No, Dr. McPherson told us, he says, "If you will get fifty dollars to pay
for the room and board," he says, "you can pay the doctors then after
your work picks up." He says, "You pay that long as you have it." Well,
now, you think going there and staying ten days and nights, for fifty
dollars. And you can't stay at a hospital now one day for fifty dollars.
Well, we didn't have that money. I had just a little bit that I had
saved, not enough to pay it, but Mr. Carey Durham, hadn't been running
this store very long down here, and Paul went down there to him and told
him, you know, what we needed, that we needed fifty
dollars. Well, he let us have the money. Well, just as soon as Paul's
work picked up, he commenced paying it back to him, you know. But we
paid it back to him. But I didn't have any money to carry with me to go
out to get me something to eat. My people, they would come to see Hetty
every day, you know. Well, my sister lived at Carrboro then, and my
little boy was about two years old. And Paul went up there and carried
him up there to her the first day or two, and Paul stayed up there, and
he'd come back and forth, you know, go back and forth to see her. And
she'd fix me a box of chicken and stuff, you know, send it to me to eat.
Well, I had plenty to eat, and I had a cousin lived out there at West
Durham. She came out there to see us, and she sent me a box of something
to eat. They knew how it was with us, you know. It wasn't only us; it
was a lot of people that was in that shape then. And so the nurse one
day. . . . There was one woman in there in the room where Hetty and I
were; there was only two patients in that room. And her little
granddaughter came—she was, I think, about eleven or twelve years
old—nearly every day, and stayed part of the day with her. Well, they'd
bring the lady—I forgot her name—her lunch and Hetty's, you know. Well,
they wouldn't eat near all of it. And one day the nurse was in there,
and she says, "Mrs. Jones," she says, "if Hetty leaves anything on her
tray that you'd like," she says, "you eat it." She says, "We don't do a
thing but throw it away when we carry it back in yonder." Well, after
that, if it was anything I especially liked. . . . But I had a-plenty to
eat. And Hetty didn't like sweet milk, and they'd bring her sweet milk
every time. And there was a colored man that would come in every
morning and clean up. And we knew him by name—I
don't remember it now—but she said one morning, she told him, she says,
"I don't like sweet milk." And he says, "Well, Hetty," he said, "do you
like buttermilk?" She said, "Yes." He says, "Well, you're getting
buttermilk hereafter; you won't get any more sweet milk." And they never
brought her no more sweet milk. [Laughter]
They brought her buttermilk after that.