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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Alice P. Evitt, July 18, 1979. Interview H-0162. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Decline of community ethic in working communities

Evitt recalls the communitarian ethic of her mill community. She believes that today that impulse is gone.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Alice P. Evitt, July 18, 1979. Interview H-0162. 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.

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JIM LELOUDIS:
Well, did each of the kids in the family have chores that were assigned to them?
ALICE P. EVITT:
Yeah. You used the fireplace then. My little brother, he cut wood, and I'd do a lot of milkin'. We'd both do the churnin'-rest each other's arms a'churnin'. All the rest worked at the mill but me and him. My older sister, though, she had-I reckon they didn't know what it was then-it was probably something in one of her legs. She limped when she walked. She never did work any. I stayed with her alot after she married and helped her-one of us, me or my brother'd stay with her to help her out. We'd stay and help her out. It was good times-better times than now. I just loved the times back then. A lot of people says they don't want to see them times no more, but I would. I loved 'em. They was good times, and people was better in a way.
JIM LELOUDIS:
How's that so?
ALICE P. EVITT:
Everybody get sick, they'd go. Now, I was young and hadn't been married long, and my brother, he married. Me and him and my mother and father lived back of Davidson College, up at Morrison. There was somebody up in the country, some lady's awful sick and didn't have nobody to set up with her. We walked a mile and set up with that lady. We never had met her, but we walked and set up with that lady. Now, they won't cross the street and do that. But people would then. They'd go if anybody's sick, but looks like now, everybody's for theirselves. But I do anything for anybody I can.