[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

JACQUELYN HALL:

I just wanted to start out by asking you all a little bit about your childhood, about where you grew up.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Right in this area.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Where were you born? Out in the county?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did your father do?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Farmed.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He was a farmer?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

We grew up knowing nothing but farming until we went to the glove mill.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When were you born?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I was born in 1916.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What date?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

July 5th.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And when were you born, Kathryn?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Blanche.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Blanche. I'm going to get this straight.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

June 5th, 1907.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How big a farm did your father have?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Just a little over a hundred acres. We had a big farm.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Uh huh. What did you raise?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh, most everything: corn, wheat, cotton, sweet potatoes, hay.

JACQUELYN HALL:

[unknown]

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Molasses. Oh my, molasses. We always had our molasses.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How would you gather it?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, now he didn't make molasses, he just raised the cane [laughter] . He raised cane!

JACQUELYN HALL:

Uh huh.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

And then somebody in the area had molasses milled. You had to haul it there and they made it for you.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You'd haul your cane to a mill. Did you sell molasses or just make it?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

[unknown]. What we didn't use, Mama made vinegar out of.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Uh huh. Did you all work in the fields?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh yes. That's all we had to make a living, was to scratch it out of the dirt.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Uh huh. All the kids?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

All the kids. Soon as we got big enough to take a row of cotton or a row of corn, we took it. Up until that time, we helped the others in their rows.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What would the helpers do?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

We had no helpers.

JACQUELYN HALL:

No, I mean when you were so young that you couldn't…

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

We just helped out the larger ones to learn how. They'd go along with the row and we'd go along and help them. We had a hoe, too.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

We'd go along and dig that trash out of the middle.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh, uh huh.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

But, if you weren't raised on a farm, you don't know what we're talking about. [laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

I wasn't. I was raised in a small town, not on a farm, but I'm trying to learn.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

You see, corn and potatoes and all this was grown in rows. You had to plant it in rows, long, straight rows, and there was a space

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that was called the middle. And you see we younger kids got in the middle with our hoes. We didn't dig out the corn or the cotton or whatever. It was hard to distinguish corn or cotton, the crop, from the grass sometimes, when it got so large. So long as we hoed in the middle, we were O.K. Until we learned, were old enough, to know what the corn and cotton was.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, how old would that be that you were old enough?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh, I think when you were five or six years old we could distinguish, but still we weren't old enough to take a load, but you'd still have to help. I'd say we were about ten or twelve years old before we got hoe to a row ourselves.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you feel? Would that be a big day when you got to be old enough to have your own row?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Sort of. And sort of you didn't like it either. It was hard work. [laughter] Not knowing anything else, we had to do it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How many kids were there in the family?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Eight.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Seven girls and one boy.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh, so it was almost a family of girls?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

We had to do boys, too. We had to do boys' work.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You think if you had more brothers in the family, you would have had different work to do?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I doubt it. We all enjoyed it. In a way, we enjoyed the work, because as I grew up I would rather do the boys' work than the girls' work.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

I started cultivating, plowing, at eleven.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You were plowing at eleven? What was considered girls' work?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Just the hoeing.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh. As opposed to plowing?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes. See at that time you worked with a horse.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And you'd rather plow than hoe? Why was that?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

I guess because it looked big. [laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Uh huh. What about your mother? Did she…?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh, right out in the field with us, she worked daylight 'til dark.

JACQUELYN HALL:

It's a hard living.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Get up early in the morning, milk the cows, feed the hogs, chickens. Come in at lunch time and feed the chickens. Go back out, then come in at dark, go back over and feed the chickens and horses, the cows, milking the cows. You milked the cows twice a day, morning and evening.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Uh huh.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

We didn't know anything else. Just routine. Look back now it was wonderful.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Really?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh, yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When you think about it now?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

If we could have those peaceful days again, it would be wonderful.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How do you think things have changed?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh my goodness. You can't imagine. You just can't imagine. You didn't have things back then. You didn't want things. If you had one pair of shoes… Our daddy went to town and got our shoes, now

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he didn't take us along. He went and got our shoes for us when he sold the first bale of cotton in the fall. Because that was the first time he had enough money to get all of us shoes and that was our school shoes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Uh huh.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Now, we didn't have shoes like this, we had high, you know, with top to them. And then we had a Sunday pair of slippers.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did your mother make your clothes?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh yes, most of them, yes. And as we went to school and took home ec., well we made our own clothes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did your daddy own his own farm?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Where had he gotten his land, do you know?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well he bought it all… well, he inherited a little, didn't he?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Later in life.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes, later in life. But when they started out, I guess they bought some to begin with when they first got married. But they got it all out of the soil, got a living out of the soil. When he run short and didn't have any money, well, he'd go into the woods and cut some wood and take it to town and sell it, take a few bushels of sweet potatoes to town and sell it. Sell butter, eggs, chickens, cream. They sold cream to the creamery. They had a creamery in Hickory. They had a route through here and they'd pick up the cream each morning and take it and sell it. Then in later years, why they sold to the Carnation Milk Company. Then as they got older, why they got rid of their cows and their horses, and went into the chicken business and raised chickens.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

After all we kids were gone, and just them there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was your house like?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Oh, I guess there's a picture of it, well look.

JACQUELYN HALL:

This painting?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Uh huh.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

My niece painted it for us on a board out of the old house. That old house is torn down now.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Well, we were just small though. We had lived in another house down further off the road. This is the house our daddy was raised in, where he was born and raised.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

After his mother and daddy passed away, why he bought the old home place. Oh, no, it was nothing fine. We 've never been used to anything expensive or fine. Just regular, we 've never been hungry. Never in our life were we ever hungry. We always had plenty, but we never had money in excess or anything like that. But that's not what it takes to make happiness. I don't think so.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Uh huh. [laughter].

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

We had a very, very plain house. Cooked with a wood stove. Mama did all of her life, cooked with a wood stove. And they heated the room they stayed in, and the kitchen, that was the only two rooms they heated. Now they had a stove in the upstairs, I mean a heater, that they could heat that room, and they had a heater in what we called the parlor. They could heat that. And when we were courting, we heated the parlor, and we courted in the parlor. [laughter] I think we had much better times then they do now. Because we made our own entertainment and now they've got to go to the bowling alley, they've got to go here, they've got to go there. "What can we do?" Well, we never asked that.

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We never asked our parents, "What can we do?" You know, we weren't bored because we were busy.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you do for fun?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Got together! Our parents were just wonderful. They encouraged us to bring our friends home, and they let us just have a wonderful time in the house. There was somebody there over the weekends, all the time. It was nothing for on Sunday afternoon to have the yard full of people. Saturday nights the parlor would be full. We had fun times.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And what would all these kids do when they would gather together?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, in our crowd, we had a boy that played the guitar, one fellow that would come, and his brother was a good singer and different ones would join in and we'd sing. We had a self-playing piano! And that's what we entertained so much with. Everybody loved to get around that self-playing piano. One night, it rained so hard when the thrashers—you don't know nothing about the thrashers, either, do you? [laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Just consider me here to be educating. [laughter]

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, years ago, when we grew up, the grain fields… you had to go in with a combine…

BLANCHE BOLICK:

No, no, no.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

First a cradle, a wheat cradle, and cut the wheat, you know and lay it in sheaves, and have somebody'd tie it. And then you had to have thrashers, and somebody who had a thrashing machine, to come in and thrash that wheat out for you. Well, all their workers—it took a lot of

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them, maybe a dozen or more men, to run that thrashing machine —and they would go with the thrashing machine in the summer and they didn't go home at night. They stayed at the house wherever they happened to be working. And you had to give them supper, and if you had a big crop, you'd give them supper, maybe breakfast or dinner, maybe two or three meals.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

They slept in the barn.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes, they slept in the barn. Now this one night it rained so hard—it was right after supper, and they were going to sleep in our barn—and instead of sleeping in the barn because of the storm, daddy invited them into the house and we got in around the self-playing piano and boy we had a time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Uh huh. Do you remember any of the songs you sang?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

"Missouri Waltz"…?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

[laughter]

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I just don't remember. We finally had to take the self-playing part out of it because we couldn't keep it in tune. Some of the girls, some of the sisters, took music lessons and we had it taken out. One of our nieces has that old piano in her house. It's beautiful today.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about dancing or games?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, one New Year's night—now you wouldn't believe this, but they was willing for us to have a good time. But they had rules. We had to be in. We couldn't be out sitting in a car with a boyfriend after midnight. We had to be in the house. And one night, New Year's night, we took the rug out and put it on the front porch and had a tear down in the house. We had music and dancing. We had a time. Shooting firecrackers. We did that several years.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What kind of dancing?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Square-dancing.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Square-dancing? Uh huh. Did you have somebody that called?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh yes. Let me see, his name was Kermit? Kermit Hedrick [laughter] . Haven't seenhim in years. That's why I say we had more wonderful times than the youngsters do these days because they've got to go play ball. My goodness, my children, how they have to run, run, run. Our parents didn't do that for us. We made our own entertainment. We got out and walked. 'Course I can understand why they can't now, with the traffic on the roads.

Back when we were growing up, young people, why, there wasn't a car along the road—one every hour would be a lot! Don't you think, Blanche? There just wasn't any traffic.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Wasn't very much traffic. We didn't have a car until 1916.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes, that was the first car my daddy had, was a 1916 model. Very few cars around here then. He kept that old car until he made it into a cut off wood saw.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

In the wintertime, the roads could get so muddy.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Didn't know what a paved road was, and we walked to school. Up until they consolidated down here, we had a church school down here, Old St. Paul's. I don't know what year they consolidated those and we we went to Star Town, and, I think I was in the fifth grade when I went to Star Town.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You went to a church school until then?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, it was a church school down here over at St. Paul's, wasn't it, Blanche? It was affiliated with the church at St. Paul's?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

I don't know. We just had a school house down there. I think it was just kind of like the schools now.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

But it was just two rooms.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

It was just one to start with.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I don't remember that, now. She remembers that, but I don't because she's nine years older than I am. I remember the two-room school house. I don't remember whether it was first, second, and third in one, and fourth, fifth, and sixth…? Or didn't they teach the seventh down here? Well, it must have been four grades in one and three in the other.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Back when we only had one.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

We had school closing, we had commencement exercises, we'd tell speeches and have programs.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How was the little school that you went to at St. Paul's different from public school in Star Town, that you went to after the schools consolidated? Was that a very big change?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No. Not a thing, except there was only one class in a room there at Star Town, and back at St. Paul's there was three or four in one. And there were just two teachers there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was there more religious instruction at St. Paul's?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I can't remember if there was any at all.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

It wasn't affiliated with the church, I don't think. Just like schools are now and that's where the school house was.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I just thought it was, because they called it Old St. Paul's.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

After they consolidated, why all these other schools, you know, went to Star Town.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yeah, that was the New Jerusalem church. I guess they just had the school house where the church was. It's just where the school was built.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about your parents? Did they join in these singings and parties?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh, no, no, no! They were over in the other room in the bed. [laughter] When we were growing up our friends didn't go all over like they do now, all over the house, they just stayed in one room. In the parlor.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Your parents, it doesn't sound like they were very strict?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well now we knew better than to stay out after midnight.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What other rules did you have to follow? What kind of things did you get in trouble for?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

We knew better than to disobey, because if we did, he didn't withhold the hickory stick.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Would your father be the one to give you the spanking?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh yes. He used to use a leather strap, when we were growing up. I can't remember ever getting it, though, except for one time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was that for?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh my. Well, I was just a little thing. See, we didn't have a heated house, I told you we just heated the kitchen and the room we stayed in, and I don't remember who the baby was. Anyhow I had a habit of crawling in the cradle and going to sleep at night, and my daddy would have to carry me upstairs then. He told me he'd hit me if I didn't quit it. Well, I didn't quit it and he hit me.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Uh huh. [laughter] Which would be the room you stayed in?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

My mama and daddy's bedroom. They slept in the room that we stayed in. All my life.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You mean there was a couch and chairs.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No. It was a bed. Just a bed and chairs, and a bureau.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But that's where you all… ?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

That's right. Where we entertained. But not the parlor, now. That wasn't the parlor.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When guests came you would go to the parlor, but for ordinary life, all seven of you would be in the …

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

The bedroom, where mama and daddy stayed. We didn't go in the parlor unless we were going to have company.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about church?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Every Sunday.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What church did you go to?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Old St. Paul's Lutheran. My mother was born and raised in the Methodist church, but back then I guess the rules were—or usually they did—they went with the husband wherever he went. We had double first cousins because my mother and her brother married…well, sister and brother married sister and brother. And mama went to daddy's church. Although it was closer to the Methodist church. And her brother that married daddy's sister lived closer to our church. But he went over to the Methodist church.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who would you say was the boss of the family? Whose word was law?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

I think it was equal. Yes I do, don't you?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Mama and daddy got along fine. They were a good example to us children.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So did they ever disagree about things, about how to raise you all?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I feel sure they did, but they didn't do it in front of us.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you never saw your parents fighting?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Not among themselves. They believed in peace. That's the way they tried to raise us.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about church?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

We went to prayer group, but we didn't belong there.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

No. We didn't belong there.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

You meant where we were members?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, just how…

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, we lived close to the Fair Grove Methodist church and we went there. Especially when they would have their revivals during the week.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

We went to Sunday school up there some, too. I don't think you did.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You'd go to the revivals at the Methodist church? Did the Lutheran church have revivals?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

No.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you'd go to Methodist revivals.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

You see, we could walk up there, we were a lot closer. We enjoyed it. In fact my first little boyfriend took me up there on his bicycle. [laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

To the Methodist church?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes, [laughter] I never will forget that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How old were you?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

[laughing] I guess we were about eleven years old, something like that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was he taking you to a revival? [laughing] Did you sit together there?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I don't remember [laughing] I can just remember him coming by and taking me on his bicycle. You know, I never did learn to ride a bicycle. I wish I had. She can ride a bicycle, but I can't.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were any of you children saved at the revival?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No. They would ask for you to come up to the altar, but none of us didn't go because we didn't know what it was about. We just went. I think we just went, more or less, young as we were, just to have somewhere to go. I think it was that more than anything else.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you'd see the other kids there?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

We knew that there were a lot of people that went.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Would your parents go?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes. You see, it was my mother's former church. She was raised in that church. Oh, my daddy always said he liked the hymns that were sung at the Methodist church much better than the Lutheran hymns. He used to love to get in a place to sing the Methodist hymns. My daddy sang in the choir until, oh I would say, two or three years before his death, and he was eighty…what?…seven when he died? He sang in the choir for fifty years, didn't he?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did he do any other singing around?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No. He just sang in the church choir.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Tell me about courting. When did that start? When did you start having serious boyfriends coming around?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

How old were you?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

I don't remember. [laughter]

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

It was so different, again I'll say it was so different because we—I don't know what other people did—but we didn't date alone. With the man I married, I'll bet I didn't date with him alone over a dozen times. We were always with someone else. And that's the way it was from the time I started dating. We never thought about dating alone. It was always at least another couple, or usually it was as many couples as could be in the car. And we would pile up. I mean we would sit on the laps, because there were very few people who had cars and you just didn't one couple go in a car.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was the man that you married the first serious boyfriend, or had there been some other boyfriends before him?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh-h-h-h, I had different ones. You know how you get crushes, several, but there was nothing to it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When did you start going out with him?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

About a year before we got married. I got married in 1937. I started dating him in '36, the early part of '36. We got married—no, about the middle of '36—we got married in December of '37.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did it come about that you decided this was the person you were going to marry?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, he just kept coming around, and I just kept wanting him to. [laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you remember when he asked you to marry him?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No, I don't remember. I don't even remember if I told him I would marry him the first time he asked me, I don't remember that. But we got married. Went to the preacher's house and we got married.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You got married in the preacher's house?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Up here in Conover.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So how old were you then?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Twenty-one and he was twenty-three. I was an old maid. I was considered an old maid when I got married. Back then if you weren't married by the time you were eighteen you were an old maid.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Twenty-five, wasn't it?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Who?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

An old maid.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No, but back then, when we were growing up, if you wasn't married by eighteen…don't you remember how Charles and Owen teased me? "Ain't you never gonna get married? Ain't you never gonna get married!"

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were you worried about that?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No [laughter].

JACQUELYN HALL:

You didn't think you were an old maid?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about you? How did you meet your husband?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Oh, I knew him. Grew up with him all my life.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh really?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

That's been so long ago that I don't remember [laughter] Not when I started going with him or anything.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You had known him since you were children?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Fifty some years.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

If her husband was living she'd be married fifty-three years yesterday.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Uh huh.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You both married boys that lived on farms right around here?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Yes. Well, we built this on daddy's place, it's our home.

JACQUELYN HALL:

This is the home that you built? It's a nice house.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I guess my husband was born here, but he was raised out in the area.

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

JACQUELYN HALL:

So how did you first start working at the glove factory?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Actually you went to work in the glove mill what year? Do you remember?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

No.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

You bought a '24 model T Ford and you was working before that.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

I was sixteen when I went to work.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

What year would that have been? Twenty-one? two? three?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Count from seven.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That would have been '21. [Rather 1923]

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I know they bought a 1924 model T Ford. Now you don't know anything about what a model T Ford is, but she and our oldest sister bought a…it was a '24 model wasn't it? Yes, I guess it was.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So just two girls bought a car together?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

My older sister.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You and your older sister. Did you buy the car before you started working?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

No.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is that why you went to work, so you could buy the car?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

We went to work and we tried staying over there with Aunt Leila, boarding over there at Newton. And that didn't work out. So we just bought a car.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh, so you could live at home and go back and forth? Why didn't your boarding situation work out?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Oh, we'd just rather be at home.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

That was in town and we were country people.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why didn't you like being in town?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh, you couldn't make me live in town.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Really?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

[laughing] No, indeed!

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you not like…?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I never did try to live in town, except when I lived in Baltimore a little while, oh! Give me the old wide open spaces.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When you were a kid, what did you see as being the difference between country people and town people? Country life and town life?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I don't know what to say about that, but I never did think I'd want to be cooped up in town. In fact it's getting too close around here.

JACQUELYN HALL:

It's growing?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

It sure is. It's growing too fast.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was one of your other sisters working in the glove factory?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes. She and our oldest sister, there's one older than she is, were the ones who worked first.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How old was your older sister when she went in there to work?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Did you go at the same time, Blanche?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Uh huh.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

And she's what? Two years older than you?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So why did you do that? What made you decide to go in there?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Well, our daddy went and got us the jobs.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

He knew the man that owned the company.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

And we decided we'd like to go to work, so that's what we did.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who owned the company then, do you know?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Hub Yount.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Hub Yount?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

H. M. Yount.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And so your daddy just went in and arranged for the two of you to have jobs?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Uh huh.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And you went in to Newton and lived with your aunt? Why didn't you just keep working on the farm?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No money. We just scratched out our living, that's all.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you have any feeling that you'd rather do farm work?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

I don't remember whether I felt any different about it or not, but we felt that's what we wanted to do, to get out so we'd have a little more income then. After we went to work, we bought the kids clothes,

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Page 19

and this and that, you know.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you give your check to your mother and father?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

No. We just helped them buy groceries, and buy childrens clothes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you keep any particular amount of your money for yourself?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

No.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

They never made any demands on us.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

We could use it as we wanted to but we always helped out.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What job did you do?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

I made gloves.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Which part of the process? Were you a sewer?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

The whole thing.

JACQUELYN HALL:

The whole thing?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Yes, I made the whole glove.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

You don't do that now, though.

JACQUELYN HALL:

One person would do the whole glove? You mean cut it…?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Oh, no, no. After it's cut, then we made the whole glove.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was that like? Did you feel like you were kind of cooped up when you first started working in the mill.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

No, not necessarily. But it was different, though

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

It's hard work, working and making gloves. If you don't believe it, I'll take you out there and show you. I work here at home.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You work here at home?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes. I've worked at home ever since I've worked for Southern Glove.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You were working at home at the same time you were working there?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No, I had a machine in my home ever since I started working for Southern Glove. They put the machine at the house and I'd go get my goods and take it back to my house.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You mean you never have worked there, at the factory? You've always done your work at home?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well now, I started work where she did, over at the Yount Glove Mill. I didn't work but about a year, times got so bad. And let me tell you, the first check I got from the Yount glove mill was for one dollar. I worked six weeks for nothing and then they paid me a dollar.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Six weeks for nothing?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

In order to learn. My daddy got me the job, like he did her, and it was such hard times. It was back during the Depression; I started to work in '35. That's the way you had to do. You almost had to pay them to let you work.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That's a long time to go without any income.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, you see, I was with mama and daddy. I was with the family so it didn't matter. Then, they laid a bunch off in the early part of the year, and of course the last ones they took on, my sister, and another one of our sisters—she's passed away now—and I had gone on at the same time. So when they let us go, why I got back on at Conover Glove Mill. My daddy knew a man that worked up there and he got me on up there. So I worked at Conover Glove until I got pregnant the first time. Then after I had the baby, why I went back to Newton Glove Mill, and then I got pregnant again. I didn't go back to work; my husband was killed before my second one was born. Then I went to Southern Glove.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you find work?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

What do you mean now?

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you feel about it?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Making gloves?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Uh huh.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh, I hated it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Really?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh my! I made gloves all night.

JACQUELYN HALL:

All night?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

In my sleep [laughter] I had gone to work in the overall factory and I think I worked two days and I quit there. I came home.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you hate about the overall factory?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh mercy, everything about it. They made you work every minute. I'd do everything they told me to do and I didn't know what else to do. I don't know, I just couldn't take it. But when I went to work in the glove mill, I got along all right.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You really didn't like to do it?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No. I can't say yet that I really like to make gloves, and I've made them all these years. I wished I had learned something else, but I didn't. Too late to learn now.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who owns Southern Glove?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Arthur Little.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Arthur Little. And were you related to Arthur Little's wife?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No. Arthur and his brother Percy Little started the business and I don't know how many years ago, Percy sold out to Arthur. Percy's wife was our sister.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh, I see. So when you were working there, was your sister married to Percy Little?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did she work there too?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh yes, until she died.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was she a sewer or what?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh, she could sew, or she could do anything.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

She worked in the glove mill before she married him.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

She's the one that she and I started to work at the Yount Glove Mill the same day.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Then she also quit Yount Glove and went to work at Southern?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No. They organized. They started together. She quit Yount's, yes. Our sister, Ethel, and Percy Little worked at Yount Glove Mill. So did Arthur for a while. They all worked at Yount Glove Mill and they quit and started their own business.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Where did they get the money to start a business of their own?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, they borrowed it. I guess they borrowed it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And just set up on their own? How many employees did they have when they started?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I really don't know. You worked for them from the very beginning, how many employees did they start with up in Conover? Just a few, wasn't it?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Uh huh.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Very few.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Yes it was very few.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Started in an old store building up in Main Street in Conover.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Oh, I'd hate to say but I can't remember.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When was that company founded? When did they start it?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

'45 or '46, I don't remember which. But now, he has five or six glove mills. Two or three in Virginia and in North Carolina.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Percy Little?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Arthur. Percy got out of it. He sold out.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And what did he do?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Percy?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Uh huh.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

He's a farmer and cattleman.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He just got out of the business altogether?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

He was a farmer all his life. Even while he was in the glove business he was still a farmer. Raised cattle.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why did he get out of the business?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I guess he wanted to get out of the rat race.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, what was it like working in a place where your brother-in-law and sister worked?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh, it was real nice.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did they make it easier or…?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, they were real nice to me.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

No, they couldn't be easier than anybody. We had to obey the rules the same as anybody else.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

There was no favoritism if that's what you mean.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

We got along fine.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I mean, it was nice for me because when I first started working for them I had no car, and they would bring my goods to me and come and get it. And they always did until I movedup here. That's the reason I think it was easier on me. See, I didn't work at the plant. No, they wouldn't have favored us in no way, shape, or form. That wouldn't have been right.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was your sister a forelady?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes, I would think in a way, yes.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

I think she looked after everything.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes, she looked after everything.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I was just talking to a woman named Junie Aaron.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Uh huh.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

She worked there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes. And she was just talking about the different people that she'd worked for and she said that your sister was the nicest forelady she'd ever had. [laughter]

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I think everybody would say that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, what was the work day like? How many hours did you work, and how much did you make?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

You mean for them or when we first started?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, both.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I told you I got a dollar. In fact, I wish I had framed it, but I didn't. It was at least eight hours a day.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

When you first started you worked ten.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

You did. I didn't.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But by the time you started working, it was probably an eighthour day.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, when I went to Conover Glove to work, why, they had a night-shift up there, too, and the ones who worked in the day shift could work on into the night, 'til nine o'clock if they wanted to, and I did some, but not very often. That was when times was real good. But your working hours just had to do with how their sales were, you see. Right now it's kind of slow.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did all of these different places make work gloves, or did they make different kinds of gloves?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Work gloves.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is that all that's made around here, is work gloves?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes. All that I know of, nothing but work gloves. [unknown] they make canton-flannel work gloves and jersey and leather. I guess you'd call that double-palmed canton flannel, too, isn't it? They make double-palmed.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did your husband do for a living?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

He worked in furniture. Then he bought a sawmill and started a business for himself, then he got killed.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How was he killed?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

A tree fell on him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

At the sawmill?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Uh huh.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You were only married for…

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Six years.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you get along then, when you were on your own and two kids to support?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Just settled down and did it. The baby I was carrying when he was killed lives right here next to me.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you live with your…

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I lived with mama and daddy for two years after his death then I went back to my own house and lived there one year. Then her husband died and I came up here and have been here ever since.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you get along with the different people you worked for in those different plants? Did you find some difference in the way you were treated?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, I never did have any trouble. Only once when I worked at Conover, they had a machinist there that I was scared to death of. He'd snap your head off if he wasn't in a good mood, but I never had any trouble with him. I think usually when you work at a place if you're nice to people, they're nice to you.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I still can't get it straight when they put a machine in your home and you started making them here?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I can't tell you exactly when it was because I don't remember. If was sometime after they started the business. But I can't

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Page 26

even remember that in years. '45 or '46, I don't remember which one. It was sometime after that I went back to work. My baby was really small, he was born in '44.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So did you ask to have the machine put in your home, instead of going in?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well you see it was my sister and her husband and of course they wanted to do all they could for me, and they knew that I made gloves and they said that they would do that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, could you make as much working at home?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Uh huh. The only thing is you'd have to stay at your machine at home, just like you would if your were at the mill, if you want to make as much. Oh, it helped a great deal, I'll tell you.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How would your day go? Would you really just sit down and work for eight hours without stopping?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No, no. You were just up and down, up and down. They did it so I could take care of my children and make a living at the same time. It wasn't easy, but some people have a harder lot than I do. I'm just thankful that I could work.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Who were your closest friends over all these years?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, this girl that I grew up with. We still are.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Mostly the people that you grew up with, not the people you've met at places that you worked?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes, because, you see, I haven't worked anywhere much. I've worked at home. Well, we still get together. Our old friends, the ones I went to school with.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What kind of get-togethers do you have?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh, well. I'm not speaking of our old friends now. We just go on different ones' birthdays. Just recently we had a birthday get-together here. I think we had about fifteen here?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

On different one's birthdays we get together here or we go out to eat somewhere over at someone else's house. We just have a group of ladies that get together and play cards. Now we're going Saturday to have our Christmas party, and we were together Saturday-before-last. And we just get together to play cards. We each take a dish and go over to somebody's house and we have our lunch. We used to go and have supper, what you may call our evening out, and come home about nine or ten o'clock at night. But we got so that we can't drive at night, our eyes won't let us, so we do this at lunch time and then play cards up until before it gets dark.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And are some of these people you've known since childhood?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh, some of them. But there now, we've made a lot of new friends, because different ones will bring this one in or that one in, and we just meet a lot of new friends that way. Sometimes we have as much as eighteen. We had twenty-one, one time. This is a widow's association. [laughter] Mostly. Well, two of them are not, but most of them are.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Blanche, did you keep working straight from the time you started when you were sixteen, or did you have periods when you quit working?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Oh, there were a few times when I didn't. I didn't work straight through.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What would happen that would make you stop working for a while?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

I don't know. I didn't have any children. I guess I just got a notion to stay home a while.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And you didn't have any trouble getting a job when you wanted to go back?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

No.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I'm not bragging, I don't mean to brag at all, but we all could make a pretty pair of gloves and if you can make a pretty pair of gloves you don't have trouble getting on.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Really? Has that always been the case?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

We all worked in the glove mill but the youngest one, didn't we?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes. We have one sister who works in there now. She goes and works at the plant.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Your whole family had a pretty good reputation for knowing how to make gloves?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, we had a reputation for being hard workers.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

That means a lot.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

You're right.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

You go somewhere and stick to your work, why that means a lot, and making good gloves, too.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Or whatever.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Or whatever you do.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Our parents taught us to give a good day's work no matter what we were doing.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did some people make inferior gloves?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did some people really get away with that?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, now they can, but years when we started work you couldn't. You had to make a good glove. It anyways carried back to you. During the years when the work was so good and the demand for gloves was so high, they tried to make more gloves and not so good, and that didn't turn out.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was there a period when they started raising production?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes, oh yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did that affect you since you were working at home?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I had to fill the same load that they did at the plant. If you don't make production, I don't think they'd let you have a machine at home.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did people react to the work speeding up like that? How did you feel about that?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

You had to speed up when they first started coming in—what did they call that when they first started it?—… When I first started making gloves you could work as you wanted to and you could not work. What I mean by that: if you wanted to make a lot you could make it and if you wanted to mess around you could mess around. But then what was that law they started—when social security first came in, wasn't it? You know, they had to pay you thirty cents an hour, wasn't it?

JACQUELYN HALL:

Minimum wage?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes. They had to pay you …

BLANCHE BOLICK:

They had to pay you so much whether you made it or not.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes! That's when they tightened up and you had to work by the hour. You had to make what you were supposed to or you got out! And ever since then minimum wage goes up. So right now I don't know what it is. How they make production—I don't know what minimum wage is.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What is production right now? How many…?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

I don't know. I make production, but I don't…

BLANCHE BOLICK:

Over production.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Yes, I make over production.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What does that mean exactly? How many gloves do you make in an hour? Or how many are you supposed to make?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh, I make six dozen pair, and that's a lot. It's what they call a lot or a pack. It don't take quite an hour-and-a-half to make those.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is that pretty fast?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No, I'm not a real fast sewer. So you don't have to be a real fast sewer to make production.

[TAPE 2, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were there ever any strikes in the glove mills around here during the period that you all were working?

BLANCHE BOLICK:

No.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

We don't have a union.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What would people do if they were unhappy about something, say, the rate of production?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Go to the supervisor.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you even have occasion to make any complaint like that? Did you know anybody to do it?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, I just can't remember anything definite, but you know when you work with a lot of people, there's always somebody who's going to be dissatisfied in some way, shape, or form. But I just never paid any attention to it it. [pause] There was one time! There was a lady come to Conover Glove from—oh, I can't remember where she was from, and now what was her name? Blanche, do you remember her name?—Anyhow, she supposedly was to help the Shufords so that we could make production and make a better glove. But after she was there a while, all we employees realized that she didn't even know how to make a glove! And I remember very distinctly one day—she wore glasses—and one day she rubbed one of the

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Page 31

employees the wrong way, and she stood up and pulled the glasses off of her and told her she was going to knock her down. And, let me tell you, that lady got out of there. She got gone. But she really didn't. She'd come around looking at our gloves and we could tell that she didn't know how to make gloves herself. I don't know why she ever come here, or what her purpose was, but she didn't come back. They didn't ever try anything like that again.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When was that, do you have any idea?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Oh my! That was when I worked at Conover glove. I don't think I even had a child yet. And my oldest child is thirty-nine years old. [laughter] I wish I could remember her name! She was an un- married lady, she was up in years then.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And were there any other occasions when they brought in these time-motion study people, people who would study how you can suggest how to speed up the process?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That's the only attempt they ever made?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

That's the only time when I was working there. No, in the glove mill you pretty much knew when you were supposed to make production. I mean, they know it now, and you tried your best to do it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I don't get the impression that there's been too much change in the method of making gloves over the years. It doesn't seem as though ther's been a lot of new machinery.

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

No. Well, there was one change. The machine I learned on—the one I'm working on now is quite different—but I've been working on this machine for—oh, how long have they had this type machine in there?—there's no change in that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What's the difference in this machine and the one you started on?

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

Well, this is smaller.

BLANCHE BOLICK:

This is a little thing, it doesn't even look like a machine. [laughter]

KATHRYN KILLIAN:

You wouldn't think it was a machine. The old type used to be more like a normal machine that you could sew on. And the other, old type, had two belts, a small belt and a big belt, and this one only has one belt.