Oral History Transcript - E.C. Goodman - March 8, 1986
Interview with Mrs. E.C. (Sally) Goodman
Interviewer: Lee Bailey
Transcriber: Lee Bailey
Date of Interview: March 8, 1986
Location: Mrs. Goodman’s Home
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Begin Tape 1, Side 1
Lee Bailey: My name is Lee Bailey, and I’m in the home of Mrs. E.C. Goodman. Today’s date is March 8, 1986. We’re going to be talking about some of her remembrances of events prior to World War II. I just want to begin by telling you what we are going to be doing with these tapes after the interview is over with. The tapes are going to be stored in the Southwest Texas Archives—historical archives. For future reference, people will be able to use the tapes if they want to do some research. They will be open to anybody that wants to look at them. Would that be all right with you?
E.C. Goodman: That’s fine.
Bailey: I’d like to start just by getting some basic information. What is your name?
Goodman: My name is Mrs. E.C. Goodman [Sally].
Bailey: What is your age and place of birth?
Goodman: I was born in 1897. You can figure that.
Bailey: Where were you born?
Goodman: I was born in Falls County, between Lott and Chilton, in the country. My mother was left a widow when I was fourteen months old. I have no recollection of my father. She held my family together, and we all learned how to work. We had a fairly happy family for the conditions being as they were during that time.
Bailey: Did y’all live on a farm?
Goodman: We lived on a farm, yes. We all worked on that farm. I remember when my brother, who was two and a half years older than I, made me a little hoe when I was about four or five. I went to the field and worked too. He drove nails in a broom handle, and I just worked as hard as anybody hoeing corn or cotton with my little nailed hoe. (Laughs)
Bailey: Did all seven of the kids work out in the field as y’all were growing up?
Goodman: Yes. My mother held her family together, and we had a happy time, considering. Everybody in those days was expected to work for a living. We didn’t depend on the government to feed us or anything.
Bailey: What did y’all raise on the farm? What kind of crops did y’all raise?
Goodman: We raised cotton and corn. Those were the principal crops. Of course, we had a big garden. We grew practically everything, except staples like flour and sugar.
Bailey: Did most people have gardens back then?
Goodman: Yes, we had a large garden. We didn’t have cookers and things to put food up then. We had to just keep dried food. We dried our peas and things like that. We always had plenty of fun and grew chickens for meat and had hogs for hams and bacons galore.
Bailey: How did you dry the vegetables?
Goodman: We shelled the peas after they dried on the vine. We let things like that dry on the vine. That’s where we would shell them, and they were ready to store after they were dry enough to shell. We didn’t freeze anything then. We didn’t have freezers. In fact, we had ice boxes, where we bought the ice in fifty or one hundred pound blocks. We put it in top of this icebox. It kept our food, like our butter and our eggs, fresh.
Bailey: How long would a block of ice last?
Goodman: About every other day we had to refill it, and we had to go about four miles to get this ice. We wrapped it real good. We carried a tub and put this block of ice in the tub and wrapped it real good to get it home. Of course, we lost quite a bit in melting. That’s the way we got our freezing done.
Bailey: Do you know about your grandmother? Can you tell me something about your grandmother?
Goodman: Yes, my grandmother was a little old white-haired lady who lived around with her children. There were four adjoining farms. Four sisters and their families lived on these adjoining farms. My little grandmother, from my earliest recollection, was living with her children. Her husband had died. She would come and spend two or three weeks with each child. She would go from one home to the other. When she would get tired of us, she’d move on the other farm. Anyhow, she was a pretty peppy little lady. One thing I remember about my grandmother—I don’t know whether that contributed to her longevity or not. She was ninety-four years old when she died. She was just as peppy as could be—but she had her little bottle of whiskey that she set up on the mantle. Every night she made what she called her toddy. I don’t know how she mixed that. It seems like she mixed it with milk, but I couldn’t say exactly how that was mixed. My brother, who was older than I by close to three years, and I decided we wanted to taste that. We got my mother and her out of the room one time, and we got a chair and climbed up there and got some of that whiskey. We poured some water in the bottles so they couldn’t tell that we had snitched any of the whiskey. We made us a little toddy like we had seen grandmother make it, you know. I pretended that it just went to my head, I made out to my brother that I was just as drunk as could be. (Laughs) It just scared him to death. He said, “They’ll catch up with us for such if you don’t straighten up now.” He washed my face to sober me up I guess, but I wasn’t drunk. I was pretending all of the time.
Bailey: So your grandmother never found out about that little experience, I guess.
Goodman: No, they never found out about it. It scared my brother half to death because he was afraid that if I wasn’t really sober, they would find out.
Bailey: Well, your grandmother was the first person in this family’s history to come to Texas, wasn’t she?
Goodman: Yes. I never remember the grandfather. She had been married twice. This was her second marriage. She had two children by her first marriage and the rest by her second marriage. She had a family of seven or eight. I don’t remember exactly. I remember there were four sisters living on adjoining farms there.
Bailey: How did she come to Texas?
Goodman: In a covered wagon. She came from Florida, but she called it “Floordy.” She would tell about them getting out, you know, and letting the children take exercise. They would let them get out on pretty days and run along the wagon and pick wildflowers. She said it was really what we would call a ball today—you know, fun—-when they came from Floordy. She never did call it Florida. We got a lot of fun out of telling about her trip from Floordy.
Bailey: Did they come with a group of other people, or did they come by themselves to Texas?
Goodman: Well, it was a family. In those days, I understand, whole families would migrate to Texas. Go west, young man. (Laughs) Anyhow, it would be several families that would have their covered wagons. They called it a wagon train. That’s how my grandmother came to Texas.
Bailey: As a little girl, do you remember how your religious upbringing affected you? What kind of religious upbringing did you have as a little girl?
Goodman: We had a Baptist Church there in the community where I grew up. That was the only church for miles around. Of course, we grew up Baptist. We went to church. We had church once a month—preaching. We had a regular pastor who came from Baylor in Waco to hold this little church together. He came once a month. He came on Saturday, and we’d have service on Saturday and Saturday night and Sunday once a month. We had Sunday school every Sunday. We had long church benches, just wooden benches. When you were small, your feet stuck straight out. You would get so tired. I remember that I would lay my head in mother’s lap when I would get sleepy. There was one particular fat lady that always came and sat by my mother, and I hated that woman because I couldn’t ever put my feet up on the bench. I had to let them hang down and put my head in my mother’s lap. Anyhow, we had a nice community. They did not allow in that church—if they heard of anybody dancing, that was strictly taboo. No dancing if you were a church member. I remember them having to—they called it “turning them out,” “turning them out” of church, and they “turned out” a couple who had admitted going to a dance. They just withdrew fellowship from them because they had been to this dance.
Bailey: Boy that sure is a lot stiffer than today’s standards.
Goodman: You bet.
Bailey: Did y’all have to travel a long way to go to church?
Goodman: No, we walked to church every Sunday. It was at least what would be eight city blocks. We would walk to Sunday school on Sunday morning and stay for church. We would then come home, and in the afternoon, about three o’clock, we would have BYPU—Baptist Young Peoples Union was what it was. We would go back to that as young people. Then we’d go back home and eat our supper and go back to services that night. We made three trips each Sunday to church and back, so we got plenty of walking exercise. (Laughs)
Bailey: What about revivals? Did they have Baptist revivals?
Goodman: Yes. We didn’t have tabernacles. Later on, we built a tabernacle there in that community that was permanent. I can remember as a little girl, they used to build what was called brush arbors. The men would just take out from their work at home before we were going to have a revival and cut these poles [and] then cut the brush. They would put some kind of wire over across the top of that, and they would lay this brush on top of that. That was what they called a brush arbor, where we could meet. If it rained, the ones on the outside had to move toward the center because the wind would blow the rain underneath.
Bailey: So all that was covering the roof was the brush that they had cut?
Goodman: Yes. The roof was the brush. There was no side, no way to protect from the sides. It was nice and cool, and we didn’t have electric lights then. We had what they called gas lights. They were fixed on those poles there. I don’t know to this day how they were generated. I guess it was kind of like an oil lamp. They made a very good light and had those all around the tabernacle, or the arbor.
Bailey: Would people come from all around to these revivals?
Goodman: All over, yes. Regardless of what denomination they were. You know, there were different denominations in those days, too. But the whole community would come to the revival when they had them because there were not too many things to go to in those days. On Sunday then, at the close of revival, we would have an all-day thing. Everybody would fix a basket of food, and we would have “dinner on the ground,” they called it. You never saw so much food and as many goodies as you could imagine. The only time I saw my mother “lose her cool,” as we call it today—she made the best lemon pies you ever tasted. Of course, people came from everywhere when they heard about “dinner on the ground” because we always had a bountiful amount of food. This young man was where my mother could hear him, and he said “I want a piece of that pie that has the calf slobber on it.” You know, it had a white meringue on top. My mother was right in his face, and she just really gave him a good talking to. She said, “What you want more than anything is some manners. If you had any manners at all, you would not say a thing like that—coming and eating this food and talking like that.” He didn’t reply one way or the other. He looked kind of crestfallen because he wasn’t even thinking about what he was saying.
Bailey: So when people came to eat the good at “dinner on the ground,” they would attend the revival?
Goodman: Yes, yes. Then we would go back into church, and we would have a revival that afternoon too and go home and eat our supper and come back that night.
Bailey: How long would one of these revivals last?
Goodman: Well, they lasted at least ten days. We never had one that didn’t last at least ten days. If we were going real strong, I mean getting good results and good interest, sometimes they would last two weeks.
Bailey: Well, what would you do during the week when everybody had to work? Would they just go to the revival during the nighttime?
Goodman: You see, we had it at a time of the year when crops were kind of laid by. There was an interval in there when we finished cleaning the crops—“laid by,” they called it until harvest time. That’s when we’d have our revivals. Usually they were in July and August because we started picking cotton then and gathering grain and everything at the last of August.
Bailey: So this would possibly be a seven to ten day-event where everybody would attend all day at a time?
Goodman: Yes, yes, that’s right.
Bailey: Where would the preachers come from? Would they travel from distances?
Goodman: Usually, they were from Baylor here in Waco. That’s where they got a lot of experience, you see, preaching. A lot of them came for their board over the weekend or good food. We always managed to take up a fair collection for them, too. That way it would help them pay their expenses.
Bailey: So y’all had these revivals until you were able to build a tabernacle in Chilton?
Goodman: Yes, we did. As we got a little better off financially, we were able to build a real nice tabernacle. It had real shingles on it and everything. We were real proud of that. It lasted for years and years, and they didn’t have to take off and build this brush arbor every year. The little church, when I went as a child, is still standing down in Falls County. It’s called Little Deer Creek Church because it was between two creeks—Little Deer and Big Deer. I guess the big deer roamed on that creek, and the little deer on the other. I never did understand why they called it Little Deer and Big Deer. I often wondered if the Indians didn’t name that when they were roaming the county. Usually, they told me—whatever they saw when they looked out the door when a baby was born, that’s what they were named. If it was a running deer, or a red bird—
Bailey: Do you remember your first schooling experience? What type of school did you go to as a little girl?
Goodman: Oh, I went to a country school. We had three teachers, though, in this community. See, the taxes from the railroad that ran through the entire district—it just kind of curved around through the entire district. See, for that reason we had more tax money than the average country school had. We had three teachers in this country school. We didn’t have single desks like the children have today. We had the double desks. Of course, when you were seven years old, your feet didn’t touch the floor at all. They swung all day. It had a place underneath where you stored your books inside.
Bailey: Would the three teachers in the community all teach at that one school?
Goodman: Yes, three teachers. They boarded around with the people. I think they paid around $10 or $12 a month for board. When I first started teaching—when I finished this school, graduated from this school, I went before the board—the county school board—and took an examination and got a certificate to teach school when I was eighteen years old. My first salary was $60 a month. That was a lot of money in those days.
Bailey: What year was that?
Goodman: I started teaching when I was eighteen years old.
Bailey: So that would have been around 1915?
Goodman: Yes. Then we had the war. World War I came on, you see. My brother had to go serve. He volunteered and went to France. That just left my mother and I there. That was World War I.
Bailey: Were you still teaching then?
Goodman: Yes. Mama wanted to keep the farm intact for the brother when he came back. He had bought livestock, you know. She wanted to keep all that. I think she got $15, maybe $18, a month from the government for my brother’s being in the Army. She put every penny of that in the bank and saved it for him for when he got home. I supported us while he was gone with my teaching salary.
Bailey: Did you teach one or two subjects, or did you teach everything?
Goodman: No, I taught the first three grades. The beginners—well, you might say four grades. I had the beginners. Then I had the first, second, and third grade. Of course, reading, writing, and arithmetic were the three subjects that we relied on. After all, that’s still the basic of education. I tell you, if you’re grounded in that, you got a pretty good start.
Bailey: So, you taught all three of those subjects.
Goodman: Yes.
Bailey: How many students were in your school?
Goodman: Oh, lands. In my room, sometime I’d have at least thirty students in the different grades.
Bailey: Did you teach in a one-room schoolhouse? Were there other grades above the fourth grade in the same room?
Goodman: We had three rooms where I went to school. The first school I taught at, you see, there were just two teachers, and I had more grades. We just taught through the ninth grade in that. They had to go somewhere else to graduate, get a diploma-from high school. They went to Lott, usually, from that little school where I taught. And that was not at home. That was between Marlin and Lott. They called it Shields Academy—the school where I first taught two years. Then, I went teaching in my home school, and I taught four years. I taught seven years.
Bailey: Was that the same school you attended as a little girl?
Goodman: Uh-huh and grew up with all those children and everything. A lot of them knew me. Well, kinfolks, I had a lot of kinfolks. Just like I told you, there were four adjoining farms of brothers and sisters. Their grandchildren had come on by then, and I taught their grandchildren, and they called me by my first name. It was so hard for them to call me Miss Sally Mae, and I told them they would have to call me Miss. They couldn’t call me by my first name when I was their teacher. They had to call me Miss Sally Mae.
Bailey: Was the discipline pretty tough back when you taught school? Did y’all discipline children harder than they do today? Were spankings still allowed?
Goodman: The intermediate teacher got brought up before the trustees because she whipped them and left stripes on their legs. She used a switch, and boy, these parents of this child really raised sand, and they tried to get her fired, but the trustees stuck with her. He was a mean little rat. (Laughs) I never did—you know, with the little ones you could usually talk to them, so I never did—there was just one third grade pupil that I ever really—and I shouldn’t have done that because you’re never supposed to hit a child in the face or on the head. I learned later. I corrected this little old boy, and oh, he just puffed up like a toad, and he just had his fists doubled up. I know he would have just loved to have given me a good lick. I saw those fists, and I just lost my temper. I just slapped his jaws good. I said, “You unlimber those hands, and I don’t ever want to see you do that again.” That, I believe, was the maddest I ever got at a pupil.
Bailey: During your teaching days, did you assign a lot of homework to the kids?
Goodman: Well, no. Not as much as I had assigned to me when I was going to school. In teaching primary grades, it’s more of a day to day thing, I found out. It sticks better if you ask them the questions and see that they studied there in school. It keeps them out of mischief. An idle mind is a devil’s workshop I’d always heard. I always tried to keep them busy with something so they wouldn’t be getting into mischief.
Bailey: You had a lot of homework assigned to you as a little girl in school?
Goodman: Yes. In fact, we got most of it at home. All we had to do was recite it to the teacher the next day.
Bailey: What you mean by “you got most of your homework at home?”
Goodman: I mean, if we had problems to work in math or anything like that, we worked them out at home before we went to school. We knew she would assign the lessons each day for the next day. In our spelling we’d have so many words and then she’d have us write them. She’d pronounce those words for us to spell and write. That was a deal in penmanship, too. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it helped you with your writing.
Bailey: What did you use to write with when you were going to school? Did you use ink wells?
Goodman: Yes, we had those all on the desk. They were built into those big desks when I was going to school. We’d empty a bottle of ink in there. I know there was one old boy who sat behind me, and I had braids, long braids, and if I ever left my braids down and he had a chance, he could get hold of one of those braids and dip it into that ink well. One time, the teacher passed by, and she picked up a tablet on my desk and said, “If D.B.,” his name was Dave Blosch, “If D.B. does that to you again, just get up and hit him over the head with his book, and I won’t see it.” Oh, that just tickled me to death. I gave him every opportunity. I swished my braids around. Well, sure enough, it wasn’t long until he dipped that in there, and when he did, I had my book lying there on my desk just ready, and I came up and hit him right on the top of the head just as hard as I could. It shocked him so. He was the funniest looking thing you ever saw. And it sounded real loud. I thought I’d knocked him out for a while. Anyhow, that just thrilled me to death. It’s a wonder she hadn’t gotten fired over it. I was careful not to tell many people. (Laughs) I treasured that above everything that that teacher had given me permission to do that.
Bailey: With six brothers and sisters, I guess you had a lot of help at home with your homework, didn’t you?
Goodman: Yes, yes. A lot of bossing, too. My mother would get me down every night and have me read to her. My mother did not have an opportunity to go to school like we did. In fact, they just had one-room teachers for the whole school, and she never did get out of grammar school. So I think she learned right along with her children. She was so interested in everything we were doing. I think she was learning right along with us. She had two teachers in her family. One of my older sisters—Maggie’s [Margaret Carney] mother—was a school teacher too, so she was real proud of her school teachers. In fact, she was real proud of all her children. Maggie’s mother was my favorite sister. In a large family, naturally, you have favorites, and Clara just kind of babied me and took me under her wing. She saw that my hair was combed every morning and braided. If I could, I would slip off without it. Of course, my mother had so many to look after. The older girls just kind of helped her get the little ones to going.
Bailey: As a little girl going to school, do you remember seeing your first car?
Goodman: Very well, very well. In fact, we lived off the road. We didn’t live on the main road, which is a highway now, graveled and paved and everything. Then it was just a dirt road. This car came from Marlin, which was the county seat of Falls County, and went to Temple-Scott and Whites. They had that hospital there then when I was a little girl. We knew what day and about what time it came, and we’d go over to the road to see that car come by. One Sunday night, we were all walking to church, and this car had been to Temple-Scott and White, and it came by, and it just had two men in there. They stopped and said, “Would you children like to ride to church;” they knew where the little church was. It was not very far—not over a half of mile. Oh, yes, we just climbed on. They had fenders then on cars. We were just crawling right in, and I remember our mothers yanked us off that running board, and they said, “No, thank you, we’re so near church, they’ll just walk.” Oh, we could have murdered our parents for not letting us ride in that car. That would have been a real thrill. My mother said, “They could have had you in Halifax.” Halifax was the end of the world with her. When cattle got out or anything, and she couldn’t see them anything on the farm, she’d say, “They may be in Halifax by now.” To me, Halifax was the end of the world.
Bailey: Was it a long time before cars started becoming common?
Goodman: Yes.
Bailey: After you saw that first car, did it take several more years for most people to start driving?
Goodman: Yes, several years. I remember my sister and her husband—they were in the dry goods business—got one of the first cars. Gee, we could ride a car when nobody else had had the opportunity to ride in a car. She came out—this older sister learned how to drive and would take us anywhere we wanted to go.
Bailey: Do you remember if cars were pretty expensive? Were they a luxury item when they first came out?
Goodman: In those days, $500 was a luxury. I remember a new Ford could be built for $500. I know E.C.’s mother and father bought a new Ford the year we married, and they paid $500 for that brand-new Ford. What a new Ford sell for today, do you have any idea?
Bailey: At least $10,000.
Goodman: Things were cheap, but money was scarce.
Bailey: You said earlier, something about your brother going off to World War I. You were teaching school at that time right?
Goodman: Yes. That’s when my mother went over to Lott to live with my older sister. I boarded. At that time—that was the two years I was teaching away from home—I would come up to Lott to be with her.
Bailey: Did you teach school throughout the war?
Goodman: Yes. I taught two years at the first place that was away from home, when I boarded. I paid $12.50 a month for board, from Monday morning until Friday. That was big money.
Bailey: Were most of the young men in the community drafted into the Army?
Goodman: Yes. My brother was drafted, and E.C. was drafted. I didn’t even know he existed then. He went to France too. My brother went to France, and that’s where they were sent most of World War I.
Bailey: How did community people react to, say, an eighteen year-old boy not going to war?
Goodman: Oh, they were—should I say it? (Laughs) They were called “yellow-bellied slackers.” People couldn’t stand them. I wouldn’t have dated one under any circumstances.
Bailey: Were there some of them around?
Goodman: Yes, there was a few yellowbellies around. I remember one wealthy person in Chilton, I won’t call their names. Everybody thought they paid their son out. There was no excuse in the world for him not going to the war. And you know what? That was the first year of the flu epidemic. When the flu first started, it was terrible. They didn’t have antibiotics like they have today, and most of it ran into pneumonia, and people just died like flies with the flu. This boy, that they had paid to keep out of the Army, had the flu and pneumonia and died.
Bailey: Were people relieved?
Goodman: I remember that the younger ones were. I said, “It serves him right. It serves him exactly right.”
Bailey: You know, times sure have changed about feelings of going to war. There aren’t such strong sentiments against somebody now.
Goodman: The times have changed period. People didn’t voice their likes or dislikes like they feel free to do today.
Bailey: You talked earlier about the drought of 1925. Were you married then?
Goodman: Yes, that is when we had put our savings in to cattle and sheep. We bought 150 sheep and 75 young heifers. We paid $70 a head for those heifers. Next year, the bottom fell out. These cattle that we had paid $75 a head for sold for $12 a head. That’s when they had the canning program at the federal cannery.
Bailey: Was this during the Depression?
Goodman: Yes.
Bailey: Okay, so you bought the cattle before the depression?
Goodman: Yes, when things were high. Then the bottom fell out the next year. And then we had the drought, you see. We couldn’t feed them, and there was nothing to feed, really. We couldn’t afford to buy feed for that many heads, so we sold them to the government. That’s when we moved off the farm. My husband got a job with the Southland Ice Company peddling ice. I got a job at the federal cannery as a supervisor.
Bailey: Where was the federal cannery?
Goodman: Down at the old Cotton Palace. They had it fixed with all those large cookers and everything, where [they] could can this meat. They hired these people who were on relief to work.
Bailey: What does “being on relief” mean?
Goodman: Well, the government was supporting them. Just like welfare today. Anyhow, we survived that episode.
Bailey: How long did you work at the cannery?
Goodman: Oh, I guess two years because the federal government had started these—they had leased on land out on South Third Street road for gardens, and they used these relief workers for planting and tending these gardens and gathering that. Then we’d put up vegetables. We canned peas, corn, and tomatoes, and things like that. That was for relief, people who were on relief. Some of them would have starved to death, I guess, if they hadn’t [had] been on relief.
End Side 1, begin Side 2
Bailey: Was that a hard process, canning food?
Goodman: Well, it was a steady process. It was hot in those kitchens and everything where the canning was. Of course, we were—supervisors were furnished white uniforms. We had to do those every morning when we got to work. By afternoon, we had perspired, and they were looking rather wilted by the time a six-hour shift was over. I had to be here and yonder and everywhere to see what was going on on my shift. You know what? Some of those who were on relief—they didn’t any more deserve to be on there. I would find them—and if I had missed a worker for a good long while, I would go to the restroom, and they would be in there, smoking and just having a good old time. Boy howdy, would I eat them out about that part of it. I said, “It looks to me like you’re depending on the government for everything you eat, and it looks like you would be grateful enough to give an honest day’s work.” I really talked to them about that.
Bailey: Were most people on relief during the Depression?
Goodman: You’d be surprised how many were on relief.
Bailey: Do you remember having friends of yours who lost everything they owned during the Depression?
Goodman: Well, not particularly because the ones I knew lived had been pretty thrifty all their lives. Yes, I’m sure there was. In fact, I would hear of a lot of people. A lot of these who had lived pretty high and mighty committed suicide. They would go upstairs and open a window and jump out or something like that. They couldn’t take it—losing everything they had.
Bailey: It sounds like y’all were doing pretty well as a family during the Depression.
Goodman: Well, yes. The ones who were willing to buckle down and work were the ones who were doing better than the ones who were trying to deadbeat their way through.
Bailey: You mentioned that both you and your husband worked during the Depression. Did you work at the same time, or did you work different shifts?
Goodman: No, we arranged it where we wouldn’t have to because we had two little girls. We wanted for them to have supervision. Of course, they went to school during the school year, but one of us was with them all of the time. He left in the morning, as I was getting in. I took what they called the “graveyard shift.”
(One minute of unintelligible tape)
Bailey: Where did they have the ice factory?
Goodman: Southland Ice Company. It was over in east Waco. Then we had Geiser Ice Company, but he worked for the Southland Ice Company.
Bailey: Do you know how they froze the ice at the ice factory?
Goodman: They had those rooms that were insulated to keep their ice in. Then they’d have blocks of [one] hundred pounds and fifty pounds and twenty-five pounds. You know, some people didn’t take but twenty-five pounds every day because they couldn’t afford more. They paid as they went. They had to have the money there to pay when he delivered the ice.
Bailey: So your refrigerator had a place in it to put the ice block?
Goodman: Yes, across the top, the refrigerator had a place—our refrigerator would hold fifty pounds. That was how much capacity it was. We kept food very well in it. It was a tall ice box, I remember.
(Thirty seconds of unintelligible tape)
Bailey: What other jobs did he have besides the ice factory job?
Goodman: Well, we moved to West after the deep Depression was over. He was running the Southland Ice Company. He had charge of it. Then he didn’t have to deliver. He had men working for him there. That’s when I started to work in Waco at the Methodist Home, teaching canning to those high school girls. After I got through with the canning season, they asked me to stay on and supervise the laundry.
Bailey: Was this still during the Depression?
Goodman: We were coming gradually out of the Depression. We didn’t really know there was a Depression because we were both working, you see. We did very well with our financial part of it because we both worked.
Bailey: So you quit your job at the federal cannery and started working at the Methodist Home?
Goodman: Yes, how come me to get that at the Methodist Home—see, they had these gardens, the Methodist Home did, and they brought stuff down there for us to can for them, and I met the superintendent, and I just went and asked after the federal cannery was closing—I just bearded the lion in the den and went and told them what I had in mind and wondered if they wouldn’t be interested in having somebody to do that. I never will forget, Mr. Johnson said, “It sounds very interesting. Just give me a little while, and I’ll let you know.” He called me and told me that if I wanted to try it, I could. When the canning season was over, I went to work in the laundry, supervising the girls who did the laundry. They had the big rollers to iron the sheets. It was very interesting. They had a regular laundry out there, and they used the high school girls there in the Methodist Home to do the ironing. They had so many hours to work every day. The only discipline I had—if some of them did things they shouldn’t do, I gave them a black mark. If they got so many black marks, then they went before the superintendent, and he gave out the punishment. But that’s all I had to do. They were afraid of the pencil when it came out. I had their names all written down and carried it.
Bailey: Were the girls who worked for you in the canning factory at Methodist Home, residents in Methodist Home.
Goodman: Yes, and after the canning season, they went to the laundry. They had a laundry for the little folks. They had them all ages out there at the Methodist Home. Of course, they had the laundry where they washed the clothes and then they sent them upstairs to the ironing room. They had one whole room with irons.
Bailey: When the canning season came back, would the same girls go back and start working in the canning factory.
Goodman: Well, no. They were going on up. Some of them graduate, you see, and got jobs. When they got old enough to really get a job, they did. Some of them married and so on. They were just pushing them on through, you see. It was quite interesting.
Bailey: They’re still going strong out there at [the] Methodist Home.
Goodman: I haven’t been out there in ages. I’m sure there isn’t anybody out there that I would know.
Bailey: How many bottles of meat and vegetables did you can? Was it a process to produce food for Methodist Home people, or did you produce good for the people that lived in Waco?
Goodman: No, just for the Methodist Home. They had their own gardens. As the fruit and vegetables were ready, we canned it and preserved it.
Bailey: Did you have big industrial size canners?
Goodman: Oh, yes, cookers and things like that. It was done on a large scale.
Bailey: Did you teach any kind of school in West?
Goodman: Well, during the canning season, I had a good conservation school where I taught women how to freeze—people had freezers by then. That was only a short while. I worked at the Methodist Home after I moved to West. I rode the inter-urban to Waco and caught a bus out to the Methodist Home during canning season.
Bailey: What was the inter-urban?
Goodman: The inter-urban was just—they had the tracks for it and it ran on a trolley-like thing. It went from Waco to—I’ve forgotten what town up the country.
Bailey: Dallas?
Goodman: It doesn’t hardly seem to me like it went clear to Dallas, but I guess it did. It ran every hour between these two places. I could catch the inter-urban at the hour that I was supposed to go and then catch a bus. If I was ever delayed, it sure was sad to see that inter-urban just leaving. That meant I had to stay another full hour before I caught another one.
Bailey: Do you remember street cars in Waco?
Goodman: Oh, yes.
Bailey: Did they have those while you were living in West, or had they already taken those up?
Goodman: No, they had the streetcars running out to [the] Methodist Home.
End of interview