Full Text of the Excerpt

PATTY DILLEY:

Were your parents farmers?

FLAKE ORAN MEYERS:

Yes, they was farmers. And he made furniture; there's where I got into it. He had a little furniture shop out in the country. He made all kinds of furniture, chairs and what they called kitchen safes back then. Those cupboards; there was tin up the doors with those little holes punched in.

PATTY DILLEY:

Pie safes.

FLAKE ORAN MEYERS:

Called kitchen cupboards. He made lots of them, and then he made a few coffins. They didn't call them caskets back then; coffins, you know, back in them days.

PATTY DILLEY:

Where did he learn how to do that?

FLAKE ORAN MEYERS:

That's the reason I learned how to make furniture; my father trained me up. We'd go in the woods and cut our timber and haul it in and dry it and make it into furniture. That was when I was at High Point.

PATTY DILLEY:

How did he learn how to do that?

FLAKE ORAN MEYERS:

From his father. His father made old wooden clocks. They was interesting.

PATTY DILLEY:

This was a family skill handed down?

FLAKE ORAN MEYERS:

Yes, that's right.

PATTY DILLEY:

I hadn't talked to anybody before that was like that.

FLAKE ORAN MEYERS:

My grandfather was a clockmaker.

PATTY DILLEY:

Was he from Germany, perhaps?

FLAKE ORAN MEYERS:

Yes, his folks were German, but he was born and raised here in the United States. His father was from Germany, and his grandmothers were Dutch.