R.41. Special Projects: Tobe : Visions of Childhood, Race, and Rural Life in Children s Literature

Transcription

1 This interview is part of the Southern Oral History Program collection at the University of North Carolina at Other interviews from this collection are available online through and in the Southern Historical Collection at Wilson Library. R.41. Special Projects: Tobe : Visions of Childhood, Race, and Rural Life in Children s Literature Interview R-0738 Mary Ann Jarvis 13 March 2013 Transcript p.2

2 MARY ANN JARVIS INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT Interviewee: Mary Ann Jarvis Interviewer: Benjamin Filene Date: March 13, 2013 Location: Mary Ann Jarvis s House, Rural Hall. Length: Five recordings, one 57:31, one 12:07, one 14:49, one 7:11 and one 16:49 NOTES: Mary Ann has a slow but steady voice with a deeper southern accent. She still articulates words well, is very understandable. START OF INTERVIEW Benjamin Filene: Yeah I think so. So today is March 13 th. Mary Ann Jarvis: Let me see. If Sunday was the tenth, this would be 10, 11, 12, 13. BF: 13 th of MJ: If my fingers are working right. BF: I m Benjamin Filene and why don t you say your name make sure that we get it. MJ: Mary Ann Jarvis.

3 BF: Ok. Well thank you for letting me come visit you here. We re in Rural Hall. So let me just tell me, I told you a little bit on the phone. But I teach history and I do museum work and I became very intrigued by this storybook as a book and as a story. And as a book that has a bunch of stories contained within it. You know you have the author and the story of the people in the photographs and the story that the author wrote. But then there s also, what I wanted to talk to you about, there s the story of the photographer, Charles Farrell. So what I ve been doing is I have been talking to as many people as I can about their own perspective on the book, whether it s as a piece of children s literature or as a piece of photography, or it s the personal stories that they had connections to. So when I heard that Charles Farrell was your uncle, right? MJ: Right, mm-hm. BF: And I talked to your niece Mary Ann--. MJ: How did you know Mary Ann? BF: Well let s see the first person I talked to on the phone was Charles Plambeck. MJ: Ok so you ve already met Charlie. He s our historian. BF: Ok well he was very helpful. I actually don t remember how I connected with him. MJ: Through Mary Ann? I mean that would have been--. BF: I think it s because I gave a talk in the Hillsborough Public Library and that was announced somewhere and he heard about it either through Mary Ann or through online searching. MJ: Uh-huh. Well did you talk about the book?

4 BF: Yeah I talked about the book and this process which I m at the early stages of, which is, as I say, trying to learn about the book from as many angles as I can, trying to find people who were involved with it. And Hillsborough was a perfect place to start because that s where the author, Stella Sharpe was from. MJ: Well I didn t know that. I felt like she was from somewhere around Chapel Hill or Raleigh or someplace. BF: Yeah that s where she was inspired to write. MJ: I will know more from you than you will learn from me. BF: Well one thing that I certainly can t say is that you knew Charles Farrell. So how much did you see him? MJ: Well about like a child growing up, I d see my uncle at family gatherings. He owned an art shop in Greensboro. Do you know anything about that shop? BF: I ve heard about it. MJ: Well it was brought downtown. If you know Greensboro and you know the square. So going west from the square down a block, he had this art shop. So it was not the first business that he owned, but this is the one that I remember growing up. And it was the stopping place for everybody in Greensboro nearly because it was the only place then that sold cameras, film, they did framing, they carried prints or ordered prints for people. So everybody, or a lot of people, if they were going to meet a friend, they would say, Meet me at the art shop. And they had wicker chairs for people to sit in and talk. It was just a real nice place to kind of gather. And my

5 uncle and then his sister Ms. Harvey (Hedrick, 4:49) had worked for him and she had worked at a bookstore I think in Chapel Hill before she worked for him in the shop. Then during the [5:00] war my mother helped him out because my ma always said that I didn t want to worry at home and worry about Frank. He was my brother and he was in the air force. BF: Oh sure. MJ: So he went to work for him and--. BF: What was your mother s name? MJ: Bernice Farrell Wasser. And she was uncle Charles s sister. And my mother was very crazy about him. Growing up, you know, they would call him (Charlsie 1, 5:38 for pronunciation). And so they were very close. Charlsie? BF: Charslie? How do you think you would spell that? Do you know how to spell MJ: I--I don t [both laugh]. I don t know, C-h-a-r-l-s-i-e or something! I don t know. They didn t have it written down, Charlsie. BF: And did you grow up in Grensboro? MJ: Mm-hm [yes], most of the time. I was born in Tyra. BF: Where s that? 1 Sounds like Chossie

6 MJ: [Laughs] Well I was in school and I would say that people would think I said Tyro. It s a little crossroads outside of Lexington. Just get on 150, and if you go too fast, you ll already have passed it. So I was born there in Tyro. My father had a service station, kind of a general store. And then he moved us when I was an infant to Hillsborough and we lived several places there. And then he moved back. He started a trucking line. And his warehouse was in Greensboro. So eventually we moved back up to Greensboro and that s where I spent most of my growing up. BF: Oh so you were mainly in the same town. MJ: But I want to ask one question. How did you come across Tobe 2? And I say Tobe because that s what we used to call it. Now a lot of people call it Tobe 3. BF: I m not sure either. I ve start to say the first one. But-- MJ: I don t know which is correct. BF: I don t know either. I came across it in the library. I was in the archives at Chapel Hill, the North Carolina section. And I m interested in trying to think about history as a story and I was looking for, well really what I was looking for was a collection of studio photography to see if I could use that as a way to understand life in a town. But instead I found this book and I was struck by the beauty of the photos and--. MJ: Yeah they re gorgeous. 2 Pronounced like Toby 3 Pronounced like Tow-b

7 BF: And that led me to questions about who are these people in the photos and how did this come about. And it was interesting to me as someone who works in Chapel Hill and Greensboro that there is such a local and regional connection to the story. MJ: Well actually uncle Charles s roots are from down around there--oh I can t think of the name of it--right outside of BF: Is that right? MJ: Yeah. My grandfather was a real wonderful photographer. BF: Oh, Andrew. MJ: Yes. And he was from, oh why can t I think of the name of the place? Oh can you think of a little town outside from Chapel Hill, maybe this way from Chapel Hill? BF: It s not Carrboro. MJ: Not Carrboro. BF: Uh, uh--. MJ: Well maybe that was, you said Carrboro? BF: Yeah. MJ: Well it was something, that might have been what it was. BF: Well that s practically part of

8 MJ: I think that might have been it. So Charlie has done history on uncle, I mean grandfather Farrell. We called him Old Dad. BF: Oh really? MJ: Mm-hm [yes]. So that s where uncle Charles got his beginnings [10:00] in photography. He had to work--well I have an article rather than trying to tell you all of this. Would you like to read this article first? BF: Well I d love to take a look at it but maybe before we do that, you could just tell me- -so you would go down to the art shop yourself? I d be interested in your impressions of your uncle just as a person. MJ: Well he was a very busy man and he went to the rotary clubs and all that. He was sort of, by the time that I was a child going downtown, he was in and out and had his friends. And he more or less left the running of the art shop to my aunt Lucy Bell, I mean Mary Farrell Hadrick. And he I guess at that time probably too, he was out doing all this photography work. And it didn t impress me because I was just a child and the thing, the reason why I laugh is he always remembered my sister s name Jacksie, and he always remembered my brother s name Frank, but when it came to me, he never could think of my name [laughs] so he just called me Girl. But anyway, when I went to see him in the hospital before he died [laughs] he still called me Girl. I said, Well I m just girl. Well anyway it didn t bother me. I don t know whether he was avoiding my name or not because I was named for Mary for his sister and Ann his wife. So I laughed and he was just avoiding the two women in his life that ran his life a lot. BF: So you said his sister--.

9 MJ: Mary. BF: Ran the store? MJ: She yes. But both, one at one time and one at the other. Ann I think was running it for a while and then my aunt, we called her Auntie Mary, Auntie Mary bought her out so then she owned the shop. BF: When was that you think? MJ: That was after Uncle Charles s death. Well no it wasn t. See I m not good with dates on this. But he might have still been living when Auntie Mary bought the shop because I m not really sure exactly when she bought it. But, so it remained in the family until Auntie Mary died. And then another man bought the art shop. And some of the workers still stayed on. My mother didn t work full time but she would come in and really help out. And especially after Auntie Mary died, my mother almost ran the art shop. And then Auntie Mary only daughter, Mrs. Lin Adams. BF: What was her name? MJ: Well she was Mrs. Lin, L-i-n, Adams, A-d-a-m-s. BF: Oh ok. Was that Mary--so was Mary Walser? MJ: No there was no Walser there. BF: Oh I see. What was your Aunt Mary s name?

10 MJ: Well she was, I m trying to think if her name was Mary Lucy Farrell Hedrick--H-ed-r-i-c-k. BF: Ok that makes sense. I got mixed up. MJ: My mother married a Walser. So that s where the Walser comes in. BF: So Mary Farrell Hedrick s daughter was Lin. MJ: Yes her only daughter was Cornelius Adams. Well we never knew what to call her. See we always had nicknames for everybody and this person was my first cousin and we all called her Curly Top. BF: Oh I ve heard that. MJ: Yeah so [15:00] Curly Top, she and Lin, I think they were living in Charlotte by the time of the sale of the art shop. I m not sure of the dates. But she and her husband did not want to give up their jobs to run the art shop so it was sold to a Mr., I ve got his name in here somewhere but I can t think of it. And he stayed on Elm Street until everything started moving out. And he moved the store out toward Guilford College, out toward the Guilford Dairy area. And I don t know too much about Greensboro anymore because I ve lived out here since 66 and I don t go out too much now and I don t drive on the highway if I can avoid it. BF: So Lin, Cornelius is Curly Top. MJ: Well she s also called May Lin. You may come across her name as May Lin. There was a dispute about her name. Her mother and her father did not get along very well when Curly Top came along so I think there was a dispute about her name. And so we never knew anything

11 to call her because I think she would use different names I think in college and different places. But anyway. BF: That s interesting, yeah. MJ: She met her husband at But an interesting thing about her name that involves Uncle Charles, my auntie Mary, Charles s sister, had a rather hard life because she and her husband did divorce. And she was not monetarily always able to, you know, have a big place for, you know, Curly Top to grow up in. And so when at different times, Uncle Charles would have I think Curly Top in his home. And she had Diphtheria, Curly Top did, and Curly Top s hair had been really Curly. But when she had Diphtheria she was living with Uncle Charles. See I don t know much about the details of her staying. Or how much she stayed at Uncle Charles s. You might be interested in looking up his house if I can direct you with some help from my notes. So she had Diphtheria and she was staying at Uncle Charles s and my grandmother, Ms. Farrell, Charles Farrell s grandmother, lived around among the children because back in those times, family members took in other family members when they were having a hard time until they could, you know, get over the hump. So my grandmother after her husband died lived with Uncle Charles some, she lived some with us, and she lived some with Auntie Mary. So if you consider how hard life was for a widow back in those days, and she was practically the nurse. She was a wonderful nurse. Now this is my grandmother. Right there is her picture. I think it s right over there when she was a girl. Do I have a picture of a lady over there? BF: No.

12 MJ: No that s my sweet grandson. Well where did I put her picture? Well I don t know. I did so much getting together. No that s me. BF: Oh ok. MJ: Anyway I ll find it I think I put it somewhere else. Well she was like a nurse and she would go around wherever people were sick and I was the sickliest of the whole bunch and she nursed me all the time, between my mother and Old Ma. They would have had their first child, [20:00] Lucy Bell Farrell, now see who I m talking about is Old Dad Farrell s wife, they had had a child. Their first child was an invalid, so she had gotten a lot of practice because she lived until she was 18, and that was terrible back in those days. And then Charles I believe was the next one born. And my mother was the baby. So there were two girls. The first one that was an infant, I mean it was paralyzed, was a girl. And then there were three boys. I don t know if you re interested in their names or not. BF: There were three boys? MJ: Three boys altogether. BF: Oh ok, so there was Charles, there was Mary. MJ: It was Helen that was the infant, I mean the one that was paralyzed. Then I forget which one was first, either Charles or Mary. Then it was either Uncle Baines or Uncle Van and then Mama, that gives us six doesn t it? BF: Yes.

13 MJ: And they were all, the boys all had to work in the art shop. I mean not in the art shop, in the photography. My grandfather ended most of his career as a photographer in Winston and had studios there and about. So he, Uncle Charles and the other two he had to run errands and photography. And Uncle Charles in his article that he gave to the Greensboro News before he died--and that was the article I said that you might like. BF: Oh yeah ok, yeah. MJ: Anyway he hated photography [laughs]. He wanted to go out and do something adventurous and I think that he was the youngest graduate in those times of, I m not sure if it was Wake Forest or But anyway he graduated very young. And he was very smart, a very learned man. And he also--i ve done a lot of this history because since I ve gotten older and had more time because I raised four boys and I did all the cooking and ironing and sewing and everything. So I didn t pay attention to all of this and I wish now that I had. But, you know, if you can remember back when you were, well you re still real young [both laugh], but unless you ve had a reason. BF: Yeah it s hard. MJ: I just didn t ask enough questions. But I keep telling my children I said, If you want to know anything, you had better think of it before long because one of these days you re not going to have anybody to ask. BF: Yeah that s amazing. MJ: About, you know, a few of the things. My memory is not so good. My sister and brother had better memories than I do.

14 BF: So when you were a girl and going in to see your uncle, when were you born? MJ: I was born in BF: Ok. MJ: I just turned 85. BF: Oh wow. So this was in the 30s and 40s that you--yeah. MJ: Yeah. And we did not go to Uncle Charles s a whole lot. Most of the time after I got up in age a little bit, we gathered more at Auntie Mary s little apartment where she and grandmother were living at the time on Madison Avenue, which is now Friendly Road in an apartment house. Do you know where the First Baptist Church is in Greensboro? BF: Uh, no. MJ: It s on Mark--I mean you go out Friendly Road and they lived they were three apartment buildings down from that church. And they lived in those apartments. I have pictures of us at my grandmother s birthday which features my Uncle Charles. BF: Oh I d love to see it. MJ: And my daddy and my mother. BF: So do you [25:00] remember the book coming out? MJ: No I don t remember it. I guess I really didn t pay any attention to it. I hate to say. That just shows how bad teenage--if you think teenagers are bad today or you have children and they re not interested.

15 BF: Yeah I know how that goes. MJ: Just think back. I was just a teenager dancing and jitterbugging and having dates and all of our chitter chatter was more important than learning about Tobe. BF: Well I wonder how he found these photos, because you know the story from the book is that he went to Goshen and ran into these people. MJ: Well you know there s never anything that drops out of the sky for you. In an article that I read the other day which I ve almost forgotten about, in here it mentions that Aunt Ann, his wife, had a lady that helped her, cooked for her and helped her in the house. When all of this came about I guess, when Ms. Sharpe had contacted him, he, the cook, I mean the dilemma was that she was going to write about, or that she did write the book about, they had grown up too large to play the part of the children. And she wanted to do younger and the whole family. I still don t know how many are in this family because it seems that there were a lot of cousins and other people that posed the part. BF: I think that s right. MJ: So the lady that worked for Aunt Ann I think knew this family at Goshen. Have you come across the word Goshen? BF: Yes I have talked to some of those people. MJ: Did you go look it up? I mean did you go find it? BF: Yeah. MJ: And the church is still there.

16 BF: Yeah! The church is still there, yeah. MJ: Did you find anybody around there? BF: I ve talked to a couple of people that are in the book. It was really exciting. MJ: Did you? Which ones? Do you remember? BF: Yeah I talked to the one who plays the part of Tobe. MJ: Did you? BF: Yeah and his name is Charles Garner. There were Garners and Hurbans. So you re right they were cousins. MJ: Well I can see that you know more than I do. Anyway they posed for these pictures. BF: Yeah. So did you know this cook? MJ: No I don t remember her. Now I remember that mama had. We didn t have, you know, a whole lot of help. But mama had somebody to--. And when we lived in Hillsborough mama had a real sweet lady that, we took our laundry to them. And if you know where the bridge is in Hillsborough--. BF: As you go into town? Mm-hm [yes I know it]. MJ: Yes this lady lived down somewhere in that section then. And she would wash and iron these clothes and put them in her wagon and bring them and walk. Have you been to where Mary Ann lived and the house? BF: Yes.

17 MJ: Well she probably told you that the house that my father built is on the corner. The house that my father built was here and there was a big lot between us. And then the house that Mary Ann lives in now was up here. And it was at one time a boarding house. During all the depression and all the hard times that they had, anybody that had anything to make money, they divided that up evidently as a boarding house. Then through the years the next house was built in between. And our house is still standing. It s right across from St. Matthews church or where you go into the cemetery. And the public school is right in there. BF: Ok, ok. MJ: And so-- [30:00]. BF: So did you [pause] did it surprise you or did it make sense to you that your uncle was interested in African-American life in Greensboro? MJ: Well he was interested in everything, I think. He was the photographer that photographed the first production of The Lost Colony. I guess you found that. BF: I heard, yeah Charlie told me that yeah. MJ: I think the most interesting part is how he got into photography. When he graduated from college he was a professor. I think he was at Wake Forest I believe. I think State wanted him, or one of the other schools. Either State College or Chapel Hill wanted him to come and, you know, teach there. And the funny thing that s in this article that you ll read about is that he walked across the campus and he saw all these old men--i hate to tell you this--but he saw all these old me you know walking around campus and thought, I just don t want to do that all my life! So I think he saw an advertisement from the Kodak people and he thought, Well I think I ll

18 just apply for that. Well he presented some of his photography work and they accepted him--well they wanted an interview. And so he went to--i know these things but I can t get them to your mind. You know when you get it old, it s just like something flies out of our mind when you try to call something [laughs]. BF: Heh, it s no problem! MJ: But anyway he went for the interview up north and he said it was so funny because it was almost like Winston-Salem or this part of the country was not even on the map. There was that much difference between the north and the south. And I don t know if all that division came about after the civil war or what. But the north looked down on the south and you can t get around that. And to this day they do in a way. But the strange thing to me is that most of them that come stay. They don t go back north. BF: So you mean he was uncomfortable in that interview? MJ: Huh? BF: He wasn t comfortable in that interview. MJ: Oh he was fine! He was fine. But it was just funny to him. And so they hired him right off as a salesman. And he traveled extensively. I think at one time they were maybe in Cuba and he was a salesman for Kodak. Then later on when he decided he was through with traveling- -he decided he didn t want to travel anymore--he settled down in Greensboro. And there was in Greensboro--I don t know what s there now--but where the square is, there was a drug store. You ve seen where the O Henry Building is right?

19 BF: Yeah. MJ: Well it was Catty Corner. There was a drug store right in there and I remember going in there. But over the drug store, and I think it was (Oligits, 33:59) I believe over the drug store was a photography business and he bought that business. I think it was named The Art Shop, so he carried that name. BF: Oh so there was a previous Art Shop ok. MJ: And so he got this business I think started in there and then later he moved across the street and down the block to The Art Shop building. That building is not standing now. But back in those days, The Art Shop was here, and next door was a florist and then the corner building was the telegram business. BF: Oh ok. MJ: So it was wonderful growing up in Greensboro. It was wonderful, as people growing up around [35:00] Winston will tell you because it was big enough and everything was downtown. And you could go downtown and do all of your shopping, get your groceries, do everything within a few blocks. You know, all of the nice--. BF: Yeah it s really changed. MJ: All the nice department stores were there, Chris was there--that was a diamond store business, a Chris store. And then you had the famous one, Woolworth s. And then there was Belk s and Talheimer s, [35:44) and Lerner s and--you know just everything was there.

20 BF: So did you have a sense, I maybe you wouldn t talk to your uncle about this, but one of the things that is interesting about this book is that it was unusual to have a children s book about African-American kids. MJ: Well that s the thing that I think is the beauty of the whole thing and why they don t have this book in schools is more than I can see. I think they should have it. My greatgranddaughter that I said comes here in the afternoons, I sort of oversee her homework and things like that and piano lessons. I try to influence her as much as I can and what direction I think she ought to move in [laughs]. But I ve been making her read a book, you know. She doesn t like reading particularly. BF: How old is she? MJ: She s not a bad reader but she just doesn t really enjoy it. So I made her read the Wizard of Oz and she--. BF: How old is she? MJ: Well she s in 4 th grade now. BF: Oh ok, uh-huh. MJ: But this was last year. And so I said, Eden I want you to read a book that you have ties to. And so I got out Tobe. And we were playing bridge in there and she got into that book and she just, she loved it. She really did. Of course she s in with the blacks too now. So they don t really have any compunction about it. So anyway she read the book and I looked over at her and I said, She s the most absorbed in that book than I ve ever seen her in anything. And

21 she wanted to take the book to school and I let her. Now I think she brought the schoolbook back that I m missing because I ve loaned it to several people. I asked her the other day and I said, Eden you did bring that book back from your class didn t you? And she said yes that she did. BF: Sure. That s nice that she could read it! MJ: But I m not sure if the teacher read it to the class or not. BF: So did you ever talk to your uncle or aunt about race? MJ: No, never did. I ll tell you, Uncle Charles intimidated me as a child because, you know, I don t know if you have anybody in your family that you feel intimidated around that you just don t really do much talking. So I never discussed anything with him. BF: What made him intimidating? MJ: I don t know. Maybe it was his intelligence, his knowledge. His world was so different from mine. And his wife was a very intelligent woman but she was cold. And I just didn t feel as comfortable about that. Well not just me. I think other people, you know, felt kind of the same way, and they just sort of went to a different circle than us. And not that we weren t friendly or not that we didn t feel welcome or anything, but the closest I got to his children, I was just--well I told you I was the sickliest one in the family [40:00]. When I was an infant, learning to crawl, mama cooked on a wood stove in Hillsborough. She had gone out to get something, water or something, and I pulled up on the stove, well that was the first thing that I had and burned my hand nearly through. And my grandmother, Old Ma--we called her Old Ma--and the grandfather Old Dad. Now I never knew him because he had died before I was born. So she was

22 the nurse and she would bring us to Greensboro and she would massage my hand. Mama said she just rubbed that hand all the time. And so I have no trouble with that hand. BF: Wow! Amazing. MJ: It could have been. Then the next thing I came down with was rheumatic fever. And Dr. Watts in--is he in Chapel Hill or Raleigh? Which was it? Anyway, they got me to the hospital, to the doctor, and they didn t have any hope for me really. Mama and daddy had gone to see me and then with me one night. And mama said daddy came home to Hillsborough and said, If you want to see her alive you had better go now. It was in the middle of the night. So mama got up and drove, I guess it was There was a Watts Hospital. Have you ever heard of it? Is it Chapel Hill? BF: I think that was in Durham, maybe. MJ: Durham. Durham that s where it was. BF: Yeah, mm-hm. MJ: And so mama got up and drove to Durham to see me. And I pulled through. But they had to keep me in bed, complete bed rest for one year. Penicillin had not been developed and they didn t know any other thing to I guess keep your heart from going bad. And the strangest thing is that I went to the doctor yesterday because I ve had everything under the sun and everyone else is dead [laughs] just about you know at my age. So I m fixing to have another hip operation. I ve this one done, this knee. Now this hip is gone and this knee needs one. But anyway I had to go to the doctor to get the release papers and they ll always want me to do an EKG. So they took me in there and did it and she came back in the office and she said, Perfect,

23 perfect. And I just had to sit there and marvel at the fact that that year in bed probably was my salvation. So the children all had to entertain me, the older ones and Uncle Charles s three children would, two of them mainly the two oldest ones, would come to Hillsborough to visit and all of those boys and girls would be out playing and have a tent and everything. And they could go down to the Eno River and they could walk the wall around St. Matthews Church and they could jump off of our high porch. I wanted to play with them and they didn t want me in the first place cause I was, you know, the youngest one. And in the second one, they had to entertain me, they had to help. They had to, you know, do things with me to keep me in bed. There was a lot next to the house and I can remember being out there and they would put me out there on a cot and, you know, for sun. So now they have told people not to use the sun and that s probably why I ve gotten little old places all over me that I have to have burned off. But anyway--. BF: So the kids would entertain you. MJ: They had to entertain me and they didn t want to. And so they considered me just, you know, the lowest of lows. But [laughs] that s it. And as an adult, looking back, I can understand that fully. And poor mama and my grandmother having to do that while in the meantime [45:00] I had empitaigas all over my legs broke out. And I can remember this. This is one of the thing that you ll find interesting about the old days. All mama and Old Ma had to treat me with were very hot Turkish towels, big heavy towels. And they would lay me up on the kitchen table and they would get that water I guess as hot as they could stand it. I don t even know if they had rubber gloves for them to wear back then. But they would get those towels and

24 wring them out and wrap them around my legs. See there again today we use penicillin for that, empitaigas. So I had, so for a year, and so I was ready to start school almost when I had this rheumatic fever and I didn t get to start first grade over in Hillsborough. And so around the time, before I could start in the first grade, I had already missed maybe a year. Well in the second year I guess I still couldn t go. I don t really remember the details. But I do remember the first grade teacher who was a very outstanding woman and my Sunday school teacher in the little Episcopal church, she came and tutored me for a half a year so I could start 2 nd grade. But I was always a year behind. And then my birthday fell, and so I cried one time when I was about twelve and thirteen and somebody asked me why I was crying and I said, I m going to be an old maid before I ever get out of high school! And sure enough, I wasn t an old maid but I was, you know, usually about two years older than everybody else. And my sister who was very bright, Mary Ann s mother, and when she was in Tyro, they skipped her a grade in Tyro. Then she went, you know, graduated and they only had to go to eleven grades. And my class in North Carolina was the first class that had to go twelve years. So my sister was through college in the shorter time [says following while laughing], she graduated from college and I was still in high school. BF: So Charles had three kids? I know two of them. MJ: Yes. And one of them died. BF: Who was that? MJ: Baby Jack. And I don t know what he had. Probably like a childhood disease, I don t know. Maybe diphtheria, I don t know. He was, he wasn t the first child because Lito I think was

25 the first one. I have there an announcement for, you know, Lito s little announcement that Aunt Ann and Uncle Charles sent out. So he was the first one, I m not sure. BF: Is Lito Peter? MJ: Peter s my favorite. BF: Mm-hm [yes]. MJ: And he s still living. BF: So which one goes by Lito? MJ: Lito now he was Charles I think. His name was Charles. BF: So there were four! MJ: There were four but one died. BF: Oh. But Lito, ok. MJ: And that s all I know, is baby Jack died. So Lito was the oldest and I m not sure where baby Jack came in. And Peter was my brother s age and Roger is the one that was nearest to my age. BF: Ok. MJ: So you know I would go to their house occasionally. But I wasn t in and out like at somebody else s house.

26 BF: Well I gathered that Uncle Charles had a difficult life too. Charlie said that he doesn t know the details, but he thinks that he had a lobotomy. MJ: Well that came on because of drinking I think. BF: Oh really? MJ: Mm-hm [yes]. Well alcoholism I m sorry to say runs on the Farrell side of the family. And it has disrupted family life in several instances. So [50:00] when my boy--i never drank--so when my boys came along I said, I don t ever want you to start because it runs in the family. You don t ever know if you start whether you can be one that can drink or not. And it runs way back in the Farrell family, way back. Charlie with all of his looking up things thinks that it ran way back. So I, you know, I m not saying that my children don t but I m saying that when I was bringing them up I said, You don t smoke. Now this was before all the hoopla about smoking. I said, You don t smoke. You don t drink. If you don t start, you never will have to go through the agony of stopping. BF: Right. Now is that something that you were aware of that may be a problem for him? MJ: No. I mean I guess, you know, children weren t just as educated as they are now with TV and all that goes on. And you know you just grow up in the family and everything s wonderful. BF: Yeah, you don t question.

27 MJ: You just don t tread into unknown territory. And, what did I care? [Laughs] I mean that wasn t anything I knew or understood, you know, as a teenager or a child growing up. So I guess I was just not as aware as I was after I grew up. BF: Yeah. But then you were? MJ: And my mother was a wonderful sweet person. She always made everybody welcome in her house. And so she--and she was always good to Charlsie--and so when he couldn t work any longer, mama would always bring him out to the farmhouse. We lived out on the south side of Greensboro back then, which I told you was not too far from Goshen. So she would bring him out and our neighbor had a little fishing pond and my mom and Charles would fish. And then mama always, you know, she would just do for him little nice things: cook him his favorite meals probably and made a cake for him. See he couldn t drive after that so mama would have to get him and take him out. So she took him, she ordered my father--and daddy was the same way. Daddy would go and get Uncle Charles and do things with him. So one of the things that I can remember--and oh I just wish that I had gone with them-- but Uncle Charles always wanted to go to the Farrell reunion down in Carrboro I guess it was because that s where his father and his great-grandfather, you know, had lived. And so they would see that he got, and when he was driving, I would imagine that he went to just about all of the Farrell reunions. And that was a side of Uncle Charles that I didn t know. See I didn t know him intimately. I m just giving you the snapshots that a child just remembers or picks up from hearing adults talk. BF: Yeah, yeah. No it s great.

28 MJ: And so it was sad. I mean looking back at it I could cry because it ruined so many of my relatives lives. Is the phone ringing? I m so deaf. BF: No. No. MJ: Anyway. It just ruined--it was sad what happened with such brilliant minds. BF: I mean do you remember the operation, when he had the operation. That must have been a big family--. MJ: Well I didn t even know remember what they were talking about when he had it. Or I was up here and I m not sure what year he had that either. BF: Was it after the war? MJ: Well I moved up here in 1966 so it [55:00] was before that. And I m not sure how long it was before he died. And see when he died it was not hardly a year before his wife Ann died. And I don t like to say things that, especially if I m being recorded, but it caused family, you know, interruptions I m sure. So--. BF: What did? MJ: What? BF: What caused family interruptions? MJ: His drinking. BF: Oh, oh, oh. Yeah.

29 Farrell family. MJ: But you know they stayed together. Now this little chair right here came out of the BF: Oh really? MJ: And I have some photographs where they show the children, you know, sitting in this little chair. And when they died, when Uncle Charles and Aunt Ann died, they gave my sister, I mean she got a lot of their furniture. I got a beautiful desk that my son has. This chair got some beautiful clothes. My aunt was a very slender nice looking lady and she wore some of the 20s dresses. I got two of those that were very beautiful. But I just got those out of the attic because the boys, you know when they came. I can remember mostly Peter when they had to clear everything out the house and my sister got a lot of things. She got the grand piano and she got a sofa. And she got a set of kitchen chairs and tables I think. I think they sold some of it and some of it they just gave away. But I didn t pay anything for those dresses. the operation. BF: Well he didn t die until the late 70s. So he must have lived about thirty years after. MJ: Well this is--now Charlie, the one you talked to, this picture and mainly this picture-- END OF RECORDING A [57:31] START OF RECORDING B BF: Ok. So these are pictures of Charles?

30 Plambeck. MJ: Yes. The one you were talking about. But this picture particularly looks like Charlie BF: Oh really? The way he looks now? MJ: He looks a lot like him. And this is the article that you will enjoy reading and I m going to suggest something. I have to eat pretty regularly or I get not feeling too goo. BF: Ok. a sandwich? MJ: So I fixed some pimento cheese, made some pimento cheese last night. Will you eat BF: Oh that is so nice of you! MJ: Well when I go do that, why don t you look through this box? BF: Ok. MJ: And what I did, a couple of years ago when Charlie--I m going to kill Charlie Plambeck--he and my other nephew, Ray Walser, they wanted to do a history of the Farrells. And one was going to do Old Dad which was him and the other one was going to do Charles. And I can t remember who was doing what, but you know I don t do internet and all of that. I had to drag everything out in this house trying to pull together things for them and it made me so mad because they had already gotten everything I had off of the internet [laughs]! BF: Oh no!

31 MJ: So I said, I can t tell you! Well I had this house just strung out with stuff. I m not a good historian and I don t remember things. But Charles, I have his obituary here. BF: Oh this is great! Yeah. MJ: And this, and I m supposed to be copying off some of his stuff for Ray Walser and I haven t done it yet. But this was in here interesting that I thought you might enjoy reading. It s about his things that have been given to the library at BF: Oh yeah? Oh good. Where did these, where did this photocopy come from? MJ: Well I have a feeling that my grandfather took them. But there were a lot of--. BF: But do you know where the original is? MJ: Well I ve got them in another box. BF: Oh because if I could scan these, I brought a little scanner. MJ: Yeah. BF: I could scan the original. That would be great. MJ: And here is Andrew Jackson Farrell. BF: Ok. MJ: Charlie took this together. BF: Well I ll take a look yeah.

32 MJ: Yeah he put that together and I said that it read like an encyclopedia, this, the article. [Loud noise] Oh! BF: Yeah. Sorry. MJ: These are pictures that when I was doing all that for them I thought, well while I have all this mess out, I m going to make a box for a few of the pictures for each side of the family. So I did a Farrell box, my mother s people, and these are some copies and articles from newspapers. BF: Oh that s smart. Yeah. MJ: So this is Uncle Charles at my grandmother s. Now this is Auntie Mary and this is my mother. This is Uncle Baines and this is Uncle Charles and this is my grandmother. BF: Ok. Oh you have them labeled. my spelling. MJ: Well I tried to go back and put a little something. Please don t pay any attention to BF: [laughs] Oh I won t. MJ: That comes from originality; I can t spell a word the same. BF: Well I ll take a look--ok! MJ: And I tried to put all of those that really pertained to that on the top. Now you can go down further. And this is the Art Shop today. Well I think it s actually been remodeled I think

33 again. And that was (Dolan, 4:20). I just now remember his name now, (Dolan, 4:26). And so it s on West Market Street. You might want to visit that sometime. BF: Oh I didn t know that. Ok! MJ: And he moved the business. I m not--it might tell you which year. But anyway--. BF: So can I scan some of the newspaper articles? MJ: Oh yeah. I don t care what you do. BF: Ok. MJ: If you want to go down here to the library to make copies--. BF: Ok. Well I think the scanners should work if I can get it set up. MJ: Now I think that this is Peter Farrell. BF: Oh! Ok. MJ: This is his son, [5:00] my first cousin right there. BF: Oh that s cute. MJ: And this is Aunt Ann, Charles s wife and see here s the boat where they came back. I think this was when [pause] and I tried to attach some of these articles to the pictures. No well that s actually the funeral thing of Aunt Ann s--she was a (McOwen, 5:30)--I don t know how you pronounce it. Anyway that was her funeral or obituary. And this evidently is the ship that they came back on when they were living out of the country. And I think that this child, let me see, was Lito, probably. And, let s see, in front of the hotel, January 25 th, Well let s see, it

34 would have been--lets see--it might have been Peter. But anyway these three pictures, you see you can tell they came probably about. I ve put that she s holding baby Lito. So I m not sure. BF: Ok. MJ: And, let s see--. BF: So the ones you have photocopies of you might have the originals somewhere else because they--. MJ: Well this is an original. better. BF: Oh that one. But these, I can scan these but scanning the original would turn out MJ: If I have them, I can t ever remember which one I have. BF: I don t have to take them, you know. MJ: Oh no. I know. I don t mind. And this is Aunt Ann with two of the boys. I m not sure I just guessed. See I m trying, I like to piece things together but I m not always able to get together all the missing pieces. I think that this might be Peter with the one that s my age, but I m not sure. I think I just tried to take a guess at it. I just tried to mark one picture. So I just guessed, I wasn t sure. And this is the same article as that one. BF: All right. MJ: And I got these at the library I believe. And there s the square and I have even shown the Ligut Drug Store. This is the Jefferson Building.

35 BF: Oh I haven t seen that article. Ok, great. MJ: You can go to the library and get a better copy probably. And you know newspapers are hard to copy like that. BF: They are, yeah. here. MJ: And this was the little baby announcement for Lito. This Darling little thing right BF: I m going to plug this in ok? MJ: And this was addressed to my grandmother, Mrs. A. J. Farrell, when she was on Patton Avenue in Asheville, North Carolina. The date is October the 26 th, So that was when Lito, or sorry wait a minute let me see which one was on here. Charles Burton Farrell. See my grandmother s people were Burtons and so that was Lito, And I guess Lito was where they, why they named his was I guess they were in a Spanish country or in a Latin American country and I think Lito means little something, little Charles [both laugh]. I don t know but anyway. But that was the one that, and I think he was the oldest one. BF: Ok, uh-huh. MJ: Ok and then there are things down in here if you just want to take a gander at. But these articles are the ones where my grandfather took the pictures of the camel on Camels Cigarettes. BF: Oh I heard about that.

36 MJ: Yeah. And Uncle Charles, I mean one of the articles says, Of all the beautiful photographing he did, this was the one that he s remembered for. [Laughs] BF: What the camel? Yeah. MJ: But I tried to run through here. Now I m not sure, I think my grandfather took this picture. This is my mother and this is Jacksy [10:00]. BF: Oh that s a beautiful picture! MJ: I m going to get you that other box that we have sent to the archives and they ve sent them back to me. When I was doing all that I had to get all these stitches together and try to guess at a lot of it. BF: You sent them to Chapel Hill? MJ: Yes. BF: Oh! MJ: Yeah. So they them back to me. BF: Well great! I can look at them in Chapel Hill too. here. MJ: Benjamin? Come down and look at this box and see if you want to scan through BF: Ok. I ll be right there [typing on computer].

37 MJ: This is the box that the archives sent me [goes out of range, but can still hear BF and MJ talking down the hall for about a minute]. Now that was not on Charles. His are in the archives already. BF: Ok, all right. MJ: Do you eat oat bread? Oat bread, the dark bread? BF: Mm-hm [yes], oh yeah. MJ: And Benjamin I have a coke, or I have coffee or I have mint--. END OF RECORDING B [12:07/69:38] START OF RECORDING C BF: Ok so this is not a polished performance. MJ: Are we on? BF: We re on. Mary Ann has agreed to read the notes that she wrote when she was trying to research Charles. MJ: And the notes were just a first draft and they re all words that are crossed out. So I may have to hunt for the words [BF laughs]. Uncle Charles was probably the most avid fisherman, [pause] having the most--well I can t even read my own writing now, let me see. Probably the most avid fisherman with a modern apparatus fishing gear than anyone could ever have. Somehow I inherited some of his fishing gear after mama died. If someone said to me, Uncle Charles, the first thing that came off the top of my head would be Kodak. The Art

38 Shop sold cameras and developed negatives. They framed pictures and made the frames right there in the Art Shop, in the basement of the Art Shop. A young man, a young black man named (Roscoe, 1:21) learned to do developing either from Uncle Charles or he may have already known how. Roscoe went on later to pull out of the Art Shop and open his own photography building right off of North Elm Street. BF: Oh! Huh [interesting]. MJ: But I can still remember in the basement that terrible odor from the developing department. It still lingers in my mind. Between Uncle Charles, Aunty Mary, Aunt Ann, and mama, there was hardly a person in Greensboro that they didn t know. A short list would probably include people like these: Moses Cone, directors and CEOs, Burlington Mills, lawyers, mayors, politicians, ministers, interior designers, professors from the college, writers, artists, bankers, newspaper editors, and the list could go on and on. Aunty Mary and Uncle Charles were very gifted in the art of talking and salesmanship. If they didn t know--gotta turn the page--if they didn t know what they were talking about, you would never know it [BF laughs]. Jacksy would love to tell about the time she and (Rachel Law, 3:04) gave Aunty Mary some prank chewing gum. Aunty Mary just chewed and chewed and chewed away. But she never showed that she had been defeated. Those were the crazy days when people had time for crazy pranks. Jacksy and Tom Payton were our ringleaders. Charles was handsome when he was young, but as he aged he became a little pudgy. He could be very charming but he enjoyed alcohol a little too much, as did Uncle Baines and Uncle Van.

39 Let s see, where do we go from here, that one s a side. I think have to turn one paper right there to get it. Let s see. Just as an aside about Aunt Ann, she was very attractive, petite, educated, bookish, always very nicely dressed and very very proper, but aloof. I never felt at home or at ease around her. She was of the Universal Unitarian faith and if Uncle Charles ever attended, I didn t know about it. However, the funeral was held by the church. Let s see I ve got to skip something [pause]. Oh I can t find my paragraph. Uncle Charles had a wonderful memory, but it seemed to be a selective memory. He always knew Jacksy and Frank --you know [5:00/74:38] I told you that [laughs]. BF: Mm-hm [yeah]. MJ: He always knew Jacksy and Frank s names but never could remember mine. Even when he was dying at Weatherly Long Hospital, he still called me, girl. Maybe subconsciously he didn t want to say the names of the two dominant women in his life, Mary and Ann. I believe Uncle Charles was very brilliant and he was the youngest person in his time to graduate from I think Wake Forest college. After returning from World War I, he taught there. [Page turn] Let me see. I ve got something somewhere else, I don t know where. Oh it may have gone back to the first page. Oh let s see. Where did this pick up? [Page turning] Excuse me. I can t even read my own--don t you look at my writing [both laugh]! I spelled everything wrong. Ok. In 1948 Uncle Charles retired, had a lobotomy because of his health. Sometime in the 50s, the lobotomy I think was sometimes in the 50s. And this was I think the, because Aunt Ann

40 insisted on his having it. But I m not sure of that but I think that it was. There were a lot in the family that didn t think that he needed it, but it probably got hard for her to put up with it. Mama, who is Bernice, was very kind to Charles, Charlsie, as he called him. Taking him fishing, fixing good dishes for him, and taking him--and this is about taking him to the reunions. And I had left it blank because I could not think whether it was Carrboro or not [pause]. I can t see it. I m about blind. From what mama implied, Uncle Baines seemed to have gone to these reunions, these family reunions on a regular basis. After he had his lobotomy, he never drove again. And in those days what he would do, while he was still able, he would walk to the bus line, which was only a block away I think still at that time. And he would go downtown and he would have lunch with all of his club friends. And one of my sons remember going to I think it was one of those Rotary meetings with Uncle Charles. Uncle Charles even took him. I ve forgotten that. Oh here it is. He would catch the bus and come to town into the Art Shop. He belonged to one of the clubs and socialized with the men. I m not sure if it was the Rotary, Guwanis, or Ron s Club, or the Sierra Club, but he would attend and enjoy being with the men. He might have been a member of all of those clubs but those were some of it. [Laughs] No women were at that time members, which I myself, think that men should --and that s my personal opinion-- should be able to have a club of their own sometimes to belong to without the meddling women. Which brings me to the feeling that mama and Aunty Mary thought that he was a tyrant to live [10:00/79:38] with. Ann, after his operation, operated the shop. No I think I ve got something wrong here. I think what I m meaning here was that that they thought Aunt Ann was kind of a meddling person.