An inexpensive rental home courtesy of Pomona Terracotta
Jones recalls his first home, a company house his family rented from Pomona Terracotta Company for a quarter a week. Rent rose over time, but his parents never paid for their electricity or water.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Johnnie Jones, August 27, 1976. Interview H-0273. 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
- BRENT GLASS:
-
Can you tell me something about the first house you remember living
in?
- JOHNNIE JONES:
-
Yes. It was down on the job, a little old red … a little old
house painted red. Let me see, how many rooms did that house have to it:
one, two, three, four, five, six. Six rooms.
- BRENT GLASS:
-
Was it a frame house?
- JOHNNIE JONES:
-
Frame house, yes.
- BRENT GLASS:
-
Was it a company… ?
- JOHNNIE JONES:
-
Yes, a company house, paying twenty-five cents a week rent.
That's what they paid.
- BRENT GLASS:
-
For a room or for the whole house?
- JOHNNIE JONES:
-
For the whole house: no light bill, water bill or nothing to
pay. We lived in it first before they even wired it up for
lights; we lived in there. And when they wired it up for light I think
it went up another quarter. And they lived there, as far as I know,
twenty or twenty-five years right there, and that's all they
paid. Then way bye and bye it went another quarter. And they built some
new houses; built them out of blocks. Now the rent went from
seventy-five to a dollar and a quarter. That would get you some pretty
good housing then. It went to a dollar and a quarter: no light bill, no
water bill or nothing to pay. Just pay that dollar and a quarter a week;
they'd take it out on you.
