Full Text of the Excerpt

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did your mother and father meet?

EUNICE AUSTIN:

I think at church, because they always went to the same church. But I know my granddaddy wouldn't let my daddy come but every two weeks to see her. And it had to be on Sunday afternoon. He would not ever let a boy come around there after dark. He wouldn't even let us bring a boy and go down to his house after dark. He said nobody had ever dated at his house after dark, and we wasn't going to either.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you think about that?

EUNICE AUSTIN:

I just didn't contrary him. I just didn't go. I'd go during the day. But my mother let us date after dark. It was a lot of us young people in the same community, and we'd have a party every couple weeks. Just the young people get together and play games out in the yard. I would always bake a cake, and we'd have pickles. We didn't have tea and things like that to drink; we'd drink water. But we had a good time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So your mother wasn't as strict on you as her parents had been on her.

EUNICE AUSTIN:

Oh, no. She has told us time and time again that she said if she ever had a daughter, she'd never be as strict on them as her daddy was on her, and she wasn't, either. It was quite different.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why do you suppose he was so strict?

EUNICE AUSTIN:

It was just his way. I don't know. [END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A] [TAPE 1, SIDE B] [START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

JACQUELYN HALL:

He didn't want you to marry?

EUNICE AUSTIN:

No, he didn't. He had two daughters that never did marry. My mother's got two sisters that were never married. And if one of them ever had a date, I never did know about it. One of them did have a boyfriend for a while, but he was not allowed to come after night. He had to come on Sunday afternoons.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why do you suppose he didn't want his daughters to marry? That seems kind of unusual.

EUNICE AUSTIN:

I don't know. That's what we could never understand, because he got married. I don't know why. That was just one thing; he did not want his daughters to marry.