It was important for the sense of the value of the human being. I look
upon it as having had a family who placed a very high value on people.
We were the kind of family that was not just my mother and her brood,
but if somebody came by who needed something, you got something; you got
food. One of the things my grandfather had was a large production of
food, and there was plenty of food. He had an orchard that was very
superior to the kind that people have now. There were different kinds of
fruits, and the rotation: you'd start off with the early peaches, and
then you'd have peaches all through the summer up until the fall. He had
enough cows to have, say, ten or twelve gallons of milk a day, so if you
came there was plenty to eat. They raised their own wheat; they ground
their own flour and their cornmeal; they had the hogs, and they had
plenty of chickens and plenty of eggs. He believed in that kind of
living, so going up there every summer, to me it was just like, how did
I know he wasn't rich? As far as I was concerned, there was plenty to
eat. In fact, there was no question; riches never entered into it. It
was the business of good living. And nobody ever got turned away. As I
understand it, he was certainly in terms of food. So this was the
pattern, and if somebody called and needed help. On many a night after
we moved from Norfolk, the three children and my
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mother, people would knock on the door in the middle of the night and
say, "Mrs. Baker, So-and-so is sick." And my mother had one of those
very positive voices. They'd knock, and she said, "Ye-e-es?" She would
get up, and I always waked up early. (It sounds like I'm being very
self-serving, but it happened to be true that I was quick when… I never
slept much. They said even as a baby, if you walked across the floor too
much I'd wake up. Maybe it's nervousness.) I would be the
[unclear] , as it were, for the other two
children, because we were home, just the three, my mother and the
children, for a good deal until such time as from time to time if there
were people who…. Like a mill had opened up near us, and young men came
into town, she'd rent out one of the upstairs rooms and let them stay
there. But she didn't do much about feeding them, because she wasn't too
eager to cook anyway, I don't think.