Full Text of the Excerpt

DOUGLAS DENATALE:

Did people have a lot of children then?

CARRIE LEE GERRINGER:

Oh, yes, there was more children than you could shake a stick at then. Now there ain't many of them.

DOUGLAS DENATALE:

Did people just have children as a matter of course?

CARRIE LEE GERRINGER:

Yes. Nearly everybody around here had about as many as I did. There was a few didn't ever have none, but they made out like they couldn't have them, so, I don't know what their excuse was. [Laughter]

DOUGLAS DENATALE:

Was there birth control?

CARRIE LEE GERRINGER:

Not as I know of. I didn't know anything about it if there was. If I had, I probably would have used it myself. Not that I don't love my children, but just so many, and I think it's better to have one or two that you can keep going and do the best you can by them, than have so many. But we was lucky; they always had plenty to eat and things to wear.

DOUGLAS DENATALE:

Did other women in town or did your mother tell you about . . .

CARRIE LEE GERRINGER:

Children?

DOUGLAS DENATALE:

About children and how she carried them?

CARRIE LEE GERRINGER:

, no. She never let nobody talk about it, I don't think. And I didn't know no more than a two-year-old young'un knows when I got married. I didn't know nothing. I was dumb as an ox. You putting all that down? [Laughter] You better not put all that on that thing. [Laughter] not. But it's the truth, every bit of it. I didn't know.

DOUGLAS DENATALE:

You had to just learn it on your own.

CARRIE LEE GERRINGER:

Just learn. Ask the neighbors after I got married.

DOUGLAS DENATALE:

Would people talk about that sort sort of thing?

CARRIE LEE GERRINGER:

Not much. I think they was about as dumb as I was, a whole lot of them.