Lola Clyde, 1975-07-03, Interview #6 - MP3 Recording

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SAM SCHRAGER: I guess that what I'm really wondering about, in part, is what children - what kids were like in those days. And what the children of the pioneers when they were kids - what they were interested in. I think of what the kids are interested in today and I imagine that's really quite different.

LOLA GAMBLE CLYDE: Oh, I think so too. Well, I think the kids in those days had to make their own fun, you know. They would cut little wheels off of a tree trunk, you know, 1ike when the tree was about a foot in diameter, eighteen inches in diameter. And those round blocks would make good wheels and then they'd take a little box, apple box or any

wooden boxes - more things came in wooden boxes those days - they could make themselves little wagons. And the girls even as girls down through all the ages, played house. We, my sister and myself, we always had a little playhouse going on. And often we had little rag dolld made. And sometimes we got little china dolls for Christmas. And we had a whole family of them and we added to them and had more children, big families of them. We used to take bottles, put a cork in it and fill the bottles with water and make running water in our house. That was one of the things we dreamed of having, was plenty of water 'cause we had so little water there on the place. And dressing dolls and cooking with the mud pies - all that went on. And making little barns and fields to plow. And taking little potoatoes and making them into little horses and cattle, tiny ones into sheep and pigs. Running little sticks in for legs and horns. And then hooking them up - taking little spools, maybe, and putting nails in them to make harrows. And could go out and harrow the land with those spools full of nails. And any kind of tin cans could be made to work for little plows and that sort of thing. And most of the play had to be pretty much according to our imaginations 'cause we couldn't go into town and just buy anything we wanted for our farms. So we had to make our own, our own little animals and own dolls and our own houses and our own little fields. We played what the adults were doing but we made it in miniture. I think that's the best way I can explain it. And in the winter there was the usual making of wooden sleds to go coasting with. And taking boards and steaming them so the points would turn up and make a sort of a rude sort of skis and putting a leather strap across to hold it on our feet. And go out and slide down the hill on our skis. Those were the games, largely, and the sort of play that we engaged in. It was a replica ofwhat the grown-ups did only done in miniture with the things we could find to use.

SS: Do you think there was much difference between what the little girls did and what the little boys were interested in?

LC: No, no. I think not. I think the boys generally patterned after what their fathers were doing like heading the fields and plowing and seeding and threshing. Threshing was great stuff, that was high adventure. And the girls patterned after what their mothers were doing, what their mothers and the big sisters were doing. That was the thing they did and it was all acted out with dolls. And the boys with their potato horses and their potato - and their other things that they'd made themselves and done themselves.

SS: What do you think the kids thought about their parents and the adults.? And what the adults were doing? You say they were coyping and I guess that makes a lot of sense, but I'm thinking of - were the kids very afraid of their parents in those days?

LC: i think so- l think much more so than now. Nowadays the kids are urged and encouraged to communicate and express themselves, you know, and in those days - my father, being from the old country, he believed that children should be seen and not heard. And one of his favorite expressions was, "Sit down and draw your tail under you," which wasn't very complimentary. Yes, I think the children were much more afraid oftheir parents than the kids are now. Nowadays most of them call their parents by their first name, you know.

SS: Was there more. .. do you think there was more discipline coming from the father than the mother in those days? or who?

LC: Yes,yes. I think the fathers ran the thing and told the women what to do and the children what to do. And I think that's right. And especially the old country men. been up where man was god almighty in the family, you know, the ruler of the roost. And they ran it with an iron hand. And the women were sort of serfs and slaves for them. And I think that was quite true.

SS: I'm thinking now from the kids point of view, would he or she be more likely to go to Mama to try to get something than to go to Papa?

LC: Oh,yes, yes, yes. They'd have to go through Mama. They's come and tell Mama and then she'd have to weddle it out of the head of the house, I think. I think that was generally the way that went.

SS: But as far as the day to day contact, I imagine the kids would see the mother much more than the father.

LC: Yes, thafe right, they saw the mother much more, un huh. Yah, 'cause it was such a hard job just making a living,you know, just getting enough food to fill the stomachs. And then they had such large families most of the people and they'd all come up the hard way where it was just hard to get enough food to eat. And doctors were few and far between. And health wasn't considered a - it didn't have the prime importance that it does now because everybody died much younger. And many of the families would say, "Well, we had fourteen children and we raised seven of 'em." And that was a good average, "We raised seven." There wasn't the health care that developed later on.

SS: What would usually be what would take the children?

LC: Well, in the very early days before we had any kind of toxins, antitoxins, so on and so on, all diptheria. Kids died with diptheria here. There's lots and lots of little graves out in the Moscow cemetery from the year of 1877 , the Black Diptheria swept through. And while we had a couple of real good doctors, we had Dr. Blake -

(End side A)

LC: There's lots of tiny headstones in the Moscow Cemetery that date back to the great Diptheria Epidemics of 1878 and 1877. And there wasn't anything they could do. They didn't have the means of it. Then for many years, diabetes in the young kids was fatal. It was a death sentence when you knew they had diabetes. It wasn't until 1922 that insulin was discovered so you see that's just the beginning. And so many things couldn't be vaccinated for.

SS: What about consumption?

LC: Yes, there was much, much tuberculosis and they called it consumption. And it was tuberculosis of the lungs and it spread like wildfire. Lots of 'em died with that.

SS: Kids?

LC: Yes, young children, young.

SS: Did they have ways of treating it? At least things they tried to do.

LC: Well yes, there were things they tried to do. They put them in bed. (brother Gus Gamble in background) OK, don't - they would put them to bed. Lots - drink lots of milk, that was a favorite thing. Try to build them up. Sunshine, Co Liver oil - that was a favorite remedy for tuberculosis. Drink lots of Cod Liver oil. And they gave it for colds and various things. Drink Cod Liver oil. So they were on the right track of uart of it anyway.

SS: Did they separate the kids that had it?

LC: No, no they never tried to separate 'em. They knew so little about sanitation, about washing your hands before meals, and that sort of thing. And many families lost a lot of the children through tuberculosis. Yeh, that was real bad - and. . .

SS: No - what were vou going to say?

LC: Well, I was^going to say, even measles and things that we don't consider so deadly, oh many complications would arise. They had no way treating 'em and high fever meant nothing to them. They had nothing to reduce the fever with. And they'd wring rags out of cold water and put on the children. And the other favorite thing was to sweat them. Put them in bed and pour hot tea, have them drink lots of hot tea. And put hot irons around them and load the blankets on 'em, and try to sweat it out of 'em. And many of the things were so very primitive and they had so ltttle to do with. And then of course, the overaiypedical knowledge wasn't available. They didn't know you could vaccinate for whopping cough.

SS: Would they use the sweating, was that just for measles or used for various sicknesses?

LC: Well, many things. Any kind of a bad cold they'd sweat it out of you and wrap 'em in blankets. And many of them had a bad cough of any kind, take a piece of flannel, red flannel preferrably, and dip it in coal oil and wrap it around your neck and rub your chest with goose grease. Goose grease and turpentine. And hang the little asafetida sack around your neck. . .

SS: Sack of what?

LC: Asafetida. It was a horrible stinking thing. Not only would it keep the germs away, it would keep everybody else away. Nobody would go near 'em with that stink around 'em. So maybe it had a point there, you know.

SS: Was that made out of. . . was it a medicine?

LC: It was kind of a wax. It was kind of a little wax thing and it was called asafetida. And I'm not sure what it was made out of now. I'd have to go look it up for you. But that was a favorite remedy and the stink of it was enough to - it must have been highly potent to smell like it did.

SS: Well, did kids tend to get sicker more easily then besides the fact that they didn't have any vaccinations.

LC: Yes, oh yes. I'm sure they did. They didn't have the vitamins. They weren't so conscious of health. The sanitation was so poor, water was scarce. They didn't wash their hands before meals, they didn't brush their teeth three times a day, they knew so little about the right food. You'd get an orange once a year at Christmas time, you'd get an orange. Most all of the early day farms in this country, ofcourse, had apples. And they believed in eating apples but there was no orange juice like we have nowadays. They, most of the early homesteaders had milk cows, of course, and they knew the when they did got to town some sort of remedy, it was generally Cod Liver Oil. And then turpentine to mix with goose grease and rub it on their chests for congested lungs and that sort ofthing. And calomel, if there was anything wrong with the digestive system it was "give a dose of calomel" or "a dose of That was the cureall for everything And they certainly, when it comes medicine-wise, they certainly weren't very good old days as far as we know them.

SS: Can you remember sickness in your family, with any of the kids?

LC: Oh yes, I remember lots of sickness among us and ft was generally sore throats, and coughing and croup. And croup was. . of course, they did know to use the steam kettle in those days. And an onion poultice, they'd chop up a lot ofonions and fry them till they were mushy and put it in a flannel rag and put that on the chest to relieve the croup symptoms, the choking symptoms. And hot foot baths were great stuff - that was to get up a sweat. And then when you got the sweat running off ofyou, you'd go in to bed and pile the blankets on. And that would break up the fevers.

SS: Did it work?

LC: Oh, I don't think so. I hold no grief for any of those old folk medicines. I just I never have. And the first time I heard of polio, my little cousin got it. And they had lost one boy with spinal meningitis and then this next little boy got infantile paralysis and it left him crippled. But they knew nothing to do for it. You just hoped that you wouldn't get it and that was all. So we've come a long way and I don't enjoy those good old days half as much as some people do. I just like to think about some good toxins, antitoxins , some good immunization for the children. When I started teaching school about 1920, the first thing I was wanting to do was^Jet every child in the school vaccinated for everything there was a vaccine for. And I was instrumental in getting the health unit started in the town of Moscow because I'd just seen so much suffering and so much unnecessary sickness by lack of it. And every place I went to teach, the first thing I tried to do was get health nurses to get out and put on a good immunization program, especially for the rural children.

SS: Were you here when the flu hit? during - before WWI?

Oh yes, yes. I was in high school, and they closed the high school down. And our superintendent, J.H. Rich, died with it. And many, many people just died. There was just nothing - there was just no remedy for it. And we had soldiers, some unit stationed here at the University taking ROTC training and drilling and that sort of thing. And they set up beds in the big gymnasium. Just rows and rows of bunk beds and every bed was filled. There'd be six, seven hundred kids sick at a time lying there in the gymnasium on cots. And it was bad.

Do you remember the course that that flu took? The sequence of events that.

Well, it generally led to pneumonia. Pneumonia was, I think, was what killed 'em off. They started in with a fever and with a head cold and then it went to the lungs. And I'm sure it was pneumonia that finished them. Their lungs would fill up with fluid and they were gone. And a lot of it. . .they went fast. It wasn't a long drawn-out process. s s Did that hit the children very hard too? That flu?

LC: Yes, it hit the children too. It just hit, and of course, the old and the young who were the least - had the least resistence, they were the ones that went first. And our school must have been closed for three months here in Moscow because the flu was just everywhere. There was nobody to go and nobody to teach. They were all down with the flu.

SS: Did most people that got it recover?

LC: Oh yes. I'm sure the majority recovered. But you can look back and think of many who didn't. And it wasn't all the old and the young. Mrs. Bob West, who was a beautiful woman about 28, got it and died. J.H. Rich was a powerful man and he was still in the prime of life, maybe 45 and wasuperintendent of Moscow schools, and he died with it. Many, many of them died with it. And it wasn't all the old and the young either, it was many of the robust and. .

SS: What was the treatment at the time? Just lying down in bed?

LC: Oh, just go to bed. That was about all they did. Yah.

SS: Well, getting back to medicine and health on, for the kids on the homesteads or the country farms. What about the role that midwives played or neighbors played? Un-huh, yes. Oh yes, that was very prevalent. Most of them, they thought that it was just ridiculous bothering about doctors, as having a baby was the most normal thing in the world. And your next door neighbor came in and delivered the baby and severed the cord, and wrapped him up and brought down hot soup and chicken dinners for them and doctored them? And after they had been in bed two weeks they could get up and take care of their baby. And that was about the way that went. I don't remember the early women getting out of bed the third day and getting up, you know. But I guess it was done, to some extent. But most of them it was the only rest they got, was when they had their babies. So they'd take their yearly vacation by going to bed for two weeks and have another baby. And that was about the way it went.

SS: They were supposed to stay in bed for two weeks after the baby was born and not get up at all.?

LC: Yes,yes. No, oh, the last couple of days maybe they could get up and stagger around a little bit. But that certainly made them weaker instead of getting up, why but there were some women who prided themselves that as soon as the baby was born,they ^got right out of bed and did up the washing, wa shed up the bloody clothes . And, of course, those stories generally got better with the telling too, you know. As the years went by it got more , it got better and better.

SS: Well, did the - were the midwives just a neighbor or was it a woman who had special training in delivering?

LC: Well, I don't think they had much training. There was always a granny woman, you know, like the granny woman K ushered Abraham Lincoln into the world. They were noted for their skill at it. And these granny women, they had no extra training. They just had had a little more experience doing it, I think. And we had a very wonderful woman that ushered in a lot of our family into the world, and her name was Mrs. George Tucker. They called her Grandma Tucker and the baby wasn't really officially born if she hadn't ushered it into the world. They came from all over to get Grandma Tucker to officiate at the birth. And. . . I guess that was as good as any.

SS: Can you remember, are there any other rules that somebody like Grandma Tucker went by besides they had to stay in bed for two weeks? Did you .. .

LC: Well, lots of beef tea, they would give them lots of beef tea and lots of hot tea so they could nurse their baby, make lots of milk. There was great hocus pocus about what to do to have healthy babies. And the granny women would tell about "don't look at the full moon or the new moon", you know. And "don't let the moon shine on the baby's face" after the baby was born. And there was much talk about cats would come in the room and suck the baby's breath. Keep all the cats away otherwise the cats would come and jump right up on the crib and suck the baby's breath and kill it.

SS: That's interesting.

LC: Yes, and that sort of thing. And I think those were old wives' tales. When I think of those, it seems to me like it's just the old wives' tales. And there was much talk about "you mustn't eat tomatoes or you give the baby colic." And "don't eat anything with acid in it, it'll give the baby colic." And there were all kinds of colic remedies. "Give a teaspoon full of peppermint in a cup of hot water and spoon a tittle of that down the baby." And oh, there were many, many croup remedies and colic remedies.

SS: What about surrounding the birth itself, were the midwives vary. . .did they stress cleanliness very much?

LC: Well, there was much putting on washtubs full of boiling water, and having the house full of steam. And yes, there were certain rituals of washing your hands, you know. Otherwise you'd get Septicemia and blood poisoning and there was much boiling of water and boiling of rags and that sort of thing. Preceded and following the birth.

SS: Was it customary for the husband to be in attendance?

LC: oh yes- i think the husband was there assisting the granny woman. I think it took all of them. Yes, I think that's right.

SS: What about for just the ordinary sicknesses that the family would have, would they call in the doctor very, likely to do that? Or would a neighbor come in and help there or. . .

LC: No- Yes they'd call each other and ask what to do. "He has a bad cough and what shall we do?" Then there was much, putting turpentine on a lump of sugar and swallowing the lump of sugar. And much coal oil and lard mixed together. And turpentine and lard and rub it all over your chest and over your neck. Those were the standard remedies. And the prevention was this, hanging this bag of asafetida in a little flannel - it had to be a little red flannel bag that you made - you put in this cake of wax called asafetida. Then you hung that around your neck on a string and you generally put that on in the fall and wore it till spring. And that was to ward off diseases and colds and croup and all kinds of bad things. And as I say, the main thing"^probably it kept away people who had colds, and you didn't catch it from them. The stink was so outrageous.

SS: Do you think that kids were afraid of getting sick in those days? Do you remember feeling that way?

LC: Well, yes, I remember there was a smallpox scare at one time. And my father put some carbolic acid in a pan of water and he got a little whist broom and he went about sprinkling everybody in all the house with that carbolic acid water. Ife a wonder he didn't kurn some of our skin with the darn stuff, but he thought that the carbolic acid in that water^Would sure help. That would disinfect the air and disinfect us kids and then we wouldn't get this smallpox that was going around. And there was fear alright. And it would be, "Everybody stay home now," and we never went very many places anyway. "Now stay home because there's a big epidemic of this disease." And "stay right here," and "Don't you dare leave the ranch, don't you dare go anyplace. Stay right here or you'll catch it."

SS: Were those epidemics like that or was it a real epidemic with a lot of- like half the families come down with it?

LC: Oh, I don't know that it was that bad. I really don't know, but it was a good way to keep the kids at home anyway. Keep them home by scaring them that if they went to town or if they'd went anyplace they'd come down with these terrible diseases that were going around.

SS: You think the parents wanted to keep the kids at home in those days?

LC: Yes, I think so. Um-hum. I know my parents did. They thought all the evil, bad things in the world went on up in town and to keep your kids away from it was the thing to do. Keep 'em away from the evil and the drinking and the carousing and the immorality of the big city of 3,000 people that Moscow was at that time.

SS: Would they mind if you went to another farm? Would that be OK?

LC: Well, I didn't do much going I can tell you. We had some neighbors that lived in the house just above us and we went there once in a while, but not very often. We stayed right at home. And I think that was the way with most of the farms, the kids stayed right at home and there was lots of work for them. There was - I never had to milk cows, but most of the kids had so many cows to milk, and so many pigs and chickens to feed. All kinds of chores. They'd have to hurry home from school and try to get the chores done by suppertime. And that would be from 4-6. If they got home by half-past 4 why then they had to work like the dickens to get the chores done by time to eat supper.

SS: Besides milking, what did they have to do?

LC: Well, they have to - some of them had separators later on when I was growing up, lots of them had cream separators and they separated the cream from the milk. Then they'd feed the skim milk to the calves and the pigs and things. Well, all of them had chickens and livestock of all kinds that had to be cared for and that was the job of the children. Then in those days they didn't have any oil burning things,it was,"bring in enough wood", you know, to run the fires all night and get the fires going in the morning again. That was generally the job of the boys, was to keep the woodbox clear full of wood. And that was quite a little challenge.

SS: Would the girls do this milking too?

LC: Yes, oh yes.

SS: How did you get away with not having to do that?

LC: Wel1 l had four brothers. I had four brothers much older than I was. And that was their job, was to go milk the cows. So I didn't have to do that. I helped Momma, set the tables and do up the dishes after supper and that was about my limit.

SS: Did the girls learn to cook quickly?

LC: Oh yes, yes. Yes. Lots of the little gals could make bread. They had to, you know. And then they could sew and it was great teaching them fancy stitches, you know. How to embroider and how to knit and how to crocket and how to tat. All those things were the womanly accomplishments.

SS: How young would girls do this work, then?

LC: Oh, start real early. The three and four year old like. They'd have little - be sewing for dolls you know, and making things for their dolls and$hey progressed. I was a reader. I played with dolls too maybe until I was ten or so, maybe much older. But I loved to read and the minute I started in so I could read for myself, it was like a new world had opened up to me. I just read everything, read everything I could get my hands on. Even if I had to go iron clothes, I'd prop up the book and iron a few strokes and read at the same time, you know. I just loved to read and that was what was - and I guess that's why I escaped lots of housework. It was easier just to go - for mama just go do it herself then it was to pry me loose from the books.

SS: What kind of attitude do you think the parents had towards their kids in those days? It sounds as though, not only didn't they pamper the kids at all, it sounds like - almost they didn't value them as much, as they do nowadays.

LC: I think, of course, my father had been brought up in the old country, in strict accordance with the old biblical instruction of "spare the rod and spoil the child." You were not to pamper them in any way and that there was lots of evil spirits inside of them and thing was to train these children in the way they should go in their youth and then in their maturity they would not depart from this way they should go. And I think there was that feeling all right. So I think that there was much of that. They wanted to do their duty as they saw it. And they thought children weren't old enough or competent to choose which was the right path. And the parents had to guide them and show them and teach them. You know, that sort of thing.

SS: That's certainly different then the way they believe about kids now. Certainly the idea that kids were bundles of sin is - I don't think is the way we look at our children.

LC: no,no,no. Nowadays we are so permissive. Maybe we've gone the other way. We're so permissive we let them tell us what to do, you know.

SS: Well, did that include beating the kids or hitting them, punishing 'em?

LC: Oh, yes. I think so. That was the duty of the fatherto see that they were brought up in rightousness and fear of the Lord and respect; their parents. And it even went as far as if my father had to go cut a switch, he would cut a switch and use it on the kids. And that was just for their own salvation and their own good, you know.

SS: What would be the sort of a thing, the sort of an act that a kid would do that would arise that kind of a beating.

LC: Well in our family it was generally the boys fighting with each other. They'4 be fighting over this and that and really fighting, you know. Giving each other bloody noses and so on. And then my father would have to step in to settle the dispute. And he'd get a switch and "lay-on" , you know.

SS: Would they be fighting over the things that they had or. . . ?

LC: Well, what they had to do too. They'd go after the cows and get into a big argument the cows home. And blame each other for what went wrong and then, "You did" and didn't" and "yes, you did." "No you didn't" and pretty soon it'd be blows and pretty soon all of them coming home crying and my dad cutting a switch and straightening the boys out. Telling them this has got to stop, this fighting.

SS: Was he easier on the girls?

LC: Yes, he really was. I can't really remember him ever switching us. But he was always threatening that he was going to. But I remember him getting switches to switch the boys with.

SS: What about the mothers attitude towards the kids? Do you think that, in those days, the mother was far, far more closer to the kids?

LC: Yes i do Yes- I think so. Im sure of that. My mother never corrected except in the most gentle way, you know. She would like have been able to have done more for us. But my father had very ill health and wasn't able - he knew nothing Soabout farming. And he just didn't have the money to do with. So that's bad too, you know.

SS: Would the kids feel very free to come to the mother?

LC: Yes, I think we did. We all talked to Mama. Yes, if we wanted this or needed that or wished we could have that. But we were realistic kids too. We knew that she didn't it and that Papa didn't have it. And there was just nothing to do but to try and get out and get jobs ourselves. That's why I was determined to become a teacher. Because, to me, that opened up a way of getting money, you know. I could be independent then. I could do things for Mama. And I was driven by a great desire to be able to help her alittle bit, so she could have some new shoes andjttes and things. And when I graduated from high school I wanted to start in and teach just as fast as I could. And I knew that by going to Normal School for one year, I could get a teacher's certificate and that's just what I did. And almost the first thing I did, I bought my mother a new coat, a new winter coat. And that gave me great, great pleasure. And I had, a way back in my mind at one time, thought I'd like to be a lawyer. But I never was able to save enough money to do that. Here come (break)

I wonder whether if many of the pioneer kids had really difficult childhoods, childhoods that had so much adversity and problems with the families getting by and getting established.

I think so. I think many, many of 'em did. I can look back at old school pictures, you know, of all the kids we went to school with, and there was so few of them ever got to go on to college. Of course, didn't have the ability but they didn't get the encouragement at home either. It was "How fast can you get out and help us in the fields?", you know. And in those days when you drove teams and the farms were small, the income was very meager, and there were very few of the kids, that I went to the country school with - very few of them went on to college and were educated and got to go out into the more productive fields of life.

Well, I think maybe some people would feel that kids aren't so aware of what's going on , but I personally think that they are.

Oh, I do too! We knew everything that was going on. We knew how hard it was for Papa to pay the taxes and I was just as worried about it when I was eight and nine years old as I was when I got to be nineteen and twenty years old. I was just as worried about where the money was coming from. And I think children do realize and they share in the parents' worries, you know. And that's why I think even yet that parents don't realize all the worries that kids do have and how the worries of the old folks are reflected in their lives. And it's alot more tragic for them because they can do nothing about it. And the parents should be very careful not to let the kids know how worried they are about ^ mortgage coming due or about "can we pay the taxes?", and "How are we going to pay the grocery bill." I don't think they should really worry the kids too much about that, try to make it as little - of course, nowadays everybody should have all they want to eat with the set-ups that we have but they don't know how very real those worrit are to children. When you think that - you think they don't know what's going on, well, you'd be surprised how well they know what's going on, you betcha.

(End Side B)

LC: I think so too. Yeh. Oh, I think so.

SS: Kids probably in the early days, did show the signs of what. . .what they were concerned about and worried about?

LC: Yes, Yes, I'm sure of that. I'm sure of that. And I think that some of the delinquent acts of the kids are the result of the frustrations and the worries that they experience, you know. I really think so.

SS: When you were teaching, just as a young woman and having the kids and having to deal with them day after day, the same kids, did you see a lot of that?

LC: oh yes- I had a first grade boy that came to me one morning and he said, "You know, mens is awful mean to womens." I said, "What makes you say that?" He said, "My dad makes my mother cry every morning." And he was real concerned about his mother crying every morning. And I said, "Oh, well. Often a man and his wife quarrel over things and she might cry, yet they have an understanding between them, you know. And you mustn't worry about that." Oh, yes he was though. He was about crying himself that his mother was being treated so badly. And, ah -

SS: What happened? Did it just go on like that, no change?

LC: Wel1 finally don't think it was that serious. I think the woman kinda was using tears as a weapon, you know, to get her own way. But the little boy was^ worried about that, real concerned. Another little boy came and told me that his father and mother were going to separate and he didn't know what would become of him then, you know. And another little boy came to tell me his uncle was in jail. And I tried to laugh that one off because I knew the uncle was kinda fond of drinking, you know. And I said, "Oh, well, it won't be long and he'll be out." "No," he said, "I don't want him out. I want him to stay right there in jail until he learns better." So that was - he knew better tha n I did. But children's worries are very real to them. Much more than when we are adults 'cause when we are adults we just, you know, we just can take it more in our stride. We think "The Lord's in his heaven; all's right with the world." But when we're little, we really have lo s of things to worry about. Every age has its own worries. I'm like Fanny Hearst, I'm glad I don't have to be sixteen. I'd rather be sixty than sixteen because then nobody can ever hurt me like the boys used to hurt me when I was sixteen^ I didn't get a dance. And that's about the way I feel about it. I don't ever want to be hurt again like I was when I was little. Nobody can ever hurt me again that way.

SS: You mean the kids, in their, in their work? Do you feel that in their studies i n school, and in their work that they did, do you think they showed - that their problems came out in that too?

LC: Yes 1 think so- Yes, I think that they did. I often had kids that had to rush so. And they didn't want to have to stay after school and it wasn't because ofthe shame of it, it wasn't the tribulation. It was, "By golly, my mother and my dad'll be mad at me that I didn't get home in time to help with the chores." See, they were worse scared of that. It wasn't that they were worried about me as a teacher, they were worried about getting home and what would go on at home when they got there 'cause they were late to help with the work. The work was ofthe greater importance than the discipline or the training of the child. It was 'get him right home there and get him out there taking care of those cows," you know. Yes. We've come a long way, I think. I think we've come a long way in both women's liberation and in the liberation of the children and the liberation of the homes. I think we've come a long way.

SS: Were there many opportunies for the kids when you were teaching?

LC: Oh, no.

SS: i was thinking of in their work, their own spirit and their hopes and their dreams about the future?

LC: Oh, well, I suppose there was 'cause we often talked about what they'd like to when they grew up. And that sort of thing. We didn't have the counseling that we have now. We didn't have time, you know, it was all we could do to get those three R's taught and their noses wiped and their hands clean, and their overshoes off and on, especially in the rural schools. But I know in the rural schools where I taught, many of my big girls went on to become teachers themselves. And the reason they gave for that was that I always told them what fun it was to teach. That this was our immortality. That we dipped our fingers in immortality and it went on and on out into the lives ofpeople, we could influence people. And many, many of my big girls I'd say, "Now, you take the first grade, and you take 'em out in the hall while I do something else. You go and hear this class spell while I do this." 'Cause when you had 38-40 kids in all eight grades, you just had to. And many, many of those older girls in those rural schools that I taught, went on to become teachers, and good teachers. And one ofthose girls came back after retiring from the schools of Sacramento and said, "The funny thing was, the things I learned at Normal School, and later at the University, weren't the things I put in practice.

It was the things I saw you do back as a first and second grade teacher." She said, "I remember you doing what you called 'corn writing'. You'd take and write a new word on the top of the desk with a piece of chalk. You'd give them a little match box full of corn, little grains of corn and they were to cover the new word with corn and you called it corn writing." And she said, "I didn't know at the time that it was the kinetic sense that you were developing in them. That they got the form of the word by covering over that word with corn." She said, "It looked like just something to keep 'em busy and keep 'em out of your hair. But," she said that, "we learned since that that was good, that was good psychology. They got the feel of the formation of the word in their muscles and it helped impress it on their minds that that was the word." And she told many other things that I had taught them because it was a handy way, the kids like to do it, and that was a good way because they enjoyed it, It made fun of it rather than a problem out of it. I had little bits of pieces of steel that I clipped into the mouths of a whole bunch of fish, maybe a hundred fish. And on the fish I'd write the new words that they'd learned. So many new fish today. And then they'd took a little bit of a magnet and catch these fish. And every time they caught one, they named what the word was. Well, it was just really busy work to keep them out of your hair for a few minutes while you taught somebody else. But it worked 'cause they loved it. They would sit - and then they'd say the word when they caught it.

SS: What would they use to catch the fish?

Amagnet, a little tiny magnet. And that would pick up the steel, see, in the mouth of the fish. And then in order to keep the fish, they had to be able to name it. If they didn't know it, it had to be thrown back. But if they knew what that word said, then that was their fish. And then they soon learned because they wanted to keep everyone, every fish they caught they wanted to keep. And those were just little gimmicks but it seemed to work. And it was better than them sitting there doing nothing or getting into devilment, lets putit that way. And some of it must have stuck because these young girls who went on to become teachers said, *vercy, they used the little things I had taught them that was used over and over and over again.

That's very interesting. Did you feel that your kids,when you were teaching them, did you feel that they were smart, they had a lot of basic intelligence?

Oh, yes,yes! I had great respect for all my children. They were good children. And I was like amother to them. I knew there were some children had black eyes and some had blue. And some were a little quicker in the reading than others. But I always knew that they were all going to go out and make a big contribution in the world. And I see'Jow, all over when I go and meet them, and the things they remember best are always what good times they had. And how I took their hand and went out and played Blackman with them. AndKtake them and run through so they wouldn't get caught. And the little kids remember that so well. And it's always the fun and the nice things that they remember. There's my phone, (break)

Yes, and it was good because they absorbed what you had taught them. They went back and expressed it themselves in their own way. And that impresses on their own little minds, you know. Yes, I think that's a good way. And often the new words, we'd new words on the board, you know, and they'd say the words over. And any word Kthat could be illustrated, we'd sent them back to the seat, "now draw a picture ofthose words that you can tell what it means." They could draw a house, a girl, a dog, a cat, various things, you know. Then there were such words as up and down and that sort of thing. Antf they could draw pictures to illustrate what up meant anc^down meant- And there's some words that its pretty hard to draw anything to show what it means but they could skip those but do the ones, the new words, that meant something, draw a picture that would show us what that word was talking about.

SS: So you say you have them do the ends of the stories too?

LC: Um-hum,um-hum. "How do you think it would end up, now what do you think?", you know. And that made it interesting for them. It involved them in the planning. It was one way of holding attention.

SS: Did they have crayons?

LC: Oh, yes. Um-hum. I can't remember even back in the early 1900's when I was a little girl in school, even then we had what we called coloring pencils. And they were like the - they weren't crayons, they were - had the wooden foundation but inside was the colored pencil. And that's what we used more than m used crayolas. Then the crayolas about 1910-1912, they came in. But at first, when I first started to school we had what they called the coloring pencils.

SS: Well, you were aaying that - a little while ago ^- that when you - you wouldn't want to have to suffer what you did at sixteen and didn't get asked to a dance. LC: Yes, that's right.

SS: Well, I was wondering about that. What was it like for the teenage girls? Girls that were growing up and...

LC: The high school days those days were just very, very difficult. Very difficult

I grew up in the war years. I entered Moscow High School with a class of 110. I graduated with a class of 40, all the rest had gone to war. And of that class, there were only about 12 boys,all the rest were girls. Everybody else had gone away to the First World War.

SS: When you say difficult, what do you mean?

LC: Well, I mean difficult all the way around. There wasn't the same opportunity for girls to do things that are today. There was - well, they could sing, they could do that. But there was no girls' atheletics, as I remember it. We weren't - nowadays the girls go out and play baseball, they play basketball, they have running and jumping. All kinds of atheletic things they can do. In those days it was only the boys. They were allowed to have a girl's glee club and they could have a girls' debate team. But the girls couldn't be on the boys debate team - no. And themj* the only kind - they weren't allowed to dance in the high school and there were no dances allowed. And that meant that the girls then and the boys were going out to Joel to - oh - the kind of trashy public dances where there would be drinking and that sort of thing, instead of having nice little high school dances with teachers there chaproning and keeping things going. And there wasn't the individual help and counseling that they have now. There was, of course,teachers were - just even as today - the teachers were all under paid and overworked. And the main thing was, watch that clock and get out of here, beat the kids out the door if you can. And in the meantime, the smart ones would learn in spite of 'em, and the dumb ones wouldn't learn anyway, and what the heck. And that was just about the way it went.

And it was tough, it was really tough go round. But in the Moscow High School I had one most outstanding teacher. And that was an old gentleman named R-v. Morse. Highly trained, he was educated in the East. He was a graduate of Dartmouth, mind you. And he was a reverend on top of that. Afine history teacher. He taught you one day, the next day you reviewed it and the third day he had what he called the You wrote what you remembered from the day before yesterday and you came in and carried that notebook with you. Then he went through today's lesson, had been assigned and he said, "Now we'll review what we had yesterday" and he'd pick out the highlights ofyesterday's lesson. "Now get out your books and we'll read your re-review. Mr. So-and-so," and he called all the boys mister and the girls miss. And, my!, we felt grown-up. "Now Miss will you read your re-review?" And I can remember just like yesterday, the 6th of April, I was a sophomore and we went into old Rev. Morse's history class and he knew that all the history wasn't inside that little history book he said. And Old Revs Morse handed me the morning Spokesman Review, and he said - because I was a^reader-he said, "Lola, will you read President Wilson's message to Congress?" And I read and after all these years, I remember just like yesterday, the closing words were,"And the time has come when America is privileged to spend her blood for those principles which gave her birth. God helping her, she can do no other." And after all those years I still - and that's sixty years ago, I can still remember that. He passed me the mining Spokesman and said, "Will you read President Wilson's message to Congress?"

And of the boys who listened there that morning, two of them were to die in the First World War, Holt Gushing on the Italian Front and Juet Barnes in the Argonne Forest. And they sat there and listened that morning as I read President Wilson's Declaration of War. Isn't that something?

SS: Yes, it really is.

Well, all those years. But he knew that it was more important to bring up that day's lesson than it was to bring out the book and read about the Revolutionary War. Isn't that something?

What about socially, Lola, as far as the teenage girls and getting to know the boys and dating and all that? You say that there weren't dances, there wasn't too much of an opportunity?

Oh, no. There was no nice opportunities. There were still boys following girls down the streets into some dark alley, and the cars were just beginning - people were just beginning to get cars when Iwas there. And any boy with acar that stopped to ask any girl to go for a ride, he just had one thought in mind. In those days, these things weren't so free and open - it was such an ungodly sin and you were all warned by your parents and by the teachers. "E-gods,don't you look at a boy, don't you get in acar with a boy, you'll be raped immediately." And.

SS: It was almost that blunt?

Oh, yes, that was the way, you know. And then there was only two kinds of girls. The good girls and the bad girls. And the good girls just minded what their mothers said and the only place they ever saw aboy was up at on Saturday night maybe once amonth, maybe. And they just went to such extremes, you know.

Well, what did they think. . .did the girls know the facts of life?

Oh, no,no. Some of them thought the babies still came from heaven,you know, and they were very immature. And they were just fallen girls and good girls. And somehow, even back in those days, there were quite few little and had a surprise baby. I knew quite a few little shotgun weddings, as I remember it. So when they start in telling me about all this "lying around in the bushes" and "this dope", I could just laugh at most of them and say, "Well, now honey, I kinda remember when you had a shotgun wedding yourself." 'Cause I remember when, you know. So I'm not so uptight about it. I went on to become a club mother for future hornet lakers and so on, here about in the 1950's when my little girls were in college and in high school. And my little girls were popular, they had no need of lying in the bushes with anybody, they were popular without it. But I remember bringing in that little OAC film about "Of Human Growth" and it was a little story that you should probably start back in the sixth grade telling about human reporduction and how a baby grew, you know. And I showed it to these little Future Homemakers, who were high school girls. And ee-gods, you should have heard the town almost go up in smoke, that what was I doing?! I was just putting sex right in the school. Well, I said, "My gosh, this sex has been going on a good many years. You know, we don't have any monopoly on it. Since the days of Adam and Eve we've been having sex, so why not tell these kids the facts?" See? Tell 'em the truth.

And as club mother, one little girl from one of the nice families - that called themselves a nice family told me. . .the home economics teacher discovered that she was pregnant fitting a dress on her. So she wanted me to go and talk to the little gal, because, why, she might loose her job if she mentioned such a thing to one of the girls. So I talked to her and the little girl cried and, yes. "Well," I said, "now honey, you're going to have to have a little help." Oh, no. She was just going to kill herself and be done with it. Oh-h-h, isn't that terrible. Wouldn't we have been a bunch ofold stick-in-themuds if we'd a sat there? "Well," I said, "That's no answer. We're not going to go killing ourselves. That's too fatal; that's too ended. We' 11 work out things." And we did.

And I remember my little girls who were pretty and popular and had just lots of things, we planned a little shower for this pregHant girl and we didn't dare have it at school so we just had it out at our house. And all the little girls came out and made things, and we thought up names for the new baby and we just had a fine time. And everything went off just fine. The little girl didn't have to kill herself and she sent the baby to one of the homes for awhile. And after she got grown and got out and got a job, she went back and got the baby and it's a fine, respectable little man nowadays, you know. So we've come a long way. Nowadays the gals are smart enough to say, why, they did it on purpose. And I like that. I don't like th'. V'l'm going to throw myself under the next train. I'm pregfeant and mama's gonna just have forty fits."

Well, did this make - for the girls in high school when you were young who really didn't know the facts of life at all -did this make things a lot more difficult for them as far as . .. ?

Um-hum. Oh yes! It was just pathetic. It was just pathetic 'cause any girl that had a lot of boyfriends hanging around, even if they were just laughing and joking, and having fun, "Oh, she must be afallen woman." "Just look at that girl - there's three boys talking to her. What are they? What do they have in mind?" And I don't know, it seems to me that all those old gossips want to relive their own youth in the lives of the other youth that they see,you see. And as I told - after I got^to be teaching and witches would come complaining to me, you know, about it, I said to one mother - this was after I was counselor to these girls in the high school - I said, you know there's just this about it. We may get toxoid to do these things ourselves but we're never too old to talk about it, you know." And ife sometimes a second hand thrill, they're so interested. I have to ask you, did you see my letter to the Forum the other day?

SS: No,no.

LC: Well,you should have read it. You missed something.

SS: Well l don't read the Idahonian, I just read the Tribune.

LC: This was in the Idahonian. Ted called me and asked me if I would write one. And I said, "No, I never write to the editor. I think it just lowers your effectiveness." "No," he said, "write one for me." And because he's such a good guy, I wrote one. And you should have heard even members of my church calling me, "Oh, Lola, I was *o disappointed in what you said. Why didn't you take that opportunity to just really lambast these kids that are lying in the bushes and smoking pot and drinking? What an opportunity, right on the front page and with the blessings of Ted Stanton." I said, "Do you think any of the kids would alive read it? Why. . ."

SS: What did you write?

I'll go get it for you. I'll go get it for you because it's kind of funny. Lots of people called up and said they. .. (break)

You were saying was, did this - the bad words - the misguiding that the girls got, did it make them afraid of boys?

Didn't seem to. By golly, there were - as I said before - there were quite a few shotgun weddings around there. It didn't seem to have any damper on it. There were shotgun weddings, there were premature babies in those days and I don't think all of this preachina did very much good, you know. If it had solved anything, it had've been different.

SS: Well, did the good girls know who the bad girls were? I mean was it. . ?

LC: No, that was the fun of it, they didn't know. They didn't know who bad girls were. They just - a - as I say the popular girls were always under suspicion, you see. And that's the way other girls justified their great virtue and their lack of dates, was "Well, of course, she, you know, she's. . . . ,you know." And they really didn't know anything about it. But it was just such a hang ups. . .

SS: The good girls really didn't know what they were talking about?

LC: No, they didn't even know what they were talking about. And so many of the good girls, if they didn't get pregaant in high school, lots of them got pregnant in college and just don't know what all this great talk about was back in those days. You just wonder,you know. And of course, I'd like to read Carol Ryrie Brink because she goes back even beyond me to Moscow back in the gay '90's and that's before I was born. But she gives us a picture there about the houses on the other side of the tracks, you know. So I - no, I as I told my darling little future homemakers who were darling, sweet little girls, this thing called sex has been going on a long time. And I feel to you that all children should be wanted children. And nowadays with all these means of contraception being put into the hands of these kids, there is really no excuse for any other way. All children should be wanted children and we will have solved most of the dilemma for the kids.

SS: When a boy and a girl did go together in those days, what was the courting like?

LC: Well, it was going out, maybe to - they called them the "rough-neck dances", and those were the dances out in the country, like out around Joel. Out at aplace called, well yes, Robinson Park - it had a different name - they called if Roland's Park. And that was open air dancing and in a sort of a - you know - and in the summer that was very suspect to be seen out around Roland's Park which is now Robinson Lake, at one of those public dances. And the people, the girls whose parents had money, of course, the kids could come to the houses and dance a little. But they weren't allowed to dance in the high school. You could go down to what they called Eggans Hall and that was a public dance again, you could go down there and dance. That was kind of suspect too, that wasn't avery good place to be seen. And the courting,I think , mostly was going to the picture show. That was great stuff. And going down to Chirrs and getting a banana split afterwards. That was the heighth of luxury. And before the cars came in - which the cars didn't get really very plentiful until about 1916-17 - before that it was rent a horse and buggy at the livery stable and go for a little ride. Of course, the farm boys - when they got about 21 - the father equips each one with ahorse and buggy so he could go out courting. And that was the purpose of the new horse and buggy, was to launch a son in the matrimonial field. He could go take the girls riding. So that was kinda the way it was done. And then gradually as the autos replaced the car - the horse and buggies - why then the car riding was it.

SS: Do you think that the farmers didn't care for their girls to go out with city boys? Would they want their daughters to meet young farmers? Was there much.

LC: Well, I think - yes, I think the farm people, and some of these old early day farm people just made a practice of looking the situation over and seeing whose land lay next to his. And just thought how nice it'd be if so and so's son married his daughter and then they could farm all that land together, you see. There would be no question about division of that property. It would stay right in the family. And I think there was some of that *°**on all right. Some of that went on. But often in the very early days of the Moscow community the little farm girls when they got out of the 8th grade, they sort of got apprenticed out. They went into the big houses. The M.E. Lewis house which is now the Hilltop apartments, they went to the McConnell Mansion and they became the little serving girls that helped keep up those big establishments. Another place they went was to the Frank Davig, the old Frank Davis home and kept house and helped put on the dinners, elaborate eleven course dinners of fancy food, dishes stacked to the ceiling and girls to - they couldn't have kept up those big houses if it hadn't been for all the little young farm girls of maybe European background, like little Scandanavian girls, little Dutch girls who were brought up the household arts. And the big houses of Moscow with all those bedrooms that we see still standing today, they couldn't have been maintained if it hadn't been for these rur^little girls who came in and went to work, for the people in the town of Moscow, to help keep up the house.

SS: You know that's a.. . (End of side C)

LC: There's nothing Carol can write that equals the family itself. Boy, boy, oh boy. And then yesterday - turn it off a minute. Is it on?

SS: Yes.

LC: It's on?

SS: Yah.

LC: Turn if off a minute, (break)

SS: When folks in those days, when young people were going out and courting and thinking of getting married, do you think that they understood very much what love was in those days?

Oh, no. No, I don't think they knew half as well as the kids nowadays. I don't really think so. It was all so idealistic and it was going to be just peaches and crea.^They weren't brought up with a sense of responsibility about the founding of a home and the raising of children. It's much better now when they say, "We're not going to have any children until we can take care of them." And "If I live with you awhile, I may never marry you because I don't want any children." I think that's a much more honest approach myself, you know. I think that's much more honest than the way they did in the old days where everything was going to be peaches and cream and the big front was kept up in front of the community. And some of the leading businessmen were down visiting the houses of ill-repute on the side and the whole town knew it. They'd see them going down and that, you know. And yet the women went around holding their heads up and pretending that "everything was just roses between my dear husband and me." And it was just a lie that they were leading. I think the kids nowadays really have something because they are going to be honest and straight-forward about things.

And Iionda like this new ritual about not "as long as we both shall live as long as we both shall love." And when thaS over and they want to go off free as the air, why go do it. I think the kids really are a lot more honest than we were in the old days because - of course, in the old days, the girls were brought up to be so subservient, they weren't capable of going out and holding ajob and making their own way in the world. matter of economics. I didn't grow up that way. I always knew that I could make a living and that I was smarter than all of the boys and that I'd get along. I never had to worry, you know. And so that gives you a good feeling too. (break)

.. .that girls, young women, that their main - what they had to do was to try to allure a man, so they'd have someone to take care of them, is what it sounds like. Yah,yah. It seems so ridiculous, you know, that they ever were, but yet that was the attitude. You gotta get out and get us a man and then we can "just sit on acushion and sew afine seam, and feast upon strawberries,suga r and cream". And we'd just have her made, when we got a man. And then they could just let themselves go to pot, so to speak, personally and intellectually. They would learn to tinkle enough on apiano just to attract a man. Then the piano went out the door as the kids eame in. And a- I, oh I don't know that that was the general rule, there must have been a lot of girls didn't do it that way, but that was part of the way and they just - if didn't get married, you know, they were just a failure. They had failed their mission in life.

Was that a real fear among the girls when you were young, to make sure you got married and didn't get stuck?

Oh, I think so, yes. That's right. To make sure you got married and don't be an old maid whatever happened, those were dirty words. The only thing you could be would be an old maid teacher or an old maid missionary lady. Of course, if you became a missionary then really you were the bride of Christ and you had her made too. You had just chosen the way of the Lord for eternity and you were taken care of. But all the others were just - it was a very degrading term to be an old maid. SS Was ther^- do you think there was a lot of social pressure to get married?

LC: Oh, yes. The mothers, most of the mothers of the growing up girls, they were the daughter's press agent. You'd go to alittle women's missionary society and the first thing you know they'd be telling about "what awonderful cook Daisy was and Daisy could just sew anything and Daisy could bake the finest bread and the most beautiful pies." And all the mothers there would think, "Gee, Iwant my son to marry that Daisy," you know. They were the press agents. They built up these daughters and when the threshing crews moved from one farm to another, the teenage girls and the young women of the household were brought out and Mary made the finest cake to impress these young threshermen. And they would have the finest pies. Each home would try to rival the other one in the best kind of cooking to show off the skills of the daughters. Um-hum.

SS: So threshing was really an occasion. .

LC: Oh, it was asocial - it was asocial event as well as - um-hum, you bet. It was a social event. And many of the Sunday schools in the rural communities, the schoo.house would put on - would have Sunday school Sunday morning. And really it wasn't so much for the study of the good book as it was achance for boys to meet girls. And the mothers would see that the daughters got right down there to Sunday school. And that was one very - well, it was one very legitimate - maybe - purpose of it. The same as the play parties in the country schools were, have served as alegitimate need for aplace for boys to meet girls and for boys to get used to going around and picking out partners, a.nd get accostumed to their role as choosers, pickers and choosers.

SS: Was that the boy's role? Was he supposed to be very active and .. ?

LC: Oh, yes, yah. And the girls were supposed to be very meek and mild and never raise their eyes, you know, and be very demure and just sit there waiting. And that's kinda the way it went in those days. So Ikinda like the new approach. I think its just much more open and honest and much more satisfactory.

SS: What happened after the marriage to young people who were trained in this idealism that wasn't real and then had to wake up and find out that it was two people that were gonna have to make their lives together?

LC: Well, that was the trouble. Most of them took it for better or for worse. And as the men used to say, "She was a whole lot worse than I ever thought." But they felt^ffonor bound to "until death do us part" and they would live up to their marriage vows come hell or high water. And lots of them went on suffering it out to the end. And some of them, this isn't true to just everybody you see, there are exceptions both ways, but often times that's what led a lot of the men to drinking and it led a lot of the men to houses of prostitution and other places. And it led to divorce. But divorce was such a naughty word too, you know. It was "for better or for worse, for richer , for poorer, until death do us part" and they meant it literally and they stuck it out to the bitter end, lots of them.

SS: Was the community really so - was there social condemnation of divorce?

LC: Not as much as Carol Ryrie Brink made it in her book Buffalo Coat. I don't think it was ever quite that bad, you know, where you just felt it just couldn't be done. But I think you had to have pretty good reason. But it made them feel that they were unsuccess ful at least, that the marriage had gone on the rocks and that somebody had failed along the line. Of course, each one always blamed the other one. That they were the failure. They'd just done everything right but the partner had been a failure. So that sense of failure isn't good either, you know. I think that its a much more frank, open, facing of facts nowadays. And I think that from it something really good will come. And, of course, I've always believed that if you hai any ability, you're honor bound to go out and use that ability, that that's why you were given that talent. And that the Lord would ask you for a reckoning, "What did you do with your talent?" and as I was fust saying, as a young girl I thoughtv be a lawyer. There'd never been a woman graduate from the University of Idaho and I had been a good debate student in Lewiston Normal and\he Moscow High School and Ithought I'd like to be the first woman to graduate from the Law School. And had I had the money I could have done it easily, you know. But I just didn't have the money. I'd had to go each year to teach to get enough money maybe to go just to summer school. So you know, that makes it a long hard process.

SS: Well, what made the difference? Was there a whole group of young women like yourself who were saying to this'other possibility, "No, I'm not going to get married."? Was it a whole group of women? Were there many people that were doing what you were doing, resisting the old way of going about this?

Well, Icouldn't say that there was alot. Alot of them were discriminating ,t seemed like the older you got and got ^college and especially when you got out and held aJOb, and you knew you could. And^tyour own paycheck and write your own checks You realized you just didn't have to marry just anybody. And Ithink that that was good That was part of the women's Hberation movement that you felt that you had certain rights of your own. That you had - right to live alittle of your own life and do afew things that you wanted to do besides just stay home and take care of the kids. (break)

End of interview