Documenting the American South Logo
Excerpt from Oral History Interview with George and Tessie Dyer, March 5, 1980. Interview H-0161. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Tessie Dyer's parents gardened and raised livestock at their Charlotte home

Tessie Dyer's parents raised a garden and livestock at their Charlotte home, as did many of their neighbors. Tessie contines to grow vegetables and can them but not as much as her parents did.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with George and Tessie Dyer, March 5, 1980. Interview H-0161. 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

LU ANN JONES:
When you first moved to Charlotte, I guess that would have been in the mid 20's when you got here. What did the mill village look like? Did people have gardens and animals?
TESSIE DYER:
Oh, me, yeah. They had gardens, they had chickens, I had cows, pigs. . . .
LU ANN JONES:
Did you all have that?
TESSIE DYER:
We had cow one time, I remember in Concord when I was little. Then we had some pigs too because I remember when daddy killed one, it was a great big old thing. Heared it holler when they killed it.
LU ANN JONES:
Did you have animals once you lived here, or did you have a garden?
TESSIE DYER:
Have animals, un-uh, no.
LU ANN JONES:
Did you raise a garden, though?
TESSIE DYER:
Yeah, I used to help my father out here have a garden. That's the reason he don't understand me now, why I don't help him. I do sometime, little things.
GEORGE DYER:
I like gardens.
TESSIE DYER:
I know daddy, he always had lot of cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, things like that. Corn is one thing we never did try to raise out here.
LU ANN JONES:
Did your mother can out here?
TESSIE DYER:
Yeah, my mother canned a lot of stuff, and I can a lot of stuff too now. I canned sixty-four pints of green beans last summer besides the tomatoes I canned, and red beets, canned a lot of those.
LU ANN JONES:
You've got a can of green beans for every week of the year then.