A modest upbringing rich in kinship
Killian recalls a plain home and a modest upbringing, but one filled with the joy of close kinship and friendship. In doing so she offers a glimpse of rural life, including parlor courtships, music and dancing, and kids determined to make their own fun.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Kathryn Killian and Blanche Bolick, December 12, 1979. Interview H-0131. 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
- KATHRYN KILLIAN:
-
After his mother and daddy passed away, why he bought the old home place.
Oh, no, it was nothing fine. We 've never been used to
anything expensive or fine. Just regular, we 've never been
hungry. Never in our life were we ever hungry. We always had plenty, but
we never had money in excess or anything like that. But
that's not what it takes to make happiness. I
don't think so.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
Uh huh. [laughter].
- KATHRYN KILLIAN:
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We had a very, very plain house. Cooked with a wood stove. Mama did all
of her life, cooked with a wood stove. And they heated the room they
stayed in, and the kitchen, that was the only two rooms they heated. Now
they had a stove in the upstairs, I mean a heater, that they could heat
that room, and they had a heater in what we called the parlor. They
could heat that. And when we were courting, we heated the parlor, and we
courted in the parlor. [laughter] I think
we had much better times then they do now. Because we made our own
entertainment and now they've got to go to the bowling alley,
they've got to go here, they've got to go there.
"What can we do?" Well, we never asked that.
We never asked our parents, "What can we
do?" You know, we weren't bored because we were
busy.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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What did you do for fun?
- KATHRYN KILLIAN:
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Got together! Our parents were just wonderful. They encouraged us to
bring our friends home, and they let us just have a wonderful time in
the house. There was somebody there over the weekends, all the time. It
was nothing for on Sunday afternoon to have the yard full of people.
Saturday nights the parlor would be full. We had fun times.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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And what would all these kids do when they would gather together?
- KATHRYN KILLIAN:
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Well, in our crowd, we had a boy that played the guitar, one fellow that
would come, and his brother was a good singer and different ones would
join in and we'd sing. We had a self-playing piano! And
that's what we entertained so much with. Everybody loved to
get around that self-playing piano. One night, it rained so hard when
the thrashers—you don't know nothing about the
thrashers, either, do you? [laughter]
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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Just consider me here to be educating. [laughter]
- KATHRYN KILLIAN:
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Well, years ago, when we grew up, the grain fields… you had to
go in with a combine…
- BLANCHE BOLICK:
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No, no, no.
- KATHRYN KILLIAN:
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First a cradle, a wheat cradle, and cut the wheat, you know and lay it in
sheaves, and have somebody'd tie it. And then you had to have
thrashers, and somebody who had a thrashing machine, to come in and
thrash that wheat out for you. Well, all their workers—it
took a lot of them, maybe a dozen or more men, to
run that thrashing machine —and they would go with the
thrashing machine in the summer and they didn't go home at
night. They stayed at the house wherever they happened to be working.
And you had to give them supper, and if you had a big crop,
you'd give them supper, maybe breakfast or dinner, maybe two
or three meals.
- BLANCHE BOLICK:
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They slept in the barn.
- KATHRYN KILLIAN:
-
Yes, they slept in the barn. Now this one night it rained so
hard—it was right after supper, and they were going to sleep
in our barn—and instead of sleeping in the barn because of
the storm, daddy invited them into the house and we got in around the
self-playing piano and boy we had a time.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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Uh huh. Do you remember any of the songs you sang?
- KATHRYN KILLIAN:
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"Missouri Waltz"…?
- BLANCHE BOLICK:
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[laughter]
- KATHRYN KILLIAN:
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I just don't remember. We finally had to take the self-playing
part out of it because we couldn't keep it in tune. Some of
the girls, some of the sisters, took music lessons and we had it taken
out. One of our nieces has that old piano in her house. It's
beautiful today.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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What about dancing or games?
- KATHRYN KILLIAN:
-
Well, one New Year's night—now you
wouldn't believe this, but they was willing for us to have a
good time. But they had rules. We had to be in. We couldn't
be out sitting in a car with a boyfriend after midnight. We had to be in
the house. And one night, New Year's night, we took the rug
out and put it on the front porch and had a tear down in the house. We
had music and dancing. We had a time. Shooting firecrackers. We did that
several years.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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What kind of dancing?
- KATHRYN KILLIAN:
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Square-dancing.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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Square-dancing? Uh huh. Did you have somebody that called?
- KATHRYN KILLIAN:
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Oh yes. Let me see, his name was Kermit? Kermit Hedrick
[laughter] . Haven't seenhim in
years. That's why I say we had more wonderful times than the
youngsters do these days because they've got to go play ball.
My goodness, my children, how they have to run, run, run. Our parents
didn't do that for us. We made our own entertainment. We got
out and walked. 'Course I can understand why they
can't now, with the traffic on the roads.