Entertainment for youth and young adults in Hickory, North Carolina
Yelton describes the various entertainments the children and young adults in her town had invented for themselves.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Mareda Sigmon Cobb and Carrie Sigmon Yelton, June 16 and 18, 1979. Interview H-0115. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
What did you all do for fun in that period while you were still single,
in your free time?
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
-
Oh, when we were growing up, we didn't have things to go to then. We'd
play games like Kick the Can. That's [at] thirteen, fourteen, like that.
Play Ant Me Over. I don't guess you all ever knowed any of that, did
you? You get a ball. Three or four get on one side
of the house and on the other one, and you'd say, "Ant Me
Over" and throw the ball. And if you'd catch it, you'd come
around and try to get one of them out.
[Laughter]
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
I've never heard of that.
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
-
We was just talking about that the other day, that kids wouldn't know.
Back then you didn't have toys and things. You had to make your own. I
know one time when my brother and I were little we played with those
glass things in jar caps. So I broke one one day and he made me mad, and
I throwed it, and I split his lip open. Oh, boy, I knew I was going to
catch it. They had to take him to get stitches. I run up under the
house, and I stayed there till Mama said she wouldn't whip me.
[Laughter]
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
You were under the house?
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
-
Oh, it was a large house. They had a big porch.
[Laughter]
She should have whipped me, but I would have stayed under there
all night.
[Laughter]
And back then when you growed up, you went to picture shows
lots.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
What about dancing or listening to bands or music?
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
-
Oh, yes, I loved to dance. We used to go to lots of dances.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
Where did you have dances?
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
-
Mostly I'd go with my brother and his wife to dances. They was young
then. They used to call it Baxter's Lake over towards Mountain View, and
we'd go over there and have square dances and Paul Joneses and things
like that. Because it wasn't too many places for young people to go back
then. Go out to the shows or maybe have parties. I used to have lots of
parties.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
At your house?
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
-
Yes.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
Did people that you knew play instruments? Did people entertain
themselves by playing music?
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
-
Yes. Talking machines, they used to call them. Things like that.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
What were talking machines?
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
-
It's something kind of like a record player now, but it would have a horn
out, like.
- ALVIN YELTON:
-
It had a handle on. You had to wind it up. Victrola(
) records.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
But it would play records.
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
-
Oh, yes.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
Oh, I see.
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
-
You know, back time the records used to be round, instead of like they
are now. They'd be round, and you'd put them on a round thing, and it'd
play.
- PATTY DILLEY:
-
Did you have one of those, or was it one of your friends that had it?
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
-
One of my friends.
- PATTY DILLEY:
-
Did they work with you at the plant?
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
-
Yes. Sometimes I'd have parties, and I'd have two or three girlfriends
staying all night with me. We used to have an old-timey sofa that would
make a bed, and we would all sleep on that one bed, laying across us.
[Laughter]
- PATTY DILLEY:
-
Were they still single then?
- CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
-
Oh, yes.
[Laughter]