Various living situations for railroad personnel
Strickland married shortly after he began working on the railroad. He describes his wedding ceremony, where they lived their first few years, and how having a family changed their situation.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Ralph Waldo Strickland, April 18, 1980. Interview H-0180. 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
- RALPH W. STRICKLAND:
-
After I come here, about the first year, I went on back home in Warm
Springs. Me and my wife got married. I was already working on the
railroad, and I went back down home. She and I fell in love the year
before. I went on back down there and we married. Down there at Warm
Springs where we got married.
- LU ANN JONES:
-
Did you get married in a church?
- RALPH W. STRICKLAND:
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Sure did. Methodist Church down there at Warm Springs. Got married at the
parsonage at the Methodist Church.
- LU ANN JONES:
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How many people came to your wedding?
- RALPH W. STRICKLAND:
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Her sister, she had a bunch of girlfriends who lived up a place called
Raleigh, about two miles above Warm Springs. There was
about fifteen or twenty. We were going get married in
secret and go to the parsonage and have the Methodist preacher there to
marry us. We showed up there, and here there a whole crowd of them come
there. We laughed about it.
- LU ANN JONES:
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Did you go on a honeymoon?
- RALPH W. STRICKLAND:
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Sure did. No, well, the next morning, we caught that Southern train and
come to Charlotte. We went down on Tryon Street and stayed at Mrs.
Keys' boarding house for three or four months. That was the
latter part of 1927, 1928. Business was good. I was making pretty good
time there. I'd get up maybe four, five, six hundred dollars
there and carrying it around.
- LU ANN JONES:
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A month?
- RALPH W. STRICKLAND:
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Yeah, a month. Sometimes you double, come back on your rest. You paid
your $6.62 for eight hours. They had time and a half day. In
1916, World War I, was railroad coordinator World War I. They went from
a twelve hour day to the eight hour day, 1916. They paid you time and a
half after eight hours. When I first started, first two or three years,
up until 1931, I got to work pretty good. I made fairly well.
$6.62, you draw seventy five, eighty, or ninety dollars a half,
a fifteen day period. You'd walk down on Tryon Street old man
A&P Store for three or four dollars and buy enough groceries to
last you for a week.
- LU ANN JONES:
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Were you able to cook there in the boarding house?
- RALPH W. STRICKLAND:
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No, Mrs. Keys, she run the boarding house.
- LU ANN JONES:
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Did you eat there?
- RALPH W. STRICKLAND:
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Yeah, we eat there, roomed and boarded there. We didn't stay
there very long after me and Susie come to Charlotte. We
didn't stay there but about two or three months. Then I went
up town. Didn't have much money, I had
a hundred so dollars. Went up there Brothers on College Street, bought
me one hundred fifty dollars worth of furniture, a wicker set, a dresser
and a chair, and a oil stove and started keeping house. We rented a
house.
- LU ANN JONES:
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Where was the house?
- RALPH W. STRICKLAND:
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Above Mrs. Keys' boarding house.
- LU ANN JONES:
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You mean it was in the same building?
- RALPH W. STRICKLAND:
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No, it was a different building. Old man Charlie, they owned three or
four houses back up there behind her boarding house. In that block, they
own those houses.
- LU ANN JONES:
-
Who owns it?
- RALPH W. STRICKLAND:
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Old man Charlie Key, Mrs. Key, they run that Seaboard cafe and boarding
house.
- LU ANN JONES:
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Were they connected with the railroad?
- RALPH W. STRICKLAND:
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No, they just run that Seaboard cafe and the boarding house.
That's where I first started. We stayed around there about a
year, then I moved from her place up on Tenth Street. Rented some rooms
up there, six or eight months or a year I lived there. Then I moved down
there on Tryon Street, stayed down there on Tryon Street between the
underpasses on Tryon Street for about seven or eight years. Then I moved
from Tryon Street to Ninth Street, Ninth Street to Davidson Street,
Davidson Street to Pegram Street. I stayed on Pegram Street and raised
my family, lived on Pegram Street for thirty-five years. My oldest girl,
Mary Sue, she'd fifty-one years old; my next one is
forty-nine, Carlos. I had one girl and two sons. My youngest son is
thirty six years old, my youngest baby. My two oldest children are older
than that. Mary Sue's fifty-one, Carlos is forty-eight or
forty-nine. We moved over here on Sheffield in 1974. Been living over
here about six years. We moved over Pegram Street, we
moved when Mary Sue and Bill Bailey--Bill and his
father run these Bailey cafeterias around here all over town. Him and
his father operated about eleven cafeterias at one time--Mary
Sue and Bill build them a new home out here on Amity Road toward Hickory
Grove. They eventually made it possible for us to get this place here. I
had a little five room frame house over there on Pegram Street. I was a
poor man; I worked on the railroad, but I bought and paid for that place
too.
- LU ANN JONES:
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What did most of your neighbors over there do? What kind of work did they
do?
- RALPH W. STRICKLAND:
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Lynn Hopkins, he was captain on the fire department, and Mr. Hill, he was
sargeant on the police department, various occupations. Some people
worked in the cotton mill, lived long there on Pegram Street. We moved
over there 1940 or 1941. There wasn't anybody over there but
white people. There wasn't a colored person on that street
nowhere. Now, I think there's probably one or two white
families and all the rest of them is colored people lives over there
now.
- LU ANN JONES:
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A lot of your neighbors at first were textile people?
- RALPH W. STRICKLAND:
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Yeah, they were textile, worked the textile. Some on the fire department,
some on the police department, some of them, cross the street, they were
carpenters, bricklayers, just common ordinary working people lived all
along there. I was a railroad man.