Dayton Stories Project
Story Circle Session #022796.2
Delong Residence
Dayton, Ohio
February 27, 1996
Our Appalachian Background
Facilitator: Marilyn Shannon Recorder: Sarah Sessions Transcriber: Holly Bergman Transcriber Typist: Sue Broadstock
Participants: Mark DeLong, Phyliss DeLong, Roger DeLong, Tina Fissel, Ann Humbarger, Norma Wevurski
This session lasts approximately 1 hour 28 minutes.
Due to its length the interview has been split into two parts.
PART ONE
PART TWO
The following transcription of the session has been edited, with repeated phrases or interruptions deleted to make the text flow more smoothly. It is suggested that visitors who find the text interesting take the time to listen to the audio portion of this session. A more detailed text will eventually be added.
Marilyn opened the story circle and participants introduced themselves. She suggested the group talk about their background.
Ann Humbarger
I was born in Texas; my father was immediately discharged from the Air Force. They moved back to Paintesville, Kentucky, and I lived there briefly, up a holler, Fitch Fringe Holler, with my grandparents; well, actually my mamaw and my papaw. Then we lived in a house up the holler; from the time I was born till I married and left home, I lived in 33 homes with Mom and dad. Four houses on one block, one time. When a bigger one would become available and the rent was a little better, Dan and Mom moved. One time we moved next door to the next house. So I always said they had gypsy in their blood. Dad had family in Florida, so he always wanted to live there, Mom had family in Kentucky and Ohio so she always wanted to live there. She was real attached to her church, which they had none of down there; she belonged to the United Baptist Church. And so, we just traveled all over, living in those places until I was in the seventh grade, then they settled in Fairborn permanently, and we’ve been here since then.
Mark DeLong
I never lived in Kentucky, always grew up here. [Someone whispers to him.] You’re right, I did live in Lexington for six months, when I was a junior in high school. So I was wrong, I have lived there. But I was thinking of the Appalachian part of Kentucky, I never lived back there. I always remember going back to visit my great-grandmother’s house, which was always a big adventure. That was in Boone’s Camp, Kentucky. Some of my earliest memories are of the smell of coal dust, and those pickles that are the brad-and-butter type pickles. Those two combinations of smells-the coal and the bread-and-butter pickles-instantly take me back to my great0grandmother’s house, which is gone now, burned up last year. Or the ruins of it burned up. But in my memory, when I’m there I can see a blue house with a porch. I can imagine what it looked like on the inside, and there were all these vases of colored water, and old pictures on the walls. And I remember there was a fireplace that had a fireplace on the living room side and then one on the bedroom side, which I thought was really cool. And there was a bed in the living room, which I thought was strange, but my grandmother said that that was just how it was. It wasn’t that big of a place, in retrospect, but at the time, it seemed like a big house. And I remember just the old telephone there, and just the smell of the place. There was a smell of–it was old, it had a sense of a lot of history to it, although at a young age I don’t think I could grasp that. But it always felt like an important place. Outside of this house, there was a wooden bridge that crossed the creek that went right in front of the house. And my brother and I would go to the bridge and go down into the creek, and play with the rocks, and build dams, and do all kinds of tings. “Cause we had nothing like that up here in Dayton, because for a long while, we lived in a trailer court down in Miamisburg. And having a creek right in front of your house, and a big bridge there-well, a little wooden bridge. I also remember going up the mountain to the rocks, the Indian rocks. My dad took me up there, I think, once or twice, and that was an adventure. He would tell me the stories that he had learned when he was a boy, of the Indians in the area. I remember the smell of the pine trees; there were lots of pine trees in that area. It always brings back, you know, warm memories when I think of it.
Tina Fissel
And at the same place he’s talkin’ about, there was a white horse that just run around. It was John P’s horse. It would just run around. He’d find it every now and then. It was my Uncle John P’s horse that would run around.
One of the strangest things that happened when I was in Kentucky-well, I was just visiting there. I went down there in the summers, I’d go down there and stay a whole summer with my aunt Faye. And then I eventually went down there and graduated from high school down there. But one of the summers that I stayed down there, I went to a make-up party with my cousin. And we went in, and I mean, it was just a complete stranger’s home , and we went in, and there was a bunch of older ladies there. Some of them was really old, and they stared at me the entire time. I mean, they stared at me the entire show, and then finally, one of them looked at me and she said, “Are you Mae Wells’ granddaughter? Are you a Wells?” You know, I didn’t know my great-grandmother’s name. And she goes, “Are you Garnett’s grand-daughter?” And I said, “Yeah, that’s my gramma.” And she goes, “Yeah.” And that’s all she said. And I never told my name or anything, she just knew me by my-they look, by your facial expressions, they know. I mean, as soon as you come in. And the reason they were starin’ at me, is they were studyin’ me out, at all my features and stuff. She finally figured out who I was. Was kinda scary. She knew who I was.
Norma Wevurski read a story she had written for her uncle’s 50th wedding anniversary about the uncle’s courtship, highlights of married life, and returning to the hills of West Virginia.
Phyllis DeLong
I guess I could say something about the young kids, and the way that we-with my brothers and sisters-the way that we’ve always been with each other’s children. We’ve always considered them OUR kids. All of the kids are OUR kids. Not so much just my kids-course, my kids were MY kids-but still, when we speak of our children, my brothers and sisters, we’ll always say our kids, “cause we think of all of my mother’s grandchildren as being so much a part of us that we included them as being ours, and we always think of them that way. There’s 27 grandchildren, so we just kinda take them all under our wings.
Roger DeLong
I remember in the summertime, down at my grandmother’s place, we boys, several boys, would get together and we’d play cowboys and indians. And it’d be late in the summer, maybe in the fall, and the corn would be put up, and fixed up like, we thought it was like an indian tepee. And we’d go and hide in there, in the garden area. The cowboys, if you were the cowboys, you’d go and get you green grapes or-it didn’t make any difference, as long as it was a grape. You had your slangshot and you’d go huntin’ ya indians. And the indians would be the one hidin’ in the corn shocks. I know we’d come peekin’ our heads out, they’d be hidin’ up in the high grass area, and we’d stick our hads out, and down would come the grapes on us, you know. We thought this was great. We’d change spots every now and then, but we did this and we musta robbed that poor grape harbor ‘til it was about empty. And grandma’d come out, and she’d seen what we was doin’; that was gonna be her grape jelly. She didn’t get none that year. We had ufn. We was splattered all over us where it hit. And they stang, too. I tell you, when you shot ‘em with a slangshot, they stang. Yeah, Gramma didn’t like that. We thought it was funny though.
Marilyn Shannon
I just have to tell you stories I’ve heard through the Dayton Stories Project. There’s somebody in the Miamisburg Creative Writing Class who is from Appalachia, and her name is Helen Behnken. And she’s actually done a little bit of writing herself. Anyway, one time at that story circle, people were talking about all the different kinds of things they smoked. And one of ‘em was ‘life everlasting’. Do you know what that was?
Phyllis Delong
Rabbit tobacca.
Marilyn Shannon
Yeah, that was the one. So that was interesting, for me to find that. And what made me think of that is when you were talking about the grapes. Doin’ the grapes with a slingshot. I haven’t heard about that yet, but I’ve heard about people smoking grape vines. Which is actually something I did when I was a kid in New Mexico. So I guess kids can just find anything to do, or make anything out of anything. To act like you’re a big shot or something like that.
Marilyn continues to say that she is tied to Appalachia through her husband’s family and tracing that genealogy.
Ann Humbarger
Being raised up here with a lot of Appalachian relatives had its good points and its bad points. I think the good thin is, is the closeness that we had in our family like Phyllis spoke of, where we did all consider each other... You know, I could go to Phyllis with a problem as easily if not easier than I could my own mother. I had, you know, a very large extended family. They are so funny; they’d be great evenings of all of us getting together and makin’ fudge and popcorn, and listening to the stories, ‘cause there’s noone who can tell a funny story like somebody from down in the hills. And things of that nature.
But one of the problems I encountered with coming and living in the Dayton area with Appalachian parents, was like we spoke when the meeting stated, we’re a little bit suspicious of strangers. Mom was scared to death here. And still is, to some extent. She’s not a real outgoing person, because she kinda sticks with blood. And so, when I was a teenager, I wasn’t allowed out of the front year. And, you know, in a relatively safe little area in Fairborn. And very strict southern religious beliefs; couldn’t wear slacks until I was almost a teenager, couldn’t wear shorts until I was a teenager. My younger brothers and sisters didn’t have these battles, because my older sister and I fought ‘em all fo them. And they should say thank you some day. You know, anything that was different was suspicious. Piercing of ears, makeup, dying of hair, I mean, anything of that nature. Oh, playing cards. Mother would come in and cut cards up in our bedroom if she found any type of playing cards in there. And so that was something to deal with, having Appalachian beliefs in a city area. And so, you know, none of your friends understood the type things that you were dealing with , with your parents. Why you couldn’t do things that they could do. But then there were a lot of wonderful things as well.
Roger DeLong
I just want to say something about what Ann reminded me. Phyllis was the one who had to fight the battle in here family, being the youngest girl. She was the first one that cut her hair, wear shorts. First one to get her driver’s license, because all the women didn’t drive. I got her, and I said, “No, you gotta drive.” So we did a lot of first, and we fought some battles too, but hey would say, “What are you doin’ wearin;’...?” My brother-in-law Phillip, bless his heart, he didn’t like shorts on you, and slacks, and he didn’t like you colorin’ your hair, and I think Faye got into some of that a little bit then, toward the end. But she had her fight the battles.
Jennifer Adams
Bein’ so young, I wasn’t raised in Appalachia at all; I was raised always here in Fairborn. I’m not really old, I’m 29. The thing I remember most, that I think is because of their appalachian background, bein’ raised the way they were-very close family ties and stuff, what Phyllis was saying-I remember specific things about each aunt or uncle. Phyllis is always cheerful, smiling, she likes to paint her fingernails; I think I got that from her. And depending on what mood she was in, is the color she would paint her fingernails. “I feel very cheery today, I think I’m going to wear pink.” And she put on pink. I never forget that.
Faye, I think of Faye, who lived in Kentucky that was nice going to her house. Seemed like we always to there at dark time, and I could always tell when we were there, ‘cause my dad would turn real slow goin’ down the holler, and i could hear the rocks, and it was dark and it was closed in and stuff, and that was neat. And the rain playing on the coal hill.
Elbert, my uncle Elbert, would bark at us, and scare you. He’d come up all of a sudden behind you and bark. And Coby, Uncle Coby. But I was real close Coby, too, because I was real close to his daughter Karen, and he took me on a lot of vacations, so that’s a lot of nice memories.
Who else? Freddie. I remember goin’ to stay with my cousin Leticia, and my uncle Freddie when he got home from work, it was the big thing because he worked at Dayton Daily Newspaper, and he’d come in and roll up his newspapers, and chase us all around the house, hittin’ us on the head with his newspapers. And he’d also let me shift the gears whenever he’d pick me up to let me come spend the night with ‘em, he’d let me shift the gears in his Mustang.
Did I forget somebody? Deal. Deal’s like mom, she’s real quiet, and when I think of her, I think of my mom. She’s very religious, and very loving. But I think more of her husband, which was my mom’s...he was my uncle, from my mom’s marriage, but he was also my dad’s brother. And I was also very close to him. Not incest or anything. And I was VERY close to him, as far as singin’ and stuff. Very close-knit family. You could still go around to everybody. That’s why I’m very touchy and huggy and loving; it’s because everybody in the family’s that way. You can go up and hug and kiss anybody. Uncle Roy Elvis, I think of him because he married me.
Phyllis DeLong
He performed the ceremony
Jennifer Adams
Yes, he didn’t marry me, per se, he married me and my husband. I knew I was forgetting somebody!
Tina Fissel
I remember, they brought back .... We don’t do this as often. We used to, a lot of times get together and sing music, and get together. But I guess everybody’s so busy now. I don’t know why we don’t do it as often anymore. But we don’t do that, and I really miss that. We don’t get together as much anymore and sing or anything. But we used to go down to my aunt Faye’s, down in Kentucky, all at the same time. I can remember this one spring, we all went down there, and there were so many of us, I ended up sleepin’ in the kitchen under the stove, I mean right in front of the stove. I mean, there wasn’t carpet or anything, and everybody was everywhere. I mean, you’d get up and walk over pallets and one bathroom. But that was so much fun. I mean, I love doin’ that, sleepin’ over with a whole bunch of people comin’ over and just spontaneously just, “Spend the night.” you know, and everybody’d just spend the night. My husband’s family’s not like that and everything has to be planned, it’s not very much fun, and I really miss that, just go in and just, “Oh, let’s spend the night.” “Okay.” You know, call them over, and you know, have a good time. That’s too bac we don’t do that as often.
Mark DeLong
I have something to add. One of the strange things that I remember is being raised up here in Dayton, Ohio, we always had indoor plumbing. So, one of my first memories of an outhouse in Kentucky, truly amazed me. It was....[laughing]
Phyllis DeLong
Let me finish this story for him. This is Phyllis, Mark’s mother. I had taken him to the outside toilet at his aunt Faye’s house, and he did what he went in there to do, and then he just looked and looked and looked, and I said, “What is it, Mark?” And he said, “How do you flush?” “Well just don’t worry about that. You’re all finished. Let’s go.” It smelled like it’s been flushin’.
I do have a story that one of my cousins, a distant cousin told last night and she was supposed to be here, and since she isn’t I’ll tell it for her. Her mom and dad used to make the proverbial trip home every weekend to visit family. And she said each time when they’d get ready to leave, Bonnie would curl each one of the girl’s hair. There was time they’d get about 30 minutes from her uncle Bob’s house, Bonnie would start pullin’ the girls, one at a time, into the front seat, and take the pin curls out and fix their hair, and straighten up their dresses and fix their bows and all this on their dressed and put ‘em in the back seat, then pull the next on up and do their hair, and straighten up the bows and put ‘em in the back seat, ‘til she had all three of ‘em done. And when they’d get out of the car, you know, when they’d pull up to Uncle Bob’s, when they’d get out of the car, course they just had to look like they were really, really dressed up. She said, “You know, because we were supposed to have been doin’ so much better, up there, than what they were doin’ in Kentucky.” So I told her, I said, “Well, that’s an interesting story.” And she said, “Well, do you think that would hurt Mom’s feelings?” And I said, “No, I don’t think so. I think Mom wouldn’t car.” So if Bonnie reads it some day, Phyllis told it!
Roger DeLong
My mother would tell me this. She said when she was a young girl, they had a new calf up in the barn, and course, everyone had chores to do. She was up there, movin’ the cattle from one stall to another, and one way you’d move the calves are you grab the back of the tail, and you sorta put one arm under their neck, and you pull a little bit and it moves. Well, this calf apparently didn’t wanna move too much, and my mom musta jerked too hard, bus she jerked that calf’s tail off. And she was so hurt about that. She said that when that calf was growin’ up, she would go up there durin’ the day, find it up in the fields, and get some leaves on a switch and knock the flies off of it. She did that until she left home, she felt so bad. They kep’ it as a milk cow. And so it tried to hit those flies and it couldn’t ‘cause it didn’t have no tail. She worried about that until she died. Every now and then, she’d think-she wouldn’t hurt a fly, hardly, you know-and she just was so hurt over that. Said she pulled, and there it was, she was just holdin’ it there in her hand. Was cold, maybe, yeah. I can just see her up there, knockin’ them flies off
And I wanted to say something else, that this family, I don’t know that it would be the norm, but when I married into it, it was a very different family than what I came from. And my grand parent Wells were older, quite a bit older, when they were growin’ up, and somewhere along the line, along the way, the family drifted apart. And they seldom ever get together. Some of ‘em you don’t want to get together with. And so THIS family goes away from the norm, I think. It stays together, it has stayed together for a number of years, and the kids-it goes on down through the generations. And I’m afraid with my family, that any getting together, it’s over with for that family. They just don’t want to, and they go their own way. And the longer you stay away from people and family, they’re worse than strangers then. And you don’t want to go around them, and that’s the sad part.
Tina Fissel
Yeah, I agree. In this family too, no matter what you’ve done or anything, nobody even pays attention. I mean, there’s no black sheep in the family. I mean, nobody doesn’t not invite anybody. I mean, even if they don’t come or something’, you invite everybody, and nobody, you know thinks bad of anybody.
Oh! And I have somethin’ else what’s different. And I never noticed it, really, until I got my husband, who was an only child. Eating; I heard my dad telling this story too, about, I mean, they would be real slow, you know getting up. And when his mom would say, “Dinner’s read.” You know, we used to get up and go and get it. I mean you know better, I mean, you don’t wait. That’s how it’s always been. And he would be real slow and get up, and we’d already be halfway done, or everybody’s got their plate. And at the family reunions, we all jump up and go to the start of the line. And in his family, I mean, small things, everybody just waits to see who’s gonna go first, you know, move out of the way. In our family, you’re trying to get it before you’re last. Just try to hurry and get enough, so you can be first at the dinner table.
Roger DeLong
I got a comment on that. I know what my son-in-law David went through. I was an only child, and when I married into this family, when they hollered that something was to eat, everybody went in goin’ and I just set there. ‘Cause I didn’t know what in the world to do. You know, they’s eatin’ like an eatin’ frenzy, and I’d sit there, and Phyllis would finally look back after while, and bring me somethin’ off the table. It took me a long time to get used to that, it really did.
Phyllis DeLong
It didn’t take him too long, because what happened was he found out if you didn’t get to the table pretty fast, you got the wing instead of the leg, or the chicken breast. So he finally figured it out. And also, too, he was so spoiled to eating certain foods that he had grown up with. He grew up with choices in foods. We didn’t have choices in foods; we had potatoes and beans most of the time. And so we didn’t have choices. Roger had choices, so he had to learn to eat foods that we had.
Roger DeLong
Just one comment. When I married Phyllis, bless her heat she’s raised on beans and cornbread and biscuits. I don’t know how many years it was, I didn’t get any beans of cornbread, because she said, “I’ve had enough of it. I don’t want to make no more of that.” It was years, and finally she said, “Well, maybe I’ll start making it again.”
Jennifer Adams
Talkin’ about food-now you have McDonald’s, and Arby’s and fast food stuff like that so you get accustomed to stuff like that. And whenever you go to your mom’s house for midday, and she says, “Well, I’m getting ready to make me somethin’ to eat, want somethin’ to eat?” “Oh, yeah, what have you got in there. Bologna or something’?” And no, she’ll mix up cornbread, fried cornbread, and she starts out with potatoes and she makes this huge meal that is absolutely delicious, and it’s all country stuff, and it’s nice to get that every now and then. Even thought you’re raised with it, but nowadays you don’t have that, so it’s nice to go home to that too. She can make a huge meal out of nothing.
Mark DeLong
Still on the theme of food, two things come to mind. First, in the older traditional United Baptist Church, they always have a big dinner on Sundays after the church meetings. And they only meet at a given church once a month, for historical reasons, because a hundred years ago it was just physically hard to get to these places. And they would travel around in groups to these different churches, so you actually went to church more than one Sunday a month, but it was just a different church. Sometimes you might go twice a month, and you would travel to another part of your area. At any rate, they always made this distinction at these dinners, the men would eat first, and then the women would eat, and then the children could eat. Not necessarily at the table; not necessarily on a plate. I guess I was used to always sitting at a table and eating, because that’ show I grew up. Ann says I was spoiled. Anyways, we’d go to these things, I would just like insist on having a chair at the table. I would cause so much pain-and I would get it.
Ann Humbarger
Phyllis came to our house a lot. And she brought prissy little Mark. His little Mamma Grandjackets, who had been raised partially in Germany, so he thought he was the kind of the roost. And he came back, and there’s 20-some other grandkids to deal with, and her I was, like eight years older than him, or whatever-four, five years older-and I would have to get away from the table so that Mark, who was cutting a hissy fit, could sit at the table, where he’s accustomed to setting, so that he could have his meal there. I mean, it was just, it was a very different life he had. He got to be raised by the rebel aunt. I had a cousin who I had dinner with this weekend at the Zion Baptist Church dinner, and he said he never knew a chicken had anything but a wing and a back ‘til he was 20 years old, ‘cause the kids didn’t go to the table first. Whereas my husband’s family in Indiana, they believe that it’s absolutely wrong not to let the kids eat first. Our family always said you should let the elders go first; his family says the elders have more patience, you let the kids go first and they’ll go out and play and leave you alone while you eat, you know. And they’re not in there whining and crying. So just different philosophies, you know. So my kids like that part of their dad’s family reunion real well; they get to go up there first.
Norma Wevurski
I had two different types of families. My mother’s family-who also was from Calhoun County-was different from my dad’s family, who was Calhoun County. My dad’s family was, they were on the top of the hill, and my mother grew up like two hills over. And so they were just different and they would do different things because of the way they were brought up. And that’s really funny to me, because they grew up in basically the same territory. But, you know, even now, as we’ve grown up and had children, it’s just different. My mother’s family is much closer than my dad’s family because there were so many of them. There are only six kids in my mother’s family and ten in my dad’s. But it’s just an attitude. The thin I read to you is from my dad’s youngest brother. It was so close, but it’s not the closeness..... We spend a week with my mother’s family, which is the Hope family, and I don’t think the Snyder family really could spend a week together. I don’t think they’d even want to. But, you know, it’s just such an interesting thing that they’re so different, coming from that same area of West Virginia.
Roger DeLong
I know that one of the customs, when you go down there: if you go up to a stranger’s house or something, and you’re talking to them, first thing they want to know before they tell you very much is who are you, what’s your family, or any grudge, they just welcome you right in and just take you right in. But if they did, you can’t get anything out of ‘em. They hold grudges back ‘ere. I know my grandpa always told me that his dad, and we’re going back a ways, was in the Civil War. And his dad was a southerner, because he had been born in Virginia, and his dad never forgave him for changing sides. And when he got married, never would go to the wedding. His family was just cut out of the rest of the family for the longest...it took years to heal. And that’s the way down there. If you get into a feud, you’ll have brothers sometimes fighting over little fenceposts, you know, stickin’ two inches over this way too much. And if they get a feud goin’, it can last for a long time. But I know that if you go there, and if they don’t have nothin’ against you and your family, you can just get anything from them.
Marilyn Shannon
Sounds like there are extremes, you know, between just extremely close families, but then ones that are fighting over really small things and not forgetting it.
Roger DeLong
Yeah, and you know the people to stay away from, too.
Mark DeLong
One of the things that I did different, I guess, than a lot of my other cousins, is that I went off to college. And I was the first one of the grandchildren to actually graduate from college. I guess I got that from my rebellious mom, who graduated from high school The only one in her family to graduate from high school. At any rate, she always felt that education was a real important thing, and she made sure all the time that I was growing up that she felt that was important, and that if I wanted to, that I should seriously consider going to college. And they didn’t have the money to pay for the school, but, you know, I still made it, I made it on a series of grants and scholarships and student loans. If you want to do something, you’ll find a way to do it. Mom’s mom, Mamaw, never quite understood why it was I wanted to go to school. IN fact, she would make comments to my mom like, “Why doesn’t he just stop going to school and go get a job in a factory somewhere?” It just was a totally foreign idea to spend all that energy to go to school and not stopping...I mean, the expectations were that IF you graduated from high school, you got a job, you married, and you had children, and you did all this at a relatively young age. And I never did that. I’m still in school. I’ve got a bachelor’s degree in physics, a master’s degree in electro-optics, and hopefully, within the next year, a Ph.D. in electro-optics. So I’ve been going to school for a long time. And I have a job, and a family, and I have two children now. But I can remember that I never quite connected as much with Mamaw as I did with my dad’s mom, just because there were differences in the expectations of how you were supposed to live out your life. They were different in that respect.
Ann Humbarger
Mamaw Flossie-I was probably closer to my mother’s side of the family because of their friendly, Appalachian ways, than I was to my dad’s side; which they’re very good people too, but I was with mom’s side more. And...
Mamaw was notorious for mispronouncing things. She reached me a drinking glass one night at home when I was a cocky 13 or 14 year-old, thought I knew everything, and she said, “Mariann, put this glass over there in the zank.” And I said, “Well, I’ll put it over in the sink because we don’t have a zank.” She pointed one of her long fingers at me and she said, “Oh girl, you got my meanin’, now put it where I told you too.” It was just a few minutes later that she said, “Shat that door over there.” And I said, “I’ll shat it.” It wasn’t uncommon for her to whip a grandchild if she thought they were gettin’ a little above their raisin’, you know. One time she was over at the house and there was a storm-it’s storming out now and my mother tonight, instead of being here, is sheltering herself at my sister’s house, because she lives in a mobile home and is terrified of storms. At this time Mom was still scared of htem, and it was right after the Xenia tonado, here in Ohio, and so she was particularly scared of them. It began to storm, and Mom was makin’ all of us kids go downstairs. I hated this, I thought it was just so silly and so backwards to do this, you know, to run and hide in the basement. I would just as soon to die proud upstairs. So she’s rushin’ us all downstiars, and she’s pushin’ us so hard thtat one of us kids bumps Mamaw Flossie, who’s there visiting, and Mamaw falls down about four-five steps. And it’s dark down there, ‘cause the electricity had shut off. And she falls down the steps, and Mamaw Flossie says, “Kids, I’m dead, shore is a whirl.” And my mom starts screamin’, “Mommy’s dead! Mommy’s dead!” And I’m thinking, “you crazy woman, she just said she’s dead, she couldn’t say it!” I mean, Mom was so scared she’d killed her mother, pushin’ her down the steps, you know. And I was so frustrated; I was a teenager being made to hide under the steps during this storm. She’d make us bring mattresses down and get ‘em....you know, I mean, it was terrible. And Mamaw did end up cracking her tooth and breaking her glasses, and had to have insurance fix it all, but Mamaw was quite a character, to say the least.
Mamaw teased us all because of what we names our kids. My daughter’s name’s Melinda. It was when a child was born that the child was named Heater, that this issue came up. And she said, “Heather. I never heard of such a name in my life. You kids have named your kids the strangest names.” And I said, “Are you kidding? You’ve got a child named Zelphia, one named Elbert, one named Povy, one named Elvina. One named Della.” And she said, “Well, I guess they’re kinda funny, now aren’t they.” But she thought names like Melinda and Heather and things were strange. I thought that was funny.
Jennifer Adams
With Mom, again, on tornadoes. I think it was during the Xenia tornado that I remember Mom-we were downstairs, in the basement-and I can remember looking up the stairs and seein’ Mom walkin’ by the door with a stick, like a cane. And you could tell she was scared to death, I’ll never forget that. And also, me and Tina were just talkin’ about this earlier. She was over at the house a lot. And one time it stormed really bad, and my dog’s outside; so my older sister Donna was watchin’ us, she got us all in the bathroom, put us in the bathtub with my dogs Tina, me, Rog, with my mom and dad’s pillows over us. So the dogs were shedding all over Mom and Dad’s pillows, and she had us singin’ Amazing Grace. ‘Cause Donna’s just like my mom, terrified of storms, so we were just talking about that. That is so funny to think about that. Then of course, Mom and Dad got home and of course Mom doesn’t think that’s funny at all. My dad, on the other hand, “I can’t believe you guys. You guys got dog hairs all over my pillows.”
Ann Humbarger
The only time I was allowed to stay upstairs during a storm was when Dad was home, because Dad thought it was silly too. And if I said, “Dad can I stay upstairs with you?’ then he would let me. We’d usually stay on the front porch and watch the storm come; we thought it was neat. And I still love a good storm. I still will stand out front and watch it come. I just LOVE ‘em, they don’t scare me at all. Maybe I should have a little bit more fear. I have respect for ‘em, I don’t fly a kite or anything, you know, or do anything crazy, but I still love it. And Dad would let me stay upstairs ‘cause she thought he was bein’ a little silly.
Tina Fissel
I have to say that I take after my aunt Nerdie now. She put it through me that I get scared of storms. Every now and then, I think to get my pillow and jump in the bathtub.
Marilyn Shannon
Has your mom always been really afraid of storms. You know, from an early age?
Ann Humbarger
Yeah, I think so. Where she was raised at, before they built the dam there, there was a lot of flooding in the Paintesville area. And she recalls one story of driving down the road, and the river there-what is that, the Little Sandy or the Big Sandy?-the Big Sandy runs a few miles down from them, where they were raised up t’the holler. And it had risen up so high that it was way up the bank and nearly to the road. And she says, “Dad, what if it ever comes up so high that it comes to the holler?” And he says, “Honey, if that water ever makes it up that hill and up that holler, the whole world’d be buried in water.” He said it helped her not to be scared at home, but whenever she was out-and Mom’s pretty much scared of everything. I mean, she is. She’s scared of fog, she’s scared of rain, she’s scared of snow, she’s scared of driving in the dark. And I don’t know; Phyllis, maybe you can answer. Is that from her Appalachian...?
Phyllis DeLong
I don’t think, you know, a lot of the fears have anything to do with Appalachia. Because Mommy didn’t have any fears that she bred into us. But now, Roger’s mother had a fear of storms, a terrible fear of storms of any kind. Any time we ever ask Roger’s mother to do anything in the future; you know, like we’d say, “On the 19th we have this going on.” She would say, “Well, I’ll have to wait and see what the weather is like.” That was always her phrase. And she would wait and see what the weather was like, and if it looked like it wasn’t going to storm, she would do whatever it was. But she never committed, until the day of, because she was so afraid of storms. So I think it’s just some people, no matter where they’re from, sometimes they’re afraid of storms. I don’t remember Mary being like that when we were kids. Course, she was a lot older than I was. I don’t remember her having those kinds of fears; I think they came later in life.
Norma Wevurski
Just listening to all of you, I can think of three things. The lightning, in West Virginia we lived on top of the hill, and every time there was a lightning storm, it burned up the transformer, it burned out the TV set, it burned up everything, you know.
And Mark, I was thinkin’ when you were talking about goin’ to college and everything you know: my mother’s family went to high school, and that made my grandpa Hope very mad. When he found that my uncle Avis and uncle Junior were going to go to high school, he left the house, and never returned. As a matter of fact, he was dead when they graduated college, or he would’ve really been mad. He left their house and didn’t come back.
Names, too, I was gonna talk about that, because we have some strange names too. We have Zelda, we have Melvina, we have, you know. If this ever travels to West Virginia, we might tone this down, ‘cause, you know, I think they think they’re funny names too, but....My grandmother’s name was Arzana Myrtle. And they were family names. We heard of family members that were named those names.
Ann Humbarger
One of the reasons that I go by the name Ann is because the name I was given was Mariann, but most Appalachian people don’t say Mariann, they say Muriann, and I never liked being called Murray. I thought it just sounded terrible when they did it. Course, now, usually the Ann came out sounding more like Ayan, but I could deal with that better. And when they would call for my cousin Emerson, who they call Ayem, and I was Ayan, you know, a lot of times we’d get mixed up. But that’s the reason I gave up Murray, but a lot of people who know that story, they call my Murray now, just to irritate me.
Marilyn Shannon
I was interested in your comments about when you were growing up it was kinda hard to , you know, have had this strict background and everything. Did anybody else have those feelings, and if so, have they changed? Or how’s it been as you’ve gotten a little bit older, and maybe a little bit more reflective about all that?
Tina Fissel
Just the church, I mean it was kinda hard growing up in that church, and then try to break with...My husband’s Catholic, and I mean, this was a big deal. That he was Catholic, I mean, this was a really big deal ‘cause everybody’s Baptist, you know. So they’re really strict that way. And then I go to , well, a Baptist church, but it’s conventional, you know. But goin’ to Mom’s church, I mean, the women sit on one side, the men on the other, and you can both sit in the middle, but I mean, they baptize people in the creek, and my husband had never heard of that. He thought I was lyin’. He said, “What if it’s snowin’?” I said, “They break the ice.” He doesn’t understand that. And two hours, and you know, goin’ to his church is a lot different than, you know, ‘cause of bein’ Catholic. But they have neat rituals too. But it was a big deal, ‘specially with some of the family, you know. My brother married into the Catholic too, and it’s a big deal. You wouldn’t think of it. Well, you know, or rebel mom.
Jennifer Adams
Ann’s my sister, so she is older than I am; I’m the fourth daughter. So it’s like she said, she did fight a lot of battles too, but I think that when a parent... Your first child, you’ve never, of course, had a child before, and you learn, you’re gonna make mistakes. And you learn. And of course, the way they were brought up, they were brought up very strict, and cards were from the Devil and stuff like that. So they had to learn this stuff too, that it wasn’t like that. So I did have a much easier time than she did. But in the same respect, our younger brother had it a hundred times easier than I did because there was that standard, you know. He could go out with girls, and he could bring ‘em back to his bedroom, because he had a good girl, you know. Well, I couldn’t take my boyfriend back to my bedroom. I guess she thought I was a bad girl.
Ann Humbarger
We tease sometimes about Puyllis comin’ over a lot and havin’ her kids over, but Phyllis was an absolute godsend to our family, because she was the rebel. So she would come to the house on the weekends a lot-see Mom didn’t have a car, as I mentioned, the other girls didn’t get their license ‘til they were probably well into their thirties-so Phyllis is the one who’d make that long trek from Dayton, or Miamisburg, over to Dayton to visit us. But it was wonderful, ‘cause she did have more modern ideals, you know. And she would calm the situation a lot, when it was a ridiculous argument about, you know, cuttin’ your hair an inch, or, you know, piercin’ your ears, or wearin’ eyeliner or eye makeup, you know. So it was wonderful havin’ her and her kids there, I mean, because it kept a lot of the arguments from hpapening over that type of stuff.
Phyllis DeLong
My mom-they were talking about Flossie, or Mamaw Flossie, that was my mother-and she was stricter on the other girls than she was on me. I was like Jennifer, I was the younger girl, and Mommy let me make decisions. Now, I don’ know whether she gave Mary Dean and Deal a choice about things or not, but he would give me choices. And she would say, “Now, what do you think your daddy would think about this?” Because Daddy had died when I was 15, and we had had the strict religious upbringing. One time, the high school principal asked me to come down to his office. And when I went down there, he said, “Phyllis, I’d like for you to go out for cheerleading.” And I said, “Well, why?” And he said, “Because we need some good girls on the cheerleading squad.” He said, “You know, the girls that are there are just not very decent anymore.” And I said, “I don’t know, I’ll have to ask Mommy. I don’t know what she would say.” And I kinda knew what she would say, but I didn’t want to tell him that. So any rate, I went home, and I asked Mommy about it, and she said, “Well, you just think about it, and you decide what you think your daddy would want you to do.” She didn’t tell me to say yes, she didn’t tell me to say no. She said, “You just think about it.” And I knew Daddy would never in a million years have let me be a cheerleader, so I said no. But she gave me the choice. So I think she learned a lot through the years, too. And she grew a lot by the time it got down to me. I was like, what, the fifth or sixth kid by that time. So we all know as parents, you know, you learn on those first ones. You really do, you learn on the first kids.
Jennifer Adams
I didn’t say anything about Mamaw. She lived with Uncle Freddie, and she shared a room with my cousin Leticia, whom I grew up with, we’re the same age. So whenever I’d go over and spend the night with Leticia, I’d have to sleep in the same room with Mamaw. You know, she’d have her twin bed, you know, tucked in the corner-not tucked, but you know, in the corner. And I remember one night, she snored awful. When she came to our house to stay the night, nobody wanted to sleep with her because she snored so bad. And I can’t stand even a heavy breathing, much less snoring. So I remember one night I went to spend the night with Leticia, and we’d just gotten in bed-course we went to bed late-and Mamaw was snoring. I mean, she was snoring bad. Leticia was already asleep. Leticia had TONS of stuffed animals, all over her bed, and we’d put them on the floor. So I started takin’ ‘em and throwin’ ‘em at her, to make her jump, so she’d stop snorin’ for a few minutes, so maybe I could go to sleep. This night, I don’t know how many I threw at her. So finally, after probably 10, 15 stuffed animals I’d thrown at her, she rolled over. I’ll NEVER forget this in my mind, her looking like me was like, you know, I’m gonna get it. She looked at me and she said, “You better stop it.” So then the next day, I thought maybe she’d forget about it, you know, go back to sleep and get up. No, she didn’t forget about it. I had to make her bed for doing that. I didn’t realize I’d thrown that many stuffed animals and I found ‘em all, you know, kinda tucked behind the bed. She wouldn’t wake up, enough to see what I was doing, just enough to startle her a little bit to stop.
Tina Fissel
She did have the godawfulest snore you ever heard in your entire life. Her whole belly moved.
Jennifer Adams
I remember hearing a story in Kentucky, that everybody was there at Faye’s house again, spending the night, all of her kids and everybody. And so they were assigning, like, places to sleep, and Mamaw had her own room of course, and no one wanted to sleep with her. So finally she looked, I think it was at Mom, and said, “what is wrong? Do I stink or somethin’?” She was really hurt. And so Mom said, “No, Mommy, you know, it’s just that you snore so loud. I’ll sleep with you.” So she was really self-conscious about it. She was afraid that she stunk or something’, that’s why no one wanted to sleep with her, but no, it’s because of her snoring.
Tina Fissel
It didn’t matter in that little house. You could hear it. Oh, but something I forgot about Mamaw. She didn’t ever believe that the astronauts went up in space. She always believed that it was all a TV hoax. And my mom’s dad thought that the earth was square, because the Bible said, “the angels will stand on the corners of the earth.” So my mom got in trouble-you should tell that story about comin’ home and gettin’ in trouble for that.
Phyllis DeLong
I came home from school one day; and I musta been about ninth grade, wasn’t too long before Daddy dies. And I was all excited because we learned in science that the earth was round, not square as I’d been taught at home. And so I came in, and I told Daddy about this, I was all excited. “Daddy, guess what I learned today?” And he said, “What.” And I said, “Well, the earth’s not square, it’s round.” And he said, “Phyllis Ann, if I ever hear you say anything like that again, I”ll wear you out.” So I didn’t say it anymore. They didn’t have things to look at visually, that we do now. Now, whether Daddy wouldn’t believed it or not, I don’t know. Because I still know some people that go out to church at the Fairborn church, that they still do believe that the earth is square. And these are intelligent people, and where they get it, I mean, it’s just from the Bible, from that one verse, but, you know, how they can make this in their mind to be true, I don’t know. And they’re educated people.
Roger DeLong
I’m kinda reminded of a story. Down in Kentucky at my grandpa’s house and somebody-he owned some rental property that hadn’t been rented in a long time. Matter of fact, it was a log cabin, one room, oh, it’s about a fourth of a mile up the holler from us. A guy come along and said, “I’ll rent that place from ya, for five dollars a month.” He said, “Okay. I’ve gotta go fix it up.” Didn’t have a well on it. Had some apple trees, though. So my mother, my aunt, my gramma and grampa, we grabbed some newspapers, and some rolls of wall paper and some brooms, and we went walkin’ up through there, and we were gonna clean it up and get it ready. Had a hard dirt floor. When you swep’ it out, it was just like a rock, though. We was workin’ on that, and the ceiling of it was made with a cloth that hung down. And we was workin’ around, and everybody was doin’ something. And I got over in the corner and got around a wasper next. It come down at me, and I’d run, you know. And I said, “I’ll fix this wasper.” I picked up a hammer, and went over there, and that wasper come right up that next, and that backed me right up. I drawed back to hit that wasper real hard, boy I was just pulled back, and all of a sudden a heard that hammer crack. Uh, oh. Looked around, and my poor grandpa he grabbed his head and he said, “You whupped me, son, you whupped me sure.” He went staggerin’ outside and had to set down. Oooh. I hit him right between the eyes. He said, “I didn’t think you could hit a wasper with a hammer.” I don’t know, it was the only thing I had. I never used a hammer again, on a wasper. Poor old feller.
Marilyn Shannon
How many of the cousins-like there are 27, did you say?-live in this area?
Ann Humbarger
Almost all of them. My sister Vanessa lives in Canada, one lives in California. Faye’s kids live in Kentucky still. There’s three in Kentucky. The rest are in this area, so 22.
Tina Fissel
My husband always teases me that we’re a cult, because nobody wants to move away. He moved me down to North Carolina, I wanted my family and he doesn’t understand, he says, “Your family’s a cult.” I mean, nobody moves, I mean really, of their own free will.
Jennifer Adams
When I first got married, we went immediately to Germany. I was 18 years old, so I’d never been away from home. And I had my wedding tape with me. And that’s the only thin-‘cause I mean, I heard Uncle Elbert talkin’ in the background, and of course everyone was in the church-it was like still being with everybody. So it is very important. We’ve got a wonderful family. I was always teased through school, sayin’ that I was related to everybody-and still am. This is your third, fourth cousin, and I’m still teased about that. And I didn’t have close friends at school, because I think there was, how many of us, eight of us that graduated at one time? All in 1984. So those were my people I went to school with , and hung out with . It was my cousins, And it’s still that way. But now, it’s even older cousins, because I’m getting older. Like my cousin Susan, who’s Ann’s age, she’s 38, 39. And when we first started hangin’ out together, she asked me, she said, “Well how old are you?” And I told ‘er, and she said, “Well, I’m nine years older than you, “ she said, A few years ago, I wouldn’t’a had nothin’ to do with you.” It’s true.
Marilyn Shannon
Do you see the next generation pretty much staying the same way? With the same closeness and everything?
Jennifer Adams
Yeah, because like they did back then, they had kids at the same time, and it seems like that’s happening with us, too. That we have kids that are around the same ages. And we still get together at family reunions and stuff.
Ann Humbarger
I thin that that’s the main thin, is the once a year, Labor Day weekend, it begins on Friday night with a slumber party for all married women at my house. Saturday night is a theme party at the Bath Township Building here in Fairborn. Sunday is just the regular family reunion, you know, volleyball, softball, barbecue, dumplin’s, cornbread, you know, all that stuff. Ad all the kids are there and playing, and all of us young people do still get together, occasionally, as much as our schedules allow. We have a Christmas party at the Bath Township building, and there’ll be anywhere from 80 to 150 people there and you just, you never know. And I have over 100 relatives just here in Fairborn, because of my mother and father’s family. And it is great. When I married my husband, his family’s all in Indiana, and very small family. You know, everywhere we go, you couldn’t go out to dinner without runnin’ into a cousin, you couldn’t go to K-Mart; well, half of ‘em work at K-Mart, you know, with their high learnin’, you know. That’s just a joke; Angel’ll kill me. I mean, you couldn’t go anywhere in Fairborn without meeting someone, and that’s great. I remember once, I pulled into a gas station, the guy’s pumpin’ the gas, and he called me on something and I said, “Yeah, well the family always says...” and when I said that, he was kinda taken aback. And he says, “What do you mean by ‘the family’?” And I said, “Well my relatives.” He goes, “Oh. I thought you were part of the Charles Manson group or something!” But we’re so used to saying “the family’ like that, and you don’t hear that from a lot of people, a phrase like that. But, you know, I began to think of how strange ti is, to say it like that.
Marilyn Shannon
Are there any other family groups in the Fairborn area that are as large as this one, would you say?
Tina Fissel
I doubt it. We kinda own Fairborn. If we all moved out, I mean, really. Me and my mom always worried about goin’ down to a Reds game, and like, rentin’ a bus for all of us, you know. But then we worried about havin’ a car crash or something’, it’d wipe out the whole family. And the economics and that Appalachia paranoia. And all the house, and I mean, it would be, really, it would be an economic crisis.
Phyllis DeLong
Quite seriously, if we all would get behind a certain candidate, or a certain issue, in a small town like this we can make a difference. Because I mean, there’s probably a good 100 or 150 that are in a voting age. And, I mean, that could make a difference in a small town.
Marilyn Shannon
I was even wondering, before you said that, has anybody ever gotten into politics in any of your family?
Ann Humbarger
There is a woman here in town, Sarah Childers, and she’s been a Bath Township Trustee, she ran for Mayor a few years ago. And it was funny, because my sisters and I do some family singing. She asked us to come down and sing for her, we did the singing, and it’s funny, because she only lost for Mayor by 33 votes. And I think it’s part of the Appalachian culture too, from my experience, that a lot of them aren’t registered voters. They don’t, you know, get out and do things in the community a lot, and inspired by Phyllis the Rebel, you know, I’ve kinda been more involved in the community and schools and things. And I started looking at the people down there. And her family, if she would campaign within her family, Sarah Childers, she would’ve won that election, because there were over 40 of ‘em there, at her campaign banquet, you know, hopin’ for her to win, who hadn’t even went out and voted that day. If she’d campaigned within her own family, gotten them to register to vote, she’d’a won. She’s done well here in Fairborn, because she owned an IGA up on Funderberg Road, and was well know in the community, a good, friendly woman.
Phyllis DeLong
Sarah also has been a big influence on different people who have come to this area. Her sister, Sarah’s sister, was one of the original people here, who came and worked at the Air Force Base, who inspired Sarah to come up here, who inspired my sister Deal to come here, through Deal’s husband Charles. So, you know, she’s had a big influence on a lot of people, or hwy people are here. And she’s kind of been, you know, looked up to, I think, a lot. She’s been one who’s always supported the church a lot, and backed the church and so forth. So, you know, we do have, sort of our leaders, I guess, within the family group. When you think about it, you know, I think about it like that. But there are in ways.
Tina Fissel
I used to, whenever I brought David, my husband, over, you could stay on one road, on Ironwood in Fairborn, and hit about four relatives on one road. I mean, and everybody, as we’re droppin’ off stuff, everything’s within two or three minutes of each other.
Mark DeLong
I think one of the things that comes out of Appalachian roots, we keep hearing over and over again, is the closeness of the family. I had an opportunity to live away from the family for the summer; well, actually two summers. I worked in Pasadena, California, for a summer when I was in college, and then in Boston for a summer. And then I actually moved to Boston, and lived there for about a year after graduate school And one of the things that you learn, when you’re out on your own like that, is how much that family actually meant to you, and you really took it for granted. And when you don’t have anyone there, and you’re thousands of miles away, and you can’t just go...that isolated feeling is really strong. I think it was particularly strong because of our background, the closeness of our family. If we hadn’t’ve had a close family, it probably wouldn’t’ve bothered me to live that far away. But it really bothered me, and I guess I never thought it would. But it did. And it just was not something I wanted to...I did not want to stay out there, that far away. Even though it’s a beautiful place, and it has a lot of history, and I like history. It just was not home. It missed this key component of being able to sit down and joke with Ann, my sister, and everyone here. And it just missed that. And I think that’s one of the re-occurring themes here, is that in general, in the Appalachian family, there’s a very strong sense of home. And I always feel home, here in Dayton.
Jennifer Adams
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.. When I was in Germany, Leticia, my cousin whom I grew up with-I was in Germany with my husband, ‘cause he was in the Army-and we got married 11 days apart, and she went to Japan ‘cause her husband was in the Marine Corps. So we hadn’t seen each other or talked to each other in a long time, and I found out shew was at home, visiting, and so I called over at Uncle Freddie’s house, and of course she was there. And we were talking, all of a sudden I heard Uncle Freddie say somethin’, he was on the other end. And he said somethin’ I’ll never forget, he said, “I just can’t believe I’m hearin’ the two of you talk. Can I just sit here and listen?” So that made me feel good that he missed me, and he missed us bein’ together, and he wanted to hear that again. I’ll never forget that, I though that was neat.
Norma Wevurski
I’m confused a little bit, because Osborne is your names, and you said you’re not as close to Osborne family. But there’s so many Osbornes around, I’ve had so many in school, now, are they all the same family?
Ann Humbarger
No, no. Growing up, most of Dad’s family were in Kentucky or Florida, for the most part. There were a few here; my dad’s sister Leona is married to Luther Preston, who owned the IGA out in Yellow Springs. But there was some age difference there with us. And I didn’t mean that in a bad sense, it’s just that we were with Mom’s family SO much. Because they are such a tight group. I mean, if you tried to cause any strife between those brothers and sisters, it would be civil war. I mean, they are so tightly bound. And they can get a s mad as they want with each other, but don’t you dare say a word against the other one. I mean, I found that growin’up, that I could say anything bad about anybody I wanted to, unless it was one of Mom’s brothers and sisters, and you had better watch out. Because she just wasn’t gonna stand for that. She could get mad at ‘em.
Norma Wevurski
I think that’s called unconditional love. And you know, that’s what I think about my family from West Virginia. There’s unconditional love there. My daughters have said that they like to go to see the family, because they’ll accept anything from a member of the family. You’re not afraid to tell ‘em anything. And you mentioned that, too.
Roger DeLong
I often wonder how close our families would be if we did not have the reunion and the Christmas party. Because I think as time goes on, with our own families, we naturally just grow apart. I think back when Phyllis’ grandfather dies, Elbert Jennings, and there was a commitment at the funeral from his kids and from Grandpa James, that they have a yearly reunion from that pont forward. And it was agreed, at that time. And we have carried that on.
Phyllis DeLong
Uncle James made me promise that I would continue the family reunion somehow, to keep it goin’. And which I’ve done that. And I’ve made Marianne make a promise to me that SHE will keep it going when I’m gone. So she’ll have to pass the promise on to somebody else, because we do think it helps our family. Because everybody is so busy these days, and we don’t see each other as much as we used to, simply because of, you know, being involved in so many different things. But at least, on that Labor Day weekend-oh we see each other, in and out, if we run into K-Mart or Krogers or something, you can’t go out to Krogers without seeing somebody-but, you know, we just don’t visit as much as we used to.
Marilyn Shannon
I have a question about Phyllis the Rebel. I’ve been hearing this a lot. Was that ever a problem with some of your other sisters and brothers, that they really thought you were just out of bounds?
Phyllis DeLong
Still is. I still carry it. There’s so many things that I grew up with, that I felt was wrong. And I had, I don’t know, was brave enough-I don’t’ know if that’s a good choice of words-the audacity to say... They didn’t like the way that I was always more adventuresome. I enjoyed having friends that weren’t in the church, or in the family. I didn’t feel like it was wrong for me to have a friend that was not in the church or in the family. And Mommy, she went along with it, to a certain extent. There were certain girls that I wasn’t allowed to spend the night with, because they were Camelites, but, you know-Camelites, that’s a type of religion. I think up here it’s called Church of Christ. But in a small-knit community like we were, we knew everybody in that little community, there wasn’t that many people. But I didn’t know why I am the way I am. I’ve just always felt like there’s things that aren’t fair, there’s some things in the church that I don’t feel like’s fair. And I speak up about it. Which, you know, women aren’t s’posed to talk. But if I feel like it’s unfair, I say it.
Ann Humbarger
I think she carries two uses in the family. Mor than that, but I mean as far as what they consider her. Yet, when you need someone to take control of a situation, you need someone to be there, you need someone to plan a party, you need someone to organize things, Phyllis is the one you come to. But then they don’t like when she gets too high and mighty and gets too bossy, you know. So then they’ll kinda pick on her with the, well, you know, “There’s the little sister, tellin’ us what to do and where to set the beans when we come in.” You know. And so, they want you to take charge of everything, but then they want you to let them do what they want to anyway. Don’t you think?
Phyllis DeLong
Yeah, well, as long as I do the work, it’s all right.
Roger DeLong
I think a lot of Phyllis’ way she is, is that I grew up, I didn’t have a strong religious background. I was religious in the fact that I was one of those Methodists, you know, but I did not have the beliefs that Phyllis’ church had, and her family had. And when we would go out, I would just expect her-because I was raised mostly in the city-I just thought it was natural for us to do these things. Wear shorts if you wanted, get a driver’s license, go to movies, have friends. We’d go paryt. Yeah, we did all kinds of things. Played cards. First thin, you know, I always grew up with cards. But I never held her back. If I did anything, I encouraged it, encouraged’er. Whereas, when one of the boys would marry a girl, they’d marry in and they sorta stayed quiet in the family, that’s what was expected of the. And we grew up in a different time. That’s one of the biggest things. It was a different time. You know, televisions, and cars, and I always wanted to go over and do something, you know, new and exciting. And other people, they didn’t. They was satisfied with staying there. And I wasn’t satisfied with staying there.
Phyllis DeLong
I always wanted more than what...I’m not talking physical things more, or materialistic things more, I just wanted more out of life. And some of that might be because I was diagnosed with a muscle disease when I was 23. And so, I think probably in the back of my mind, I’ve probably wondered, you know, I many not have that many years, so I better make the best of what I have. And maybe that’s part of it, I don’t know. But I as always rebellious, I was rebellious before. But now, I was still, I was a good person. I wasn’t runnin’ around or anything like that, I was in good person. I did what Mommy wanted me to do, if I wanted to do it. But no, I said that for a joke, because I really did what Mommy told me to most of the time. But Mommy would just laugh, you know. I guess she would let me get by with more, because I was the baby girl. No, I wasn’t sick at home with Mommy, before I was married.
Tina Fissel
I do have one thing that I know I do miss. That David’s family-his grandmothers, there was only like five grandkids, so they were real close with their grandmother and got all kinds of gifts, you know, for Christmas and stuff. And like, with my Mamaw, I mean, there were so many of us, I mean, we didn’t have that I mean, she was almost more like an aunt than a Mamaw. I mean, she was my Mamaw, but I mean, she wasn’t like David was with his grandmother who, you know, got all kinds of gifts, for birthdays, you know, Easter, and all this. I mean, I remember maybe two Christmases of gettin’ ...she just couldn’t buy for all 27 kids. Every now and then, I remember gettin’ a couple special things. I mean, that’s one of the things that you do miss with havin’ a big family like that. Is that you don’t get that intimate with your Mamaw.
Norma Wuvurski
I think we musta been rich, because my gramma always gave a dollar. She’d send you a dollar in a birthday card.
Marilyn Shannon
I have a question about sorta the religious carryover. Because it sounds as though most of the family were fairly religious in this United Baptist Church, which I’ve heard a little bit, mostly through the circle with your parents and everything. So how have the young people, meaning you all and the other 37 cousins or whatever, have they kept some of the same church beliefs, and all that sorta thing? And the reason I say that, I’m just sorta interested for myself too. I have four children, four adult children. I’m probably your parent’s age or a little bit younger, but somewhere around in there. And we’re Lutheran, and everybody always went to church, now that was what you did, people didn’t have a choice. And you know, that’s not exactly what you call very strict, or anything like that, but now, of my four children, nobody goes to church. They might anything like that, but now, of my four children, nobody goes to church. They might go every once and a while, if they come home for a visit; nobody lives in tow. Talk about, you know, you all live together? I have one child in Albuquerque, one in Washington, DC, one in Alabama, one in Vermont. So, you know, we don’t get together very often. I have three first cousins, and two in California, one in Philadelphia. So that’s probably really incomprehensible to you, it’s incomprehensible to me that you have 27 first cousins and they almost all, 23 or so, live within a stone’s throw practically. I feel, I didn’t know how-what’s the word I’m looking for, I can’t think of the right word, befeft? I don’t know if that’s a word-that I don’t have all that. I didn’t’ know I didn’t have all this until I met up with all you guys, and now I found I don’t have. I miss it. You don’t miss what you don’t’ have, but it sounds really neat. But I just wanted to ask you about your church views. Just as sort of a parent myself.
Ann Humbarger
I think that’s a real interesting aspect. Of all of the grandkids who were raised with the strict United Baptist upbringing, to my understanding, there are two right now who belong to them, United Baptists. The rest have, I believe all of them, have a strong religious belief in their life, but almost all attend other churches. It’s almost like the strict beliefs my mother came here with, as far as clothing and shorts and all that, it’s the same thing. Untied Baptist has kept all of those very, very strict beliefs. And there are some rules out there that some of the kids, I believe, don’t’ believe are right. I guess I should just speak for myself. But I think most of us go to church. And when you leave United Baptist, it’s almost like leaving the family. It really is. Because when I go to church up there, it’s almost all relatives. Or relatives of relatives; almost everybody’s from Kentucky. So it’s a tough thing to do. Especially with my mother, it was. Jennifer’s here, she’s one of the two that still belong to United Baptist. Right now.
