6 10 75 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/e42f4e22150aeb27d56d119ae9263248.mp3 737882d320fccabacbf91dfdff4caed7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Broome County Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Broome County -- History Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Description An account of the resource The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed. See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information. Acknowledgment of sensitive content Binghamton University Libraries provide digital access to select materials held within the Special Collections department. Oral histories provide a vibrant window into life in the community. However, they also expose insensitive, and at times offensive, racial and gender terminology that, though once commonplace, are now acknowledged to cause harm. The Libraries have chosen to make these oral histories available as part of the historical record but the Libraries do not support or agree with the harmful narratives that can be found in these volumes. <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/digital/">Digital Collections</a> are created for educational and historical purposes only. It is our intention to present the content as it originally appeared. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright  Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ben Coury, Digital Web Designer Yvonne Deligato, Former University Archivist Shandi Ezraseneh, Student Employee Laura Evans, Former Metadata Librarian Caitlin Holton, Digital Initiatives Assistant Jamey McDermott, Student Employee Erin Rushton, Head of Digital Initiatives David Schuster, Senior Director for Library Technology and Digital Strategies Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1977-1978 Relation A related resource <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections, Broome County Oral History project</a> Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Petras, Louise Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Caganek, Anna Date of Interview 1978-07-15 Collection Broome County Oral History Project Date of Digitization 2016-03-27 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 23:11 Minutes Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE55999">Interview with Louise Petras</a> Subject LCSH Petras, Louise -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Immigrants -- Interviews; Household employees -- Interviews; Chenango Bridge (N.Y.); Farms Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Broome County Oral History Project Interview with: Mrs. Louise Petras Interviewed by: Anna Caganek Date of Interview: 14 September 1978 Anna: I am Anna Caganek, dating to viewer, talking to Mrs. Louise Petras. 234 Clinton St., Binghamton, New York. Date is September 14, 1978. Louise: Louise Petras. Louise Petras. Breginsky! [sic] Anna: Mm-hm. Louise: I came up here Anna: My mother and father, yes. Louise: My father came - 1900. My sister came - 1901. And my mother came - 1903. The youngest one. And my other sister, I came - 1905. And my other sister came - 1906. Came, we livin’ on Pennsylvania - that’s near Harrisburg. I was working, it was about, it was [unintelligible] Anna: Mm-hm. Louise: I was working at Good Samaritan Hospital six months, and then I went to Buffalo to my aunt, and I was working in a hotel. When I was 16 years old, I got married…like a crazy. You write that? Then I still was working houses all the time. Was working over and over…housework. I never work in a factory. And then I came to Binghamton. My husband, he was working up here, and I was cleaning houses for everybody. For Mrs. Hamlin, I was working 14 years; Mrs. Smith; Dr. Kane, John; Dr. Kane, Paul. I did - and Dr. Gregory. I can’t think if he was living on a, on a…knick…doctor, doctor…mm, I, I can’t think of his name now. Anna: Tell me what, though, when you came to Ellis Island what they did. Louise: And then I came here from the ship. So I went to…now [unintelligible] Anna: Ellis Island. Louise: Ellis Island. And I stay there overnight. Anna: They look you over…? Louise: They looked me over. Then next morning, I went on a tra, trantor [sic] living on Pennsylvania. Anna: What was the name of the - you came, the ship? Louise: Kaiser Willhelm. I came on Kaiser Willhelm. And [laughs] [foreign], we sleep over and [foreign]. Anna: Mm-hm. Louise: And I tell you, I never see so many people in a ship. And I got lice now. I tell you. [laughs] So when, when I came to, to Lebanon, my mother first was doing my hair. Clean my hair. So I didn’t have any no more. Anna: Do you know when you got married, or where you got married? Louise: Oh, I ain’t got married ‘till - ‘cause I was 13 years old. And then I went up to Buffalo and I was working up there in a hotel, in a kitchen. Anna: Mm-hm. Louise: And then I was - I have typhoid fever. I was, eh, for 11 weeks I was sick. And I thought, “I’m gonna go.” But, I guess they didn’t want me up there. So then, you know…I have kids after kids - kids after kids. So when I moved from Buffalo to Lebanon - back to Lebanon [Pennsylvania] - I still was working. And…[foreign] I wanna say something, you know…I was working in Buffalo, housework, every place. Then I went back again to Victor, Buffalo. And I was working up there, I don’t know how many years. That was my job. And here I was, working all over the doctors. I was working, I guess, 14 - 8, 16 years after Mrs. Hamilton, and she had the drug store. But, housework. And then for John Smith’s wife, I was working housework. Dr. Kane, John, I was working housework. Dr. Paul Kane, I was working…Mrs. - Dr. Marino, I was working up there year and a half. Then I went back… Anna: And what’s the name of the…was, uh, the doctor? So I didn’t even know…? Louise: Dr. Pollmak, over two years. I was working hard, you know. I never worked in a factory because I didn’t understand factory. So I was working housework. Anna: Hm. Louise: And you know how that is when you have kids after kids. I have 14 kids. I have 11 boys and, and 2 girl - 3 girls. Now, I got two boys left and one girl. They, all of them died when they was 15…22. Then I was on a farm. I liked it in a farm up on Chenango Forks. We was up there only 10 years, and then move again, [unintelligible] Anna: Well, tell ‘em how nice the people were in those days. Louise: And that not, that time, the people was very nice. They help each other. If you need help, the people help you; if they need help, you help them. We never fight. ‘Cause they, they always was nice. Nadda, not like nadda. Anna: No. Louise: You won’t get any help now for them. And everything was cheap. So my mother paid $3.50 rent - we had five rooms. But they had water water outside - you had to carry it. I tell you: The people so nice to you. God, if you need this - if you need money, they lend you. If you need help, something like, uh…do you know how much we pay for a pound of pork chops? We pays $0.10 pound of pork chops; $0.04 a hot dogs pound; and $0.06 of beef for soup. How you like that? $0.25 for dozen eggs. The, we used to buy 100 pounds of sugar for $4.00. And 100 pounds of flour because my mother used to bake bread. Now, see how, how people was that time? How they helped each other? But now, lookit: They don’t pay any attention to nobody. I can’t understand how that’s gonna come. And I tell you this much: My grand, grandmother was 96 years when I went here. And she told us what’s gonna happen. And it’s coming! And nobody gonna wanna believe it. And it’s gonna be worse than it is. Because people don’t care; they don’t help each other like they used to do. I can understand why. There are still the kids stealing, they are killing. That’s what my great-grandmother said, that that’s what’s gonna come, and this is the year [it]’s coming. Now, believe me or not. Too bad I am not up there so I can tell you the straight how is it. But, nah. We paid, you know how much we paid for shoes? $0.50 a pair and $1.50 for the good one[s]. And $0.03 a yard for good, for make new clothes. Now, isn’t it nice up there that time? Anna: That was probably the 19…eh, the 20s and 30s. Like that. Louise: Yeah. Anna: Like, uh…19, uh… Louise: That was, that was what? Anna: 1920s? Louise: Not 30…? Yeah. Anna: 1930s…and, yeah. Louise: Yeah. That’s, that…people helped each other. Anna: 30s. And up to 19…um, uh, 40s, wasn’t it? Louise: Yeah. Everything - believe me, if you buy coat? $75.00. $75.00, or that was, was the best one. And when the hairdre- when the lady made dresses, she charge you $0.50 for dress. $0.03 for pound; $0.03 a yard, we bought. And then we had everything like that. You don’t believe that, and that’s true. It’s too bad that I can’t do it right straight, you know. To tell them what it what - what we went through. And in the summertimes, you should see the people. They was, my sister’s husband [laughs] was playing accordion and, eh, was dancing outside. Help each other, no- not like now. This is, this is awful what they’re now. [unintelligible] Yep, that’s, that’s true. That’s a, that’s a thing that I can…’course, I went a few days to school. A school home - Mrs. Lee used to teach us. And Ms. Hess come up, you know. Anna: That’s when you got your paper [proof of citizenship]? Louise: That’s when I got my paper. Anna: 1934? Louise: 1934, I guess. Yep. All the people was nice each other that time. That’s, I don’t think that never gonna happen no more. No. ‘Cause now, you’re afraid to go out. Outside. Anna: No cars then, days, so no… Louise: They didn’t have any - so much cars. There was few of them, but… Anna: Mm-hm. Louise: Boy, I tell you… Anna: How did you go, get to the farm? On the car, then? They, uh… Louise: We, we have a car; we have a truck on a farm. Anna: What did you do on the farm? Louise: We wha-farmer, and we was selling milk. And potatoes…and I took eggs: $0.25 a dozen. So…then I pick up the white…I went in a field. Pick, pick up the mushroom - the white ones, the early one. Bushels. I went up there every morning; I went up there, I came up the Main Street, and I said, “Here: Divide it. How much you want? How much you want?” Now sometimes, I made butter. When the flood hit, we didn’t have any, any place to get the milk, so…I made butter. That’s, that’s the way was my life. So…and I liked it ‘cause there was people. Anna: Everybody was happy. Louise: Everybody was happy and there was a people nice. They appreciate you when you come up there, but now? Look at now. I can understand. And believe me or not, it’s gonna be worse. You say, “I can understand.” Anna: What year did your husband die? Louise: My husband? Oh, he was, uh… Anna: He used to build houses. Louise: He used to build…my husband was a builder - he used to build, uh, houses. Stucco houses and every kind of, uh…that’s why he built, uh…up here, up on the six- Anna: Sokolovna? Louise: Huh? Anna: Sokolovna? Louise: Yeah! This, this one. Anna: Tell ‘em, tell ‘em. Louise: This, this…or… Anna: Tell ‘em. Louise: Well, they’re gonna, they’re gonna have to see this up there. My husband build that. Anna: Yeah, the Sokolovna. Tell ‘em. Louise: The Sokolovna up here, yes. Anna: Tell ‘em. Louise: Yes. Anna: Tell ‘em. Louise: My husband was good builder and everybody likes him. Even Father Cyril, when he was fixing something in a church. But, now? They won’t pay any attention to nobody. Anna: What did you go…? What did you do? Like, did you go out for a good time in Ithaca? Louise: Oh, no. Anna: No. Louise: We didn’t go for good time. We went with somebody got married - the wedding. But, we didn’t go to dance or something like that. Anna: Vacation? Louise: No, no. Never, no- Anna: But, you were happier, though? Louise: We was happy, I don’t care. But not, not like now. You gotta be scared now when you go out. Well, this is awful - everything. Believe me or not, and it’s gonna get worse. And believe me or not because I read the Bible - all Bible and there everything said. Anna: So, don’t…? Louise: Yeah, that’s true. That’s not, I’m not lying because I never lie, and I was working at rich people - doctors, everything. I never touched nothing. Anna: What church you go to? Louise: Uh, eh…what church we went? Anna: What church you go to? St. Cyril? Louise: St. Cyril, I’ll go. And then I was living on, uh, Rotary Ave., we went down, St. Thomas. Yes. And the people was happy. Now? Gosh. I don’t think take care of street, people across street on Rotary Ave. But now, you have to be afraid to go out. That’s why I don’t go out - because I’m afraid. One thing, um, [I’m] already 86 years and 6 months - 5 months. And I can’t see very good, so I have to sit in house. That’s…so there you are. That’s my story. Too, too bad I don’t know how to write. Because I went to school - we used to have the school home, you know. Twice a week, Mrs. Lee used to teach us. Anna: And what’s, eh…when you came to this country, you were how old were you when you came to…? Louise: I was 13 years old when I came here to this country. Nyet. Then I got a job down at Good Samaritan Hospital. Anna: Hm. Well, you came from Czechoslovakia, off, it was at that time Austria-Hungary. Louise: Yeah, that was, eh…it used to belong to Franz Joseph, that time. Anna: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Louise: But I, I came up here on, uh…what was the ship I told you? Anna: Yeah, you did. Louise: So not the way…well, be better for me if I sent somebody intact. Anna: Mm-hm. Could you think of anything else? Louise: I was in a hospital…I don’t know how many. The first, I was in that old, old hospital that was on a fifth floor, and we got out first. When was that? That storm? That, that come. Anna: Oh, you mean, like the…the big storm? Louise: Yeah, storm. And that, that building went like this. Anna: Shaking. Tell ‘em. Louise: Shaking [laughs]. Yeah. I used to tell the nurse how to supposed to clean and mass- Anna: You mean the City Hospital? Louise: And massage. Anna: City Hospital? Louise: No. Down, down…at City Hospital, I, uh… Anna: Wilson Memorial…? Louise: Wilson! Yeah. But, that was the old, old…that’s a long time- Anna: Uh-huh. Louise: -because I was up there. I don’t know how long. I used to massage the woman [sic]. You know? Anna: Yeah. Louise: And there was this one nurse, she said, “What are you doing?” I said, “So what? If she asks me, and her backs hurts, why not?” I used to help how much I could, and then I got so sick. Then I, five weeks. Fi- I think five weeks. Five weeks, I didn’t even talk to nobody, I didn’t even, any…just feed me by the, the tube. ‘Cause I have…wait a minute, what I did I have? Anna: Typhoid fever? Louise: No. Anna: Scarlet fever? Louise: Something I, I do know… Anna: I thought you had one of those. Louise: I forgot already. But, uh… Anna: Typhoid, didn’t you say? Louise: The, the first one…that was on my story - oh! I have ulcers. Anna: Oh, ulcers. Mm-hm. Louise: Yeah, the first one I was up there. And I used to, used to laugh at them, you know. I said, “Do you clean? Did you call this clean?” I said, “Gee, I could clean it for a few minutes and it look awful nice.” ‘Cause I’ve brought like that when I was in Europe, when I, when my mother left me, I was eight years old. And I started work, you know? And that’s why, that’s why I’m…if I clean, I clean. If I don’t, I don’t. I’ve been bragging, but everybody likes me. Especially when I make the home noodles. [clears throat] Anna: Tell ‘em. Louise: I used to make home noodles. Anna: Mmm. Louise: Up to Smiths? Boy, you should see. Anna: You ought to give me some if you’ve got ‘em so I can show the girls. Louise: You should see how they fight about it. God, I, for five eggs. I’ve, I made noodles for them. Anna: Mmm. Louise: Then I put hot butter on it? Oh, you should have seen them. No, I’m not bragging, but I tell you: Every place I was working, they likes me. Everybody, no matter who was. Yes. Anna: And that’s all? You can’t think of anything else? Louise: And that’s right, I can’t think of any-[laughs]. Anna: Are you sure? Louise: Yeah. But, don’t put me in a jail. Anna: Oh, okay. Louise: ‘Cause I don’t wanna go to jail now because there’s lots of- Anna: [chuckles] Louise: -bad guys up there. Anna: Well, you want me to stop it now? Louise: That’s okay. [foreign] Anna: [foreign] Louise: [foreign] Anna: [foreign] Louise: [foreign] Anna: Yeah, go on. Louise: 67…$67.00. 67 years old when I went for the first time for my Social Security. You know, when you get the money. Anna: So, Social Security? Louise: Social Security, something. I went in the court, and I asked the man, I said, “Are you sure this belongs to me?” I said, “I don’t wanna go jail.” And then he said, “Well, they need woman up there cook for them and clean.” I said, “Boy, if I go up there, they gonna be quiet.” [laughs] So the, two months later, they call me up. He said, “I got $280.00 for you.” I said, “No, I don’t, not want it. I don’t wanna go to jail.” And they started laughing. He said, “Don’t be afraid; that belongs to you.” ‘Cause I was 62 years, I didn’t went up there, asked, ‘till I was 57. Anna: 67. Louise: 67. So there you are. But, you know? It’s hard to talk now, this way. But, if I was with you? I, maybe I could have better one. Anna: No, that’s alright - you’ve said everything. Well, that’s it then, huh? I’ll shut it off now. Rights Statement This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Louise Petras Subject The topic of the resource Petras, Louise -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Immigrants -- Interviews; Household employees -- Interviews; Chenango Bridge (N.Y.); Farms Description An account of the resource Louise Petras talks about emigrating to the U.S. from Czechoslovakia at the age of thirteen, her work cleaning houses for a variety of people, and living on a farm in Chenango Bridge. She also discusses obtaining her citizenship papers. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 49 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Petras, Louise ; Caganek, Anna Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-07-15 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-03-27 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Broome County Oral History Project Extent The size or duration of the resource. 23:11 Minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/4d5bbd5ad44990c839605d73f46a2814.mp3 ab42272e6141cfd0065e2d1381398db2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Broome County Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Broome County -- History Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Description An account of the resource The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed. See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information. Acknowledgment of sensitive content Binghamton University Libraries provide digital access to select materials held within the Special Collections department. Oral histories provide a vibrant window into life in the community. However, they also expose insensitive, and at times offensive, racial and gender terminology that, though once commonplace, are now acknowledged to cause harm. The Libraries have chosen to make these oral histories available as part of the historical record but the Libraries do not support or agree with the harmful narratives that can be found in these volumes. <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/digital/">Digital Collections</a> are created for educational and historical purposes only. It is our intention to present the content as it originally appeared. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright  Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ben Coury, Digital Web Designer Yvonne Deligato, Former University Archivist Shandi Ezraseneh, Student Employee Laura Evans, Former Metadata Librarian Caitlin Holton, Digital Initiatives Assistant Jamey McDermott, Student Employee Erin Rushton, Head of Digital Initiatives David Schuster, Senior Director for Library Technology and Digital Strategies Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1977-1978 Relation A related resource <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections, Broome County Oral History project</a> Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE56938">Interview with Mabel Quick</a> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 16:49 minutes Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp3 Date of Digitization 2017-03-27 Material Type Sound Subject LCSH Quick, Mabel -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Binghamton (N.Y.) Rights Statement This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Broome County Oral History Project Interview with: Mabel H. Quick Interviewed by: Susan Dobandi Date of interview: 13 March 1978 Susan: Miss Quick, could you tell us something about your early beginnings, where you were born and some of your recollections of your childhood? Miss Quick: Yes, I could. I’d be glad to. I was born in Scranton way back in 1893. I grew up in West Pittston where my father was a dentist. Later we moved to Nichols, NY, and I grew up in the West Pittston schools under the name of John but when I reached New York State I was told that if I had another name I should use it because I was going to take Regents so in this community where I am now I became known with my old name Mabel. I taught school after graduating from Cortland in Johnson City for 40 long years but we really taught then we had classes that we were proud to pass on they could read—they could write—and teaching was wonderful. We were only earning $500 a year but we could with our increments reach $1800 a year that was the limit that we could go. Well, I lived here in Johnson City came here in 1917 when I started my teaching and this was a lovely town then to be a part of to live in and it really was a pleasure. Things have changed here now—old buildings have disappeared and new ones in their place but it’s still a place I’d like to live a long long time. I came from good old English stock. The Quick name comes—a the Quicks really came from England although they say we have Irish and Dutch mixed in a little bit and my ancestors missed the Mayflower by 2 years. They went to Holland and I tell the girls we missed the Mayflower by two years and we’re missing things ever since but we get along the Quicks are kind of lively people and they settled—helped settle this country. I’m proud of that it’s a heritage that a lot of people don’t have and we do have old Tom Quick my ancestor the first one to come over from England, Holland bought Staten Island from the Indians for a bolt of cloth. The Quick silver is now in the Metropolitan Museum and a there’s an old chest desk in a museum in New Jersey made by old Tom was given to George Washington and signed. I wish I had that but of course I don’t but I have seen it and Tom’s oldest son got along beautifully with the Indians until they moved to Milford, Pennsylvania now. Another family came in and there was trouble over land grants and the Indians killed old Tom so Tom Jr. as we would say today sought revenge and he killed so many Indians that the government let him alone. He was not drafted for the Civil—a for the Revolutionary War and finally Tom got smallpox and died. The Indians couldn’t understand why he was put in the ground so they dug him up to see if he was dead and of course not having the techniques of medicine we have now the germs were still there the Indians caught the smallpox and Tom killed them even after he was dead. He is now—a the records we have in Cooperstown he is the character Natty Bumppo (clears throat) of ah (clears throat again) pardon me in James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales so I have a good line. I’m proud of it. I joined the D.A.R., the Daughters of the Founders of the Patriots of America, the Daughters of the Colonial Colonial Colonies of America and now I expect sometime to go further with the Huguenots of the Colonial days. It’s a privilege and an honor as I see it. Many people would like to join but can’t. Their line is not complete but I like the genealogy and am glad that I have the opportunity of being one of the early American families. In school well perhaps I shouldn’t get into that too much it was really good in the old days. I don’t know what they’re teaching them today but I am proud and glad that I taught in the early days when we could really see and know and have the experience of realizing that we had taught the children to pick up a book and read it and know what they read. Today I wonder what they are doing. I wouldn’t want to go back and find out. I see it all over I don’t think that they could pull me back with a hay rake but I’m glad that I have lived all these 85 years and had the experiences I’ve had. Susan: Could you tell us a little about your hobby? Miss Quick: Yes, I have a very wonderful hobby. You know when I was teaching when I first started to teach I’d come home from school and I’d—I’d go in the kitchen—I thought food dropped into position on the table and I thought if I would go in the kitchen well maybe they’ll (clears throat) teach me to do something. When I’d reach the kitchen my aunt and my mother both wonderful cooks would say now, “Enough good cooks in the kitchen—we don’t need you.” So I got so I wouldn’t go into the kitchen I wouldn’t even come home from school, I’d patronize the antique shops because I like old things and I walked in one day to an antique shop I saw a doll lying face down. The dress was open at the back and it said, “Remember who wrote this when far away.” Well, I was intrigued so that started a wonderfully good collection. I now have between well around 400 dolls with all related items such as doll carriages and hats and furniture and chests and beds, cradles, chairs everything that might have been played with years and years ago. I’ve written an article which is being published in the Federated Doll News Magazine. I belong to two doll clubs and I have sent colored slides of my carriage in an article entitled “A Buggy for Dolly.” In each of the 35 carriages I had a lot of fun putting in a da—a doll a period that would go with the carriage one has a Charity Smith Kitty Cat the other a teddy bear and it was well received. They said it was a delightfully different approach to doll collecting. I’ve met so many wonderful people through this hobby. I’ve had exhibits oh many exhibits and a right now presently there is an exhibit (clock chimes) of the Easter parade and—and a that Roberson wanted for their Easter attraction and they came down and selected the dolls for that a occasion. At Easter time they wanted a big exhibit for their Christmas Forest so I gave them—they also came and selected what they wished and it was they told me about 2,000 people saw that. I’ve been guests at various clubs, doll clubs around the state and as I said before you meet the most charming people and I’ve enjoyed it I think that’s what has kept me going of course the family was after a while different ones the family was large my aunt, my uncle, my mother were here my sister she was an invalid for 11 years and after they all went it was a—a well even during the time when they were ill it was a life saver it sort of keeps you going. You have something to look forward to something to do and even if you don’t do it one day it’s there for the future and it what I have I think will preserve and give people an idea of what really was played with what the children really had whether they played with them or no. It was right for the period in which these very very old ladies grew up with. Susan: Children formed more attachment to their a— Miss Quick: When have you seen a child wheeling a doll carriage? You might see one in a store but I wouldn’t call it a doll carriage. I have the little old wooden carriages made by Joel Ellison and signed by him in the sixties. I have many wooden box carriages some made by the Whitney Carriage Co. and I also have a chests that are signed 1846. These were usually homemade things the little chests and beds and you don’t see it anymore children are—well it keeps production going now. They buy it today the child plays with it tomorrow and the next day it’s out broken and they go back and get another production is— Susan: Everything is plastic now. Miss Quick: Everything is plastic. There will I don’t know it isn’t saying really goodbye to the old but it’s trying now these people who would like to collect. They just have to take from what is given today and decide whether or not it will ever be collectible and will really last as the old things of—of yesteryear have done but I’m glad I have what I have. It gives me great deal of pleasure and it also gives pleasure to others. Susan: Well, is there anything more that you would like to add? Miss Quick: I can’t think of anything more. I think that a we’ve about covered it. Susan: Well, thank you very much for the interview Miss Quick it’s been very interesting. Miss Quick: I’ve enjoyed it. I really have enjoyed it and as I say I meet such interesting people. Susan: We do. Thank you. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Dobandi, Susan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Quick, Mabel Biographical Text Mabel Quick speaks about growing up near Scranton and later in Nichols, N.Y. She discusses living and teaching in Johnson City. She discusses her ancestors coming to America from Europe, with particular focus on Tom Quick, her ancestor who purchased Staten Island from Native Americans. She discusses her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution and related associations. She is an avid doll collector and has over 400 dolls with associated accessories; she discusses this collection and activities in which she participates related to this hobby. Date of Interview 1978-03-13 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Mabel Quick Description An account of the resource Mabel Quick speaks about growing up near Scranton and later in Nichols, N.Y. She discusses living and teaching in Johnson City. She discusses her ancestors coming to America from Europe, with particular focus on Tom Quick, her ancestor who purchased Staten Island from Native Americans. She discusses her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution and related associations. She is an avid doll collector and has over 400 dolls with associated accessories; she discusses this collection and activities in which she participates related to this hobby. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Quick, Mabel; Dobandi, Susan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-03-13 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 77 Subject The topic of the resource Quick, Mabel -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Binghamton (N.Y.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. 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Title A name given to the resource Broome County Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Broome County -- History Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Description An account of the resource The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed. See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information. Acknowledgment of sensitive content Binghamton University Libraries provide digital access to select materials held within the Special Collections department. Oral histories provide a vibrant window into life in the community. However, they also expose insensitive, and at times offensive, racial and gender terminology that, though once commonplace, are now acknowledged to cause harm. The Libraries have chosen to make these oral histories available as part of the historical record but the Libraries do not support or agree with the harmful narratives that can be found in these volumes. <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/digital/">Digital Collections</a> are created for educational and historical purposes only. It is our intention to present the content as it originally appeared. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright  Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ben Coury, Digital Web Designer Yvonne Deligato, Former University Archivist Shandi Ezraseneh, Student Employee Laura Evans, Former Metadata Librarian Caitlin Holton, Digital Initiatives Assistant Jamey McDermott, Student Employee Erin Rushton, Head of Digital Initiatives David Schuster, Senior Director for Library Technology and Digital Strategies Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1977-1978 Relation A related resource <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections, Broome County Oral History project</a> Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Broome County Oral History Project Interview with: Mrs. Marie Nejame Freije Interviewed by: Nettie Politylo Dates of interviews: 6 March 1978 and 6 April 1978 [Interview #1: 6 March 1978] Nettie: This is Nettie Politylo, interviewer, talking to Marie Freije of 60 Mathews St., Binghamton, NY, on March 6, 1978. Marie, do you want to start telling me about your recollections of your life when you came from Lebanon? Marie: OK—I was born in Lebanon and we lived most of our life in Egypt, and the winters, we spent our winters in Egypt and in the summer in Lebanon, up until and then we were caught in Lebanon during the First World War and we were spending our summer there. And from there, we spent the, spent the four years in Lebanon and in Arabia. We had to go to Arabia to get away from the war, that's from the Turks-dominated Lebanon. That's when my brother, Fred, was with Lawrence of Arabia who worked for the King of Arabia. And we finally came to Egypt before the war ended—four months before—and that's where I went to school—in French schools—private schools, and in 1922 we came to this country. I was 15 years old, entered schools here. We lived in Syracuse, where I attended high school and College of Music—that was a major in music. In 1932 we came to Binghamton, therefore I consider Binghamton my hometown, but I enjoyed life here in the community. In 1938, my brother and I went into business—opened up a ladies dress shop specializing in bridals in Johnson City. We carried the store for 38 years, enjoyed the many friends, the customers who I've made a lot of friends with. I belong to many clubs and do a lot volunteer work, Business and Professional Women's Clubs for, that's in Triple Cities, Johnson City Catholic Daughters, Civic Club, Our Ladies of Lebanon Club, American Civic Association, and was also President of Business and Professional Club and President, twice, Ladies of Lebanon Club. I have enjoyed being active in the community, made many, many, many friends. In 1972, I closed my business and went to Lebanon on two trips. It was very enjoyable because I never knew Lebanon too well, which is my mother country. Because we—little girls didn't travel too much at that time, so we would spend the summer months there and winter months in Egypt, as I said before. Therefore, it was a new experience for me, and I think it was the most beautiful country. It makes you feel sad that what has  happened to it during the past three years. Now, I was married in 1970 to Louis Frieje, and we've been very, very happy, and I still meet a lot of my friends. I belong, still, to all of the clubs. It is most enjoyable that part of my life and my business was making friends. Now, I don't know what else you’d like to know. I— Nettie: Marie, did your husband have a business of his own? Marie: Yes, he had but is retired. Nettie: What type of business did he have? Marie: He was in the restaurant business. Nettie: What restaurant was that? Marie: Freije Grill on Clinton St. That's where all his brothers had their businesses—Freije Electric, Freije Wall and Paint Store—and they have all retired, of course, and they are enjoying life very, very much. At the present time, there's something—may be of interest to you, being that we have no children, either him or I—we sponsored my husband's grandnephew from Lebanon to come here and live with us and put him through school. He came in 1976, December of '76. In 1977—January, we put him through Broome Tech, where he is a student now, studying Electric Technology and Computer and English. He will graduate in two years. In 1977 he had met a lovely Lebanese girl, who is a Lab Technician at Lourdes Hospital, and were married and living with us. They are a delightful couple. It is good to have young people around the house because I have always loved children—my nieces and nephews are like my own children. We are a very closely knit family—both the Freijes and my family by the name of Nejame. My brother, my younger brother who was in business, and his family is still running the business in Johnson City—which is called Hi-Fi Record and Tape Shop. They have had it for about 40 years, also. My brother is deceased, therefore, the children are running the business and have been very successful also, very well known through the area. Nettie: Oh, that sounds very interesting and I think that was very nice of you to sponsor someone like that, to make someone happy plus yourself. Marie: We're delighted to do that. Nettie: Marie, why don't you tell me more about the store—go into the store—I think it was fascinating. Marie: The gown shop—my gown shop, of course, after 21 years I gave up the bridals and went into sportswear—mainly as the sportswear business was flourishing and that was the thing to do. Besides, after my brother passed away in 1959—ah 1947, I beg your pardon—it was, you know, I have to run the business all alone, and of course, it was difficult to work nights and days, also. So, I turned it into a sportswear business and I loved it very much. I finally was getting a little too old to run it anymore. (Laughing). I'm 70 years old now—so I thought it was time to relax and pay attention to my music and to my wonderful husband, and we've done some traveling, of course.  We went twice to Lebanon since I was married, in 1970 and 1972. We were going back to Lebanon in 1974 and the war broke, so that took care of that. And—but—really—due to my—in regards to my business, thank God, we had a very successful business and as I see my customers, now, all over the Triple Cities when I meet them on the streets, markets, and in clubs which I am still very active, they—I'm almost ashamed to say it, but they do miss my store very much. Nettie: Yes, we all do, Marie. Marie: I certainly made many hundreds of friends, and in fact it, just about two weeks ago I had my, as a guest here, my first bride whom I outfitted—very, very first one. When I got married she sent me a prayer, in a picture—framed picture which I have in my kitchen, and I see her every morning, noon, and night. (Laughing). And she visited me last—two weeks ago, and we had a very good time altogether—reminiscence over friends and over old times and what have you. Nettie: Sounds interesting—Marie—I’m sorry—pardon me. Marie: When I came here, not knowing that we were to remain here in this country, and so—after I went to school—and we all loved it here, and my mother, father, and my three brothers—I'm the only girl and the youngest in the family—imagine me, 70 years old, the youngest in the family. (Laughing). So, but, my intention was to be a concert pianist, turned out to be in business. (Laughing). Nettie: In business—you did very well. Marie: Certainly. Nettie: We do miss you! Marie: But I still love my music. I follow it up—have time to practice— Nettie: Something you love— Marie: Yes, yes, I do! Nettie: Marie, will you tell me about the Lebanese people—their culture, traditions, maybe some foods? Marie: Well, yes, now, that's something of great interest—were that now—when I got married, I didn't know a thing about cooking—(Laughing)—because I never had the time for it, but since then I have became a gourmet cook—even in Arabic—in our Lebanese food—and I love it. Of course, now, you know they—the last few years, they’ve been talking so much about—[door bell rings]. That's all right. [pause] Nettie: Marie, we'll continue now. Marie: As I started to tell you before—the last few years they—been talking about health foods and health food stores opening up—even the markets are starting to carry health foods. Our Lebanese people—the culture—we’ve been raised on health foods since we were children, and we still do. Take, for instance, your wheat germ—that, they sell today and tell you how to do it—your lentils—it's all health food stores—health foods—and yogurt, which has become very popular, they are talking so much about it as being very healthy. This is something that we have lived on—all our life. Our bread is made with the health—what you call flour—is very healthy food. We—the Lebanese cook mostly at home rather than go out to eat, because we have such variety. Now, at our table you'll find three kinds of olives, two different kinds of cheeses that we make out of the yogurt—we make the hard cheese that looks like the American cream cheese, for instance, but a little bit tarty—we have oil on the side with it, our cheese, which I learned to make myself, and all this—so—all our preserves, jams—we make ourselves—and in our food you have, in one dish you could have a balanced meal. You have your sauté meat, which we use mostly lamb rather than beef—we use very little beef—except for roasts, you know—and have your meat—your vegetable—could be okra, could be asparagus, could be peas or beans, and with tomato sauce—that's your main dish, and cooked rice—on the side—not boiled—but it’s cooked so that it would have a flavor to it, you know—butter—and—so—and a salad. Therefore, you have a balanced meal right there, you see—but no Lebanese table is complete unless you have your olives and cheese on the table after you have your regular meal. That, you'll find that practically in every Lebanese home. And we have a tremendous variety of dishes—tremendous. I don't think you will find that in a, really, many European or American dishes—great variety. As I said before, it's all health food. Now in regards to our way of living—mode of living—we are very—Lebanese people are a very close-knit together—very friendly and really very highly educated. You never hear of any Lebanese, whether in this town or any town, that has gone wrong—that has gone to jail, that has done any destructiveness or anything—you hardly hear anything like that—good law-abiding citizens, and very friendly and very active. Most of the Lebanese people in this town, especially, in the area, are in business and are successful and have a good name—I'll vouch for that. Wherever you go, it really is the same thing—there—the ladies are very cooperative and friendly and take good care of themselves and their families—they dress very well. Nettie: Marie, you are a very good example of what you are saying. Marie: Thank you. Anything else you'd like to know? Nettie: Well, do you have any other recollections you would like to tell me? Marie: Well, you might like to have a little idea how we spent our years in Arabia—during the First World War. Nettie: That would be interesting. Marie: Excuse me, as I said before, we were in Lebanon and we couldn't get out because they closed the Mediterranean Sea, so we had to stay there. My uncle, that is my mothers's brother, who was a general in the, then Syrian Army, at the time. Because after the First World War Syria and Lebanon were divided—see—and so we—he sent us to Arabia—not Saudi Arabia—this Arabia is another section beyond Syria, and of course, I was only about six years old at the time, and over there, in Arabia, the Sheiks happen to be very dear friends of my uncle in Egypt, who was the Secretary of the Sudan. You hear a lot about Sudan these days—Sudan at the time was under the, both Egypt and Sudan was under the English government, and my uncle was Secretary to the Sirdar, like a governor—the government—you know—Sirdar, they call it. He was a very prominent man—in fact, was decorated by the Queen Victoria. And from there, my brother, Fred, who was only seventeen years old at the time, and my younger brother, Arthur, and my mother and I, we were there for three years. Through these Sheiks, my brother Fred, who was working for the Emir Faisal in the—means “Prince”—Faisal of Arabia, who later became King of a—ah—ah—Arabia (Iraq), and he was working with Lawrence of Arabia and was decorated by Emir Faisal, and through him we were able to get to Egypt on an English boat—English war boat—we—ah— Did you ever see the Lawrence of Arabia movie? Nettie: Yes, I did. Marie: Well, that's us—there. (Laughing). Yeah—that experience, I have pictures and see—but I forgot this part—where we're leaving Arabia—we went on camel back for nine days. The year before, I take this back, the year before, my brother Fred took my young brother, Arthur, too, and put him in school in Egypt and he came back. The following year, Mother and I and Fred we went to—we're going back to Egypt, and we stayed at Faisal’s in the Aqaba area—that's another part of the picture where—and we went on camel’s back for nine days and nine nights and he had, he was coming back—see, to Arabia to take the soldiers—we had 600 camels and 900 soldiers—and we—day before we're to arrive in Aqaba—where Emir Faisal was—he—we—had outlaws hitting us with a—that's which called machine—caravan—with sub-machine guns, and I was riding the dromedary—I made my brother valet, must as well call them valet, pulling them on the camel—you know—make him walk—and I went on dromedary—that's the one—the hump—you know—dromedary, and because where I was before—I was riding on the camel with my mother—made like a tent—see—my mother on one side and me on the other. You know how little girls, they get—(Laughing)—as flat as I was—I get fidgety—I wanted to drive by the dromedary so as we were riding, and these sub-machines came at us—the bullet just passed my face and he grabbed me and threw me down—luckily we were going down into a little valley—which is unusual in a desert, you know—and of course, of all crew came out with machine guns, and they—we escaped those outlaws, and then that night we were in tents and they're going to kidnap me—see, they had me dressed as a boy—and in fact, later on, King Faisal presented me with a dagger, which I still have, yet. And my brother, too, he took his own dagger, which only carried by royalty, was put here on display in Binghamton and Johnson City when we first came here—was written up in the Press. It was a really beautiful thing, which my nephew has now—Fred's son in New York. And it was really quite, quite an ordeal, to—well—especially after I saw the Lawrence of Arabia, I said, "Dear, if only my brother was here." Nettie: To see that— Marie: To see that, you know, he died but we had quite a fascinating life. Nettie: I think it is—what should I say, “exciting”? It was very exciting. Marie: Yes—yeah—yeah, but—The reason we came here, my brother Fred, who was, after the war—when we were in Egypt already—he was working for the French Embassy, through my uncle who was a doctor. He was in politics a lot, so he got him a job at the French Embassy. But what happened, we had to escape here, and because the King's entourage—they were all Muslims, and he was the only Christian amongst them, so—of course—there was that jealousy—they were after him—after his neck—that, for my uncle sent him over here, because my brother and my dad were here, see. My brother—was—my oldest brother was at Columbia University, and so—ah—we came here—we had to escape from these people who were after him—you know—so that when they came here for a year or so—maybe they'll, you know, forget all about him, and then my younger brother—we put him in school, so—went, let's see, on 1918-1922, and they were here—and the, so we thought we'd come, my mother and I, would come here—my aunts and uncles did not want us to come here at all. She said, “Even if I die on the boat, I want to go and see my children and bring them back, and my husband." So, we finally came in 1922, and we stayed here and we liked it very much that we never went back, our family was here. Nettie: Marie, that was exciting. Marie: See, my father came here before the war—because he came to visit his brother—he had his business here. He was a cabinet maker in Lebanon, and he came—his business was still going on—he came to visit his brother—then the war broke, so he didn't go back, and he stayed here throughout the whole war, then I didn't know my father until I came to this country, now my oldest brother— So it was an quite exciting life—a wonderful life together. Nettie: Guess so— Marie: Wonderful life together. We are a closely knit family—we all live together—we— Nettie: I thought the Lebanese were that way. I think it is very nice. Marie: Like the young lady from Harpur was interviewing me about the—our people—especially our old people. She said—I said, “We don't throw out our old people—we take care of them.” I said my mother was 92 years old, and my sister-in-law and I took care of her. None of our Lebanese people put our old people in nursing homes or forget about them—they always live with one of the children, they are well taken care of, which is something we are proud of—it is our background—we can't help it. Nettie: I think if some of our children, some of our people took heed on people like that—maybe they would turn their life around and make nice things, different for the elderly. Marie: Sure, they must remember that they, they're gonna be old someday. How would they like to be thrown out any old way in a nursing home or private home of some sort? Because, well, it just isn't right—that’s all, the fact that we’ll all get old, what’s going to happen to us. Nettie: You have to think ahead, too. Marie: This way your children would know how your grandparents were taken care of, and maybe they would learn a thing or two and just pass down the generations. Yes, that's something our generation of foreign extraction should never forget, their culture of their heritage. Nettie: I agree with you. Marie: They should be proud of it. There's a book written by Ted Roosevelt, and one of the passages is, "If you were not—uh—uh—this—you could only make a good American citizen if you don't forget your heritage.” Nettie: That's very nice. Marie: That's, we loved this country—that's why we remained here, and you can't beat this country anywhere in the world, but we still love our country, too. And we're proud to say we're Lebanese. You could be proud to say your own background from which your parents came from, should never forget it. Believe me, I think the American people—we're all American now, but outside of the Indians, naturally, they respect us more now because they understand us more, the world is getting smaller, you know, so—they appreciate the various cultures of the different nationalities of their background, you know, and all of us should be very proud of it and not be ashamed of. Nettie: I know I am. Marie: We make good citizens, even though we were not born here, we abide by the law, I'm sure all foreign extraction people do—so people are very interested. (Laughing). Nettie: Is that all you want to tell me? Is there anything you want to add to that? Marie: Well, let me see now. All I can say, I'm a little sorry I'm not a little younger so I could go back into business— Nettie: That's right—I know what you mean. And start all over again. Marie: Thank God I have my health, have my good husband, my comfortable home. I love my music, and I still am active in all the clubs and help people and everything else. Our Lebanese club is a small club, but active in the community, we hold a dance in the Fall always—and the proceeds go to St. Jude's Hospital for the children—retarded children, and then we hold a card party in the spring—that's for our scholarship fund—we give the three high schools and any student that school feels needs it—you know—give three, three scholarships—that's about it—you know. Nettie: Marie, that was very interesting, and I want to thank you very much for the interview. Marie: I want to thank you for asking me. I hope it's worth your while. Nettie: I'm sure it is. Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE55916">Interview with Marie Nejame Freije</a> Date of Interview 1978-03-06 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Politylo, Nettie Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Freije, Marie Nejame Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 35:13 Minutes Date of Digitization 2016-03-27 Collection Broome County Oral History Project Subject LCSH Freije, Marie Nejame -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Immigrants -- Interviews; Lebanon; Johnson City (N.Y.); Bridal shops; Businesswomen -- Interviews; Cooking, Lebanese; World War, 1914-1918 Rights Statement This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Marie Nejame Freije, Part 1 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Freije, Marie Nejame ; Politylo, Nettie Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Freije, Marie Nejame -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Immigrants -- Interviews; Lebanon; Johnson City (N.Y.); Bridal shops; Businesswomen -- Interviews; Cooking, Lebanese; World War, 1914-1918 Description An account of the resource Marie Nejame Freije talks about her upbringing in Lebanon, and her family's flight from the country to Egypt due to war and the grueling nine day journey that almost killed her. She discusses running a bridal shop in Johnson City, NY after coming to the United States. After 38 years, she retired and married. She details Lebanese culture and foods, as well as the fundraisers in which she participates that benefits St. Jude's Hospital and area high school students. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-03-06 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 24 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-03-27 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Broome County Oral History Project Extent The size or duration of the resource. 35:15 Minutes ; 16:46 Minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/b0beeb664da950ecb8ffee504e48b7b5.mp3 640c6746647c65abe515d55ec0b1c7a6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Broome County Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Broome County -- History Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Description An account of the resource The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed. See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information. Acknowledgment of sensitive content Binghamton University Libraries provide digital access to select materials held within the Special Collections department. Oral histories provide a vibrant window into life in the community. However, they also expose insensitive, and at times offensive, racial and gender terminology that, though once commonplace, are now acknowledged to cause harm. The Libraries have chosen to make these oral histories available as part of the historical record but the Libraries do not support or agree with the harmful narratives that can be found in these volumes. <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/digital/">Digital Collections</a> are created for educational and historical purposes only. It is our intention to present the content as it originally appeared. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright  Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ben Coury, Digital Web Designer Yvonne Deligato, Former University Archivist Shandi Ezraseneh, Student Employee Laura Evans, Former Metadata Librarian Caitlin Holton, Digital Initiatives Assistant Jamey McDermott, Student Employee Erin Rushton, Head of Digital Initiatives David Schuster, Senior Director for Library Technology and Digital Strategies Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1977-1978 Relation A related resource <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections, Broome County Oral History project</a> Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Broome County Oral History Project Interview with: Mrs. Marie Nejame Freije Interviewed by: Nettie Politylo Dates of interviews: 6 March 1978 and 6 April 1978 [Interview #2: 6 April 1978] Nettie: This is Nettie Politylo, interviewer, talking to Marie Freije of 60 Matthews St., Binghamton, NY, on April 6, 1978. Marie, we will go back to the interview you had the last time, and tell me more about the camel trip you took across the desert in nine days and nights. Marie: I'll be glad to—try to recollect everything that we went through. To begin with, we were living in the—what they call the Arabian Mountains, and my brother, Fred, who was at the time 18 years old, and that he joined the First World War, and he was associated with Prince Faisal of Arabia, who later became King of Iraq. The Prince sent him to the mountains to fetch about 1000 soldiers, but they were pro-French and they were fighting against the Turks. My brother was taking my mother and I back to Egypt where we lived—so, my mother and I traveled along with the caravan of 600 camels and about 1100 soldiers, most of them, naturally, on foot. The trip to Aqaba, where Faisal was, took us nine days and nine nights through the Arabian desert. Now we, my mother and I rode the camel. They built a basket—big basket on top of the camel for us to lay in and they had a cover (net) to protect us from the sun and the sand. Fortunately, we did not come across any sandstorms at that time of the year—so, and—we were at times running short of water, as there was very little water in the desert—just what come across probably two or three oases where there would be a pond of water, dirty water with scum and what we to—mother would use her veil—thin veil—put it over the water so we could drink from it—take water and carry it ’til the next stop that we will find another oasis. On the way, about two days before we reached Aqaba, we came across outlaws that are in the distance. They started shooting on us with submachine guns, but fortunately we—that was about the first time that we were down in the valley, because usually the sand—I mean—the desert is all flat—mostly, and the whole caravan started to go down—before that—I wanted to ride the dromedary, which, it would be a young camel—which is the one hump. I made my brother's valet go down so I could ride his dromedary. I was about six years old—six and a half—and—so was riding it—that's when the outlaw was shooting at us, and the bullet just about passed my ear. He grabbed me and got me down—if that hit me, I would not be here to tell the story. So, we went down and then the great big horde of men, Arabs, went up with machine guns, singing and hollering and they started shooting back at them—so, when the outlaws—so that—we are overpowering them, they took off but we have to be on the cover all the way to hold up the train—you might say—so that night we arrived at this Sheik's domain—in the desert. They lived in the tents there. This Sheik is under the governorship of the Prince, so we were treated royally, and they gave my mother, I, and our maid a tent by ourselves, and they had guards. So, when the guards were not there during the evening—now before going to sleep, the maid was combing my hair, which was way down to my hips, and then one of the Arab boys started to peek through the tent and one would tell the other, "Didn't I tell you this was a girl, and it's not a boy?” because they had me dressed as a boy to be disguised, because it wasn't safe for a white girl to be dressed in a dress, and below the ear and stood it top of the head—(supposedly hair) would kidnap her—so the maid heard them—and she ran out to my brother's tent and told him. So, the Sheik got hold of these boys, tied them up, and he put other guards around our tent for the night. The next day we traveled one full day to reach Aqaba, and we arrived and the Prince had accommodations for the women—meaning, my mother and I, and our maid who’d take care of us. We were there one week. My brother was commended by Prince Faisal for doing such a fine job and accumulating all these soldiers to be—he took the—dagger, which only royalty wear, which was solid gold, dagger with all precious stones—and put it on my brother's waist. We still have this dagger, which is very beautiful. As a matter of fact, the Prince gave me a dagger—black onyx, like with mother of pearl, and I was dressed with this Arab-like costume until we reached Egypt. It really was quite an experience. Oh, I forgot to tell you, after we were attacked by these captives, by the outlaws, we ran across another attack—and this time was a boa (constrictor)—these huge snakes that stands up, all black, stands up in the air—it—well—it just could kill anybody—in the path, stand up like a pole, you know, and the men then shot with—several men shot with submachine guns and killed her. That was another bad, very bad and horrifying experience, that's why I’m afraid of snakes all my life, due to that experience. Nettie: Are there many snakes like that out in the desert? Marie: No, not too much, but those that are there are huge and deadly—they're deadly, yes, very much so. Nettie: Marie, when you were going across the desert, you slept in the tent. How about the others? Marie: They slept just on the sand—yes, oh yes, sitting up, sleeping any way they can find a little comfort—you call it comfort. Nettie: What did you say that you had for food? Marie: Food, they had to prepare, ’cause we had bread and cheese and hard-boiled eggs and other—some wheat germ that is cooked—you know—that you can eat cold, you know, with bread to last it for nine days. We were lucky to have enough food and water so that we didn't really starve or died of thirst—yes—we survived that—and then from there we went on an English boat—you know, to Alexandria, Egypt. We got—arrived there four months before the war ended. We stayed there ‘til 1922, when we came to this country. Nettie: Marie, at one time you told me you took a trip with someone to Egypt, and I think it would be interesting to know about Egypt, plus telling us about Pyramids there. Marie: Oh yes, I made my first trip back to Egypt and Lebanon in 1964, and my uncle was a doctor there—he took us all over, of course. I was a young girl when I left there, about fourteen years old, when I left Egypt to come to this country. It was a new experience again for me. Naturally, we went to the Pyramids and they're really something to see. It was beautiful, I got our pictures there. Nettie: Marie, how would, say, the height of a pyramid would be, according to a—maybe a building around here? Marie: Perhaps, if I can recollect , it could be something like to be probably, to be forty stories, that the highest one, then you have the middle one, then you have the small one, then you have the—then you—the middle one, the only one that has the tombs inside, where some of the Pharaohs and Princes and Queens are buried there—you have guards to take you in—is—rather frightening, I never went in—really—‘cause— (Laughing). They are all man-made—as you know—in those—you, the Pharaohs—thousands of people died building it, and they carry all these stone on their backs all the way up, many of them would fall or get killed. Nettie: They say they are made so perfect, is that right? Marie: Well, perfect for those days, yes—they are not made putting with cement with each other, just— Nettie: Isn't there anything else you want to tell us, or experiences you can tell us— Marie: They had beautiful museums there that are really beautiful to see, and the mosques—Mohammed mosques that are very beautiful. The walls are—at least of couple of them that were there were made of alabaster—all the chandeliers are gold filigree, and this is another thing, when anybody has to go into the mosque you cannot go with your shoes—you take your shoes outside and the guard gives you linen slippers to tie on your feet to go in and see the mosque. Nettie: That's what they call their Holy Place, isn't it? Marie: Yes. Nettie: I think at one time you told me something, the Pyramids—about a certain record that was made. Marie: Oh yes, yes—they have—this is something that the Frenchman invented and wrote the book and developed a record—also, it is what they call "Light and Sound." It is done at night, because they—it's done in French, English, and Arabic at different nights—they have chairs like a theater, you know, and there's the commenter who commentates, you know—the narrator, I should say—and the light would be thrown on the, let's say, on the Sphinx, say, for an instance, and the voice would come out from the Sphinx and they would tell the history of Egypt and the Pharaohs and Queens, etc. It was beautiful—very beautiful. In fact they were thinking—it was written up here in the U.S. papers that they were trying to see if they could do it on Washington, D.C., but it never went through. It was something to see—fascinating—very interesting—they are talking about the certain one of the Pyramids, and then the light would go on and the sound would come out, as if it was coming from inside. It was beautiful. Nettie: I don't recall anything else. Marie, do you have anything else to tell us? Marie: No, I just wish that my brother was living at when they made the picture of Lawrence of Arabia, because him and Lawrence were together with King Faisal—they worked with King Faisal. Did you ever see the movie? Nettie: Yes, I did, Marie. Marie: Well I lived it—I lived it again—because that was, we were mixed up in it—you know. (Laughing). Nettie: To you—it’s more interesting since you lived it than it, more than it would be to us. Well, Marie, I appreciate you telling us more about this. Thank you very much. Marie: Thank you too. Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE55916">Interview with Marie Nejame Freije</a> Date of Interview 1978-04-06 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Politylo, Nettie Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Freije, Marie Nejame Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 16:46 Minutes Date of Digitization 2016-03-27 Collection Broome County Oral History Project Subject LCSH Freije, Marie Nejame -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Immigrants -- Interviews; Lebanon; Johnson City (N.Y.); Bridal shops; Businesswomen -- Interviews; Cooking, Lebanese; World War, 1914-1918 Rights Statement This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Marie Nejame Freije, Part 2 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Freije, Marie Nejame ; Politylo, Nettie Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Freije, Marie Nejame -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Immigrants -- Interviews; Lebanon; Johnson City (N.Y.); Bridal shops; Businesswomen -- Interviews; Cooking, Lebanese; World War, 1914-1918 Description An account of the resource Marie Nejame Freije talks about her upbringing in Lebanon, and her family's flight from the country to Egypt due to war and the grueling nine day journey that almost killed her. She discusses running a bridal shop in Johnson City, NY after coming to the United States. After 38 years, she retired and married. She details Lebanese culture and foods, as well as the fundraisers in which she participates that benefits St. Jude's Hospital and area high school students. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-04-06 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 24 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-03-27 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Broome County Oral History Project Extent The size or duration of the resource. 35:15 Minutes ; 16:46 Minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/1a93a8bf3d94a88f594aec0084cf81f4.mp3 3c21d429fe7be76e0d9020d2d3ded61c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Broome County Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Broome County -- History Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Description An account of the resource The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed. See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information. Acknowledgment of sensitive content Binghamton University Libraries provide digital access to select materials held within the Special Collections department. Oral histories provide a vibrant window into life in the community. However, they also expose insensitive, and at times offensive, racial and gender terminology that, though once commonplace, are now acknowledged to cause harm. The Libraries have chosen to make these oral histories available as part of the historical record but the Libraries do not support or agree with the harmful narratives that can be found in these volumes. <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/digital/">Digital Collections</a> are created for educational and historical purposes only. It is our intention to present the content as it originally appeared. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright  Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ben Coury, Digital Web Designer Yvonne Deligato, Former University Archivist Shandi Ezraseneh, Student Employee Laura Evans, Former Metadata Librarian Caitlin Holton, Digital Initiatives Assistant Jamey McDermott, Student Employee Erin Rushton, Head of Digital Initiatives David Schuster, Senior Director for Library Technology and Digital Strategies Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1977-1978 Relation A related resource <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections, Broome County Oral History project</a> Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Bower, Marjorie Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Wood, Wanda Date of Interview 1978-04-21 Collection Broome County Oral History Project Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 33:09 Minutes Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE55865">Interview with Marjorie Bower</a> Date of Digitization 2016-03-27 Subject LCSH Bower, Marjorie -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Nurses -- Interviews; World War, 1939-1945; Public health; Chenango Valley, (N.Y.); Chenango Valley Central Schools Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Broome County Oral History Project Interview with: Marjorie Bower Interviewed by: Wanda Wood Date of interview: 21 April, 1978 Wanda: This is Wanda Wood, interviewing Marjorie Bower of Highover Road, Chenango Bridge. The date is the 21st of April, 1978. Marge, you've recently retired from, ah, the nursing profession, and we'd like to know something about your early years of nursing and, ah, on up through until your retirement. Marge: Well, nursing has been—ah—was my choice of professions from the time I was a little girl—ah—having had a mother who was, ah, chronically ill, and I had some knowledge of the medical profession through, ah, the doctor who took care of her, and through taking care of her myself at home. So I was rather anxious to become a nurse and, ah, to do it in a professional manner. So I was able to, ah, get in training at, ah, Binghamton General Hospital. Wanda: Where did you—what was your early schooling, before that? Marge: I graduated from Union-Endicott High School and, ah, I graduated in 1934 and went—ah—I was only 18 then, or 18 shortly after I graduated, so then I went immediately into training. And training was quite different in those days than it is today. We, ah, planned on, ah—our first six months of training was what we called the probationary period, and we were hazed, ah, quite a bit by the upperclassmen, and—ah— Wanda: Do you remember any incidents about that? Marge: Well, we were—I can't remember specific instances except being told to go get a—different kinds of instruments which, of course, didn't exist. And everybody always got a big charge out of the “probies” coming and asking for these strange instruments that were nonexistent. So they had quite a few laughs on us, but of course when—when we got to be juniors and seniors we did likewise to the probies. But, ah, it was a very strenuous training. We had to be up and have our breakfast by six—by six o'clock, and then by six-thirty we had inspection. We wore big black ties and white aprons and starched uniforms, black stockings and black shoes. And if everything wasn't perfect, we were sent back to our rooms to make it perfect—that is, our bow tied right and our apron exactly, ah, pristine white, and if—if it wasn't in that condition we—we were sent back, and we were still expected to be on the ward at five of seven where we had transfer. And during the day, we were supposed to have two hours off during the day. We were very fortunate if we got it, because the head nurse always seemed to—it seemed to us—to delight at finding some extra duty for us to do. That extra duty could be cleaning medical cabinets, cleaning up utility rooms, straightening up, ah, bath trays. I might say that the bath tray—that every patient had a bed bath because patients stayed in bed a long time. In my early period we had, ah—that was before penicillin and before the antibiotic drugs, so nursing care was extremely important for medical patients and for surgical patients too, because we had nothing really to combat, ah, infections. And some of it was sad times because we saw many people die, that today would have been back working in ten days, from pneumonia or from a post-op infection. But we lived through it and—ah— Wanda: What were the hours? Marge: The hours were, ah, seven to seven, with supposedly two hours off during the day. Now we had class time, and if our supervisor on the floor could arrange it, she made sure that our two hours off was our class time. But sometimes she couldn't do that, so we might have an extra hour when we could sit comfortably in class. And in class we—had a—nurse's training had advanced to the point where we had a great deal of Anatomy and Chemistry. We had laboratory work. We had Nursing Ethics and—ah, I'd like to say something about nursing ethics in those days, because that was the day when—ah, if you were on a ward and a doctor came anyplace within your presence, you stood, and although you didn't salute, you were at attention. And you stayed that way until the doctor left the floor, and—ah, I was quite surprised several years later to, ah, be accompanying a physician friend on a floor and have her, ah, looking at a chart and see a student nurse come over and say, "I am sorry, Doctor, but I need this chart," and remove the chart from the doctor's hands. And I—I was astounded because—ah, we—ah, couldn't think of that in our time, if we had to stay on duty an extra hour to do our chart, we would have stayed and not dared to even approach the doctor who was reading a medical record. But, ah, that's a change in the times, and when I think sometimes back to—ah, the way—when we were, felt that we were so subservient, that I, I, I’m glad of the progress, really. Wanda: And that's just been a few short years, really. Marge: That's just been a short—it seems like a few short years—I suppose it's been quite a few, really. But—I graduated from training in, ah, 1937 and went immediately to work as a night nurse at General Hospital. And the hours then were—ah, twelve hours, seven to seven. My pay was—ah—eighty-five dollars a month. If you worked days it was eighty, but because I worked nights it was, it was eighty-five. They gave us a stipend of five dollars for working the night shift. Wanda: And did you live—did you live in the hospital? Marge: We lived in—we lived in the, what we called the dorm, and had a—had a small room. It, it was, it was adequate and—ah, the living conditions were good, but we were still under the strict supervision of, ah, nursing ethics, and in those, you didn't go overtown unless you, ah, wore gloves and a hat—at all times. And I remember distinctly, one time, my mother had bought me a—a quite expensive hat. It was real nice, and I was coming back from overtown across the Washington Street bridge, and the wind came up and my beautiful hat blew into the river. Wanda: Oh no. Marge: I got back to the nursing home and one of the supervisors saw me walk in without a hat on. And this was the time when I was a graduate nurse, but I was still called on the carpet for having been overtown in unladylike apparel, because I lacked a hat. And no explanation that my hat, which had cost so much, had blown into the river, would suffice. So I, ah, of course, was a little bit beyond the area where they could dole out punishment, but I did feel reprimanded and made sure I wore a hat for the next few years. Wanda: With a hat-pin! Marge: Well, I—I never got one with a wide brim after that. Or else took it off going across the bridge. And then my mother became quite ill because—ah—so I quit, ah, nursing at the hospital and took care of her for a year. And after her death I went back into public—into private duty. And I found that quite satisfying, I—through all of this period I really—there is a great deal of satisfaction in nursing because—ah, during my—during my night period of nursing I—I really would like to mention some of that because, ah, I think some of the nurses today perhaps don’t see it because it is gone, become such a technical field, but it was—ah—a real great, ah, feeling to have somebody who had come in in the middle of the night in a bad accident and then have them several days later, ah, tell you that it was your presence and your smile that really helped see them through a difficult period of life when they had no family around for a few hours and things were so rough. And with the roads the way they were, General Hospital was in the area where we saw many tragic accidents coming down Conklin Avenue and Vestal Avenue, and of course they were admitted at General. And the comfort you could give parents and relatives when they came in after somebody was hurt—and I don’t think there’s any other field—professional field—where you really have this satisfaction of really being close to a person in their hour of need and fulfilling that need. And no matter what the other circumstances of nursing were, you did have that special and personal satisfaction, even though the pay was low. And I—I did private duty for about three years and then I decided to go on into an area of specialization, so I went to Syracuse University and, ah, did work in Public Health. And I worked for a year and a half in Public Health in Onondaga County. And that, too, had its special compensations in going into homes and dealing with families as a whole unit, from childhood to the old-aged. Wanda: How did it differ in Syracuse? Were you connected with a hospital up there? Marge: No. I was not connected with a hospital. I was in— Wanda: —an agency? Marge: No. I was in Syracuse University and after I finished my special preparation for Public Health, ah, we had student experience there. I worked in schools for a bit—for school—for student experience as a Student Public Health Nurse and then I worked with, ah—what they called the VNA. That was a Visiting Nurse Association in Syracuse who did home nursing, where in that period of time we went into homes and—ah, gave—ah, maybe gave a bath and taught parents and family to take care of elderly people who were bed-ridden and might go in for shots. And this was during the War and doctors were very scarce, so our services were in great demand. And it was a very busy time for me—both as a student and then when I finished my training I worked for the Onondaga County Nursing Association. Worked out of the Town of Marcellus and the Town of Tully. And the—of course the War was still going on, so that we really were very—we were very busy and yet it was very satisfying to, ah, do this, and of course it was much different. You didn't have the close supervision that you'd had in the hospital. And because of the lack of doctors, nurses were called upon to do a great deal more. We did a lot in pre-natal work, and checking the parents and in instructions. It was—Public Health is mainly a preventative and a teaching program. And it was interesting. Then I came back—my Dad was sick and I had to resign from that position and I spent a year at home with him. And after that—ah, I decided to go in—I had an opportunity to do school nursing for the Broome County—ah, is it County Board of—the Broome County Board of, ah, Services [Broome County Board of Extension Services]. Anyway, they provided school nurses for the schools in Broome County who did not have their own school nurse-teacher. Then, because after I’d worked for them a while, I could see that this required further specialization, I went back to school and took nurse—courses in school nursing—school nurse-teaching. Wanda: At Syracuse? Marge: I took some at Syracuse, but I started with—a Syracuse Extension at Harpur, and I took some at Harpur and through the next—ah—because I stayed in school nurse-teaching from then until my time of retirement three years ago, I, ah, took courses at Cortland and Oneonta and, ah, did get my Bachelor's degree from Oneonta. So that I would be fully qualified for doing school nurse-teaching. Wanda: That must have been quite a new branch of nursing at that time, wasn’t it? Marge: It—it really wasn’t a new branch of nursing. There had been the school nurse-teachers, but just a few, but—ah, during the next few years from 1947 on, school nurse-teaching grew because there was a need for it in the schools. There was a need for people—nurse-teachers who understood and could put the nursing profession really into the teaching situation, where you had children and you could teach Health along with giving the necessary care and preventative medicine. It was—it was a combination of public health and teaching in a—almost a captive, ah, audience group. Wanda: Was this with young—ah—all ages? Marge: This was with all ages. When I started, I was covering Broome County. I was doing school nurse-teaching in the Town of Binghamton, and Chenango Forks, and in Harpursville and in Port Dickinson. I covered all of those areas at, ah, various times. And of course this—this cut your time—it was a lot of travel time. We did immunization clinics in all of the schools. We did hearing tests and vision tests and tried to cover all the children in all of these schools. And although we didn't have the time for teaching then, as we would have liked to, I—I think we fulfilled a great need because many of these areas, I—for instance, areas like the Harpursville area, they only had one doctor in the town and, ah, that was Dr. Torrence and he was a wonderful man to work with. He was a G.P. and did general surgery. And also there—he was Health Officer, so all in all we—ah, between the school doctor and yourself, you did a great deal of medical work and preventative work among the children. Wanda: Now how many other teachers—what was the staff in this—ah—? Marge: Four. There were four of us in this, ah, when we started. Then that was phased out in 1950, ah, 1 [1951], and I went to Harpursville for a year and after going to Harpursville I, ah, had the opportunity to come to Chenango Valley Central Schools—they had just centralized and I spent the rest of my, ah, working days as school nurse-teacher at Chenango Valley. And this saw—it—it’s a great deal of satisfaction. There isn’t any area of nursing, whether it’s specialization or general practice, that there isn’t—ah, satisfaction there. It has its, ah, shortcomings, or had times when—ah, when things don't go right, or, ah, you—you can’t get something corrected that you know needs to be, because of perhaps the financial situation of the parents, they’re not able to have the child’s eyes corrected or surgery that the child may need, but by working through various agencies in the county you usually can help the parents get some help. And, ah, it—ah, I—I think it fills a need and I hate to see the trend now where school nurse-teachers are being phased out, because it is an area of specialization and you can’t put—ah, I saw the need when I went into it, that I needed more education to—to do the job, but at the present time, school nurse-teachers are being phased out and either R.N.s or clerks being hired to take their place and they, ah, put in—children of our county are being—or of our state or maybe across the nation—are being short-changed because of this. They’re not getting counseling to help counsel them in their need and—ah, also the—the mental health counseling that, ah, a school nurse-teacher can give. And I really would like to—put in a plug for that. That—ah, it's the wrong direction to take, which many of our schools are taking. Our school boards and our school administrations are, ah, not being far-sighted enough. And I realize it's because of financial reasons that— Wanda: Is that a fact, really? Marge: This, this, this is a real fact—that so many schools have phased out their school nurse-teaching programs and have hired R.N.s. Legally the R.N. cannot do as much and it is because we are living in a technical age, in an age of specialization. Unless the people who are fulfilling their job have the know-how, the job is not going to be done as it should be done. And in the end it's the student who is, ah, short-changed. And the student is the future parent and the future citizen of our country. And we are not doing enough in the area of, ah, sex education; we’re not doing enough in the areas of drug education in the way that it should be done; we're not doing enough in just plain health education, consumer education. Our students are being bombarded with all of these—ah, aspirin ads and medical ads on television where they’re not getting, really, the health education in school to, ah, combat this trend. And I think—ah, too many people are still saying education should just be the three Rs and feeling, because of the financial reason, that they are going back to that, and that's not preparing our children—our future parents—for the world it is. Because they’re coming up into this world, as it is. Wanda: Do you think—do you feel that parents are bowing out of their responsibilities in that way? In educating their children on these problems that you mention? Marge: Well I—I feel that in—in some ways parents are bowing out, but let’s face it, the parents haven't had the education themselves. What—ah, unless they have some help, how are they going to educate their children? I mean, it, it’s, it's a fast race and it's—it's just as hard for parents to keep up with it as it is for teachers. That's why we need, ah, people who are really specialized in this field. We had—ah, the State has mandated health education teachers in the schools, but, ah, some boards are getting around that by trying to have a school nurse-teacher do a school nurse-teaching job and go in the classroom too, and, ah, some are bowing out of it because, ah, they get one or two parents who, ah, object to the—the health education in the schools, and when I say health education, I mean, we know that venereal disease is, ah, on the uprise in our nation, and we, ah, conveniently may say that it's being covered in our health education classes, but ah, I think if somebody went in and observed some of the health education classes, they would find the teachers are afraid—to teach about it. Be—because of parents—a few parents' repercussions. They really feel that this isn't the thing for the school to do, but where are the boys and girls going to learn about it? Wanda: On the streets, right? Marge: Well, on the streets or after they have it. I—I think that, ah, our State is trying. They have passed laws so that, ah, boys and girls who feel they have—might have a venereal disease can go in and be checked for it, and it will be kept confidential. And that's a—a big plus. That's been done by the legislature. And of course they—the legislation has tried to say that we will have these things covered in school, but ah, our school administrations are, ah, reluctant to take the big step. We had a good case of that when Sue Crouse—when she went into, ah, some of the schools and with some of the Girl Scouts, where parents—ah, well, the Letters to the Editor were pretty rife in the papers for quite a few months. And, ah—this is getting maybe off the subject of nursing, but, ah, it’s something that's a community need. And I think the school nurse-teachers have been some of the first ones to see it. To try to, ah, fight for it and arrange for programs in the school. I don't know, maybe this is one of the reasons we're being phased out! But I think the big reason is financial, because I know that all of the people in education are there for the good of the children or there wouldn't be any education, or most of them. But altogether it has been a very satisfying career, and I—ah, there are many specializations in nursing and, ah, allied fields of medicine, so nursing is taking on a new dimension in—ah, the nurse-practitioner now, in which they are becoming a closer doctor's assistant in that they are going away and taking specialization in—ah, examinations. They are doing this in schools where the school pract—school nurse-practitioner will be examining children under the close supervision of the pediatrician or school physician. They are also taking specialization in working in doctors’ offices and doing initial examinations to—ah, shorten—ah, well, to assist the doctor and to maybe give him a little more time on the—ah, the—ah, critical aspects of the patient care. Wanda: It sounds like a wonderful career for some children that don't want to go into extensive education. Marge: That’s right. And, and it has taken such a turnabout. I mean, it has become so technical now that even in the hospitals where—ah, where in my period of training we practically stood up and saluted and bowed when the doctor came in, the nurse now is more of a co-worker with the doctor. And, ah—her, ah, place in patient care is being given more recognition, as it should be, because she is doing a great deal more and is much better trained to do it. So it's, it’s a great career and it brings you close to people—if you, if you like people and you want to help them, you want to be close to them and do as much for your community as you can, you can’t go into any better profession than nursing. Wanda: Well, you certainly have proven that and I know you’re much admired in this community for what you’ve done. Marge: Well, thank you. Rights Statement This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Marjorie Bower Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 5 Subject The topic of the resource Bower, Marjorie -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Nurses -- Interviews; World War, 1939-1945; Public health; Chenango Valley, (N.Y.); Chenango Valley Central Schools Description An account of the resource Marjorie Bower talks about her motivations for becoming a nurse and her work in the field; nursing ethics, working as a night nurse as a post-grad, public health training in schools and in the public sector, work during WWII, and her experiences as a school nurse-teacher, and her views on the expanding field of nursing. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Bower, Marjorie ; Wood, Wanda Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-04-21 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-03-27 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Broome County Oral History Project Extent The size or duration of the resource. 33:09 Minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/08ced4d8cdc31e0cd93ce3e47961f098.mp3 8b9701fadd1e1901cf95eda113bf885a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Broome County Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Broome County -- History Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Description An account of the resource The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed. See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information. Acknowledgment of sensitive content Binghamton University Libraries provide digital access to select materials held within the Special Collections department. Oral histories provide a vibrant window into life in the community. However, they also expose insensitive, and at times offensive, racial and gender terminology that, though once commonplace, are now acknowledged to cause harm. The Libraries have chosen to make these oral histories available as part of the historical record but the Libraries do not support or agree with the harmful narratives that can be found in these volumes. <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/digital/">Digital Collections</a> are created for educational and historical purposes only. It is our intention to present the content as it originally appeared. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright  Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ben Coury, Digital Web Designer Yvonne Deligato, Former University Archivist Shandi Ezraseneh, Student Employee Laura Evans, Former Metadata Librarian Caitlin Holton, Digital Initiatives Assistant Jamey McDermott, Student Employee Erin Rushton, Head of Digital Initiatives David Schuster, Senior Director for Library Technology and Digital Strategies Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1977-1978 Relation A related resource <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections, Broome County Oral History project</a> Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. 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Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Keeney, Mary Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Dobandi, Susan Date of Interview 1977-12-16 Collection Broome County Oral History Project Date of Digitization 2016-03-27 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 30:22 Minutes Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE55957">Interview with Mary Keeney</a> Subject LCSH Keeney, Mary -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Mechanicsburg (Pa.); Pennsylvania Dutch; Nurses -- Interviews; Binghamton (N.Y.); Dry goods store Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Broome County Oral History Project Interview with: Mary Keeney Interviewed by: Susan Dobandi Date of Interview: 16 December 1977 Susan: This is Susan Dobandi, interviewer, and I'm talking with Mary Keeney, who lives at 150 Chapin St., Binghamton, NY. The date is December 16, 1977. Mary, I'd like you to tell me something about your life in your early beginnings. Could you start with where you were born? Mary: Yes, I was born in southern Pennsylvania, in York county in the country, and we lived there for about three years, then we moved to a little old town, Mechanicsburg—this was across the river from Harrisburg, about nine miles west in the Cumberland Valley which is a beautiful valley about 20 miles across where I lived. The land was—ah—limestone country, very ah productive, and the fields were acres and acres of wheat and corn and not—not large dairy ah herds but more farming. We lived in, usually, lived in about a six room house that was common for the poorer people and we had these six rooms, very comfortable but no conveniences, no hot water, cold water, no bath. No heating except with a range or cook stove and a heater if you wanted to heat the rest of the house. Bedrooms were pretty chilly. We got along without bathrooms but it wasn't as bad as what one would think having that outside toilets because, being the limestone land, there was plenty of drainage underneath the town. It seemed like there were underground streams that carried off anything that would be—would sink down. To have an outside toilet they would dig down until they found a rock, underneath that rock there would be an opening. Many times they turned the firehose in there and flushed it out then built the outside toilet, which of course made the danger of wells, so they had to close up the wells. They were not used, they couldn't be used any more because of this underground sewage. The sewage system only carried of the surface water. They—the town was—the people were very much under the influence of the Pennsylvania Dutch, which are not really Dutch but from Germany. The people came from different parts of Germany and they were different as they came from different parts of Germany. They would differ, as they came and for a long time I thought it was real Pennsylvania Dutch but I found out that it was not—not the true Pennsylvania Dutch as it's called now. Not so much. Susan: Mary, did this influence your upbringing? Mary: Yes. Susan: Did this influence the way your parents raised you? Mary: Yes. Susan: And affected your schooling? Mary: It did. Susan: Tell us how. Mary: Because they brought with them the German ways. Oh. And while it wasn't too marked difference they—but they were very class conscious, and so as you grew up there you were kind of classed—that what street you were living on—whether you lived on this side or that side of the tracks, if you mingled with this class or that class. And if you got in that class, you never got out of it no matter how successful you were. You were always considered that class. In school as you grew up, you were just kind of, ah, classed in the poorer class or the better class and it stayed that way. I went to school and I liked it. I liked school very much, but it seemed pretty hard. We didn't have—we didn't have any playgrounds. We were always kept off the grass. Many times we were blown and reproved and scolded if we got on the grass. We had no recess, we had morning and afternoon session, hurried home at noon and right back. We had no half terms or two terms in the year. It was a whole year. Mine were nine months work, solid work, and when examinations time came in the spring, we had nine months work to review for our examinations. We had very little vacation. Work—our school opened in September and by Memorial Day, we were out. We didn't go after that. I went to the high school, finished the first year and attended the second year until I was ready for my examinations. My father was ill and I had to help out in taking care of him. I was not at home, at that time. I was living with a lady as a companion, going to school, so I went home and helped take care of him and I got back with my lessons. The principal said, “You pass; take your examinations. If you pass in three studies, I'll put you over in the junior class,” but I knew he meant harder study and the doctor had just told me that I was studying too hard, that I should not try to finish high school. So I figured I had better not try. So I dropped out. I couldn't take up any work—I wasn't strong enough, but I did have a friend that was living, working in Atlantic City. When I was eighteen and she was doing work among girls who would go down to Atlantic City expecting to pick up work almost overnight, then be stranded, needed a home, needed advice, needed protection and so there were reading and restrooms for these girls and, but the doors had to always be open. So this friend of mine who was working there who was a graduate nurse asked me to go down and work with her, which was very interesting work. No salary promised, but all my needs were supplied and I had a very interesting life which I enjoyed so much. While there the lady who was the national president of this Florence Crittenton Association came there to look over the work in Atlantic City. She met me. She liked me. She liked my work and gave me a scholarship to go to their training school in—in Washington, D.C. So without any money (ha) I started and I found my way down there alone, not being used to traveling, but I—I found my way and began my work there. They claimed that it was a year’s work crowded into six months. It was a specializing on obstetrical nursing but it included general lectures on general nursing, children’s diseases, ethics of nursing and two Bible studies. We just had day and night duties and many times I was on duty more than a half of that time because I had to fill out for a nurse to be off one day a week, so I got very tired, but the lectures that I received and the and the practical work which we jumped into immediately, instead of cleaning floors and so on as they did in those days, I did crowd in quite a little ah training. I think I was just naturally…I, I liked nursing, and so after I came home I didn't start nursing but people kept asking and I gradually worked into practical nursing in private homes. What? Susan: Then you came to—talk about when you came to Binghamton and started raising your family, and what were things like then. Mary: I came in 1907, but I went back, and then I had a friend who wanted me to nurse her when she was expecting her third baby. I came then; I was on the case, and when the doctor came he was asking some questions and he wanted to be sure, how did I know this or that, and I showed my chart and he said, “Oh, I can give you work most any time.” From that I went—I stayed on and kept working, and I got more calls than I could fill. I, I worked at that about four years and a half. I met my future husband and we got married when I was 34. Susan: What neighborhood was this in, Mary? At the time, here in Binghamton? Where did you live at that time? Mary: At West Windsor— Susan: Oh. Mary: —with this friend. They had a grocery store, and instead of resting when I would go off a case, I would go up there. I worked in the house, I worked in the store, and the man who owned the store was Treasurer of the Telephone Company. Had the books, so I would catch up on the books, so I never got a great deal of rest. Susan: Tell us about when you were here in Binghamton. Mary: Then when I got married I first went to Vestal for a few years but then we moved back to—we moved to Binghamton. That was, oh, about ‘25—1925. My hou—my life was my home life. Susan: Your home was your life. Mary: Yes, I didn't want to work, a doctor begged me to do work for him, but I said I was—I wanted my home life. I enjoyed it. I was happy. Of course, those days we were living comfortably. Susan: Your husband was in business here in Binghamton? Your husband was in business? Mary: Yes, he was…well, a carpenter. At first he was working—he had worked for E-J a good many years, but he was gifted. He was a carpenter and he went into business for himself, so he was building homes, and of course during the Depression he was doing a great deal of repair work because they we were glad of any kind of work during the Depression. Susan: Can you tell us anything about the change in the city from the time you first came as against now? Did they have the trolley cars when you were here? Mary: Yes, they had trolley cars and I can remember when they last—they made the last trips. They draped some of the trolleys with crepe and that was the last trip that they made when the buses came. Oh. I…the War - the First and Second War - they didn't affect me a great deal. I was working at nursing during the First World War. The Second World War, of course my husband didn't have to go. My stepson didn't have to go. He didn't pass the physical and my son didn't get—he wasn't old enough to go until the last end, so that he enlisted twice but he wasn't in—a—he didn't get overseas. Susan: Now, I know that you’re not very much up on the Feminist Movement, but can you tell us anything about the Suffragette Movement in your days? When you were growing up? Mary: No, I didn't seem to get into contact with that. I think it was because I was so satisfied with my home life, and I thought that being a housewife and a mother was just about the height of happiness, and I thought to be a mother, to be able to be queen of your own house and home, you had to learn how to cook well. You had to learn how to sew. You had to learn how to take care of the children when they were sick. I thought it was very challenging and I liked it. I think I would not trade for any—ah—outside interests, if I just could have…be queen in my own home. Susan: You were telling me the other day about some of your experiences when your mother sent you to the dry goods store. Could you describe one and a little trip that you made to the store so that people will have some idea? Mary: Yes. Susan: And your experience with that little…at? Mary: The dry goods stores. They—they sold a great many things, of course. All kinds of yard goods on the first floor. On the second floor they had furniture and furnishings for the home. Window shades, curtains and things like that. The people did a great deal of sewing in those days and one day we came home from school. Mother had been to this store and when we came into the house she said, “Girls, I want you to go up to—up to Allcott’s,” that was the name of the dry goods store. She said, “They have something there that's very interesting,” and she tried to describe it. We couldn't imagine. We went up—we went into the back of the store on the first floor. And there they had a gramophone, with the records and a great big horn and the sounds coming out of this horn were unbelievable. We couldn't imagine where they came from. Some of the kids said, “Oh it must be down in the basement coming up some way,” and that was my first experience with the gramophone, and of course those were the days before radio and those were the days before many things. We had no refrigeration, electric refrigeration. They had cut out, they would cut the ice from the river during the winter months. It seemed we had very cold weather at that time. Then they would pack this ice in sawdust in buildings and would sell it during the summer. It was always amazing to me how that ice would stay from winter until summer and still not melt away. Those who could afford it, the ice wagon drawn by horses came through every day. You could buy a 25 block piece or 50, but most of the people depended on their cellars. We didn't call them basements - they were cellars with dirt floors, and perhaps because of the underground waters or streams, they kept cool. We kept our milk and butter and things down in the cellar. No, there was no heat in there, just our canned goods. Everybody canned because you couldn't get fresh fruits and vegetables. You either had them canned or you buried them and they buried cabbages, carrots, parsnips and so on—and would dig them out and we canned fruit and preserved a great many. We had to get along from one season to another that way. Fire engines were drawn by horses too, and I'd like to tell you a story. After they, the fire engines did not need horses anymore, they, somebody who owned a great big wagon or, we didn't call them trucks, would haul coal. They were heavy which needed two horses, one of the owners bought two fire horses to draw the—this wagon of coal and it, I heard that if they would hear a little gong ring, they would run. Just why they started this day I don't know. I was sitting, looking out the window where an alley came up into a dead end, not actually a dead end but a jog, and they were coming right straight for my window, and I knew they were coming too rapidly to make the turn and got up and ran to the far end of the room and held my face, waiting for the crash, when they made the turn it would hit our house but I didn't hear it—so—I went out. They did make the turn by coming up the sidewalk, and one horse’s shoe mark was left on the step but they made the turn, went down about half a block, turned into Main Street and stopped at a fire hydrant. But—I went out rather shaky. A doctor from the corner came up and looked over to see what they had done. He said, “They left a shoe mark right on your step; if you had your door open they'd have walked right in.” [chuckles] But our coal was delivered that way, just like the ice. It went down the chute in the cellar. We didn't have gas. We had, we had to cook on a cook stove, but they had—many of the houses had what they call a chimney corner instead of a fireplace. It was a chimney corner that you could shove your cook stove or range inside, do your cooking and a little—it was a little—it was ah, er…awkward. But you could do it, and then afterwards close the doors and that heat would stay. It was not…you wouldn't need to bear the heat from the stove. Sometimes, they had a little summer kitchen they could move into. Rights Statement This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Mary Keeney Subject The topic of the resource Keeney, Mary -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Mechanicsburg (Pa.); Pennsylvania Dutch; Nurses -- Interviews; Binghamton (N.Y.); Dry goods store Description An account of the resource Mary Keeney talks about her early life in York County and Mechanicsburg of Southern PA with her family. She speaks of the influence in the town of the Pennsylvania Dutch people, who were from Germany and brought many German ways and traditions to the town. She also describes her childhood experiences, such as delivery of goods, the dry goods store and how they preserved their food. She received a scholarship to attend the <a href="http://www.florencecrittenton.org/content/">Florence Crittenton Assoc</a>. and began training as a nurse. Later she moved to Binghamton, NY, married and retired from nursing. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 37 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Keeney, Mary ; Dobandi, Susan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977-12-16 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-03-27 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Broome County Oral History Project Extent The size or duration of the resource. 30:22 Minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/756555be9fe142ef8a5ab43065ad3508.mp3 e51b373fded5afc08371db916a889524 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Broome County Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Broome County -- History Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Description An account of the resource The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed. See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information. 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Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright  Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ben Coury, Digital Web Designer Yvonne Deligato, Former University Archivist Shandi Ezraseneh, Student Employee Laura Evans, Former Metadata Librarian Caitlin Holton, Digital Initiatives Assistant Jamey McDermott, Student Employee Erin Rushton, Head of Digital Initiatives David Schuster, Senior Director for Library Technology and Digital Strategies Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1977-1978 Relation A related resource <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections, Broome County Oral History project</a> Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. 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Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Shaughnessy, Mary Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview O'Neil, Dan Date of Interview 1978-01-24 Collection Broome County Oral History Project Date of Digitization 2016-03-27 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 32:48 Minutes Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE56019">Interview with Mary Shaughnessy</a> Subject LCSH Shaughnessy, Mary -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Binghamton (N.Y.); Cigar industry; Endicott-Johnson Corporation -- Employees; Nurses -- Interviews; Tuberculosis; Hull Grummond; St. Mary's Church; Irish; Wilson Memorial Hospital Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. 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Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Broome County Oral History Project Interview with: Mary Shaughnessy Interviewed by: Dan O’Neil Date of interview: 24 January 1978 [Note: Telephone rings in middle of interview, and Mrs Shaughnessys' sister, Mrs. Winifred Walsh of same address, enters room and is included in conversation and hereafter referred to in this transcription as Winnie.] Dan: Ah Mary will you relate to me your life and working experiences in the community starting with the early days on Henry Street? Mary: Yes. Dan: OK. Mary: Is it on? Dan: Yes, you go right ahead. Mary: Oh I was born at 208 Henry Street. It was an Irish settlement and ah most almost all girls that were around my age went into the cigar factory around there and ah we made we would get a $5.00 gold piece for our pay—we made around $5.00 a week and it was usually given in a gold piece and ah of course we walked to work and we walked back because there weren’t any cars then. Dan: What cigar factory was it? Mary: It was Hull Grummond. Dan: Hull Grummond. Mary: Corner of Water and Henry. Dan: And you say you were paid $5.00 a week in a gold piece? Mary: Around that amount—a little change maybe we had besides that. Dan: Yeah, what was your job in the— Mary: Rolling, setting the wrapper around the cigar. Dan: OK. Mary: By hand—no machines. Dan: And this was you're paid so much a week or were you— Mary: No, they counted how many cigars we done. Dan: In other words it was piecework. Mary: Yeah, piecework, that’s right. Dan: OK so in other words this $5.00 a week in a gold piece they gave you that and whatever change over and above that, that you made in the piecework. Mary: If I remember it, that was the way it was. Dan: Uh huh, how were the conditions there, the working conditions? Mary: Well they were good. We had ah they were nice people to work for. Some of them were from originally from Binghamton and some came with the company from out of town. Dan: And you say you were how old when you started to work there, Mary?  Mary: Ah about 14. Dan: 14—OK. Mary: Well I worked just a little while at on Wall Street—they had a factory there but then we went to Hull Grummond later. Dan: Was this one on Water Street also Hull Grummond? Mary: No that wasn't.  Dan: Another factory. Mary: That was another factory. They were mostly from out of town—the bosses were. Dan: And you worked there for how long—just a year—Hull Grummond? Mary: Probably 2 years. Dan: 2 years OK and you were a roller. Mary: Yes. Dan: And ah you ah you don't know how the tobacco industry started up here do you? Mary: How it was started? Dan: Yeah. Mary: No I wouldn’t know that. Just that we were glad that there was a place come to town that we could work. The only other work there would be was working in a home and you lived in with the people but ah I never I had gone in and helped sometimes in a great while but someone who needed help. Dan: OK—now after you left Hull Grummond, where did you go Mary? Mary: I went to Endicott Johnson shoe factory with the CFJ building—Charles F. Johnson building. Dan: And what did you do there? Mary: Heeling er ah putting ah heel lining in the shoe by hand. Dan: Uh huh—OK—now how long did you work there? Mary: Ah well probably I think about a year and a half or so. Dan: A year and a half OK and from there what did you do? Mary: Well I was home for a while—my husband was ill—he had tuberculosis. Dan: Now you say you were 14 when you went to work in the cigar factory and you worked there 2 years—that would make you 16 right? Mary: Yeah. Dan: And then a year and a half at EJ? Mary: Yeah. Dan: That would make you 17 ½.  Mary: How long—I was 24 when I got married. Dan: Oh you were 24 when you got married. Mary: Yeah Dan: I see. Mary: We went together of course. Dan: Oh but you said you had to leave EJ because your husband was ill. Mary: Yeah and he worked there too. Dan: He worked there too. Mary: Uh huh. Dan: So you must have worked at EJ more than a year and a half though, Mary. Mary: Yeah I think around that Haha. Dan: Yeah because if you got married when you were 24— Mary: Yeah almost 25, I think. Dan: Almost 25, yeah OK—so you left there when your husband got ill. Mary: Ah I left EJ and went in the mountains to be near my husband and took a job at the hospital and just helped out there. Dan: What, what mountains were they? Mary: Well, in the line of nursing but not, not too much so because I wasn't trained but I did help out and he said that he hoped I could be a nurse and of course I always remembered it. [Phone rings] Dan: Will Winnie get that? Mary: Yeah. Dan: Go ahead Mary. [Phone rings again] Mary: Winnie. Winnie: I’ll get it. [Phone rings again] Dan: Now, you were there how long in the mountains—how long was he sick? Mary: Oh he ah let’s see he was sick about he was first he went to Chenango Bridge he was 18 months up there in the TB Hospital and then he went to ah—well he worked for EJ, so we went to an EJ place they had in the mountains—not way up in the mountains—at the foothills of the Adirondacks and I went up there and worked until he died. I came home the day that he died that evening. I came home the next morning. Dan: Then you weren’t married too long, Mary. Mary: Oh no and we didn't live together too much because he was in the hospital a lot. Dan: Yeah, so how old were you when he died. Mary: Ah, let’s see oh around 30. Dan: Around 30. Then what did you do Mary? Mary: I went back to school and studied and went back to school. I went to East Jr. and took some subjects there that gave me credit and ah everybody was very nice and ah and ah let’s see I went to Buffalo for a short time. Dan: Why don’t we turn this off? [Recorder] Mary: Yeah. Dan: Now Mary you said you went to East Junior. Mary: Yeah. Dan: Finish school? Mary: What? Dan: Finish school? Mary: Well I went ah I had—Winnie, Winnie, don't talk. [Winnie enters room] Dan: That’s all right, that’s all right, that’s OK. That’s all right—now that’s all right. Winnie: Did you want me? Dan: Oh sure, sure. Mary: You’re registered on here [Tape Recorder]. Dan: That’s all right, that’s OK. That’s all right—it makes it more interesting. Mary: I ah remember. Dan: East Junior is only ah East Junior High School is only about a year—that you went there. Mary: Oh I studied subjects from Central but I didn’t go there, I studied them privately and took the examination. Dan: What examination was this? Mary: Well ah History I think was one. I went to night school for a while I can't tell you how long and ah. Dan: Now is this in preparation for your becoming a nurse Mary? Mary: Well I suppose yes. Winnie: Had to get the credits. Mary: I wanted to get credits. Dan: Yeah, how far had you gone to school when you went toward—at when you first went to work? Mary: When I went in training? Dan: No, no, when you first went to work, you know at 14, when you first went to work at 14. Mary: Yeah. Dan: How far had you progressed in school at that time? Mary: Oh to the 7th. Dan: 7th grade? Mary: Because you had to go to another building to the 8th grade see—down on Washington Street where the police used to be, remember? Dan: Police, police station? Mary: Police station on Washington. Winnie: It used to be Washington Street school. Dan: Oh Washington Street school, yeah, yeah, a little before my time (Chuckle). Yeah so OK, so then by going to night school, East Junior and Central, you got more credits. Mary: Well you only had to have a year then but it changed considerably. Dan: A year, a year outside of high school. Mary: Ah a year of high school. Well you could get your ah credits for whatever way you got them, if you passed and received them from Albany you know you had a year’s credits. Dan: In other words your training, th schooling— Mary: Then I trained for two and a half years. Dan: Oh you trained in a hospital. Mary: In Wilson Memorial. Dan: For two and a half years. Mary: And graduated there. Dan: And graduated in their nursing class, I see. In what year was that Mary? Mary: 1931 Dan: 1931 Ok and what did you do? Mary: Private duty for a while between Lourdes and City Hospital and Wilson wherever a patient might ask for a nurse and ah we put our names down and they'd call us if they wanted us. Mostly at Wilson and ah then I went from there to Psychiatries on No. Winnie: You went to Windus’ first. Mary: I went to Windus’ I went took care of a private patient and ah I was with him 8 years. With him and his wife of course. Dan: What was his name? Mary: I lived right in with them. Dan: What was the name Mary? Mary: Windus. Dan: Windus. Mary. Very well known around here. Dan: How do you spell that? Mary: W-I-N-D-U-S. Dan: W-I-N-D-U-S. Windus, OK what address was that do you remember, Mary? Mary: Well they owned a home on Chenango Street. Dan: Chenango Street. Winnie : On Helen Street. Mary: Win, not them, no. Winnie: Allen Street. Mary: Allen Street in Johnson City. Dan: Allen Street in Johnson City and you were with them 8 years and then you went to where—to psychiatric. Mary: Yes, I think so—well I went to medical upstairs. Winnie: She had trouble with her hands—couldn’t use the back rub. She got eczema on her hands. Dan: So where was this medical upstairs—where? Winnie: On Clinton Street. Dan: Oh the annex you're talking about. The Wilson Memorial Hospital. Mary: Yeah, I worked over there. Dan: That, that psychiatric—oh I see. Mary: Yeah. Dan: And how long did you work there, Mary? Mary: Oh I can't remember—I retired from there. Winnie: ‘61 I think. Mary: Must have been. Dan: ‘61, so you were over there quite a few years—must have been over there about over 20 years then. Mary: No it wasn't that long. Dan: It wasn’t that long. Winnie: Probably about 8 or 10 I think don't you? 8 or 10. Mary: I worked in two different, I worked on medical over there. They had medical and psychiatric. I worked on medical for quite a while and ah we used to they used to send patients up on the Hill you know up to he State Hospital and I used to take them up in the ambulance then. Dan: Could you give me an idea of the typical day in nursing back when you first started Mary so we could compare it to the present day methods? Mary: You mean of how— Dan: Nursing, you know like the medical profession has progressed quite a bit since the early days since when you know you graduated. Mary: Yeah. Dan: I was wondering if you could give me a capsulized— Mary: I remember with the paperwork today. Dan: Pardon? Mary: There’s an awful lot of paperwork today. Dan: A lot of paperwork today. Mary: Oh yes on account of this— Winnie: Insurance. Mary: You know Social Security and everything - it’s a lot different. Dan: Now outside of the paperwork, how did it differ? Mary: Well not too much. Winnie: Well when the patients left you had to do the beds. Mary: Of course some of the nurses that I worked with had worked at Wilson when they had to go downstairs and take care of the fire at night—that long ago see if the furnace was going. Dan: Oh was that right? Mary: Which that doesn't happen today. Dan: And that was what kind of heat—was it coal? Mary: Oh I imagine so, yes it was coal. Dan: Didn't they have a superintendent to take care of that? Mary: Well maybe it was the night he was off—I don't know. Winnie: It was just a house then. Mary: I wasn't there then—that was before my time. Dan: Before your time. Mary: That was in the old wooden building which is gone now. Dan: Yeah, but more of your time was taken up as far as patient, nurse to patient relationship. Mary: Yes, much more time with the patient than there is I think today. Dan: Today they have nurses’ aides and etc. to do the— Mary: No they didn't and you had to do a lot of ah keep the utility rooms cleaned and all that, that you, a lot of things that have changed today. Dan: Now how many were in your family Mary—how many brothers and sisters? Mary: Oh there was 6 children in all—one was born dead. Dan: One was stillborn. Mary: Ah there’s 5. Dan: 5 children—you said you had to go to work at 14, did your father and mother the ah did your father die at an early age? Mary: No he was 84. Dan: He was 84. Mary: 83. Winnie: He was sick a lot. Dan: He was sick a lot so that would account for your having to go to work at an early age. Winnie: Yeah, but you went to Pine Street School, grade school before you went. Mary: It was Pine Street Grade School where Pine Haven is or Pine Haven. Dan: That’s where you started in school? Mary: Oh yes, I started in there. Dan: And went to the 7th grade, is that right? Mary: I left in the 7th grade. I don't think I quite finished it—I don't remember too well. I think that ah it was the 7th—that’s all they had there. Dan: Anything about the neighborhood life or your family life at that time ah Mary that ah would be of interest? Winnie: Well was mostly Irish on Henry Street then. Dan: Mostly Irish Winnie. Mary: Beautiful flowers and ah yards. They kept their yards up very nice—lovely. Dan: About what year was this ah Mary? Mary: About what year? Dan: Yeah. Mary: Oh dear. Winnie: 14 take 14 from her age 14. Mary: I think so. Dan: 14 from what? Winnie: 86. Dan: 14 from 86 would be 72 yeah so your dad died when he was 84— Mary: 83. Dan: 83 uh huh and did your Mother live after or did she predecease him? Winnie: She died in ‘25. Dan: She died in 1925. Mary: By that time the rest of the children went to work and my sister was very good to my mother and she went to EJ and she was there when they gave the big bonus and she saved that money and they built a home on Oliver Street later. Dan: Now going back to Hull Grummond, you say you worked there about a year and a half, is that right? Mary: I think about that. Winnie: I don't remember. Mary: No—she was awful young then. Dan: You were employed as a roller on a piecework basis. Ah Mary, do you know of anybody else that’s living today that worked in the cigar factory? Winnie: Fannie, Fannie the German woman. Mary: Who? Winnie: Fannie. Mary: Oh yeah. That’s a girl over in the hospital now—she isn't a girl anymore but she's a German—she came from Germany and ah I don't know her last name now—when she married of course, she has a grown husband. Winnie: Is it Winkler? Mary: Huh? Winnie: Is it Wlinkler? Mary: I don't think it’s Winkler—I'm not sure but anyway she was ah about my age and she ah is still living and ah oh— Winnie: Mabel is still living. Mary: Mabel, yeah, Mabel Fry lives in Ohio, Cincinnati, Ohio. I have been to see her different times. She's ah she was my age and she worked in Barnes and Smith, which was another cigar factory by local people. Dan: Yeah, but you don't know why they went out of business, do you Mary? Winnie: I think cigarettes were, don't you? Dan: Cigarettes—well I heard that the Union—they tried to unionize it. Mary: Well yes I think that did have something to do with it. Dan: Why did you go from Hull Grummond to EJ Mary—was it an increase in salary or something? Winnie: Yes there was more money from the cigar factory to the shoe factory. Mary: Huh? Winnie: From the cigar factory to the shoe factory there was more money. Mary: Oh yes, yes that’s right. Dan: In other words what prompted you to change jobs? Mary: Yes, yes. Dan: Yeah OK and you met your husband when you were there. Mary: Oh I, he was in our neighborhood—I knew him when I was in the lower grades in school. Dan: He worked in EJ too? Mary: Yes he did. Dan: OK, then you were only married a year and a half when he got sick. Winnie: He was sick 5 years. Mary: He was sick 5 years about that I think. Winnie: He died at 33. Dan: Anything else Mary that you can think of that would be of interest at all? You mentioned in your class at Wilson ah there were some Griffin girls, the Griffin girls. Who were some of your classmates at Wilson? Mary: Ah. Dan: That took training—went into training with you. Mary: Oh there was quite a few then. Winnie: They were also were younger. Mary: They were a lot younger than me you know. Dan: Yeah. Mary: Yeah ah Tom McAvoy’s wife she was she sat next to me in class and ah then she took up anesthesia and she was an anesthetist when she married. Winnie: Dr. Occhino’s wife was in your class. Dan: What year was this class here—1930? Mary: 1931. Dan: 1931 and how old were you when you graduated from this class, Mary? Mary: About 36 wasn’t I or 37? Winnie: I think you were about that. Mary: I went in and I didn't quite have credits enough and I had to go back and get more credits. That’s when I took some subjects at Central High School—I can’t think of that teacher’s name. Dan: But you only needed to qualify to go into training a year of high school? Mary: That’s right. Dan: Is that right? You had a year of high school and then you went right in the hospital for 2 ½ years in training—right. Mary: Tender, loving care. Dan: Tender, loving care and then you were awarded your certificate or whatever your license to register—a Registered Nurse, right? Mary: Yeah. Dan: Anything, any one of your patients very famous at all in the community that you nursed? Winnie: Well there were some ministers. Mary: Huh? Winnie: Didn’t you take care of some ministers? Mary: Ah who? Winnie: Any of the ministers in Johnson City. Mary: Oh yeah, Mr. ah Noah. Winnie: You were working on the floor then. Mary: Noah I know him very well only he worked in the—he was in and out of the hospital a lot—he was a friend of mine is all. Mr. ah an Episcopal minister. Winnie: You took care of Leonard Steed’s wife’s mother. Mary: You know Edith Steed? Dan: I’ve heard of her. Winnie: The boys that are doctors. Dan: Yeah, yeah, Actually the one that stands out would be this Windus. Mary: Yes, Mr. Windus. Dan: Mr. Windus who lived on Allen Street in Johnson City. Winnie: Do you tell him he was President of the Bank, Mary? Mary: He was Vice-Pres—when his brother died, I think he was President. Dan: Mr. Windus was—he was Vice Pres. Mary: They started the bank down there. Winnie: Workers’ Trust—Vice-Pres. Dan: Vice-Pres of Workers’ Trust. Mary: They started the bank down there, they started down in Hallstead and had a bank up there Hallstead or Great Bend and they were from around ah I went through their town one time—can’t think of the name of it. Winnie: Well you know the Behan house on Riverside Drive? Mary: He owned that but he didn’t want to live in it. Dan: He’d rather be in Johnson City. Mary: He owned that beautiful, that beautiful home in Hillcrest. That’s where we were. Winnie: Romy Haskell’s home, the big white home up there. Dan: Huh. Mary: That’s where she was sick so long. Dan: Yeah. Mary: But I didn’t take care of her there. I didn’t take care of her at all, but she had nurses around the clock for 16 years. Dan: Is that right and you went to St. Mary’s Church, Mary? Mary: Well I don’t go there now. Dan: No I know you don’t go there now but did at one time. Mary: Yes. Dan: On Henry Street but ah things have changed quite a bit now. Winnie: Well when we lived on the East side we still stayed with St. Mary’s. Dan: Still went to St. Mary’s, yeah, kind of get used to it you know. Winnie: Yeah I know. Mary: I ah could tell you something amusing about that. They called it Old St. Mary’s. Dan: Is that right? Mary: So I got up one night at a meeting and I said, “Well I don't like to say this but ah it is not Old St. Mary’s. I was baptized in Old St. Mary’s on Chenango Street—a skating rink that was made into a Church on Sunday—they brought the altar in and it was across from where St. Paul's is now and ah you walked up and carried the baby or the godmother did and the godfather and ah walked back. They thought nothing of walking and ah that’s where I was baptized and that was the first St. Mary’s Church. Dan: That was right across from where St. Paul’s is now? Mary: Across the road. Dan: What was it—a wooden building? Mary: They took it down long ago. Winnie: I think it was a garage and they had a fire or something. Mary: Yeah. Dan: So in other words they carried the all the the altar appointments up there and ah had the Sunday Mass there before they built St. Mary’s? Mary: These priests don't even know that I don't think because they were young men. Dan: This was prior to—let’s see the cornerstone on St. Mary’s Chuch I think is around 1890 something ‘92—this would be prior to that wouldn't it? Winnie: Just before that. Dan: Just before that. Winnie: You were born in ‘91. Mary: Dick was one of the first babies baptized in St. Mary’s. Winnie: John and you were baptized up there. Mary: Father Hughes called him “Richard the Third.” Dan: Father Who? Mary: Father Hughes. Dan: “Richard the Third.” Mary: He called my brother “Richard the Third.” Dan: Oh, Richard the Third. Winnie: He was named after his uncle. Dan: Was Father Hughes the first Pastor of St. Mary’s? I think he was. Winnie: When I was here— Mary: I think so, Father Drummond. There was a Father Drummond Pastor but I think he was after. Dan: Who was the priest that used to take a and have Mass across from St. Paul’s before St. Mary’s was built? Mary: I don't know that. Dan: But you were baptized in that church. Mary: I was baptized in that church. Dan: And that church was across from St. Paul’s. Mary: It was a church on Sunday and a skating rink all week. Dan: Must have been quite wide open wasn't it? Mary: Haha there’s a lot of changes. Dan: A lot of changes I guess so. Mary: Now they've got their second viaduct. Dan: True, true. St. Mary’s has changed too. Winnie: Oh I don't know anybody—about 2 or J people. Dan: Well is there anything you would like to add Mary that you think would be of interest at all? Mary: Dear, I'll probably remember them after you go. Dan: Well if you do, call me up and I’ll be glad to come back. Mary: Haha, all in all my memory is pretty good you know considering I'm 86. Dan: 86. Mary: But I’m very active although I fall. Dan: Well that’s wonderful, it’s remarkable I mean years ago ah you know starting out at $5.00 a week you know was big money.  Mary: Yeah. Dan: Big money—you know kids today they think, “Oh Gee it's nothing.” Well Mary I’ll play this back for you and if you should think of anything that you'd like to add, why we can just turn it on again—how will that be? Mary: OK that’s good. Rights Statement This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Mary Shaughnessy Subject The topic of the resource Shaughnessy, Mary -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Binghamton (N.Y.); Cigar industry; Endicott-Johnson Corporation -- Employees; Nurses -- Interviews; Tuberculosis; Hull Grummond; St. Mary's Church; Irish; Wilson Memorial Hospital Description An account of the resource Mary Shaughnessy talks about her birth and upbringing on Henry St. in Binghamton, NY, in an Irish settlementan Irish settlement area. She speaks of working at the Hull Grummond cigar factory and later working for the Endicott Johnson shoe factory.  She recounts completing the nursing program at <a href="http://www.uhs.net/locations/uhs-wilson-medical-center/">Wilson Memorial Hospital</a> to become a registered nurse, as well as her training there. She then discusses working occasionally as a private duty nurse, and what a typical day was like in nursing, compared to the present day. She recalls her experiences with her religion and church as well. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 54 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Shaughnessy, Mary ; O'Neil, Dan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-01-24 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-03-27 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Broome County Oral History Project Extent The size or duration of the resource. 32:48 Minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/a026c848f6e3bd2213ebc627be84019c.mp3 8beb37ece1ef40e96c92d26f61034fd2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Broome County Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Broome County -- History Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Description An account of the resource The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed. See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information. Acknowledgment of sensitive content Binghamton University Libraries provide digital access to select materials held within the Special Collections department. Oral histories provide a vibrant window into life in the community. However, they also expose insensitive, and at times offensive, racial and gender terminology that, though once commonplace, are now acknowledged to cause harm. The Libraries have chosen to make these oral histories available as part of the historical record but the Libraries do not support or agree with the harmful narratives that can be found in these volumes. <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/digital/">Digital Collections</a> are created for educational and historical purposes only. It is our intention to present the content as it originally appeared. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright  Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ben Coury, Digital Web Designer Yvonne Deligato, Former University Archivist Shandi Ezraseneh, Student Employee Laura Evans, Former Metadata Librarian Caitlin Holton, Digital Initiatives Assistant Jamey McDermott, Student Employee Erin Rushton, Head of Digital Initiatives David Schuster, Senior Director for Library Technology and Digital Strategies Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1977-1978 Relation A related resource <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections, Broome County Oral History project</a> Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sovik, Mary Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Caganek, Anna Date of Interview 1978-04-10 Collection Broome County Oral History Project Date of Digitization 2016-03-27 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 35:00 Minutes Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE56026">Interview with Mary Sovik</a> Subject LCSH Sovik, Mary -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Children of immigrants -- Interviews; Binghamton (N.Y.); Endicott Johnson Corporation -- Employees -- Interviews; Babysitters -- Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Broome County Oral History Project Interview with: Mary Sovik Interviewed by: Anna Caganek Date of interview: 10 April 1978 Mary: My father was born in Austria-Hungary and he came to America in 1891, and my mother didn’t hear from him for quite a while, so she packed up, just with the clothes she had on left my two brothers over there, came to Jamaica, Long Island in 1894, because he wasn’t sending her, any money, and she wondered, if he was dead or alive. So then she said, “I’m not going back no more.” It took her too long to come here, thirteen days on the boat, no clothes only just, what, she had on so in 1895, I was born. My father had been in the bread line that’s why he didn’t hear, that’s why she didn’t hear from, him. Cleveland was president at that time and there was a depression, and my father worked in Jamaica, Queens, Long Island, on a farm, where they were raising vegetables, to take to New York. They called it a Truck Farm. So then a year later, so then my brothers came from Austria-Hungary, one was 20 years older than me, and the other was 19 years old. The reason they were so much older than I because two children died, in Europe, while my father was in America, they had the cholera. That’s what they died from and then my brothers came and they heard someone crying, my mother was giving me something to eat, they heard a baby crying. They said, “Who is that?” My mother said, “You got a little sister, we forget to tell you.” So that was me. Well then we lived in Queens, my brothers worked on the farm, too, carrots, cabbage and all that, it was [illegible] farming, so then we, moved to Rockland Lake, and my brothers worked as dynamiters, making that route one from Florida to Boston route, and they worked, there as dynamiters, then we moved from there to Johnston, NY, when I was 8 years old, and I went to school in Johnstown, I went there ‘til 1909 and I quit at the age of 14 years and went to work. In the glove factory, I worked at 10 cents an hour for 8 hours a day, so putting thumbs in and tying them with the other part of the glove. And I could hardly wait ‘til I would be 16 years old so I could work 10 hours a day, dollar a day. So then I went on piecework and I worked on a machine. First I pulled ends, you call it end pulling, it’s that silk, in the back of the glove 3 cents a dozen. Then I went there three years later, and I thought well I’m going, to go to that factory, where I used to work, and I went, to look for the employers and I asked, “How much do you get a dozen?” It was about 5 years later, they were getting 40 cents a dozen for the same work the same work that I was getting 3 cents a dozen. And I was making 25 dollars a month. So then I went to Europe in 1913 and I went to, on a boar the name was the Kaiser Wilhelm, it was called the Kaiser Wilhelm, with a cousin, that lived in Gloversville, I went to her parents with her and our boat costs us 58 dollars one way, just on the boat. She came up to the factory, she just came to say goodbye, to me. She says, “Mary I’m going to Europe, my mother wants me to come home. Why don’t you come with me?” “Wait, I’ll go home and ask my mother if I can go,” and I went home, and my mother said, “What are you coming home so early?” I said, “Netty’s going to Europe. Can I go with her?” She says, “Are you crazy? Going over all that water.” So we went to Cloversville, we got the tickets it costs us 58 dollars on the boat one way, and we went to Bremen, and we rode, on the train to Pressburg, and then I went to Malacky, where my aunt lived and we went to visit different aunts. I went to St., Svatý Mikuláš, St. Nicholas, and I was in Marie, Tal, Sastin, and I went, to Prague, my aunt took me there to see the Sokol’s drill and we were there until November. I came back to Johnstown, NY, just in time for Dance for Thanksgiving, for Lent, before Lent. I was in Vienna also. When I was in Johnstown after I got married, in 1915, July 3, 1915 and lived in Johnstown and then we finally moved, to Saratoga, we were there for 2 years in Saratoga, moved back to, Johnstown again then in 1919 we moved to Binghamton and I’ve been here since. I go to Johnstown every year, I drive. I’ve been going to Johnstown every year, and I’ve traveled, quite, a bit, I’ve been to Panama City, Florida from Binghamton. My daughter was married there, her husband was a flyer, Paul Vanek. He was Lieutenant, and Paul Vanek was a flyer, I went to Queens, Long Island, when I was single yet, in 1914 to visit my godmother in Jamaica, and Queens, Long Island, was a regular farm.  I went to Sunny Side Long Island, and I went to the World’s Fair, in Yonkers and my godmother, did lived in Queens, but it was just a farm, and I’ve been to Miami, Florida six times, I have two cousins there, Miami Beach, six times. I have a niece and a nephew there, Hollywood Florida, Pompano Beach, Fort Lauderdale my niece’s husband’s son lived there. New York City 15 times. I went to Fort Lauderdale with the Senior Citizens, we went to Disney World and they took us all over, on that, boat that goes along the canal there we went to dinner and to outside dinner, and to vaudeville, show, and we also went to Key West. Also to Miami Beach on a trip, they took us by bus. Clearwater, we went to Kobak Tree for dinner and I’ve been to Auriesville, I used to go to Auriesville in 1904, it was only 7 miles from Johnstown. I went there on a horse and wagon (ah) I saw a priest out there, he was, from England, and I got talking to him, “I used to come here in 1904-1907. To the old church, in a wagon with the fringe on top.” (Oh) And he said he was from Ireland, oh with the Surrey with the fringe on top, so I seen him there, several times, when I go to Auriesville, and I’ve been there ten times, since I live in Binghamton. When I go to Johnson I always go to Auriesville and I went to Poughkeepsie, to friends to a wedding, and San Diego in California went, to visit my grandson and wife, and my little great-granddaughter was born, she was two months old when I went there, they took me to, Mexico. I went to Tijuana, Mexico, Joya, and I went to Chicago 13 times, my daughter lived at Mt. Prospect, Illinois, now she lives in, Guilford, Connecticut, and I’ve been there 8 times, Guilford. My grandson lived there now he lives at East Hartford, now I have to go, to East Hartford, troy, NY. Bowlers with the E.J.A.A. Bowlers. I was a bowler, Buffalo, NY with the Bowlers we went Niagara Falls with the Bowling Team with the E.J.A.A. used to go to Schenectady, then in. My brother lived in Schenectady, then in second, Secondaga, Lake 1975, but I used to go there in 1912, when it was Secondaga Park roller skating, and swimming, when we used to wear, stockings and bloomers for bathing. I’ve been to Rochester 4 times, my grandson graduated, from University, of Rochester then he graduated from Strong Memorial, he’s a doctor, there now he got married and I was there Christmas visiting them, then some in Auburn the one that used to live in San Diego so now I, have two great-grandchildren. I’ve been there several times, then, went to Nashville, Tennessee, with the Senior Citizens in 1976. Montreal, Canada, in 1975 with the Senior Citizens. Now I’m, retired when I was 63 years old that was in 1958, retired from E.J. And I started to babysit, I lived in Hillcrest in a trailer, trailer park for 9 years, Tingley’s. I babysay for 50 cents an hour, by the hour, afternoon and evenings. So then Mrs. Kresge asked me Martha Kresge, if I would, babysit a week or two days and night while they went to Germany, to sell Volkswagens. So I said sure, they lived at Chenango Forks. So I started babysitting, people heard about me, so then I, started babysit move right in and took care of the children, while, people went on vacations. I sat for doctors, lawyers, dentists, and IBM workers all kinds of businessmen, I even sat for Charlie Johnson’s, grandson, and I also sat for Charlie Johnson when they went to down south South Carolina, someplace the daughter lived there someplace, they went to soo, some Dupont (they went to visit Dupont) and I sat for several doctors, the Horowitzes all the Dr. Demtrak and Dr. Ansell, Dr. Goodman, eye doctor also pediatrician, Dr. Bronstein, Dr. Kondrad Stearns. I couldn’t mention how many, I could be, must be a hundred, Dr. Baron, must be 250 families that I have sat for, so now at 82 I am going to relax now. And I’m going to enjoy myself with the Senior Citizens, I go to Senior Citizens for dinner, I belong to Greenman’s Center, I belong to, the Johnson City Nutrition Center at the High School, I belong, to the, First Ward Senior Citizens, I go there for [illegible], to the meetings, and we enjoy ourselves very much. Anna: Could you think of anything else? Mary: I have two daughters, one lives in Binghamton then I, have another daughter lives in Guilford, Connecticut. I have six grandsons the oldest one is 33 and the youngest one is, will be one Sweet Sixteen in March and the other one will be 16 in, June. Two wonderful grandsons, they are very good to me and I have, one niece in Johnson City, and that’s my son in law is General Manager, in, Dunn McCarthy, he started there when he was a young boy, pushing boxes, around, pushing racks around and finally worked on heels, worked at heels, and then he went in the service, Waco, Texas, he was a flyer, he went, to Panama City, and the great-grandson was born there. And he came back, he came back and went, back on heels again at, Dunn McCarthy, and they finally asked him, “Would you like to be a foreman?” so he was a foreman. Then they sent him back to Auburn Superintendent. Then they sent him back to Binghamton to be General Manager. Now he’s up in Auburn back and forth working. My other son in law the one that lived in Connecticut, he was working for Charlie Bloomer in Mt. Prospect. As a research chemist. Then they transferred him to Guilford, Connecticut, been there now in research they had 3 sons, each one one of my, daughters had 3 songs, I finally di get a granddaughter, a great-granddaughter which I was waiting for because I had two girls, and I wanted some granddaughters, and they closed Dunn McCarthy, yes he is, working in Auburn now. He worked in Dunn McCarthy for 37 years. He came back he goes there on Monday and comes back on Friday. She works in a bank. I go with every week with the Senior Citizens. I go to Johnson City play Bingo, we play for pennies 25 games 2 cents a, game and sometimes I’m lucky and sometimes I’m not, lately I’m lucky and I’ve had so many pennies to carry my pocketbook drags, on the floor it is fun. And the girls are very nice. They also play Bingo, but we like to, play for the pennies. I belong to St. Stan’s. St. Stanislav on Prospect, Street. I used to belong to St. James when my girls were little and then I, we did go to St. Cyril’s and then when I moved to Hillcrest, I went to, St. Katherine’s about 9 years I lived in Hillcrest then I was, when I came home to live, my daughter’s mother in law they went to St. Stan’s. So my daughter said, “Mother why don’t you go to St. Stan’s? You can take Mom and Dad to church,” they used to ride with me to church. And I’ve been going to St. Stan’s for 17 years. Eddie’s the daughter, from Connecticut. They go to St. Cyril’s. The Vaneks do. Anna: Thank you Mrs. Sovik. Mary: Some of the people I babysat. Dr. Marvin, Dr. Sivers, Dr. Horney, Dr. Nortons, Epstein, Dr. Bronsky, Dr. Klima Grandel, Dr. Gould, Dr. Goodman eye and baby doctor, Dr. Koslawsky, Dr. Amtrak, Margolas, Kurst, Bateglino, Hogopian, Norman Rudin, The Parrish Sanford, Olums, Dr. Natala, Dr. Baron. Dr. Shute, Dr. Sife, Dr. Stevens, Dr. Weiss, Dr. Kenneth Smith, Conrad Stemis, Koffmans, the Monks, the Emmas, Dr. Posture, Dr. R.E. Nell, Dr. Stevens, the Andersons Norwich, Hestor, lawyer, Dr. Graff and Dr. Roff, the Levenes, Dr. Steinbough, Dr. Brown, Dr. Monserette, Dr. Cleary, Dr. Davidge, Dr. Doyle, Dr. Vreede, Dr. Moriarty, Dr. Pemberton, Dr. Hayden, Dr. Cox, Dr. Divovan. Dr. Donovan, the Hotchkiss and Dave Lewis. Rights Statement This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Mary Sovik Subject The topic of the resource Sovik, Mary -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Children of immigrants -- Interviews; Binghamton (N.Y.); Endicott Johnson Corporation -- Employees -- Interviews; Babysitters -- Interviews Description An account of the resource Mary Sovik was born in Jamaica, Queens Long Island, NY. She discusses working in a glove factory, the many places she travelled to, and her work in Endicott Johnson up until her retirement. After retirement she states she became a babysitter for doctors, lawyers, and businessmen in Binghamton, NY. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 56 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/2d88dcbc075c3590201e5300ecb15684.mp3 45766cc8ea0ebe8f3f4b0c182e86cc23 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/5c6c0986d64fd5fecbded9f85552e596.mp3 3d8d0b791a9349be14ef12b7b37ee24d https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/e2d3bba7b9fa4fb6ba6a4ce9932fb2ed.mp3 2e9b32af2a2edf305b37e569cb4c31bc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Broome County Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Broome County -- History Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Description An account of the resource The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed. See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information. Acknowledgment of sensitive content Binghamton University Libraries provide digital access to select materials held within the Special Collections department. Oral histories provide a vibrant window into life in the community. However, they also expose insensitive, and at times offensive, racial and gender terminology that, though once commonplace, are now acknowledged to cause harm. The Libraries have chosen to make these oral histories available as part of the historical record but the Libraries do not support or agree with the harmful narratives that can be found in these volumes. <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/digital/">Digital Collections</a> are created for educational and historical purposes only. It is our intention to present the content as it originally appeared. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright  Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ben Coury, Digital Web Designer Yvonne Deligato, Former University Archivist Shandi Ezraseneh, Student Employee Laura Evans, Former Metadata Librarian Caitlin Holton, Digital Initiatives Assistant Jamey McDermott, Student Employee Erin Rushton, Head of Digital Initiatives David Schuster, Senior Director for Library Technology and Digital Strategies Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1977-1978 Relation A related resource <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections, Broome County Oral History project</a> Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Alston, Matthew Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Wood, Wanda Date of Interview 1978-01-30 Collection Broome County Oral History Project Subject LCSH Alston, Matthew -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Binghamton (N.Y.); African Americans -- New York (State) -- Binghamton -- Interviews; Musicians -- Interviews; Orchestra; Jazz; Photographers; Discrimination; Arlington Hotel; Bennett Hotel Date of Digitization 2017-03-27 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 33:09 Minutes ; 12:25 Minutes ; 33:29 Minutes Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE56058">Interview with Matthew Alston</a> Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium Broome County Oral History Project Interview with: Matthew Alston Interviewed by: Wanda Wood Date of interview: 30 January 1978 Wanda: Date is the thirtieth of January. Don't know quite where to start here, but I would like to have you tell me something about what your life has been like. Matthew: Yes. Well, in the beginning, the reason I tried so many things, and I worked at each one of those things to make a living—now—because at the time I was coming up, it was hard for a colored man, no matter how smart he was, to get into places, you know. And he had to be twice as smart as a white person to—ah—get a chance, you know. That's the only way he could get into some places. Well, now I figured that—ah—in school I would have to learn as much as I could, and if I had the same intelligence, you know, on the same level, as a white boy under the same conditions, I should be as good as him in learning something. And that's what I did, I—I learned to do pictures, I learned to paint houses, and I took interest in everything I did to do the best I could, you know. And then I—ah—there's a friend of mine that—who was in school, and he played a recital one day, on the violin. And he was about fourteen years old. Well, that got me for music. So I went home, I says to my Dad, I said, "Gee, Clinton can play good." I said, "I wish't I could take violin lessons."  “All right.” He bought me a violin. So then, ah—Professor—ah—from Owego there—what the heck was his name? Ah—Houck*—he, ah—he, ah—took—I took lessons from him. And I learned to play the violin, and then I, I after that developed into a, when I got older, into a—a leader of an orchestra I had. I went overseas and I came back after the First War and I had two boys I picked up over there that could play. Wanda: Were you in the Army then? Matthew: Oh yes. Oh yes, that was—in the First War. And so we—they wanted to stick together. They came from New York. So we formed an orchestra and—first five men and then ten. I played at the Arlington Hotel, the Bennett Hotel, and I played, ah—in Montrose every Thursday, for the college boys there. I played up in Ithaca and went all around like that and I grew up to ten men. And [laughs] that's what my violin lessons did for me. And then I wanted to take pictures. I found out something about pictures and— Wanda: Tell me how you started in photography. Will you tell that story? Matthew: Yeah. [chuckles.] Well, anyway, it's gonna be funny. I don't know whether I should let this out or not. I—uh—I never did see anybody take pictures, you know, and finish 'em before, and I thought it was quite a mystery about that. So I—ah—was working for some people. They had—ah—ah—ah, Barnum—it was Barnum's—they used to have a—a grocery store up on, ah, Chenango Street. And a little house, a little yellow house on the corner of Doubleday and Chenango was theirs, and then they'd go to Florida every winter—and they—and I was going to school too, up on Robinson Street at the time. They wanted me to—I mowed the lawn in the summer, so in the winter, when they went down there they wanted to keep the snow clean and keep the fire goin' so the place wouldn't freeze. And one day she wrote and told me to clean up the attic, and put things aside that I thought she might need and so they could be thrown out if she didn't. So I did and I came across a camera. First I came across a couple of boxes of negatives, and at that time they didn't have—ah—celluloid. They were glass negatives—glass plates, made outta glass, And there was no film around other than the glass. So a friend of mine, older than I was, he had been taking pictures and I took them up. And Brownie, he worked for the telephone company, you know. And I says, ah—"Ernie,” I says, “I found these up in the attic."  And he says, ah, "Oh yeah."  And I says, "Gee, this Mr. Barnum must know a lot of colored people in—in Florida."  He says, "Why?"  I said, "There's a picture. There's two girls standing up and an old man, and they all have black faces. And the girls have long black braids, you know."  And Brownie commenced to laugh. He says, "Yep," he says, "I'll make some tricks tonight." He says, "Come up to the house after supper." And I went up and he had an old-fashioned—printing, you know, and developing. You didn't have to have, ah—all these darkroom lights and everything, and had that open-faced—ah—open flame gas, no mantle, just those you turn up and down, you know. And he says—he took me up in the bathroom and he had some emulsion he put in that dish and he had a little, a little lamp, one of those stinkin’ little old lamps they used to burn oil. And you'd smother inside of a small place with it, and every now and then they'd burn an’ smoke up the place, you know? And he come out and he'd hold the—put the negative in the frame, put a paper over it, and then he'd close it up and he come up and bring it to his chest, and he'd turn it to the light and count so many seconds, then put it back and then go around and develop it. And he was developing, you know, and he says, "I want you to pay attention to this, Matt."  And I looked and he says—ah—I says, "What is it?"  He says, "Now watch it change," he says, "I'm a magician.”  And so it commenced to develop, y’know, and it commenced to come up, y’know, and it come up all white, so I says, "Hey Brownie," I says, "They're white!" He says, "Yeah," he says, "that's a positive,” he says. "Now—ah," he says, "this is a negative." Then he showed me the negative with black people on there like this, y’know.  So, I thought he tried to be nice to me. I thought he didn't want to say, “Negro,” or anything like that. He says, "Negatives." So I said, "You don't have to be so nice, just tell me what they are, see?" He says, "They're negatives." He says, "So, so when you put a negative to a positive—papers—positive,” he says, "and then you develop it," he says, "it's just reversed. What's black is white 'n what's white is black."  And I says—I studied that—I said, "Well, I just have to take pictures." So I started in doin' that and I learned a little of that—and then I wrote back and told them what I found. And I found a little Colony camera—that's, oh, it's worth a lot today. It's an old—one of the first Ansco cameras they made here. Wanda: Colony? Matthew: Yeah. C-O-L-O-N-Y, Colony. And, ah, it was made o’ wood and had a rubber bellows and it had a lens on there with a cap. You had to take the cap off and count and put it back. Quick—like that, y’know. Wanda: For the exposure. Matthew: Ayuh. Because the emulsion in those days was very slow—very slow acting—y’know, it wasn't fast and you'd just take it off, put it back on there like that. And, ah—then comes the—ah—flash light. Magnesium powder. And y’see, so you get out the first time with that and I take a little bit in a spoon and put an’ on the flash—a little spoon, little pan, y’know, and you hold it up with a handle, an’ there's a little wick, you hang down an’ light it an' wait a minute and it'd go BOOM and the explosion makes all o’ the—smoke up the room, y’know, and everybody used to jump outta their skins. And after you got through takin' ’em, y’know, you'd look at your pictures. If you had a group there'd be some with their eyes shut, some of them open, and some eyes starin' out—it was a mess. So you have to ca—take about a dozen pictures to get one good one. Because they were scared to death. And I says—I went to a dance one night, and these women had dolled the place all up. It was on the top o’ the old Herald building. You can put that down if you want to. Wanda: Herald? Matthew: In the old Herald building on the corner of State an’, an’, ah, Washington. I mean State an', and Henry. It's where the Army—no wait a minute, it isn't now. It used to be the post office? You know where the old post office—they call it old post office now. It's on the corner of— Wanda: You mean the Armory—where the Armory was? Matthew: No. No. This building is still up. It's that big building that they—that they have on—on the corner, you know, where Berger's is? Wanda: Mmhmm. Matthew: Just opposite Berger's. You know that big— Wanda: —Oh yeah.  Matthew: —Army or United States Post Office. There was another one, it was about four stories high and—it was, they used to, ah, they had—they printed a paper down in there, y’know.  Wanda: The Republican Herald? Matthew: Mmhmm. Right there, across, rather, on this side—where Berger's is. And right across there, where the Post Office is, there was another building almost like that. And they used to have dances in it. So this—these people, they had—they decorated—all the fancy stuff up in there, y’know—and drapes hangin' down. So I said to the boy that was gonna hold the flash, I says, "Get it away from those paper things." And I said, "Don't hold it too high. Just about that high." And he lit it. And it went phhht-BOOM and it hit one of those drapes and it went all over the—everything was burning on the ceiling at once, and the women were runnin’ out and they wanted to kill me. I said, "Oh, I gotta get my camera an’ stuff." Me an’ him, I was scared to go back. But I got some good pictures. And, ah, they said I was for damage and—I was in a heck of a fix, y’know. Well, that's the kind of pictures you took. So after that explosion comes from the flash, everything gets all foggy, and you had to let all the windows up an’ fan the smoke out— Wanda: —the smoke! Matthew: It'd take you ten or fifteen minutes before you could take another picture. Honest to God, that was something. And any time you held one up and says, "Look at that beautiful negative!” and you had to drop it on the floor, and bang, your negative's gone, see? Wanda: Of course. Matthew: All cracked up. So I—that's how I got in it, and then I sent to, ah—the, ah—the New York, ah—let's see—it was a photographic—ah—school in New York City at that time where, ah, you know—ah—you—a correspondence course. Wanda: Oh. Matthew: And it's still in business, I think—the American Photography, that was it—way back there, and I took a course in that to improve myself. Then I went, I took papers, at one time I took some papers—oh, a fellow that was a—a photographer on the Morning Sun. But they might’ve sold—in that same building there now. He, ah—he had to go away for a vacation, and they left me, wanted to know if I could take pictures, ‘cause I had the best equipment in town, y’know, at that time. And I met Mr. Kilmer an’ his horses an’ things, and I took some pictures and had them in the paper and, ah—Oskewanna. I think they had one horse there by the name of Oskewanna. He was a favorite, y’know, and I took a lot o’ pictures of him, see, that I took down at the old—ah, fairgrounds in—ah—Endicott. You know, where that, they had a race track down there an’ ball games an’ everything. It was—oh, I don't know, years ago.  And now to show you how they were, y’know. The guards was up against there, y’know, where you had to go across the track. An' the only place, the good place to get to the track at the finish was right on that side, right next to the—ah—judge's stand, as they came through. So I tried to work out a way to get over there. When I was young I was an athlete—I could jump, y’know, like that—and I had this big camera, and I went up an’ said, "Will you let me cross, please?" "What are you doin' here?" I says, "Look, I gotta get in to take pictures." I says, "I got a courtesy card from the Morning Sun." He says, "You aren't workin’ over here." So—all the other guys was goin' over, y’know—so I walked down that way and I jumped the fence and I run across the track, an’ the horses were comin' and they went, "Matt, get outta there—go back!" And you see, we had the cameras like this—a line of boys takin’ pictures, you know, and ah—three of us, tracks was here, so you would—ah—as soon as the horses'd come close to you, you'd take a picture an’ you'd swing back and let the guy behind you get a chance. I was the last one, see, back here, and the horses hadn't got up to the grandstand—I mean the judge's stand, y’know—so—huh—I swung over and I got—[laughs]. Well, they, they put that in the paper an' all that stuff, but—ah—so that's what prejudice did, y’know. It made me do things. And then I started to paint houses. No—I—I—drove a truck for Jameson-Boyce and, ah—and I get off from that and I started—when I was on it—to paint houses, and then I—that's the chance I had for—for playin’ my music, y’know. For dances. We got dances everywhere around here. The old—it was—we used to call it the Dixie Jazz Band, if anybody will remember that—y’know, and we put all the other guys out o’ business and they, they wanted me to join, y’see. I don't know whether I should—do I sound prejudiced? Huh? In the speech? Wanda: No. Because I can put myself in— Matthew: Well, anyway, like I'm tellin’ you—when I learned, that's how I came to do so many things. And I thought I was just as good as the next guy—if I had the opportunity. And I had to make a livin' because when I grew—I didn't know I was gonna get this old, but I learned I need to make more than a dollar a day, y’know, so ah—they had a union here and when I come, I said to the, ah—Dimmick—he's the one, the head o’ the union—music, Musician's Union—I says, "Look, I've got an orchestra," and I says, "It's gonna be good," and I says, "I want to be fair, everywhere," I says, "so I'd like to join your union," y’know. And he says, "Well, I’ll look about it." And it went on for two months. I'm still playing, you know. So one of the guys come to me, he says—one night—he says, "Matt, I'm sorry, but," he says, "you can't play around these places here unless you—” Wanda: —What?! Matthew: "—join the union." I says, “Don't tell me that." We were makin' more money than they were. We were gettin' a—ah—two dollars for the first hour and a dollar and a half each hour afterwards, and that's all they were getting, see. And we'd get more because we had more time, and sometimes we'd make as much as fifteen dollars a man a night, see. That was good money, in those days. So—ah—I had three boys, the piano player and the drummer and a boy that played a—a mandolin, see. Wanda: And it was jazz. Matthew: Oh, it was all—all, we had a fifth guy. 'Cause I was in New York City for about three years before the War, and I went from there to War and then I was—that's how I got to playin' good, y’know, with bands. And not—cut out the high-tone music 'cause I couldn't make no music—ah—no money. And when—so I went overseas and when I came back, I brought back—ah—one white boy and two colored boys. They lived in New York and they were in the same camp, y’know? And they came back and so we formed the orchestra. And then Bill Jeter, here—he, he died not so long ago. He was, ah, he was our piano player. And—ah—Marshal Moore, he was a drummer, so anyway we went, we played up to Greene, y’know, every week, and this night they wasn't givin' to the music. And I said, "Look, boys," I says, "These people pay as much as anybody else, and I don't care if you're so tired you can't keep your eyes open. You gotta play just as good for them as you could anybody else."  And ’e says, "Well, you know, we don't have to—play. In fact, we shouldn't play with you." They was all colored boys there, y’know. So one o’ the white boys down there that belonged to the union let ‘em in—one at a time, see—and told 'em not to say nothin' to me about it. And I says, "Whaddya mean?" He says "We belong to the union and, ah, they just let us play tonight." And I told them where to go. I—I was mean, y’know. I was tough, see, but I was tough as they. I told 'em just how fast they could get there without me helpin' 'em. And—ah—OK. Now here's where the trouble comes in. They played a month or so. And what you do—you've got an organization here, a union. Now you've got a band and he's got a band, and you call up and say, "I need a trumpeter." Well, one of the boys that's out of work gets the job. "I need a drummer." And so forth, y’know. Well, what happened, they was getting these—ah—drummers, y’know, and other guys from the white outfit, and the colored guys would be out o’ work, they wouldn't let you. So this one boy, one time, happened to be—ah—comin’ in, and he stood out in the hall waitin' a little while, y’know. And the doors was open, see—and, ah, let's see—and so one o’ the white boys says—whaddya call ‘em? He says, "I don't—-why you wanna hire them niggers?" he said. "Don't forget," he says, "There's more people in the orchestras. Them damn niggers, they're gettin’ all the jobs." So this boy gets mad. He told the rest of 'em. And I didn't know about it 'til later. So, I'm up on—I'm painting houses now, y’know, and I didn't work out of my trade, and so I'm up on the corner of—ah, Pearne and, ah—Chenango Street. Joseph's Brothers had a—had a—a store there. Wanda: Oh yes. Matthew: Remember? Wanda: Yes. Matthew: Well, I'm up there painting, y’know, and I look down on a hot summer day, and there was my orchestra down there, pushing those hot irons around with wooden shoes on and—and the sweat comin' off of 'em, and tar. That's the time—they used to have asphalt for roads and they didn't have the machinery. They'd do it by hand, y’know. So I looked down and I says, "Ah—hah-hah-hah," I says, "Look at the band down there." I says, "Whaddya doin'?" I says, "Boy, are you guys hot!" You know. Oh jeez, they all run and hid. They didn't want to—look this sorta thing, so, so I went down an’ I said to one of 'em, I said, "What happened?" "Well, like you said, they'd put us outta business, and they have." And then he told me. He says so, then they didn't have no work and they wanted me to come back, and I says, "No." I says, "No.” I didn't want to have nothin’ to do with it. Ah, my—my grandfather, see, on my mother's side—was a Cherokee Indian, see. I've got three bloods in me. I've got a—I'm Indian and English and, and Negro. My father was a dark man, see. And when those—you know—touchy bits up there like that, you get mad. I don't know anybody anymore. Anybody'd ever do me—and it's easy—anybody that ever done me dirty—I could forget them. You know I—I don't make up. Some of them I never made up, see. And they know it, see, so I told him, I says, "We got along fine an’ I told you that would happen, because," I said, "I know the, ah—ah—the ideas that these men have around here. They just wanted to get you out, see?" And I says, ah, "Serves you right." I said, "We get along." I said, "I went through it like a man." And I told 'im what was gonna happen and I says I have an idea, because we had the new jazz, everything that was comin' up from New York, y’know. This one boy had a clarinet and the other one played the piano, y’know, and they were hot stuff, and me—I was—doin' everything—[laughter]—you know, and we—we got all the jobs, y’know. I—I—had worked up to ten men then.  And here's a funny one. All o’ the pictures I took—everybody's in it but me. They say, "Where were you, Matt?" I took all the pictures, see. So this one girl that, ah—Bill Jeter died about a couple of months ago, and his daughter came from New York here, and she said she has quite a few pictures now that I took of the orchestra at that time, and she's going to send me a couple of 'em, see. Then I'll have my own, but I'm still not on them. [laughs.] So that's, that's one way that I had to learn everything. And I put an interest, now. If you see—you see that camera book there? Wanda: Um hmm. Matthew: Well, that's one I bought, oh, about four years ago. I take a book like that and I read it through. And nothin'. It's just like mud to me. You know— Wanda: Yeah. Matthew: I can't get it, read it through again. In the meantime I'm—I'm practicing with my camera. Wanda: Um hmm. Matthew: I put the book down about—maybe three weeks later, on Sunday or something, I pick it up and start to read—everything comes right out like that, you know, you can't—you can't learn things—in one day. Wanda: Right. Matthew: I can't. Well, when I get that done, then you ask me anything and I can tell you just what's on that camera, what it'll do. And then I go ahead an’— Wanda: It's up here. Matthew: Sure. Wanda: Your computer is OK, isn't it? Matthew: [laughter.] I think it is so far, but once in a while it changes, when it gets stuck there, y’know, and I go to think of something—it just don't function right away. After a while, if I wait long enough. Now like, like there's a young lady that I knew in New York City. This is way back in nineteen-hundred and, ah—well, just before the War I met her and—she was a very nice-looking colored girl, and her name was Catherine and I couldn't think of the other name. I just laid there—think—and think and think, this morning. I don't know what made me think of her, but anyway, I did, and ah—"Sullivan." Because she had a name, you know—that was an Irish name. She was a colored girl. So, as I said that—I put it together. I said it's nothing that I could call a Johnson or Jackson—now that's a name of another race. And so I just like to do—and that, that was over—since nineteen and—and sixteen, I guess. So you see, the function there, comes after a little bit. Wanda: Yeah. Matthew: Now there's a lady, you want to ask me about her. See that nice lady there on the table? Wanda: Oh yes. Matthew: I don't know whether she's dead or who she is or where she lives. I've had that for fifteen years. Now—here's what happened. I used to take a lot of portraits, right—I lived—I had two big rooms and I took all nice—portrait pictures, you know. My daughter's got all of the—junk over to her house. And I went lookin’ around. I used to go down to the Volunteers and Salvation Army to buy frames. 'Cause they were expensive. That frame—she was in that, y’know, and I took her home and she looked at me like that, you know. It—it just—I thought to myself. You take a look at it, take it up close. Wanda: It's beautiful, isn't it? Matthew: Uh- huh. And I said to myself, "Jesus, that nice lady, I can't just take her out of there and tear her up or throw her away." And everybody thinks she's my wife. [chuckles.] I said, "I don't know whether that's an angel or not." I said, "That lady might be dead for a long time," but I says—ah, I just couldn't throw her away. You know I didn't want—because that, ah, frame—I coulda used the frame, all right. But I says, "No." And she looked at me like that, y’know, and I said, "All right." Isn't that silly? Wanda: No, it's not silly. Matthew: Anyway, I got an aunt, two aunts, that—that—they're real Indian, y’know. And, but she—she looks like, like, like one o’ them. Aunt Lou, she's dead now. You see my, my grandfather William—now they're talking about the Roots,⁺ y’know. There's one of my cousins—I guess at the same time this guy started Roots—and he lives down in Jersey, so he came up and he, ah—his mother was my mother's sister. See? One of her sisters, she had five of ‘em. So he come up out of New York and he says, "Matt," he says, "What—ah—what—name some of the people." Well, he tried to find—so I named him some and he says—ah—he wanted to get 'em. Now, my mother's father, he came from England, and his people—cut him off, because they called him the black sheep. He—he was one of an Englishman that wanted to get out and come here and have, do things, y’know. Of course they had a—crockery ware. And, ah—his name—their names were Webb. His name was William Webb. Wanda: They had a crock—crockery? Matthew: Well—they had a—a—crock—like, like crockery wares, y’know, dishes and things like that. Wanda: Umhmm. Matthew: They have a—either wholesale, or they manufacture them. I don't know what it was. Mother used to tell it, y’know. And, ah—so—I—ah—their names were Webb. They were William Webb’s. Big tall man—he had this long mustache. He looked like those, ah—colonels that they have in England, y’know, those—ah, yeah, like that. [Laughs at the suggestion of a monocle.] And so they, they, they threw him. He—he said he didn't care whether he saw them anymore or not, because he came to this country and he turned out to be a carpenter, y’know. He liked that trade. And he must’ve learned when he was young and he grew up to be a—a good carpenter, and he, ah—oh, ah—came home and told my grandmother, one night, Mother said, that he thought he fell off the scaffold where he was workin', y’know? No, not him—the fellow that was his partner—fell off the scaffold—and died. And she said it was two weeks after that—that he fell off the scaffold, and when he went down he hit his back on—on one of those tombstones, y’know? And, and he died. Broke his back. Now maybe—these days they mighta been able to do something for him, y’know? He died. Well now, he left a son, my mother's brother. And he was a handsome guy, Junie. Tall and he looked just like his dad, y’know. And, ah—he, ah—was a fireman. Years ago, y’know, they didn't tell, they couldn't tell for sure who was—y’know—what he was, see? He was an Englishman, that's all. Ah, and my uncle, y’know, I wish I had some o’ those pictures to show you, he was a handsome man, And, ah, so that's how I got mixed up. So my—they—they got some, ah—some stuff in this tree. But I think they got it mixed up with an oak tree, or something, but anyway—they couldn't put some of the limbs back. So—that's some of those things that went around, y’know, and now to show you what a nice job—a different job I had—ah—I—you know—prejudice is an awful thing. You know, they had the medical depot up here— Wanda: Yeah.  Matthew: You know where that was? Wanda: Umhmm.  Matthew: OK. A man downtown that's supposed to hire you and send you there. Regardless, see. It was a government job. So I went up there two or three times and I filled an application out and he says, ah, "I'll let you know in—in a week." A week'd go by, and I'd get up there and I'd go up and I'd see him sittin' right in the office there. And, he was up in the, ah—now let's see if I can get this filled in right where he was. I think it was in the, ah—the—the building on, on Chenango Street where the, ah—the first, ah—Union—I mean, ah—not Union, but, ah—ya had to pay your taxes—where the taxes were—in that old—in that building where—where the, ah—gas company was, see? Over there. Well, anyway—no. It was across the street, where the—where the loan place is. They opened that up for government work, y’know. At the time, y’know? Right across? Well anyway, I got tired of being run around. So, I knew a girl that was a typist down there and I said to her, "Hey look, I made a mistake on my, ah”—you know, ah— Wanda: Application? Matthew: “Application.” I said, "Can I have a couple of them? Better give me two so if I won't make a mistake." Says, "OK," so she gave me two. I took them home that night. I'm married, too, now, you know. And I wrote on it. Filled them out. Front and back. And the next morning I says, "I'm going up there." So I went up, and you had to have a—ah—notice from his office before you could—y’know, they had everything guarded and you had to have it to get in. So I happened to go up to the picket. It was easy, y’know, and I'm walking around, and I walked up there "biggie" like—I thought I was gonna get throwed out, see, but anyway, I walked up there that morning, y’know. And so I says, "Hi, fellas," so he says, "What fella?"  I says, "Hi, Frank." He says, "Hiya, Matt. What are you doin' up here?" I says, "Well, I come up to go to work, but I just have a paper like that, y’know. Goin' to see if I can get a job up here and go to work." And, ah—he didn't even look at me, y’know. He says, "Go ahead," So I went in. So here was a little Frenchman. Up on the steps in the Administration Building. And, ah—he come up there and he says, "Can I help you?" I says, "I'm lookin' for a job, and I have my papers." He says, "You have?" And I says, "Yeah." "Well, what do you do?" And I says, "Here's my application." So down in there it says, ah—freelance photographer and experience in, ah—printing and developing and so forth, y’know?  "Ahh—just the man I want. I need a photographer," he says. "You gonna get a job."  I says, "Why?" He took me right in, you know, and he says, ah, “We got nothin' here, but we'll take care of ya." And I happened to have about seventeen hundred dollars worth of equipment, you know, of my own, see? And he says, ah, “Maybe you can't do no work right now,” but he says, "We—we can fix some way." So what I had to do, the first thing, was to take the pictures of—ah—thirty-six hundred people that worked there, y’know. That the—ah—numbers and everything. And I had a camera that could do that, y’know. And I brought it up. So that, and I had this—two bulbs that—hundred-watt bulbs, you know—put 'em there and I made a frame. Everybody'd sit there and I was workin' and I was developing them—every night. So the next morning I could have a string with the numbers on, see, that I took, And I got through with that, so—they finally sent down a couple of things and got my stuff in a truck, see? Brought it up. And this guy comes in there one day and he says, "What are you doin' here?"  I says, "Me?" I didn't know anything. "Me?" He says "Yeah." Says "I'm workin' here." "What are ya doin'?" I says, "I'm takin’ all the photographs here. Big ones and little ones." "Why, how'd you get that job?" I says, "Just on account of you not puttin' me through." I said, "I've got what it takes to do the job and the Frenchman is not prejudiced." And I says, "Right away, he was lookin' for me but I didn't know it," I said. "Where the hell did you get the papers?"  I says, "I stole 'em up there one day." I says, "I'm workin' now. What are you gonna do about it? I work for Uncle Sam and you can't fire me—for nothing—if I'm handy an’ I'm workin’ for Uncle Sam. I got the job—signed up," I says, "You're outta luck."  Wanda: This was government work, right? Matthew: Heh? Wanda: It was government work? Matthew: Yeah. And, ah—I had to fill the application and everything, y’know. If you work for the government, you've got five or six people that don't like you. They're trying to get rid of you. They do everything—they can't do it. You gotta come to a—you know—a court hearing to find out why. They can't just say, "Oh, kick him outta here." That's one thing about government work, you know. You've got to have a real good reason. Wanda: Civil Service. Matthew: Yeah, and I was so mad—y’know—I used to box and wrassle, see. It was so hard for me to keep off that guy, you know. And, and I didn't want to spoil it because I'm gonna beat him up, then you know, they—[laughter]. So I had to take that for a while, and so every time he'd come back—so the Colonel says to me, Colonel Dowitz, his name was, ah—and he says, "Matt," he says, "Tell ya something," he says, ah, "We haven't got the room that—that—ah—you want, but," he says, "here's a place you can fix up." He says, "I'll get the carpenters sent over." A carpenter come—"Whadda you want?" I had two big, big—I didn't need all the rooms. I had two rooms—as big as these two together, more there, and then the Monolith machine, y’know. Did you ever see them? Wanda: No. Matthew: Well they're, ah—they're machines that you work that, that run a lot of paper like a mimeograph machine. Wanda: What did you call it? Matthew: Monolith. Then, and, and so I made even plates for that. And, and, they had a big machine in there, that they—you know, you go downtown and they have, ah—records made of some papers. Years ago it cost 'em eighteen hundred dollars for the machine, you know, and I learned to work that. Wanda: Photostat machine? Matthew: Photostat machine. Wanda: I used to run one of those. Matthew: Did ya? How d’you like those things? Well, I'll tell ya, well, this, this one, I think it was eighteen hundred dollars or something like that one, and I got out on—this guy came down one day and he says, "Whaddya doin'? Now." I says, "I'm makin’ some—photostats." "Where'd you learn?" I said, "Look, Mister," I said, "I can't tell you all the colleges I've finished—" And I used to “bull” him until—[laughter]—he believed everything that I'd tell him. After that, you know. I said, "I can't begin to tell you how many colleges I went through—for this stuff." And ah—at the time, these were really the best of the things that I liked in my life. And I took pictures of my kids all the time, I had a little fella that big. His mother dressed him up nice one Sunday, so I says—he's my big son, one of my big sons now—he says, ah—I says, "Hey, Louie," I says, "Let Daddy put you on the table." Every Sunday I was takin' pictures like that. I got a lot of 'em in a box that my daughter's got—so—they wouldn't get lost, you see? Because—I had some kids break in my house—one time, and all the beautiful pictures I had—of street-cars—and everything—from way back—they just—gouged them all on the floor, you know. Well anyway, I says, "Daddy'll give you two cents for a picture."  “All right.” So he stood with his hands behind him, one foot out, you know, lookin' nice. I took one and I says, ah, "Well, now Daddy'll take another one," I says, ah, "because maybe that'll be good." "Daddy—two pennies? Two pennies?" That little rascal—he was six years old, and yet—he was toutin' me. Not ready for school yet, anyway, but, and he's tellin' me, "Two pennies, Daddy. Two pennies." [laughter] Sorry. I said even if he was panning—he was usin' his brains all the time, y’know, just like his father. Wanda: Did you—you do much landscape photography or scenic stuff, too? Matthew: Yes. I did a lot. I—I—wish't I—let's see—I—I—I've got everything put away, but I've got, ah—slides, you know. Wanda: Oh, we, we can go into that some other time. Matthew: Some other time. Yeah, I'll get some out then. That's all my daughter Charlotte and I'd do, we—ah—we went, ah, around every, ah—day that we had off, and we’d go and then there was one of the Foster grandmothers, she likes being out in the woods in the country, so we'd take her and a friend of hers, and she says—in the summer, ah—two years ago she says, "Matt," she says, "Beautiful day out," and I said, "Yeah," I says, ah, “We get out at twelve o'clock, y’know," I says. "Well, let's go down and get a hunk of bread and a baloney," and I said "We'll go out—I'll take pictures." And I took a lot of pictures. Oh, I—old broken-down barns, y’know, with the humpbacks. One of 'em fell down and, and I knew it was an old barn and I could see the pegs were in there holding it up—the—beams about that big, y’know, and, and all these years—it was over a hundred years old. And I had a feeling. "Matt," I says, "that's only about a hundred twelve—fourteen years old.” And—and there was no bolts in it. A great big barn, put up there with these—ah—pegs, wooden pegs, y’know. Wanda: Wooden pegs. Amazing. Matthew: Umhmm. And then I've got pictures of old folks, y’know. I'll pick out some slides, and then I'll let ya know and then you can come in and— Wanda: I'd love to. Mr. Newcomb is interested in—in seeing some of your— Matthew: But. That's all I'd do. You know I—did—oh, I'd spend a lot of money with different ones who didn't have nothin' to do and they had a car. Five, six dollars worth of gas and we'd ride, and then, ah—she used to say to me, "Where'll we go today, Matt?" And I says, "Just—just get goin'." And we'll stop and get this an’ that an’ the other, and then we'd come back here and it would be very, very—why, it would be night, y’know? And here I'd go down. I'd go north, here, and what do I see? The sun is shining on this side, see? And then I take all the pictures, on this side the river, we'll say, going all the way up to—to—ah—oh—ah—Oxford, there. Up that way. Now, in the afternoon, to get—I'd cross over and come down the other side, and the sun is in the west—start in on that side. And that's what I had to do. So I went in—the morning—and we'd go up and up until about two o'clock, anyway, and go one side and take, and then, then we would always go on the old roads—on the back roads, you know. Oh, I enjoyed that. We got fooled one time. I'll show you, maybe, someday. All right. I went to a place up—above Oxford, there—where they had a civilian camp, you know. And they had this fireplace which was wide as that machine [the stereo] and it went up like that, and off the ground was that big, where they had the fireplace, y’know. And, ah—they had great big stones, they were stones about that big and they were cemented in and there was nothin' but the chimneys left—with the fireplace in there. All the rest of the buildings had been cleared away. And I says, "Gee, I've run into something." I—got a lot of slides, y’know, and I came home and I had 'em finished up. Because I don't do that 35mm stuff, y’know. Not now. And, ah—so I had 'em all done, y’know, and I said, "Gee, I've gotta get the history of this." And—everything was gone, you know. It looked—and everybody said, "Where'd you ever get this? Gee, where'd you get this?"  I said "Oh, I don't know—it's some place George Washington fooled around in." I says, ah, "It's upstate here.” So—one of the guys—I went up there one day. I was deer hunting, y’know, and I went up there to see him and ask him if he wanted to go out and take me someplace. And I says, "By the way," I says, ah, "There's two big chimneys here, and,” I says, “a big fireplace." I says, "Boy, that must be over a hundred years old." He says "Huh?" He says, "Whadda you mean?" So I told him where. "Ah, man," he says, "Boys put that up during the Depression.” Wh—when they had the civilians, you know, had the boys planting trees. Wanda: C.C.C.? Matthew: Yeah. [laughter]. I says, "Boy!" But you see the hundred in, ah—ah, Latin, isn't it? Wanda: Yeah. Yeah. Matthew: So CCC would be three hundred years old. Wanda: Makes a good story, anyway. Matthew: Yeah. Well, I was excited. Wanda: Well, of course. Matthew: I says, "They must have—baked people in there when they got bad or somethin’.” So I was—the fireplace was—this long, you know, and then the chimney came way out and up like that, and out of this side—it was huge chimneys, y’know. But, but they, ah, wasn't built right down low, it was built up about that high. You know, with a fireplace you'd freeze to death. Y'ever been in a house that had a fireplace—years ago? Wanda: Yes. Matthew: OK. When I was in Jersey, my aunt had a house, so—one at a time we'd stand up there or sit up there—and your face burns up, y’know, and here and your back is—freezing. You turn around, put your back to it an’ you freeze your face. [laughs]. You know, I used to think, "Gee whizz.” I never have been in one before, y’know, but down there, they lived out in the country when I went to visit. Well, up here we always had stoves and ranges, and my aunt—"Well, Aunt Maria," I says, "How do you keep warm all around?"  She says "You keep turning around." I liked that place because they, they had a—ah, well, there was a kind of canal—nearby. About as far as from here—oh—halfway down the building, y’know. And ah—high w—the water come in there when the tide raised, y’know, from the ocean. And we could catch crabs in there at night— Wanda: Oh my. Matthew: —and—turtles that big, see. So one night we—ah—we heard ducks. Ducks are crazy, you know, they—on moonlit nights they, they walk all night long catching frogs and things, y’know. Wanda: I didn't know that. Matthew: Ducks, you can find ducks, ah—walkin’ around, you know, at night. And the lawn went down, sloped down to the river. So one night we heard, "Quack, quack, quack, quack." And I got up an’ looked out and there was a turtle—almost, about big around as a basket, there, ah, you know— Wanda: Bushel basket? Matthew: About that high, and he had this duck backin' and drivin' and the duck was just— [END OF TAPE. They caught the turtle and made steaks of it.] [BEGINNING OF TAPE #2] [Mr. Alston brought out some of his photographic equipment, and he and Wanda spent some time inspecting cameras, lenses, etc.] Wanda: This is your Speed—Graphic? Matthew: Yes. Wanda: B. and J. Press—that's an oldie. Matthew: Yeah. See, I can use this because I've got, ah—whaddya call it, plates. Ah—I ran that off the track. Wanda: Just let me look at it. Matthew: It's heavy. Wanda: Yes it is. Kalart? —Matic Rangefinder. That's a classic, isn't it? Matthew: Oh, it is. Wanda: Yeah. Matthew: And I got the lenses upstairs. You know, I never get—I can start talkin’ on cameras and I can spend a whole week.  Wanda: You never get tired of them. Matthew: No. Wanda: It's like some people like to play with cars. Matthew: Yeah. And there's a lens that's two hundred and fifty dollars, just for the lens. Wanda: Projection? Matthew: We can use that on—on a camera, too. See these lens boards they made? The—they're supposed to hold a 16mm Kodak. Oh, I've got three or four of these around. But you see, unless you can sell them to somebody that's got a camera like this, they're no good. Wanda: Yeah. Matthew: And it's better to use these now and then. Wanda: Oh, it is? Matthew: Oh yes. Because they, they get tired, y’know. I've got a few pictures here, I picked up when I took— Can you get it on? Wanda: No. Matthew: Well, pull it right out. Wanda: It's off the, the track. Matthew: Put it way back in there. Wanda: Yeah. Matthew: Now see if we can get it on the track. Leaning a little bit—easy—wait a minute. Now pull that in there—are they on the track? Wanda: Yeah. Matthew: There you are, now, y’see? That's a little extension bellows on there. And a lock there, see. Now— Wanda: Oh yeah. Matthew: That's—bring it all the way out, y’see? Wanda: And you could use these for copy work and everything. Matthew: Oh yes. And you see, you get the same size—as your picture, when you copied. I like to copy a lot, but now—you know—I never— And so then you take this and you lock it, see? Then it goes through, wait a minute, then this, then this. And there's a back on this, see? And, ah—this? See how it goes? Wanda: That's a beauty. Matthew: Umhmm. Wanda: Do you have a darkroom now? Matthew: Well—I make one out of the bathroom. I have a table to fit over my—a toilet bowl with legs on the side, and then it goes right across the wash basin, so it, ah—it comes in quite handy and I've got everything—that I need in there. Wanda: You can do a lot with a little space, can't you? Matthew: Oh yes. Wanda: What are your pictures there? Matthew: Here are some, ah—here's a couple o’ my, my daughters up at the park. Wanda: Nice. Matthew: And this is down at the old State Armory—ah, you know, the one on Washington Street at the time? Wanda: Oh—oh yes. Matthew: And this is Derek—that's my son. He looks just like that—you know—he was just that size when he said, "Two cents, please." Wanda: That's a cute little thing. Matthew: This picture I took up in Syracuse, it's a—one of the buildings there. Wanda: You said you had one of the last horse-drawn trolleys? Matthew: Here's three of my kids— Yeah, with the horses. I went down—I haven't got it there now, but I went down to a—I didn't go to the Traction Company. I went down where the—Exchange on Court Street, and they said all those pictures—somebody took 'em. Change the office, there you know—I gotta go down there and see. He said some of the guys, you know, put out word to see if I could get one for you. Wanda: Oh. Matthew: See, they've changed, that's—this is a— Wanda: How come people are so careless with things like that? Matthew: Yeah. This. Another one. And there's a—let's see. See, I took pictures of the kids all the time. Every time I'd turn around I had a picture of them. Now there's another one. Here's a pic—you want to got down to—oh—ah—oh, you know the one. Let's see what it says here. Wanda: The Speedex? Matthew: These, I just happened to grab while I was upstairs here. Wanda: Ah, I wonder if— Matthew: See, I did all these—I finished all these myself.  Wanda: Yeah. Well, how did you get your—job that you told me about? Working with the insurance company and the— Matthew: Well, I don't know, I got it. Every time I went downtown, you know when I go now, I gotta—one of those cases, y’know? Wanda: Like this? Matthew: No, not that thing. Oh ,it's like—like on the davenport, I guess. Well, anyway, I'll show it to ya. I—I'd go down and everybody took me for a veterinarian or a doctor, and honestly— Wanda: Because of your camera case? Matthew: Yeah, ‘cause I had it in my hand, see. And I had one guy, says, "You know, I see you all the time with that thing." It was never away from me. I always had it—in case of accidents and things, y’know. And he says, ah, "You always got it there. I thought you were some kind of a doctor or maybe a veterinarian." He wouldn't say a medical doctor, he had to put me in a vet—with the horses. Hah. So that's what you had to put up with, see? I'm not good enough to be a medical doctor, but I, I could work on horses. Ahah? Well, people are funny. I, it don't bother me, I get a kick out of it, things people say. And there's two ways to focus this, you see? Now you put that on a tripod, you see the footage here? And then, see this little marker? Right there? Oh, right here. Wanda: Yeah. Matthew: You wind it up there—focus—like that—without takin' it out. Wanda: Hmm. Did you have any connection with Ansco? Ever—did you do any work for them? Matthew: The only thing I did for them, I taught some of their workers how to enlarge or develop. Wanda: Hmm. Matthew: They came to me—it was just a short course of about a—maybe six weeks. One—one or two nights a week if you wanted to come. You see, to fill out an application there it says, ah, to get in this department—ah—“Did you ever have any experience in, a—enlarging or copying,” something, and "No." So they'd come to me and they get the experience, then they go back and fill out the application, they get the job. So I go down—after I'd been doin' it for quite a while, and I apply for a job with the office there. Got talkin'. And I told him, I says, "You know I—helped a lot of your—your workers out.” He says, "You're the man." I says, "Yeah." He says, "Well, gee, ya—did a good job on it."  I says, "Well, now I wonder if there's any place for me down here?" I says, "I've done most anything in that line." "Oh no," he told me. "How old are ya?" I says I was about 45, 50, ya know. He says, "Well," he says, "you're beyond the age. We don't take men over 35." There's always an excuse. I says, "I know a lot,” but he says I'm too old now. Y’know. Well, he says, "We—we might let you know," he says. "Anyway," he says, "You're willing to work?" He says, "There's a lotta room in the warehouse." I says, "Whaddya do?"  "Oh—move racks around and, you know—and sweep or—sweep up the place."  I said, "Go to hell, will ya?" I said, "I know more about this than half of your guys in here," and I says, "You want me to sweep?" I said, "I don't, don't do that for nobody." Wanda: Rug beater. Matthew: Yeah, sweep up—oh boy. Wanda: How can you laugh about things like that? Matthew: Huh? Wanda: How can you laugh? Matthew: Because it's funny. I go there, y’know, like anybody else, and then they give me that stuff, but—but they seem to, they seem to learn something. You see, now, in the Army—they had a little place up there—“If of African descent, tear this off." Nothing on the other three sides. That's to classify you. Without any trouble, see. So I left mine on. And I had trouble—tryin' to—get back to bein' a colored guy again. [laughter.] I didn't tear it off, see? That's a fact, see. Now my boys, they, they never had that. They're light, most of them, y’know. They're like their mother, y’know? And, ah—well, you see the youngsters here. So we never had much trouble in the family. But I'm telling you—my time comin' up, they was tough. Born in 1892, so you know, that's close to the Civil War finishing, and then the Spanish-American War come in, y’know, the Japanese war—years ago, see. And—I mean the Philippines—years ago—in the United States, and as I say, that just went on. When I first went in the Army—they had a—unit for colored boys. You know, I say “colored” because, ah—the Black man that's as black as—? An’ like that, that's all right for him—he's a Black man. But if he had—if he wasn't color-blind—there's all colors. Red, yellow, blue, green, orange. Wanda: That's right. Matthew: So—I—I—I just resent it when somebody says I'm a Black man. I says, "You're color-blind." "Whaddya mean?" I says, "Don't try to supply me with a Black man.” I says, "You call me ‘colored,’ and like it." "I see your point." I said, "Yeah, well, see my point," I says. "Just be a little, you know, ah, decent with these guys." Says, "You don't want to—?” I says, "I've known that since I was born," but I says, "Don't try to classify me like this, 'cause,” I said, "That guy, he's Black and he wants to beauti—he wants Black to be beautiful." I said "OK," I said, "If I was Black, OK, but," I said, "I'm not black." And I says, "What color are you?" And he says, "Well," he says, "you can see." I says, "Yeah. You're a white man, but do you know you're white?" I says, "You didn't follow your dad around, or your grandfather? You don't know what little Black sister you've got, or little Black brother you've got, somewhere in the world." I says, "Now, don't be so—quick to jump up and call somebody what they are." I says, "Look—I know a lot of people—that passes for white—nice people. And I don't blame them because you get a better—opportunity, see?" And I says, ah, "Your father and mother told you was a white boy. You're gonna remember that. And that's what you're gonna be, see? Nothin' against you, but,” I said, "a colored boy is born, they tell him he's a colored boy. So he knows that, and everybody else." So I said, "Whenever they—they mix them up so that you can't tell a white boy from a colored boy," I says, "then it's come time for you to go and study something, because you—you don't know who you look like, for an instance—that are runnin’ around this country." Some of 'em get mad and some of 'em don't, but I don't care. They don't want to belittle me, you know what I mean? God made me and He made them, and He chooses to make me different than them—that's why He give me a brain—I'm gonna use it. And that's whether you're white or Black, I don't give a darn. See I—I've got—look, I'm invited now into a party—or not a party, but a wedding—of a—white girl. Very nice, and ah—she's gonna get married in St. Paul's church on the eleventh. And I'm invited and I'm taking—Suzanne with me, and then the reception, it should be in—well—up in Chenango Bridge, I think they said. Wanda: Oh, the Country Club. Matthew: Yeah. And I'm always in places like that. Now when I was a kid, the firemen would have a—a dance. The colored guys—”Now—? They don't want you there." I says, "Look, you know a lotta people there. You know some firemen there." I says, “All right, get a ticket an’ go." My wife and I went to everything and there was no—as I said, it depends on who you are and that, you know. But you don't want to be timid. You know what I mean? Because there's somebody knows you there and you're gonna enjoy—yourself, see? So I'd buy a ticket and, ah—bought a ticket to the Italian, ah—the dance they used to give down to the Knickerbocker Hall. You don't remember that—that's down on the first—you know where Henry Street, way down towards the river? Wanda: Yeah.  Matthew: Well, you know that building right next to it—Knickerbocker? They tore that down now, see? Well, anyway—ah—these Italians—I used to have two or three Italian friends, and they hired the hall. So this one fella—Joseph—he, he had a girlfriend and she had a sister, and we were all in school together—so he says, ah, "C'mon, Matt."  So I says, "Sure." I wasn't married then, see. Well, I was a real Indian. I had paint on my face and I had a big Indian outfit, a—you know—ah—big feathers? And I had, ah—pants—you know—buckskin with fringe on like that, an’ moccasins? And I used to do an Indian war dance, so they—they—ah—we waltzed and waltzed and danced together, an’ I danced with everybody. They don't, they don't know me—I got war paint on, see, and Joe, he was a—oh, a—a warrior and I was the chief. His girlfriend was a—was a squaw, and this sister and I—she was Columbia—you know, dressed like Columbia, like that. So after the dance and the grand march was over, they took me aside, and Joe and the two girls, and we had to waltz around and then they took ya outta the bunch, y’know, and there was this guy up there, you see. [Impersonating an Italian accent] "I tell you," he says, "Indian man. Big-a Chief. He's-a got-a first-a prize for men. Little-a papoose, he's got a, he's got a, for a papoose he's got a, got a prize. He's—a girl, he's-a call um a squaw and she's got a prize, a second-a, and the Chief, his-a wife, she's got a nice-a prize." So everybody took off their masks. Says, “An’ everybody, now, take-a mask off, please." So I just kept a, I kept my bonnet on, y’know, and I didn't, ah, or didn't wipe my face off too good, and then after the first few—I wiped it off good and he says, "Aw look. Attsa nice-a boy," he says, “I know that's-a Matt-chew—a-Matt-chew." And everybody went, "Look!" and I got—they wanted to know how I disguised myself, y’know? So I got a—I got a shaving kit and a mirror off here and a stem down here and a base, and it had on here—a cup for—you know at that time we used that— Wanda: —Oh, shaving cream with a brush— Matthew: —a brush. I hated to fool them, but that was the only time it ever happened, and the firemen—they had a hall, and it got so everybody knew us, you know, when we went down. And the funny part—we used to waltz, see, they had waltzes on. They had prizes and like that. My wife says, "I know that man. I'll tell you why," she says, "Hey, would you look at that shirt? The poor man needs a button."  I said, "People are human," I says, "so—the farther you stay away from them the less they know about you." But I said, "You mingle with them and be around them, they come to know you. And if you're different than the other ones," I says. "Everybody has got to have fun," I says. “They sell me their tickets, and," I says, "I'd sue 'em if they didn't let me go up there and dance." Well, that's how we had our fun. My kids are the same. Wanda: You have a wonderful outlook on life. Matthew: Well—I have to have it if I'm going to be happy. And now I go to work, you know what I mean? They say, "How—how do you get along, going like that?" I says, "Look," I says, "I let the day take care of itself. Tomorrow I don't know what's gonna happen. When it comes, then I know what to do.” I says, "Why should I worry about what's gonna happen tomorrow?" I says, "So that's the way to do it," I says. "You don't have to do what I do, but," I says, "that's the way I figure it out." And that's a fact, because you don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. You know today. Wanda: Thank heaven.  Matthew: [Laughter]. Wanda: Do you work with children all the time up at B.O.C.E.S.? Matthew: Yeah, I do want to tell ya. Instead of taking my vacation—I go up to the, ah—other place up there—to the Broome Developmental—those little ones up there, and they're—there’re some mongoloids up there and then there's a lot of, ah—deformed kids. They're all in wheelchairs. There's six hundred altogether—some young ones and up, old ones up to twenty years old there. They live there and they take a certain bus, go to—they're active and they can, ah, understand. They bring them up to school in buses, to B.O.C.E.S.—different grades. Wanda: And what do you teach them? Matthew: Well—the teachers up there, women, they teach, ah—ah, the little ones, ah—oh, ah—how to read and write and so forth, y’know. And once in a while we jump in if—they've got a few that we help out, that it's a little too hard for them, y’know. Bring 'em up and then, ah, we don't teach 'em a full course, y’know, but we teach them crafts. Something they can do with their hands, you know. And like—ah—I teach them to, ah—braid, you know, pocketbooks. [Matthew shows a hand-made wallet.] Wanda: Oh. Somebody did this for you, huh? Matthew: Yep. And, ah—they got spaces in there, you know, inside for the, oh—ah—well, you know—stuff there. And I, quite often the—I got the one there—the doctor—I gotta go to him tomorrow. Every now and then, when I get examined, see, I go to a regular doctor. I have to go to be examined now. After—tonight, after eleven o'clock you don't eat, and tomorrow morning you fast, and I go there and then they—draw the blood, y’know, and analyze that and then he tells me—he gives me a cup of coffee, ah—tells me to go ahead and— Wanda: Where do you find a doctor like that? Matthew: They do—down there, though, the girls. And he says, ah, and he says, "Well, go home and eat a—eat a horse!" He's a nice doctor. Doctor, ah—Grinberg. Wanda: Oh. Matthew: You know him? He's the best doctor in the world. Wanda: I would love to go to him. Matthew: He's nice. He's just like a brother since he's known me. He just pulled me through a—a bad sickness I had one time. So, ah—I fish and I bring him a fish like that, and I bring him squirrels and rabbits and things, y’know. I hunt a little bit, now. The boy does most of the heavy hunting. I, I just go to the—to the places that are close by, y’know. Wanda: Your family's around here, are they? Matthew: Well, not everybody. I, I've got a daughter in Michigan and I've got one in—in, ah, Dayton, Ohio, and I've got one in Chicago. I've got one in, ah—Los Angeles, and I have—how many's that make, four? Wanda: Yes. Matthew: And then I have two here. I have Peggy and Suzanne here. And then I've got a girl that's in—you know the grandchildren in—eleven, eleventy dozen grandchildren. [Laughter.] Wanda: Has this been home all your life? Matthew: Oh yes. It's, ah—since I was little. I came up from Jersey. Wanda: Oh. Matthew: When I was about nine years old. Yes. I like Binghamton. I—I knew most everybody here, and when they go fishing, you know, they—my son-in-law says to me one time—Jack is a, is, ah, is, ah, my son-in-law. He went fishing up to Afton. I know every place from here to Canada, you know? And he says to me, "Hey," he says, ah, "Dad," he says, ah, "I wish we could get up there where Jack was last week."  I says, "Where?" He says, "Up to Afton." I says, "What part?" He says, "I don't know, but," he says, "we crossed a bridge," and he says, ah, "I don't know, we went down by the bridge and got a boat." And I said, "Was it an old bridge or a new bridge?" And he says "A modern bridge." So we got in the car that time, you know, started, y’know. And he, ah, we got up to Afton. We crossed the bridge and I look down and I says, ah—ah, I says, "Is this the bridge you crossed?" "Yep." And I looked down to the end, and I looked down and I saw there was about ten or twelve PepsiCo bottles. He says, "That's the place! That's the place! You know how Jack is always drinkin’—big quarts, quarts of Pepsi-Cola." And there were all these bottles. So we went down and we caught fish. Went back and told Jack. And he says, "Jesus, can't get away from him." I says, "I know," I says, "I’ve fished every foot of this pond since I'm about seventeen years old." But, that's the way my, my wife and, and Johnny and his wife and Leo Payne and his wife—used to—travel together, you know? And, ah, they'd leave on Sunday. I said, "Oh, I don't think I'll go." And later on my wife says, "Let, let's go fishin'." I says, "For part of the day." So the first thing I'll say, ah, "Well, where would they go today?" "I don't know." So we go up to Afton. We go two places there, we don't see 'em. We go back, go to Whitney Point. We don't see ‘em there. So we finally go on up around Oxford and we come down. Every place we ever fished. And I find them—Whitney Point. They gotta be one of those places. [Laughter.] Wanda: Good a way as any, isn't it? Matthew: Oh yes—umhmm. But as I said, I know, I know Binghamton—way, way back.  Wanda: I think if, if you'd like, we could do this again, could we? Matthew: Anytime, sure. Wanda: I'm so grateful for the interview you've given. Matthew: Oh, I've enjoyed your company too. We had a lot of fun. We relaxed and— Wanda: You bet. Matthew: I'm not crazy, I'm just silly. [Laughter.] *[Correction: Professor Palze was the violin teacher.] ⁺ [Roots by Alex Haley.] [The introduction to this interview was accidentally erased. The subject is Matthew Alston, residing at 150 Moeller Street, Binghamton, NY.] Rights Statement This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Matthew Alston Subject The topic of the resource Alston, Matthew -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Binghamton (N.Y.); African Americans -- New York (State) -- Binghamton -- Interviews; Musicians -- Interviews; Orchestra; Jazz; Photographers; Discrimination; Arlington Hotel; Bennett Hotel Description An account of the resource Matthew Alston discusses his early interest in the violin and creating a small orchestra after returning home from World War I and then later a Dixie Jazz Band. He details how he became interested in photography, his first camera, which was a Colony, one of Ansco's first cameras and how it came into his possession. He discusses taking a correspondence course for photography. He speaks of taking photographs of Willis Kilmer's race horse, for the local newspaper, being hired by the government as a photographer, and taking photographs of buildings and landscapes in his free time. He talks about his photography equipment and film processing. He discusses his ancestors and family and the prejudice he suffered. He talks briefly about his work with handicapped children. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 65A ; Recording 65B ; Recording 65C Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Alston, Matthew ; Wood, Wanda Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-01-30 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-27 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Broome County Oral History Project Extent The size or duration of the resource. 33:09 Minutes ; 12:25 Minutes ; 33:29 Minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/91ce51d1336897568191e490d097ced0.jpg 8a7e2cecb330937002a074eb2e18a4e7 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/1ab5b2740583351190215f0d47eae301.jpg 7ca399720fdde6c05500b00d6c69900e https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/dab1a0466bc31ecfc8549786b1129ba1.jpg ae7285e9abbdb9d276e7816ae10ff619 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/c6f64c336de72c075386447fc3d7bc15.jpg 88aea67509b8cd51a7a8d8b5910b13d6 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/400afbcfc6a1a40e536fcf0b575f7950.jpg 88a967f47ab84dd72f43f9fc934377dc https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/85d64c326fb4026c6f0d8aba448087b2.jpg c1d762e875955e12eac79341457e096f https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/ced340f95795a8fcf87b334e02b6aa36.jpg efa7b97978e919875f3830e44cd9c831 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/fe646d5c6dc6c46e220be5e857cddc28.jpg 9d0672a7d3f8cacedee81104aea724f6 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/346e1be8e6121d1f086047245bfcb8b8.jpg 1100e1b9acfae8cb475ef65a545d2849 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/befc091589c101ce13ef19c2a1e20ed1.jpg 35ab355c13cb960b56b8a65f1f209d7a https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/1d249cde0e2d9fd2a62ce400745788ab.jpg bad1eb7789765922bdb3343fbf990a3c https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/5112e23562512bf25e2c0cc04aa929bf.jpg 1d89415339be79c609430117ebb2fca4 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/6742b125e3de01ea37eec4fbc36ceb4d.jpg ab54fcc745e13bc2f0a99ecb4b29ec20 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/914b46031b530009245607fd4bcb9dc0.jpg 68beb82611d5bbca0883ffbf884f6de1 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/ad21fa6e08b95bf1fb87e1c41b80962b.jpg 5b387997063430901577a3b26a7c0472 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/ca56c5d921379c32f30408ef85432121.jpg 35b26265e44cc67eb1b95ba5fb8fa813 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/8f46397683ac1fa3d249d9309e4d933c.jpg 90a790e63b7d7f58969af1334011e369 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/f857cf261173d985a055ea1f185bbde3.jpg 960c8b4d0c07240837e2c3a3e94f0327 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/88d56f478eecc0086a04bcd784791e14.jpg 5b254f27a454b5b0d881d743d9282e93 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/f9ff0455841091f6929049418f8eb4ad.jpg 105ffc4d81bf5929f3ace6d9e5560861 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Broome County Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Broome County -- History Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Description An account of the resource The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed. See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information. Acknowledgment of sensitive content Binghamton University Libraries provide digital access to select materials held within the Special Collections department. Oral histories provide a vibrant window into life in the community. However, they also expose insensitive, and at times offensive, racial and gender terminology that, though once commonplace, are now acknowledged to cause harm. The Libraries have chosen to make these oral histories available as part of the historical record but the Libraries do not support or agree with the harmful narratives that can be found in these volumes. <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/digital/">Digital Collections</a> are created for educational and historical purposes only. It is our intention to present the content as it originally appeared. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright  Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ben Coury, Digital Web Designer Yvonne Deligato, Former University Archivist Shandi Ezraseneh, Student Employee Laura Evans, Former Metadata Librarian Caitlin Holton, Digital Initiatives Assistant Jamey McDermott, Student Employee Erin Rushton, Head of Digital Initiatives David Schuster, Senior Director for Library Technology and Digital Strategies Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1977-1978 Relation A related resource <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections, Broome County Oral History project</a> Template: Universal Viewer / Rosetta Rosetta audio media Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Gruss, Michael Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Caganek, Anna Date of Interview 1978-01-05 Subject LCSH Gruss, Michael -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Johnson City (N.Y.); Pennsylvania; Coal mines and mining; Endicott Johnson Corporation--Employees--Interviews; Cigar industry; Polish language; Russian language; Slovak language; Ukrainian language Binghamton Clothing Company; Dr. Mary Ross Date of Digitization 2017-03-27 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 33:20 Minutes ; 14:01 Minutes Collection Broome County Oral History Project Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE56071">Interview with Michael Gruss</a> Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Michael Gruss Subject The topic of the resource Gruss, Michael -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Johnson City (N.Y.); Pennsylvania; Coal mines and mining; Endicott Johnson Corporation--Employees--Interviews; Cigar industry; Polish language; Russian language; Slovak language; Ukrainian language Description An account of the resource Michael Gruss speaks of his youth in Pennsylvania and working in the coal mines there. He was a licensed black powder blaster and he describes what this entails. He moved to Johnson City in 1913 to work for the Endicott Johnson Corporation and acted as an unofficial labor mediator for the company. He reflects briefly on witnessing the overall factory [Binghamton Clothing Company] fire and trying to help the factory workers. He describes the cigar industry in Binghamton's First Ward and the workers' attempt to unionize. He worked with Dr. Mary Ross as her driver and assisted her on home visits. He was competent in Polish, Russian, Slovak and Ukrainian languages. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fa Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 67