Addie Thompson interview recording, 1993 June 25
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Leslie Brown | Okay. I'd like to start if you would just state for the tape your full name. | 0:02 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Addie Pierce Thompson. | 0:08 |
Leslie Brown | And are you originally from Halifax? | 0:13 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Mm-hmm. Yes. | 0:17 |
Leslie Brown | You were born in Halifax? | 0:18 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah. | 0:19 |
Leslie Brown | What did your family do for a living when you were growing up? | 0:21 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Sharecropping. | 0:24 |
Leslie Brown | They were sharecropping? | 0:26 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah. | 0:26 |
Leslie Brown | For what family? | 0:27 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | You mean what family they sharecropper with? | 0:30 |
Leslie Brown | Mm-hmm. | 0:32 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, two or three different families. One was Fleming family and Simmons. | 0:34 |
Leslie Brown | Simmons? And what did you do, when you were a child? | 0:46 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | When I was old enough, I worked in the field chopping, picked cotton, shake peas. Yeah, pull corn. | 0:55 |
Leslie Brown | What that work like? | 1:08 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | It was very hard. | 1:10 |
Leslie Brown | Would you tell me about it? | 1:12 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah. In them days, we had a bell to go by. You had to go by a bell. It would ring you out, ring you in for dinner, ring you back out at 1:00 for work. And of course, you have to work till the sun sets, and then you come home. | 1:17 |
Leslie Brown | Did you work every day? | 1:41 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Every day, except my school, when school was in. And sometime had to be out of school a day to work. | 1:43 |
Leslie Brown | Mm-hmm. | 1:53 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah. And as I growed up, after I was grown, I was still out there in that field, became to be a mother. And I have picked high as 300 pound of cotton a day. | 1:56 |
Leslie Brown | 300 pounds? | 2:16 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | 300 pounds. And I'd be seven, eight month pregnant. | 2:18 |
Leslie Brown | Mm-hmm. | 2:22 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yes, sir, sure had. Worked very hard. And you won't getting very much for your work. | 2:23 |
Leslie Brown | How much did you get for your [indistinct 00:02:34]? | 2:32 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I have chopped all day long for 25 cent a day. | 2:33 |
Leslie Brown | Hmm, 25 cent. | 2:39 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Mm-hmm. | 2:40 |
Leslie Brown | How many other children were there in your family when you were growing up? | 2:42 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, it was 15 of us, but, of course, some of them died out. And seven of us growed up together. | 2:47 |
Leslie Brown | How many died? | 3:10 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Eight. | 3:15 |
Leslie Brown | Did they all die young? | 3:17 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, some little babies. | 3:18 |
Leslie Brown | Hmm. Now how old were you when you started working in the fields? | 3:26 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I would say around nine. | 3:34 |
Leslie Brown | Really? What kind of work did you do before you went to the fields? Did you have any responsibilities? | 3:39 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I helped clean the house. I do the washing, cleaning yards. | 3:48 |
Leslie Brown | Mm-hmm. And you went to the field at age nine, and you— | 3:54 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, around nine. | 4:03 |
Leslie Brown | And was chopping— | 4:03 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Picking cotton. | 4:04 |
Leslie Brown | Cotton was the first thing that you did when you started? | 4:05 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, I was picking cotton. I didn't chop at that age, but I would help pick cotton and shake peanuts. | 4:07 |
Leslie Brown | Mm-hmm. How do you pick cotton? | 4:15 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, you put a bag on your shoulder, and you just go down the road and pull it out the bud. | 4:18 |
Leslie Brown | And how do they know how much you picked at the end of the day. | 4:26 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | When you fill your bag, you come, and you have a sheet spreaded on the ground. You pour it in the sheet. And at the end of the day, you tie the sheet and weigh it. | 4:31 |
Leslie Brown | Who did the weighing? | 4:42 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | My father, when I would be working in the crop. He was tinning. And then when I help other people, they do the weighing, like I go and pick for other people for pay, and they do the weighing. | 4:44 |
Leslie Brown | What kind of house did you—Oh, I know what I wanted to ask before I asked you anything else. How do you shake peanuts? | 5:05 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, they go out there with the plow, and they plow the peas up. And then the mens go out and put poles up and down the field. And you go and you just pick them up and shake the dirt and tie them around the pole. | 5:11 |
Leslie Brown | And then someone else would come along and do something different? | 5:35 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah. After they dry out good, they have a pea picker. They call it pea picker. They'll come down through the field and thrash them out. That would divide the leaves and the stem from the peanuts. And then they have somebody to put the peanut in a bag, and you sew the bag up. Then they'd take them to the market. | 5:38 |
Leslie Brown | And how did you get paid for shaking peanuts? | 6:08 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | By the stack. Each pole you fill up, you get 25 cents. | 6:13 |
Leslie Brown | How long did it take you to fill a pole? | 6:22 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I tell you what, I used to shake a lot of them. I have shook a hundred stacks a day by myself. I sure have. Mm-hmm. | 6:25 |
Leslie Brown | Was it hot? | 6:39 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yes, Lord, yes, that it was. But I would work hard, 'cause I wanted to make the money. And you were getting such a little money, you had to work hard to have anything when the end of the week gone. | 6:41 |
Leslie Brown | And you said that your family was sharecroppers? | 7:01 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | That's right. | 7:07 |
Leslie Brown | So when you worked, a lot of times you worked with your family? | 7:07 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, I'd be working for my father out there, for my father. At the end of the year, the man that he would be sharecropping with would have what you call a settlement at the end of the year. Sometimes they would say you had made money. They'd pay you three or four hundred dollars and sometime more. And sometime, they would say, "You fell in the hole. You hadn't made anything." And you'd just be worked all the year and come out at the end with nothing. Yeah, I been through all of that. Then they would tell you, it would be right there at Christmastime, "Well, I'll lend you some money on another year, if you going stay here and work with me." So that's how you would have your few dollars for Christmas. | 7:11 |
Leslie Brown | Now how does sharecropping work? What did the landowner provide? And what did your father provide? | 8:09 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, the owner just provided the land. Of course, he would get all the fertilizers to go on the crop. He would furnish the mule and the plows. And then at the end of the year, you supposed to pay half of what he had finished to work the crop. You would be borrowing so much money each month to live on, sometimes $40 or $50 a month to buy grocery. And at the end of the year, you had to pay all that money back, and then pay for half the fertilizers and everything that went on the crop. And if the crop made good, and you did so good, you would come out sometime making some money. But then if the crop didn't make good, you would come out with nothing. | 8:16 |
Leslie Brown | Were there times when the crop would make good, but you still didn't [indistinct 00:09:36]? | 9:31 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, yeah. There was times when the crops made good. And you have your little money at the end of the year. Then whatever you had at the end of the year, you had to take that and live on that through the winter. Starting in March and the next year, they would start this loan again, so much a month for grocery, starting a new crop. | 9:35 |
Leslie Brown | How long did you sharecrop for your family? | 10:10 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Oh, until I was 20 years old, 'cause I was 21 before I ever got married. And so I sharecropped with them just that long. But then sometime after we clean our crop out or picked all our cotton and shake all our peas, then I'd had the opportunity to work for some other person and get paid by the day. If I was picking cotton, I'd get paid by the 100-pound. If I was shaking peas, I got paid by the stack. | 10:13 |
Leslie Brown | Were any of the landowners ever Black? Or were they always white? | 11:05 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I really don't know that. But I would more rather think they were Black. | 11:12 |
Leslie Brown | Were all the sharecroppers Black? | 11:26 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I know a few white sharecroppers, but in those days the white people really had money. They didn't even consider them as white people. All of them white people I know that was really working out there in the farm would have to come to the Colored people's church, 'cause they couldn't even recognize them. | 11:34 |
Leslie Brown | Did you know any of them? | 12:15 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, I know of one lady. Her name was Anna Aiken. They never really recognized her. She always attend our church until she was dead. And I knew another man named Joe Merrick. He always mingle with the Colored people. | 12:16 |
Leslie Brown | Why did he mingle with the Colored people? | 12:48 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Because he felt like he wasn't welcome with the white people. I think that's the way he felt. And he is living even to now, he still go to the Colored people's church. | 12:51 |
Leslie Brown | Really? | 13:08 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Mm-hmm. He really do. | 13:13 |
Leslie Brown | Do you know how we can find him, what church he goes to? | 13:13 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I know he attend Smith's Chapel, but he is in the rest home. But it's a lady that goes and get him every third Sunday and bring him to Smith's Chapel Church. | 13:18 |
Leslie Brown | Now all the people that your father sharecropped with were white? | 13:40 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah. No, no. He sharecropped once with a Colored man. His name was George Tillery. | 13:46 |
Leslie Brown | George—Could you say that again, please? | 14:02 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | George Tillery. | 14:03 |
Leslie Brown | Tillery, like the same name of— | 14:03 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | T-I-L-L-E-R-Y. | 14:12 |
Leslie Brown | Did you know him? | 14:15 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yes, I knew him. | 14:16 |
Leslie Brown | What do you remember about him? | 14:24 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, he was kind of a hard man and didn't care how wet it was or whatnot. He want my daddy to put his children out there and let them work. So they didn't get along, and my daddy moved before time to even house the crop. He left there. | 14:27 |
Leslie Brown | How long was he with George Tillery? | 14:56 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, he was there, I would say, about nine months. | 14:56 |
Leslie Brown | Was that in this area? | 15:02 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | That was over on 481, about two and a half miles to Enfield. | 15:07 |
Leslie Brown | When your father left George Tillery, what did he go do? | 15:31 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | He moved with a man name Willie Fleming. And we were there, I guess, about four years, and Willie Fleming died. So we moved from there to Grover Harbor. And that's when I got married. | 15:36 |
Leslie Brown | How did you meet your husband? | 16:15 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, my mother knew his mother well. And she would go to visit her, and she come to visit my mother, and that's how I and my husband got acquainted. | 16:21 |
Leslie Brown | And what did you do together before you got married? | 16:40 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | My husband? | 16:44 |
Leslie Brown | Mm-hmm. | 16:48 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | He would come to see me, and we would sit and have conversations. We would go to churches together, things like that. | 16:51 |
Leslie Brown | Where did you live when you got married? | 17:09 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Was living on Grover Harbor's Farm. That's right down here on 125. It's about three miles from where I'm living now. | 17:12 |
Leslie Brown | And what did you and your husband do for the living when you got married? | 17:28 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Still worked on the farm. | 17:37 |
Leslie Brown | Did you sharecrop? | 17:37 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | No, not at that time. They was working with a man by the day. And when we got married, I lived in the home with his mother and father. So I chopped for this man by the day, picked cotton for him by the pound. And we lived with him. Let me see. I got married in '92, and we lived there until '95. | 17:39 |
Leslie Brown | And— | 18:31 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | And then we moved down that road a little ways. That was over on the 301 highway. Lord have mercy, what's that man name? His name won't come to me right now. It's been so long ago. | 18:35 |
Leslie Brown | So you got married in 1942? | 19:07 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Mm-hmm. | 19:08 |
Leslie Brown | 1942. | 19:08 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | This was my last husband, but I had been married before. | 19:18 |
Leslie Brown | Oh, yeah? | 19:21 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Mm-hmm. | 19:22 |
Leslie Brown | When was that? | 19:23 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I married him when I was 20, my first husband. | 19:25 |
Leslie Brown | Mm-hmm. You were 20 years old. You know what year that was? | 19:31 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | No, not really. And when I married him, I did the same thing I did with my second husband. I lived in with his mother and father. And he was so abusive, I couldn't stay with him. I had to leave him and came back home with my mother and father. And that's how I met my last husband. And then I and him was married in '42. | 19:39 |
Leslie Brown | Did you go to school? | 20:28 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, I went to school. | 20:29 |
Leslie Brown | Where did you go to school? | 20:33 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I went to—Well, a lot of people called it Langham Branch. | 20:39 |
Leslie Brown | Could you say that again? | 20:41 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Most people called it the Langham Branch School. | 20:46 |
Leslie Brown | Uh-huh. And what did you call it? Is that what you called it also? | 20:52 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah. | 20:55 |
Leslie Brown | Do you remember anything about school? | 20:59 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, I remember we used to have to walk to school. I walked to school. Sometimes it would be so cold, I get there, my fingers would be aching. And we would have to go pick up chips and things and build a fire to warm up. We had to take our own lunch in boxes or whatever you could get to put it in. Our mother would pack us a lunch. And we would have the best time to ourselves sitting out there at 12 o'clock eating our dinner. I didn't quite finish school. I went to up to the 11th grade, and then that's when I quit. I didn't go no more. I finished the 10th grade. | 21:02 |
Leslie Brown | Why did you quit school? | 22:07 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I don't know. I just don't know why I would quit. I should have kept trying to go. But in them days it was kind of hard getting where—See, when you finish the little elementary schools, the other schools were so far away from you. And if you didn't have good convenience to get there, you were just out of it. 'Cause in those days, we didn't even have the buses like children got now. So one thing, it was inconvenient for me.ed And I just dropped out. But I have wished on many days that I'd've kept going. I sure have. | 22:13 |
Leslie Brown | How far did you walk to elementary school? | 23:14 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Oh, about four or five miles. | 23:17 |
Leslie Brown | And how far to high school? | 23:25 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, high school would've been about 12 miles from where I was living. | 23:27 |
Leslie Brown | And you would've had to walk 12 miles to get there? | 23:32 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Or either have some way to ride there. And at that time, my daddy didn't have no car or nothing, so that was just that. | 23:35 |
Leslie Brown | Were you able to go to school every day? | 23:47 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, I made mostly every day. I would've had to miss one day a week. My mother would always keep me home one day through every week to do the washing. Sometimes, I would get up early and do the washing and then walk in the 12 o'clock hour to my school and get my lesson. I did on many a day. | 23:56 |
Leslie Brown | You must have liked school. | 24:32 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I did. I really loved it. I certainly did. | 24:33 |
Leslie Brown | Do you remember any of your teachers? | 24:43 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, Ms. Earl was my teacher. She taught me all the way through up to the 10th grade. | 24:46 |
Leslie Brown | You had the same teacher all the way through 10th grade? | 25:01 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | All the way. | 25:03 |
Leslie Brown | How big was the school? | 25:04 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well— | 25:07 |
Speaker 1 | Hey. | 25:07 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Hey. It was about, I reckon, might be twice as big as this room. They were very small schools. And in them days, your parents had to pay for your book and also pay for the seat for you to sit in. | 25:11 |
Leslie Brown | Were your parents able to pay for your books and your seat? | 25:37 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, they always paid for that. And if you didn't pay for it, you wouldn't have no seat. | 25:45 |
Leslie Brown | You had to stand up? | 25:52 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Mm-hmm. And no book to read. | 25:53 |
Leslie Brown | Were there children who stood up? | 25:58 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | No, everybody would have their seat. | 26:00 |
Leslie Brown | Did everybody have books? | 26:03 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Everybody had books. And in them days, the teacher would punish you if you did anything. You would get punished. They'd make you stand up on one foot half a day, or they would beat you in the palm your hand with a paddle. You really got the punishment in those days. But I think it was better raised children then than it is than today. | 26:07 |
Leslie Brown | Can you tell me about Ms. Earl? What was she like? | 26:42 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, she was a pretty good teacher. She was very nice. And her home was in Whitaker. But she always, when time for school, would come and live with a family down here, called the Hill family. That was right there on 481 too. And of course, the school I was going to was on 481. But she died last year. She had retired though for years ago. And last year, she died. But she was a pretty fair teacher. | 26:45 |
Leslie Brown | What kinds of things did you learn in school? | 27:34 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, I learned to read and write. I learned how to figure, learned a little about art, how to make little different things, stuff like that. | 27:37 |
Leslie Brown | So you got married, and then you got married again? | 28:03 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | That's right. | 28:07 |
Leslie Brown | Have you farmed all your life? | 28:08 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | No, I worked in a tobacco factory once for about 12 months. | 28:13 |
Leslie Brown | What did you do there? | 28:28 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Stem tobacco. And then I lived in Chester, Pennsylvania for about five years. And I didn't do no work there. My husband had a job out there, so I just stayed and kept house. | 28:31 |
Leslie Brown | Did you enjoy that? | 28:59 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, I did. | 29:00 |
Leslie Brown | Now why did your husband go to Chester, Pennsylvania? | 29:04 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, the man we was living with, he and my husband had some disagreement. And so, my husband had a sister that lived in Chester, Pennsylvania. And she was visiting me at the time. And she just talked my husband into going back up there with her, so we just moved out and went on up there. | 29:08 |
Leslie Brown | What kind of work did he have in Chester? | 29:41 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | He worked in some kind of steel plant. | 29:48 |
Leslie Brown | What kind of money did | 29:56 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | He made good money in there. | 29:57 |
Leslie Brown | And why did you come back? | 30:02 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I just wanted to come back home. My mother got sick for one thing. And I wanted to come back and be with my mother, 'cause she was down about 10 months. And I just really wanted to be with her. So I came back home. At the time, I had four children. And my oldest child was the girl you just saw come together here. She was in school at the time. And my sister-in-law told me she would keep her in school for me, so I could come home to be with my mother. So that's what I did. I come home, and I stayed with my mother. Then I got there begging my husband to come home with me, and he just gave up the job and come on back home. And we didn't ever go back. | 30:05 |
Leslie Brown | And what did you all do when he came home? | 31:25 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, he got a house for me to live in. And he worked for this white man by the day. And I just stayed home and took care of the children. And after that, my mother died while I was with her. So then outside, my husband got this house. My father moved in with us. And then my father later married again, and he had this house right here put up. And then he died. And my niece and my sister was in here with him. And neither one didn't know how to take care of theyself, so then it fell in my hand to move in here to take care of them. In the meanwhile, I lost my sister, but my niece is still here. And this past February the 6th, I lost my husband. So I'm just still sitting in here. | 31:30 |
Leslie Brown | You were married for 50 years. | 33:26 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | 51 in February. 51 years. | 33:27 |
Leslie Brown | Mm-hmm. Do you remember what the years were that you were in Chester, Pennsylvania? | 33:37 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | It was somewhere ranging between, I think, probably between '32 and '40 something, '36 and '40, somewhere in that range. | 33:51 |
Leslie Brown | When did you stop farming? When you went to Chester, Pennsylvania, was that— | 34:29 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Mm-hmm. | 34:31 |
Leslie Brown | And you didn't farm anymore when you came back? | 34:32 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, when we came back my husband worked, day work. We didn't farm, no sharecropping or nothing, but just day work. And of course, in the fall of the year, when they be housing the crops, I would go out and pick cotton for different people. And that's how I would make my little winter money. | 34:34 |
Leslie Brown | Did you have a garden? | 35:13 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah. Well, I had gardens up until the past three years. And I wasn't able to do nothing out there, and my husband wasn't either. So we gave that up. But right now, I'm still trying to have me a little small garden this year with my children, spare time to work in it. | 35:15 |
Leslie Brown | Would you tell me about working in the tobacco factory? Where was the tobacco factory? | 35:55 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | It was in Rocky Mount. | 36:00 |
Leslie Brown | How did you get down there? | 36:05 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I was living over there at the time. That's when I left my first husband. I came back home, stayed with my mother and father. Then I went to Rocky Mount, stayed with my father's brother, so I could work a while. And I worked in it, called it the China American, I believe, factory. And you just take the leaf of tobacco, slit the stem out it, and they would weigh a certain portion of that stem, and that's what you got paid by, how many pounds of stems you would have. | 36:05 |
Leslie Brown | And how much would you get paid? | 36:56 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, I made pretty good money in there. I made pretty good money there. I would make about $25 a day. And in those days you called that good money. | 36:58 |
Leslie Brown | Did you like the work? | 37:29 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yes, Lord, I loved the work. | 37:29 |
Leslie Brown | What did you like about it? | 37:29 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Hmm? | 37:30 |
Leslie Brown | What did you like about it? | 37:30 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I liked all of it. Any of it I did, I loved it. I sure did. I worked in there, I reckon, about a year. Then I come back home and met my last husband and got married. But I always loved to work. And I miss it so bad now. I just sit and look at the people going to work and wishing I could get there. But I worked in all that field right out there. | 37:34 |
Leslie Brown | Right across over here? | 38:12 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Right across over there. I have been out there and shook a hundred stack peas per day for people. That I have, and had little childrens too. I have put up a tent in the field and carry my children and set them up under the tent and work all day. | 38:13 |
Leslie Brown | You sound very proud of the work you used to do. | 38:44 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I was. I was proud of it. I sure was. Yes, siree. I used to pick cotton for people, walk right across from the house, have my children inside the house. I'd be out there picking cotton. I'd slip back inside or peak through the window to see what they were doing. And they wouldn't even know I was there. They would look like they was all right. I'd go right back to that field. I did it many a day. Then I come home. I would scrub my floors. And in those days people didn't know what manures and things was to put on the floor. I scrub my floors, so my children wouldn't be on no dirty floor. I would get the tub and rub bowl and wash and hang out a line of clothes. And then I'd be ready to go back to work the next morning. Yeah, I have worked hard in my life, but I loved it all. I love it. | 38:46 |
Leslie Brown | Do you enjoy staying busy? | 39:58 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yes, I do. Yeah, I sure do. | 40:00 |
Leslie Brown | Well, tell me about going to church. Did you grow up going to church? | 40:07 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, I growed up going to church. My mother and father would take me to church, and we went to church in mule and wagon. And he would have called a kerosene lantern hanging underneath the wagon, so what few people did have a car could see him coming. And we were going out there at that church. My mother put a quilt down in the bottom of that wagon. And boy, we was happy as [indistinct 00:40:54]. After I was about—I reckon I was around 13 or 14, I started to usher in the church. | 40:13 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I used to walk there. I would take my shoes in my hand. I had walk right from there on that highway there and walk to that church. And then I'd sit down and put my shoes on and usher from down that aisle. And after I was about 15, everybody wanted me to leave the ushering and go in the choir stand. They would tell me, "so you got too good of voice to be down here. You need to be up here." So then, that's when I went on up in the choir stand. I've been singing in it ever since. | 41:14 |
Leslie Brown | What kind of hymns did you sing? What kind songs did you sing? | 41:52 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Oh, gospel songs. | 41:58 |
Leslie Brown | Do you have a favorite one? | 42:01 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Hmm? | 42:03 |
Leslie Brown | Do you have a favorite one? | 42:03 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, now I love Amazing Grace. I love that song. And I love this song about He woke me up this morning. Well, I love them all, but it seemed like Amazing Grace, so I'm crazy about that. | 42:06 |
Leslie Brown | Did you belong to the missionary board or anything like that? | 42:38 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | No. | 42:42 |
Leslie Brown | Do you remember if there was one? | 42:44 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, they had one at Smith's chapel, but I never joined it. | 42:47 |
Leslie Brown | Now what church did you belong to? | 42:48 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I belonged to Crowell Baptist. That's right here back of me. And I'm a member there, and I'm a member of their choir. I've been a member of their choir ever since I was 15. And I'm a member of the choir in the Smith's Chapel Baptist Church, but not a member of the church, just a member of the choir. And I have all the robes, different robes, robe for Crowell, robe for Smith's. And every year when they change robes, I get mine. I'm sitting right in this chair, but I get mine right along with them. And my children get me in the car, carry me on out there, and they roll me right in there. And I sit right in there and sing. Well, oh Lord, them people at Smith's, they have a fit on third Sunday if they don't see my head coming through that door, sure do. And they'll carry me down to that front door. One of the choir members will push me all the way up and have me to lead their choir in. Yeah, I've been singing for quite a while, and boy do I love it. I love it. Yes, sir. | 42:57 |
Leslie Brown | When you were growing up, did you listen to music? Did you sing outside of church? | 44:37 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, and when I would be at home, I'd be singing all the time. I didn't even have music. I'd just be singing. | 44:43 |
Leslie Brown | What kind of songs did you sing? | 44:47 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Church, you know? | 44:47 |
Leslie Brown | Church songs? | 44:52 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Mm-hmm. | 44:52 |
Leslie Brown | So what did the church mean to you when you were growing up? What was the church [indistinct 00:45:06]? | 44:53 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I just enjoyed it and seemed like when I get there, I always had a different feeling, always felt good when I get in the door. I was just in the door. I just always had this good feeling when I go in there. Now, when I was younger, I would sing blues. | 45:05 |
Leslie Brown | Really? | 45:30 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, I'd be in the field working, singing blues. But after I got going in that church and got enjoying it so well, I quit singing blues and went to singing Christian songs. But I used to be something with them blues. | 45:30 |
Speaker 1 | [indistinct 00:45:51]. | 45:50 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | All right. | 45:51 |
Speaker 1 | What's [indistinct 00:45:53] phone number? | 45:51 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | 30, 89. | 45:56 |
Speaker 1 | [indistinct 00:46:01]. | 45:57 |
Leslie Brown | You used to sing blues too? | 46:03 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yes, I did. | 46:04 |
Leslie Brown | You remember what songs for blues songs? | 46:06 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Now one song I used to love to sing: "I'm going to dig myself a hole and move my baby down in the ground." | 46:08 |
Leslie Brown | Why did you like that song? | 46:18 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I don't know why. 'Cause everybody act like they enjoyed it. And yes, sir, and they be this—I made money off of it, tell you the truth. | 46:19 |
Leslie Brown | You did? | 46:28 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I have sung that song, and people be throwing dollars and 50 cents up there, talking about "Sing it again, Ad." I'd sing it again. | 46:28 |
Leslie Brown | Well, where would you sing that they would throw money? | 46:37 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | We'd be at different houses. | 46:38 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | We tend to live miles away, and my mother and father wouldn't allow me to go to them. | 0:02 |
Leslie Brown | To the Piccolo joints, you weren't allowed to go? | 0:10 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | We weren't allowed to go. | 0:12 |
Leslie Brown | Did you go anyway? | 0:13 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | But every once in a while, I would slip away and run in there for a minute, and then I had to fly to get back home before my mama would miss me, sure would be it. | 0:14 |
Leslie Brown | What were the Piccolo joints like? | 0:29 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, this was just a store and they had that machine in there playing the records and everything, and I would want to hear them. And people would dance in there, but my mother didn't allow me to go, she sure didn't. Wasn't like it is now, right? That's all these young people do now, is go to them Piccolo joints. You can have church service on that end and a Piccolo joint on that end, if you want to find the crowd, you go to the Piccolo joint. | 0:32 |
Leslie Brown | So what did you do for fun when you were growing up? | 1:18 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, I had a lot of friends else and they loved to sing too, and we would get together, and sing, and play ring around the rose, and all that kind of mess, that was our enjoyment. | 1:22 |
Leslie Brown | Where did you meet your friends? | 1:48 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, I met 'em by going to school, and I had two wonderful girlfriends, their father was a minister, and their mother and my mother were good friends, and they would go to each other's house at night, and them moon shining nights, we'd be going from house to house. And their father, he mostly started me to singing, he would put all us childrens in that room and make us sing. And he said, "I'm going to make a singer out of you," after all, and he would make me sing this song, Brighten The Corner Where You Are, that's what I started off from. | 1:50 |
Leslie Brown | How old were you? | 2:45 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | And boy, Lord, we'd laugh and had the best time, be out there running and playing, come home, go to bed. And coach, you can't do that now, it's dangerous, and you walk from here up there to the store now, somebody be done kidnap you. But in those days, it was rough work, but you enjoyed each other, it was just fun to be with each other. Yeah, I saw in the church, a many time with no music at all, pray, I used to pray in the church when I was a young girl. | 2:46 |
Leslie Brown | What were the special days in church? | 3:39 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I would say Mother's Day, Father's Days were good and special, and Christmas. | 3:54 |
Leslie Brown | Were there special events at the church on those days? | 4:09 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Mm-hmm, yeah. | 4:12 |
Leslie Brown | Were there a lot of people who went to church? | 4:16 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yes, Lord. And back then, you get there, you can hardly get a seat. People be standing all outside, couldn't get in the church? Okay, and they still have good crowds at church now, but they don't be no ways packed like there was back then. Every once in a while, you'll get a good packing crowd. | 4:18 |
Leslie Brown | Did people go to church in families or by themselves? | 5:03 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, some people go by themself, and then some go in families. | 5:07 |
Leslie Brown | Did different families know each other? | 5:15 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Uh-huh, yeah. | 5:18 |
Leslie Brown | Did people help each other? | 5:25 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, well, now I could say this much, people have been very nice to me since I've been sitting in this wheelchair, I could thank God for that, they always doing something for me. Some churches has been nice enough to send me money enough to buy me a bottle of medicine and at Christmas time, they send me fruit and send me a little small check or something, they've been very nice to me. So that make me feel like my work I have did was not in vain. Yeah, people is pretty good. You have some people stand out, try to look over you or something, and I guess it always be like that, some people think they're better than others or got a little more than others, but I could say they've been very nice to me, people been very nice. | 5:28 |
Leslie Brown | What kind of things did you do for people when you were younger? | 6:52 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I used to do a lot of things for people. I would visit the sick a lot, I always loved to help the sick people. I have had people to tell me I wouldn't do that, but I have did a lot of things for the sick. | 7:01 |
Leslie Brown | What kinds of things? | 7:22 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Like comb their hair, bathe them, wash their clothes, I have cooked food and cared to the sick. | 7:23 |
Leslie Brown | Were these people who were friends of yours? | 7:35 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, yeah, they was friends. | 7:38 |
Leslie Brown | Did other people do the same thing? | 7:40 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | No, a lot of people didn't pay them kind of people no mind. I took care of my husband mother, she had cancer and I took care of that lady, I did things for her her own children didn't do. I kept her clean, I kept her hair, I kept her house clean, and I got my husband to get her a house right across the road in front of me. I would cook, the mens would be in the field working, I would cook food and then I would carry food over there and set her table, so when her husband and boys got home, they didn't have no problem about no dinner, then I'll come back over to my house and have my husband dinner ready. | 7:48 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Lord, I did that for a long time, I sure did. Even today, some of her children will come here now and tell me if it's anything I need, let them know, said they'd never forget how I stood by their mother even when they weren't even there, then some of them don't. But I used to tell them, I said, "Well, I'm going to do this though, maybe someday somebody will do something for me," so now I'm sitting here in this chair where I need somebody to do something for me and I think I'm being rewarded from it. | 9:03 |
Leslie Brown | You told me about the Whites who were sharecroppers and some of the Whites who were the landowners, what kind of contact did you have with Whites when you were growing up? | 10:10 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, they always treated me all right, I never had no problem with none of them. I used to take in washing for White people, I have cleaned their homes, and all of them was very nice to me, I never really had no problem with them. | 10:32 |
Leslie Brown | Do you know anybody else who had any problems with them? | 11:06 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, not really. Sometime I hear a lot of people say they had problems with them, but I wouldn't know about it, I wouldn't like to go into that because I really wouldn't know about that. | 11:11 |
Leslie Brown | What do you remember about segregation? | 11:45 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I don't remember nothing too much about that. No, I don't remember too much about that. | 11:49 |
Leslie Brown | Did you go to a Black school? | 11:56 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, and then in that time it was all Black, wasn't no White. | 11:56 |
Leslie Brown | Did you ever go to the movies? | 11:56 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I used to go to the movies when I was young. I didn't go there very often, I'd just go there every once in a while and that was mostly when I was living in Chester, Pennsylvania, I and my sister-in-law would go every once in a while for the pleasure part of it. | 11:57 |
Leslie Brown | But you didn't have to sit separately? | 12:52 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | No. | 12:53 |
Leslie Brown | So do you remember your family ever going shopping? | 13:05 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, I used to ride with them on the muling wagon, they would go to infield over to the Myers store, that's where my daddy would buy all his groceries. | 13:11 |
Leslie Brown | The Myers? | 13:31 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Myers. | 13:31 |
Leslie Brown | Mm-hmm. | 13:31 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | And back in them days, when the parents would go buy grocery, they would get these big jugs and molasses, 7, 8 dozen of herring fish, and boy, in them days they thought they had got something, I'm telling you. My daddy used to buy cheese by the block and buy a whole lot of fresh fish, because long then you could get this stuff real cheap and it wasn't nothing like deep freezers and refrigerators in those days, and they would buy blocks of ice, and that's how they would save the food. | 13:38 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I've seen them wrap the ice in bags, and put it up in the fireplace, and set their food all up on there, that keep it cold. I have gotten milk, my daddy had cows, I will fill a jar of milk up every morning, tie a rope around it and let it down in the well, and at 12, I'd pull it up and drink it, it would be cold, because we didn't know what refrigerators and deep freezers were. Didn't have no electric, we used lamps, kerosene lamps, we would iron by the fire. And I used to take in washing for White people and I have stood flatfoot by the fireplace and ironed from 12 to 13 starch collars, I did all of that, that I have. And today, they got (phone rings) electric irons and they don't want to do it. I thought somebody was going to come in and get it. [INTERRUPTION 00:16:32] | 14:47 |
Leslie Brown | So can you tell me about your parents? A little bit about your mother and father? Do you remember your mom and father? | 16:37 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Mm-hmm, yeah. Well, my mother and father was good parents. They were very strict, my father always told us we had to go to Sunday school in church, and he would lead us to this Sunday School every Sunday morning, and he would buy our clothes and he'd tell us he didn't buy them for us to wall them out, he bought them for us to go to service, and he salted it, yes, Lord. Every Sunday morning, he would take us to that Sunday School, and come back, and then we'd go to church. And I don't mean we were riding, we were walking, sure did, yeah, Lord. | 16:53 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | And I never heard my mother and father curse, I never saw either one of them under influence of liquor, and if they had an argument, we wouldn't know about it, I never seen him strike my mother, so we just lived a happy family, sure did, very. | 17:56 |
Leslie Brown | How were decisions made in your family? | 18:30 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, my father would make decisions, my mother would always go along with whatever he said. | 18:33 |
Leslie Brown | And when you got married, how were decisions made in your family? | 18:47 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | About the same, my first marriage didn't work that way, he would always want his mother to be the head over me. And my first child was born, I couldn't go buy my baby clothes, his mother had to go buy the baby clothes, I couldn't go buy no groceries, she'd do the buying the grocery, and so I got tired of that. But my last husband, I and him always make them decision together, and I always bought the grocery because he never did want to buy the grocery, but I'd be the one to go to buy it. He would provide me with the money and I would go buy the grocery. | 18:52 |
Leslie Brown | What kind of work did your mother do? Did she work- | 19:58 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Mm-hmm. Yeah, she worked out there in that field. | 20:01 |
Leslie Brown | How was your life different from your mother's life? | 20:06 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, I don't see too much different in it, my mother was a hardworking woman and I came up working hard, so I don't see too much a different in it, I really don't. | 20:13 |
Leslie Brown | Did you ever hear any stories about your grandparents? | 20:38 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, I knew my mother's mother real good, I knew her father, I was a small kid, but I can remember him very much. I was small when my daddy's parents died, I can remember her name like that, but not too much about her life. | 20:42 |
Leslie Brown | You ever hear any stories about them? | 21:22 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, not really, no. | 21:25 |
Leslie Brown | Were they slaves? | 21:28 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I think my grandmother was, my two grandmothers and my grandfather, I really think they were slaves. | 21:33 |
Leslie Brown | So did men and women do different jobs when you were farming? | 21:53 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, yeah, in one respect they did, because the men did the plowing, and womens didn't do plowing. And then the men would fetch the peanuts, pull fodder, they'll be stripping the leaves off in the corn stalks and womens didn't do that. But so far as the shaking the peas, picking the cotton, and doing the chopping, and housing the tobacco, the women did all that as well as men. | 22:07 |
Leslie Brown | Who had responsibility for taking care of the children? | 22:54 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, that was more my mother's job, because my daddy helped her, but I think she had little more responsibility over that than he did. So far as keeping us in line, they was together on that, but preparing they food and they clothes, that was my mother's responsibility. | 23:11 |
Leslie Brown | You said you had 11 children? | 23:44 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah. | 23:46 |
Leslie Brown | When did you have your first one? | 23:48 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I was, I think 19 years old when I had my first child, and that was by my first husband. Yeah, I was somewhere around 19. | 24:05 |
Leslie Brown | Did you go to the hospital to deliver the baby? | 24:24 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | No, I delivered all my children at home. | 24:26 |
Leslie Brown | Mm-hmm. By yourself? With your mother? | 24:28 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | With a midwife. | 24:31 |
Leslie Brown | Who was the midwife? | 24:31 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | My first child was—The lady was named Mary Kinch, called Mary Kinch, and my other children was by—Oh, my God. Hey, Fia, what was that midlady named what lived in Tillery? | 24:43 |
Speaker 1 | Ma? | 25:12 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | What that midlady name what lived in Tillery? | 25:13 |
Speaker 1 | The who? | 25:13 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | The midlady. | 25:14 |
Speaker 1 | Lived in Tillery? | 25:14 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, what that name lived in Scotland Neck? | 25:24 |
Speaker 1 | Anae? | 25:27 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Ania, yeah, that's her, Ania. No, I never been to no hospital, I had all my children right at home. | 25:28 |
Leslie Brown | So you always had a midwife? | 25:49 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, my last two children midwife was named Cozy Edmond. | 25:54 |
Leslie Brown | You know if she's still living? | 26:19 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | No, all of them dead. | 26:21 |
Leslie Brown | Who would get the midwife? | 26:30 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | My husband. | 26:30 |
Leslie Brown | He'd go? | 26:30 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah. | 26:30 |
Leslie Brown | Every time, he'd go? | 26:30 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | That's right. | 26:30 |
Leslie Brown | Did other women have their babies with a midwife also? | 26:39 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah. | 26:42 |
Leslie Brown | And what would happen when the baby was born? | 26:49 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, the midwife would take the baby and cut the cord, put bands on the mother, check in, see how you doing, and if you was doing all right, they'd go home and they'd visit you the second day to see how you getting along. You be doing all right and that'd be last you see of her. And back in them days, they would always tell you not to get up and do nothing until the baby was nine days old, but I had so many children, I had to get up, I would get up and clean my children up, I sure did. And nowadays, I think they did away with all the midwives, everybody got to go to the hospital, and you got most sick young people than you had them days when I was having children. | 26:52 |
Leslie Brown | You don't remember people being very sick? | 28:21 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | No, not the young generation, but the young generation now is sicker than the old generation. Yeah, I had all my children at home, sometimes I wouldn't even let my husband know until it was about time for the baby, then I would call him and tell him, and he'd go get the midwife and get back, the baby would be already born. | 28:24 |
Leslie Brown | What wouldn't you tell him? | 29:03 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I wouldn't tell him that I was having pains. | 29:06 |
Leslie Brown | So did that happen? | 29:16 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Did it happen? | 29:18 |
Leslie Brown | That the midwife got here and the baby was born? | 29:19 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Oh, yeah, several times. And the midwife would come in the door laughing, "All right, I know I won't be here long," and then she'd get in here and say, "My God, this girl already got that baby," (laughs) yes, sir, I'd have that baby right by myself, I sure did. And maybe that's what [indistinct 00:29:50] me today, I don't know. | 29:22 |
Leslie Brown | Who taught you how to raise children? | 29:58 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, I learned with my mother, because as I came up in the world, I would help her take care of hers, so I knew what to do when I got grown already. Yeah, I helped my mother with her children, I prepared the meals, I just didn't let my mother do nothing after I was old enough, all she had to do was sit down and mend the holes in the clothes. I cooked the food, I washed the clothes, I kept the house clean and I kept the yard cleaned. And back in those days, you get a little hole in your clothes, they would call themselves patch it, but now they don't want to wear no patch clothes, but then they'll buy them and buy old patches, raggedy patches, and stick it on them. | 30:02 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | But back in my day, they'd patch them holes and you'd keep wearing them clothes, yeah. So that was my mother's job and I kept her house going, so when I got grown, I already knew what to do. And after I lost her, I tell you, I was proud to know that she had learnt me the way. | 31:03 |
Leslie Brown | What else did you learn from your mother? | 31:41 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, she taught me how to be nice and kind to people, how to give. She always taught me not to look to be paid for everything I do for people, learnt me how to obey, I'll tell you that. I'm 78 years old and today, I'm willing to obey anybody if I know they telling me what's right, and I think that's the most important thing in life, is learn to obey. And in those days, my mother didn't have to knock and beat on me all the time for me to understand what I'm supposed to do, she could just look around at me and I know what she meant. But today, you look around at your child and they go laughing at you, I'm telling you. And a lot of children tell you today, that was the old time and this is the new time, but seem like to me that the old time learned you how to be more respectable than the new time is learning people, because these young crowd out here today don't respect nobody. | 31:44 |
Leslie Brown | What did you learn from your father? | 33:44 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, the same thing, he learnt me how to work, learnt me different choices, how to work, how to obey, how to act when we go in churches and Sunday School, how to be quiet. | 33:44 |
Leslie Brown | What's the happiest thing that you remember about growing up? | 34:24 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Mm-hmm. Well, I tell you, I really don't. Well, when I finished the 10th grade, I was very happy, I was a very happy girl, but I think when I went in the water and was baptized, I guess that was about the happiest day I have had, because I was a happy girl that day. | 34:48 |
Leslie Brown | What was happy about that day? | 35:31 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I just felt good about joining the church, and I always felt good about even just going in the churches anyway, and I felt good that I had come to be a member. And I tell you, I stayed happy most all the time anyway, I never really had too many sad dates when I was growing up, I lived a pretty happy life when I was younger. | 35:33 |
Leslie Brown | Where were you baptized? | 36:22 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Upon beyond the church, when I was baptized, they took it down in the swamp, I was baptized down in the swamp. And I can remember so well, it was so many people, mens were sitting all up in the trees so they could see that baptism. In those days, baptism was wonderful, so many people would be there, but now they just baptized you all in a little pool and can't but one or two see it no way, so the people don't bother about even being there, just a small crowd. But back in them days, it was somebody at them baptize, and them old brothers and sisters would be singing the hymns and ooh, you could just hear the voices ringing down there, and that sound good to me, because like I say, I just always loved to sing. Yeah, that was one thing I dearly loved. | 36:29 |
Leslie Brown | Were there other people baptized at the same time that you were? | 38:09 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Oh, yeah. | 38:12 |
Leslie Brown | Can you describe for me how a baptism— | 38:16 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, they would have us dressed in long dresses and a white towel on our head, and they'd have me instead of lead you down in the water, no, you go down forward till you get to the minister, and when you get to the minister, then they turn you around and you be facing the congregation, and he would say the words that he had to say, and carry on, and bring you up. Yeah, it was happy days back then, very happy. | 38:20 |
Leslie Brown | It sounds like a lot of your life though, was centered around the church. | 39:16 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Yeah, I loved the church, I tell you. And not only them two churches, I was going to other churches too, I mean walking, I walked to those churches. I see the Creek Baptist Church, I would go to Sunday School, come back home, change my clothes, and get in that road, and walk all the way down, come back. I sure Did | 39:22 |
Leslie Brown | You remember the church having homecomings? | 39:56 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Oh, yeah. | 39:59 |
Leslie Brown | What were they like? | 40:01 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | In my mother's day, they cook all that food, put in them baskets and boxes, and they have them long tables built all the way across the church ground, and have all that food up there, because they have homecomings now, but they don't be out under them trees going on like they did in them days. They have it on the inside of the churches now, but way back in them days, there wouldn't be nothing but mules and wagons on the church ground and them people would be having a time. | 40:01 |
Leslie Brown | What did the men do? You said the women cooked, what did the men do? | 40:45 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, they would help them prepare the food. Come on in. | 40:45 |
Speaker 2 | Hey. | 40:45 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Hey, sit down. | 40:45 |
Leslie Brown | Well, is there anything else about the church that you'd like to tell us? | 40:45 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | I guess that's about it. Yeah, that's about it. | 41:46 |
Leslie Brown | Mrs. Thompson, do you have a favorite phrase or a favorite quote? | 41:50 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Have what? | 41:55 |
Leslie Brown | A favorite phrase, or a favorite quote, or a favorite verse from the Bible? | 41:58 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | Well, the Lord is my shepherd and I shall not want. | 42:09 |
Leslie Brown | The 23rd Psalm. | 42:21 |
Addie Pierce Thompson | That's right. | 42:23 |
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