Full Text of the Excerpt

JACQUELYN HALL:

When you were growing up, did you have a sense that your mother had to work awfully hard or was having a hard time with so many children?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes. But we all helped. The whole family helped and worked real hard. Of course, she worked the hardest, because she worked in the field and she would go to the house about eleven o'clock to get dinner and have dinner on the table at twelve when we got there. And she would make half a dozen or more pies, so she'd have enough for supper, too. A great big dish of beans and potatoes and corn and all that. And how she would do it in one hour I never have figured out. It'd take me a half a day. But she was so fast. She'd set down to peel an apple, and she'd go around that thing, phew!

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was your father like?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

I can't remember too much about him. He died when I was about five years old. But I can remember us little ones would fuss and carry his shoes to him and things like that, but I can't remember too much about him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He was a good bit older than your mother.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Yes, he was.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did your family life change after he died?

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

We just had to work that much harder. I was little; I wasn't hardly big enough to work. I carried a hoe ever since I was big enough to carry one, though. But he had just bought some land the year before he died, and he was supposed to pay for it the next year. And I can remember that Mama said that she didn't know if she would lose it or not, but said the next year the cotton crop and everything was so good, had such a good year, and they paid off the land.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So she didn't lose the land.

GLADYS IRENE MOSER HOLLAR:

Didn't lose the land.