody else. I just have to say it again. And then the one who have—If he left to it, he ain't going to have a licking till it's done spent. (laughs) Somebody that's done working on something—(laughs)—I'm going to tell you [indistinct 00:34:32] | 33:33 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | You come to think about a thing, it ain't a whole lot of things of people to really actively worry about if you just don't worry about extra things that ain't going to do him no good. Some folks got a penny and they really want to rush and try to get more, more. Trying to get more. And that person who has enough little money in his hand to take care of his business and just have a little bit over, go ahead won't have to worry about how I'm going to pay it. He's just as well off as that rich man, and he's well off in a way because that rich man, he's worried about how is he going to keep his money without it getting away from him? He's going to study about that all the time. | 34:37 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | There's so many things and so many ways that folks are trying to get people who have got a whole lot of money, that you've got to be careful. If you do it, you won't have none, no time. It'll get away from you. I say you can get started in something—you and somebody else, you say, "Let's do so and so and so and so," and then you can get started with that person and in just a few days, you'd probably say, "No, I don't believe I'd do that." You done got you started in there and now you got you messed up. Yeah, you got you messed up. So you've got to be real careful, real careful. | 35:17 |
Hasan Jeffries | Now I'm going to ask you some questions, brief, to-the-point questions. Shouldn't take me more than five, 10 minutes, and then I can let you go. | 35:55 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Okay. | 36:00 |
Hasan Jeffries | Dealing with family history, sisters and brothers, just names, for the record. First, your date of birth? | 36:05 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | 1918. 1918, July 23rd. | 36:17 |
Hasan Jeffries | And where was that? | 36:18 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | This was in Nash County. Near Whitakers. | 36:21 |
Hasan Jeffries | Right here in North Carolina. | 36:39 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. Mm-hmm. [indistinct 00:36:45] | 36:40 |
Hasan Jeffries | And what is your wife's name? | 36:45 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Geneva. | 36:46 |
Hasan Jeffries | And when was she born? | 36:52 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | She was born in Halifax County. Yeah. She was born 1927. | 36:54 |
Hasan Jeffries | 1927? | 37:10 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Mm-hmm. | 37:10 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. And what is her occupation? She works with you? | 37:17 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, she works with me and before she left home, she was farming just like I was. | 37:19 |
Hasan Jeffries | Now, your mother's name? | 37:21 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Sally Hedgepeth. | 37:21 |
Hasan Jeffries | Her maiden name? | 37:36 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Her name was Sally Bass. That was her maiden name. | 37:37 |
Hasan Jeffries | Do you remember her date of birth? | 37:41 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | September the 27th. | 37:49 |
Hasan Jeffries | The year? | 37:54 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Wait a second right now. She was born one—Wait, let me see if I can get my daddy's and her—One was 18—My momma was 1892, that's what it was, yeah. | 38:08 |
Hasan Jeffries | And she was a farmer too? | 38:23 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, she was a farmer. | 38:26 |
Hasan Jeffries | Was she born right here too? | 38:33 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, same, just about I said the same place I was, about two miles. (laughs) | 38:33 |
Hasan Jeffries | Over there in Nash County? | 38:43 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. Right there in that little place you call Gold Rock. | 38:44 |
Hasan Jeffries | What was your father's name? | 38:50 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Jetty Hedgepeth. | 38:51 |
Hasan Jeffries | How do you spell that? | 38:54 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | J-E-T-T-Y. Yeah, they was born about two miles in the same place I was born, both of them. (laughs) So, we weren't getting out much. (laughs) | 38:55 |
Hasan Jeffries | Now, where was he born? | 39:09 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | He was born around Gold Rock too. Anyway—And the birthday, one come one month and one come the next month. | 39:16 |
Hasan Jeffries | Do you remember the names of your brothers and sisters? | 39:29 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Oh yeah, I know the names of them. | 39:33 |
Hasan Jeffries | And the years they were born? | 39:38 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Louvenia, Louvenia. That's the oldest girl. | 39:46 |
Hasan Jeffries | How do you spell that? | 39:46 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | L-O-U-V-E-N-I-A. | 39:47 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. | 39:47 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, she was a Hedgepeth too. Okay, you want what now? | 39:56 |
Hasan Jeffries | When was she born? | 39:58 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | She was born Christmas Day, on Christmas Day. Louvenia was born 19—Wait, now, let me tell you now. They got married in 1916 and she was born in 1915. That's right. Yeah, she was born in 1915. | 40:01 |
Hasan Jeffries | What about the other children? | 40:24 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Rufus, that's the boy, old boy, and he was born January 1916. | 40:27 |
Hasan Jeffries | 1916. | 40:46 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | 1916, that's right. | 40:48 |
Hasan Jeffries | And after Rufus? | 40:50 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | After Rufus, then Clara in 1918, July the 23rd. | 40:53 |
Hasan Jeffries | And Clarence. | 41:02 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, and then after Clarence, then Kelly. | 41:03 |
Hasan Jeffries | Kelly. | 41:10 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | He was the baby boy. K-E-L-L-Y. | 41:10 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. | 41:14 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Kelly was born—I believe it was the 2nd of April. [indistinct 00:41:20] | 41:14 |
Speaker 3 | What? | 41:14 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Kelly was born the 2nd of April on the 29th [indistinct 00:41:31]? | 41:19 |
Speaker 3 | [indistinct 00:41:34] | 41:19 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | 2nd of June. Uh-huh, okay. I know it was the 2nd of something. Yeah, 2nd of June. And now— | 41:37 |
Hasan Jeffries | After Kelly? [indistinct 00:41:51] | 41:50 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | After Kelly [indistinct 00:41:54] when he was—Wait, now. Octavia, Octavia. Yeah. O-C-T-A-V-I-A, Octavia. | 41:51 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay, and she was born? | 42:02 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Octavia was born on October the 26th. | 42:02 |
Hasan Jeffries | Of what year? | 42:02 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I think it was 1921. | 42:02 |
Hasan Jeffries | '21? | 42:02 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | 21, because I know there's three years difference between me and her. | 42:02 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. Now, you weren't the next child though. | 42:28 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Huh? | 42:29 |
Hasan Jeffries | Who was after Octavia? | 42:30 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Bulah. | 42:34 |
Hasan Jeffries | How do you spell that? | 42:35 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | B-U-L-A-H. | 42:36 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay, and her date of birth? | 42:45 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Her birthday was September the 22nd [indistinct 00:42:48] September. | 42:45 |
Hasan Jeffries | That was 22? | 42:52 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Mm-hmm. | 42:52 |
Hasan Jeffries | And after Bulah? | 42:52 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | After Bulah, Alameda. Alameda. | 43:05 |
Hasan Jeffries | She was born in '23? | 43:09 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | '24. | 43:10 |
Hasan Jeffries | '24? | 43:12 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. | 43:13 |
Hasan Jeffries | After Alameda? | 43:17 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Alameda, then it was—[indistinct 00:43:21] Alameda is the last one. | 43:19 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. | 43:21 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | [indistinct 00:43:39] Alameda—who was born after Alameda was? | 43:42 |
Speaker 3 | Bettie Mae. | 43:42 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Huh? | 43:45 |
Speaker 3 | Bettie Mae. | 43:47 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Bettie Mae, that's who it was. Hers is July 23rd too, ain't it? | 43:48 |
Speaker 3 | [indistinct 00:43:54] | 43:48 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, hers is July 23rd. | 43:54 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay, and what year was that? | 44:04 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | About two years different than them. | 44:04 |
Hasan Jeffries | About 26? | 44:04 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, uh-huh. | 44:04 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. | 44:04 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Because she was born on my birthday. I'll never forget that. | 44:07 |
Hasan Jeffries | Oh really? | 44:09 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. | 44:10 |
Hasan Jeffries | Now you were born in—What did you say again? Okay [indistinct 00:44:14], right. Now, was Bettie Mae the last? | 44:11 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Say what? | 44:20 |
Hasan Jeffries | Was Bettie Mae the last? The last child? | 44:22 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I didn't understand you still. | 44:22 |
Hasan Jeffries | Was Bettie Mae the last child? | 44:24 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | No. Christine—Oh, Christine. Christine, yeah. | 44:25 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. | 44:38 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Wait, wait, wait Christine, she was a January child, I'll bet. Something like that. Well, how about Christine? | 44:43 |
Speaker 3 | [indistinct 00:45:11] | 45:10 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | When is her birthday? Huh? | 45:10 |
Speaker 3 | I don't know, honey. | 45:10 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Wasn't it in Christmas somehow? | 45:10 |
Speaker 3 | [indistinct 00:45:11] Christine's birthday is in September. | 45:10 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | It was the 15th of September. | 45:10 |
Speaker 3 | No, [indistinct 00:45:13]. | 45:10 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Oh yeah, 27th of September, and now, January had Bernice? | 45:10 |
Speaker 3 | Margaret and Mildred had to come in here for [indistinct 00:45:24] | 45:10 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, Margaret— | 45:10 |
Speaker 3 | [indistinct 00:45:32] Margaret was the 10th of September—August. | 45:10 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | 10th of August, that's right. That's right. I remember that. | 45:36 |
Speaker 3 | Mildred is the 21st of September [indistinct 00:45:39] | 45:36 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Uh-huh. Now, say the same thing over again. Say the same thing over again. | 45:42 |
Speaker 3 | 27th of September. | 45:45 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, it's the 27th of September, and that's who now? | 45:45 |
Speaker 3 | That's Mildred. | 45:45 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Mildred. | 45:45 |
Speaker 3 | [indistinct 00:46:02] September. | 45:45 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, they both were born in September. One is the 22nd and one is the 27th. | 46:03 |
Hasan Jeffries | You've got them all. | 46:10 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | No, wait—Mildred [indistinct 00:46:17]— | 46:12 |
Speaker 3 | 10th of August, Margaret's the 10th of August. | 46:15 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | 10th of August? Margaret. | 46:15 |
Speaker 3 | Yeah, Margaret. | 46:18 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Margaret is the 10th of August. | 46:24 |
Hasan Jeffries | Margaret? | 46:24 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah, you ain't got that down there either. | 46:25 |
Hasan Jeffries | Nah. | 46:25 |
Speaker 3 | Bernice is the 20th [indistinct 00:46:26] | 46:25 |
Hasan Jeffries | [indistinct 00:46:26] | 46:25 |
Speaker 3 | [indistinct 00:46:26] | 46:25 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. | 46:25 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Mm-hmm. Bernice is— | 46:26 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay, now what about some of those schools that you mentioned. The first one— | 0:00 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | The first one that was— | 0:07 |
Hasan Jeffries | Shady— | 0:08 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Shady Grove School, I went to. | 0:11 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. | 0:11 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | The next one I went to was Nashville High School. | 0:13 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. | 0:17 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | The next one I went to was Brick Tri-County School. | 0:24 |
Hasan Jeffries | Brick Tri-County? | 0:25 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. | 0:25 |
Hasan Jeffries | What years were those? | 0:25 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | The years of 1935, '36, '37. | 0:25 |
Hasan Jeffries | That was Brick County? | 0:25 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Halifax County. | 0:47 |
Hasan Jeffries | Halifax County. What about the past jobs that you've had? | 0:58 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Say what now? | 1:01 |
Hasan Jeffries | The jobs that you've had. | 1:01 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Oh, the jobs that I've had, I had a job as a contractor. Tarrytown Mall contractor. I had a job with them about two years, that's when I first started. | 1:02 |
Hasan Jeffries | When was that? | 1:20 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Around right here where I am now. | 1:21 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. | 1:23 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. When I came out of service. I had another job up to what do you call those things? Other thing of Woodridge. Woodridge contractor there. I had about a little over a year there. | 1:23 |
Hasan Jeffries | After that, it's just been farming? | 1:56 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I worked the shipyard two years. Yeah. The time that I went to shipyard, that was some of my first work. I had forgotten that. That was my first place I worked. Yeah. | 2:01 |
Hasan Jeffries | That was immediately when you came back from service or before you went? | 2:18 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | No, that was before I went. | 2:25 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. | 2:30 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | It was before I went because when Pearl Harbor got bombed, I had been set to go there, two weeks. And I had missed my cadre of going from the first week and the next week, we was missing a man working and I was the only one that knows his job. So they kept me in the shipyard and I didn't go to Pearl Harbor. So it got bombed and I happened to not be there. | 2:31 |
Hasan Jeffries | Happened to not be there. | 3:05 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Ain't that something? | 3:06 |
Hasan Jeffries | [indistinct 00:03:08] | 3:06 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | That worked out fine. | 3:08 |
Hasan Jeffries | I would say— | 3:11 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yes, sir. | 3:12 |
Hasan Jeffries | About your religion, what is your current religious denomination? | 3:15 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I am a Baptist. Full-fledged Baptist, that's all. Yeah. | 3:20 |
Hasan Jeffries | And the current church that you belong to? | 3:27 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | The oldest, Shiloh Baptist Church off of Whitaker. That was the first church, I joined that church before I came up here. | 3:29 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. | 3:38 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | But after I came out here, I moved my membership to Crowell Baptist Church and that's the two churches that I associate with. | 3:38 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. | 3:44 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. I associated more than that, but that's what I call my churches. | 3:48 |
Hasan Jeffries | Right. | 3:49 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Yeah. Yeah. | 3:49 |
Hasan Jeffries | Have you ever received any awards or honors that you want to have recorded down here? Maybe in service, after, different organizations, any church awards? | 3:58 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Well, I haven't had one. I haven't gotten one myself. I tell you, we all got our religion and our faith and our belief, but it's always, either church or most anywhere else, it's certain people that just don't bother about certain things. They don't give a thought at it. There's some that look up to start them off in it, but that didn't bother us. Let me tell you this. I come along, a big family, and if all of us get in a safe spot, we can move things and they try to keep us from getting together, too many of us. Only nine of a church or anything, they love to have a whole lot of different one from different families, not this many families taking the whole thing. You know what I'm talking about? | 4:08 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | The folks will get a strike against people anyway, if it looks like most people likes them and will let them get a start. You know what I'm saying? Because they're so large, it's such a large family, see? They will pull things like they want. And somebody else don't like that. They like for—Well, I do too. I like for it to be mixed up, so a whole lot of them will have the same attitude and the same thoughts about it that I have. That's like I told them at our meeting the other day. They go and put a certain person in a certain job to do, like secretary and different little things in any kind of program or organization. | 5:18 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Sometime they don't pick and try to get the one you think'll do the best job. They'll get so-and-so because he is so-and-so. You know what I mean? | 6:10 |
Hasan Jeffries | Mm. | 6:21 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | They don't get. But see it's like this. The one that I think will do the best job, that's the one I get. I don't care who he is. But some people, they know that you know how to do it, it's true. But you can be so much kinder and so much nicer than I can be and you can do the same job, I'll get that person. But they'll get the person that they can do the job now. They always have one that really can do the job, but it's the attitude and to get along with the people that passes the test. Yeah. I like our officers that we got down, I like all of them. They just nice people. I don't believe we can find no more that just like them. It's some more can do the same job, but as for can they do it as well or would they do it as well? I say it like that. | 6:23 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Some people do a thing and they won't do it. But the ones we got down there, they will do what they can. They knows how to tell other people about what's going to happen and how it's going to happen and what you should do to make a thing better. It look like everybody pulls along together. It pulls along together. And I likes it. And we could have it still better if we had more participating. Really we got, as a little community, a good little crowd together there. 35, 40 people most every meeting we'll have, they come down. So it's nice. Some folks just ain't take pride in hardly nothing hardly. Just the least they can get hung dry, that's what they going to do because it keeps them up on the ball. Yeah. Some folks would rather stay home and some folk would rather go out, but I'd rather go out. But I don't want that thing to my staying home. I sleep at home. (laughs) | 7:32 |
Hasan Jeffries | I understand that. | 8:44 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I'm telling you. I sleep at home. | 8:44 |
Hasan Jeffries | What are some of the other organizations that you belong to? Or have belonged to in the past? | 8:47 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Oh— | 8:55 |
Hasan Jeffries | Well, first when you were in the Army, let me get that. What regiment and division you were in? | 8:55 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | We had 375th Engineer Regiment. Yeah. | 8:57 |
Hasan Jeffries | 357 you said? | 8:59 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | 375th. | 9:06 |
Hasan Jeffries | 375th. | 9:08 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Uh-huh. | 9:08 |
Hasan Jeffries | Infantry? Oh, Engineer. | 9:12 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Engineer organization over there. | 9:29 |
Hasan Jeffries | Any other? | 9:32 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | No. We didn't change the whole time that we were over there. | 9:32 |
Hasan Jeffries | Okay. | 9:32 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | We still stayed in 375th Engineer organization. | 9:32 |
Hasan Jeffries | Do you belong to any farmers' cooperatives, anything? | 9:33 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | No. | 9:36 |
Hasan Jeffries | No? | 9:36 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Mm-mm. | 9:37 |
Hasan Jeffries | What about social organizations? | 9:39 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | No. Not exactly. We didn't, well— | 9:43 |
Hasan Jeffries | Besides—? | 9:49 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | We had the club, the 4-H Club, young people. Right in here, we had the 4-H Club and we would meet here and two places in Enfield. We'd have little parties and things out, at that place, sometimes we had them out at the church. Yeah. We had a nice time too because we had a crowd, it was a bunch of girls and boys. Do you know right around, right this little second here where you made your turn up yonder? | 9:54 |
Hasan Jeffries | Right. | 10:20 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | And you go about a mile and make another turn, come back around here. Do you know we had over 200 people, children, in here? | 10:20 |
Hasan Jeffries | Mm. | 10:30 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | In these houses, right around this horseshoe. We had two buses coming here, get two buses with the children every morning, just right around this little horseshoe, three mile. That's right. Every one of these houses had from seven to ten children on them. But Miss Velma stayed down there, they didn't have but three. But about eight children or ten children were every other house round here. And when Saturday evening come late, you would see a crowd coming down the road, walking. Just going to walk around the horseshoe. After a while, you see another crowd. On Sunday, they walk, go to church and come back from church. Before it get dark, you start around the horseshoe, you get back to the houses about time it's getting dark. | 10:30 |
Hasan Jeffries | Everybody walked to church? | 11:12 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Everybody walking is enjoying walking and talking. They liked it. And as the years passed, every year, it gets scarcer and scarcer. The girls and boys that finished school, they were moving out to leave from round here because there wasn't much going on around here. | 11:19 |
Hasan Jeffries | Yeah. | 11:34 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | So they had cousins and things away in the city and if they would go stay with them a while, they could get their own jobs, so that's what they did. So most of them is up North now. New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia, all the boys and girls from round here is up there. Just the late years, they taking on to Greensboro and Durham and Charlotte. Yeah. Charlotte. I got four in Charlotte. I got two girls in Charlotte and I got two boys in Charlotte. I got one boy in Philly, another in Baltimore. I think that's all of them. Yeah. My two boys have worked, repaired my house. | 11:38 |
Hasan Jeffries | Oh, really? | 12:31 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | They come around and visit. Yeah. They just finished fixing pothole this week. | 12:32 |
Hasan Jeffries | Last question I have for you, do you have a favorite song or a favorite quote that you would like to have recorded? A favorite phrase that you would like to tell your children? | 12:42 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Let me see. Yeah. I said a little piece about Mother, out at the meetings, about a month ago. I hadn't thought of it since I was—Well, I have thought of it, but just to say it, I didn't say it. They were trying to get somebody for the program and they were really going after one of us, "Just get up and say just a little short poem or anything." So I told them I would. So I don't know why I thought about the little piece. About six months ago, we had a program and I said another piece. But that piece I said, I hadn't thought of the piece in 25 years. I don't read, but it's something that I learned when I was in 6th grade. | 13:01 |
Hasan Jeffries | Do you remember the name of it? What was the name of it? | 13:58 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | The House by the Side of the Road. Mm-hmm. | 13:59 |
Hasan Jeffries | Was it long? | 14:06 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | It was a pretty good long, pretty good long. Well, I cut it off before I got so far down. After I got the the good out in it because I couldn't remember the last part of it. But I said most of it. This was a little child's speech, a little child's speech on Mother's Day. I said, if you hear it, I believe, yeah, it was for Mother's Day. | 14:08 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | "Mother never taught in any schools. She never went to college. But let me tell you she just full of every sort of knowledge. I have no doubt that I can tell, so far as I hear to tell, can do as many thing as Mom, and do them all so well. She never studied law a bit, she haven't a degree, but when it comes to settling scraps, she is any old referee. She is a dandy cook, she is. When we want to play, to sing, she can sit and play for us just as fine as anything. She can make herself a gown and make—She can make and mend anything as good as new and make herself a gown and trim her hat just as well as any hat in town. I have no doubt of any man, so as far as I hear tell, can do as so many things as Mom and do them all so well." | 14:43 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I learned that when I was six years old. Well, I started school, just a little fore I got six and I learned that. That was the first poem or piece that I learned. That the first one. | 15:37 |
Hasan Jeffries | You still remember it? | 15:57 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | That's it. But you know things happened a long time ago, even when you were young, little small, just starting school. Them things that you learned don't never leave you. But things you did yesterday will soon be gone out today. You can easily forget them, can't you? (laughs) | 16:00 |
Hasan Jeffries | Yeah. Yeah. | 16:15 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | I say, I reckon because you didn't have nothing in your head then, what went in then stay you. (laughs) | 16:15 |
Hasan Jeffries | Well, thank you, Mr. Hedgepeth. | 16:15 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | Uh-huh. | 16:15 |
Hasan Jeffries | Thank you. | 16:15 |
Clarence Hedgepeth | And I enjoyed talking to you. I really did. | 16:15 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund