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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview K-0833, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
In the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd, Clyda Coward, joined by her daughter Debra and other family members, remembers her childhood in rural North Carolina in the 1930s and 1940s and describes the impact of the flood on her community in Tick Bite, North Carolina. Coward grew up poor but well-cared-for by strict, hard-working parents. She remembers working on her father's farm—which he bought after a stint as a tenant farmer—and finding time to play with her siblings on the long walk to work. Her upbringing bound her to the area and to her community. In addition to describing her personal history, Coward remembers two significant events: the arrival of DuPont and the destruction wrought by Hurricane Floyd. DuPont helped the community by giving many of its residents jobs. Floyd, however, damaged the stability that DuPont brought. Unlike previous natural disasters, the flooding caused by Floyd managed to drive Tick Bite residents from their homes and keep them from communal gathering places. This interview will be useful for researchers interested in historic and contemporary poor rural communities.
Clyda Coward, joined by her daughter Debra and other family members, reflects on her childhood in rural North Carolina and the state of the small community of Tick Bite in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
If he finds that I'm going wrong then he can—.
Chime in? Okay.
You want to move your chair over here where they'll hear you if you chime in?
Yes, ma'am.
Let's move the chair. Let's move it over so you'll be close to her. There. Okay.
Okay. Thank you very much. So the first thing I would like to ask you is your name, when you were born, and where you were born.
Well, my name is Clyda Bell Davis Coward. I was born February 28, 1933.
Almost a leap-year baby.
Well, that was why I hesitated because it was actually after midnight on the twenty-eighth, my mother said. So I have wondered about that a lot.
Tell me where you were born. You were telling me it's across the field.
I was born right across—. Well, this is Tick Bite. Well, there is nothing except woods and farmland back here, and I was born across that field over there. I remember when this road wasn't paved, and we didn't have any electricity in this area.
No kidding? That would be back in the '20s and the '30s?
Well, it was back in the—. You see, I was born in '33, so it had to have been later than that.
I see. That's right.
As a matter of fact, I remember when they put Eleven Highway out there.
What was there before?
Dirt road.
How did people get around then?
Mule and cart, and eventually they started getting the T-Model Fords—the
ones that could afford them. They were very scarce. They were kind of
like cake.
Yeah. Right. And so, because it was kind of hard to get around, did most people kind of stay in their community where they grew up at that time?
Yes. Yes. The farm that I was born and raised on was the John Barwick farm. He had five tenant houses on this farm.
And your family had one of them?
One of them. Yes.
What all did you grow for him?
What—on the farm? Well, we grew tobacco, corn, cotton, and the regular beans and then the garden stuff. We grew the animals. My daddy—I remember him breeding mules.
He bred mules?
Uh huh.
Because you worked the farm with mules?
Yes.
How did it work? Like at the end of the year, did you have to pay the landowner the rent, or did you get to keep what you sold from the farm?
No. Now to the best that I can remember, the way that went was my father worked the farm for Mr. Barwick; then he eventually started tending tobacco and corn and stuff for himself. Mr. Barwick would furnish my dad the fertilizer and the seed and what have you, and my daddy didn't have to pay anything to him until the fall of the year.
Then what did he have to pay—rent or—?
No, it wasn't rent. He just paid back the money that Mr. Barwick put into Daddy's part of the crop.
Almost like Mr. Barwick was the bank sort of?
Yeah.
How was it to get on like that? Was it comfortable? Was it hard?
Well, we did a lot of hard work, but my father was a resourceful person. My dad always grew everything we eat, really. He grew the corn. When the corn would get dry, we would have to shuck the corn, shell the corn, and then he would take it to a mill that would grind the corn into corn meal. We grew wheat, which made the flour. Well, we had animals that had the milk, hogs for the pork, and eventually my father started just raising all of this stuff by himself for himself—you know, the extra. And he bought a farm like that.
Was that unusual in that day for him to be able to buy a farm?
Oh yes, it was. Very. But now, he bought the farm from Mr. Barwick. Mr.
Barwick had some land that the road had divided, and he sold my father
thirty-three acres
Just the tobacco?
Just the tobacco.
Then you'd have all the other stuff to eat, and then you'd have the tobacco for the cash? Is that how it was?
We would can. My mother did. Well, I can remember we would put in tobacco days. That evening we would go in the garden [to] pick peas and beans. There was no refrigerator. We had an icebox. And so Mama would can the vegetables. We had a big pot-bellied wash pot. I don't know if you've ever seen one. You have? [With a note of surprise in her voice]
Yes.
Well, that was what she canned the vegetables in—in the wash pot.
And she heated the water how—over a wood stove?
Uh huh. Over a woodstove.
And she had to get it good and hot because that's what you have to do for canning, right?
Yeah.
That's hot work.
Yeah, but we were outdoors anyway.
How about the other families who were on the Barwick's farm. Did y'all play together—the kids—or did the other families help each other when you needed it?
We didn't have that much time. My father and mother didn't allow us to have much time for ourselves.
Hard work mostly?
A part of Saturday and a part of Sunday after we went to Sunday school and church: then we could have fun until sundown.
It sounds like they were strict.
Yeah, very much so.
So when you could have fun, what did you do for fun?
Well, I know that you won't believe this, but we had a lady in the neighborhood, and she lived in a converted tobacco barn right back there. The tobacco barns have poles. They call them tier poles that you hang the tobacco on to dry the leaves out. This lady had made stairs. Each one of those poles—I don't remember how many were in the barn, but I know that she had at least five sections in that one tobacco barn.
Of stairs?
Uh huh.
So for fun?
Oh, she had room to accommodate other people. She even took in people.
How clever.
Yeah, I thought it was neat.
I never heard that. That'd be neat.
So for fun would you go visiting over there?
Oh, for fun.
No?
No, it didn't. We would ride the animals until they died, which did not please my father at all.
You would work them?
We would ride on them. They would overheat. They'd get too hot, and they'd die. [Sounds of activity in the background] Well, we would play ball. There wasn't very much that you could do. You see, we didn't have any electricity. We only had kerosene lamps. So when it got dark, it got dark. You want to cut that thing off a minute?
This is fine. You were telling me about playing ball. Did you get to play ball?
Well, you see we—. There was enough of my brothers and sisters to have a—. Well, no, not really because my parents had two sets of children.
How's that?
My mother had four children. For twelve years she didn't have anymore children; then after twelve years, she had three more children.
Which batch are you in?
The first one.
So you have some brothers and sisters who are a lot younger than you?
Well, my baby sister was five years older than Debra.
Wow. So did you play with the other kids in the neighborhood?
Whenever we could. But you see, we would have to leave home—. The houses are spaced, and basically—. Now, like, we were living up there, and there was a house over there. Then about a mile back down this road, there was another house. Really, we didn't get to play much with the other people on the farm until we went to school. You see, we had to walk about five miles to go to school. So we got the chance to play plenty.
On your walk?
Mm hmm.
What grade did school start at? Did it start at first grade?
Mm hmm.
So you're a first grader, and you're walking five miles each way?
Mm hmm. Each way.
You must have been a strong little girl.
Well, I tell you what, you had to be strong to belong to my father.
How so?
Well, the girls had to do basically the same thing the boys did. If the boys had to work and shuck corn or shell corn, we had to do the same thing.
So there was no preferential treatment?
Nope.
How far did you get through school?
Well, at that time, the first school that I went to, it taught up to the eighth grade. After that, I'd walk from over here all the way across the creek. I guess maybe that was about five miles. And I would catch a bus over there and go to Ayden to school.
You had to go to Ayden, all the way to the next town, for high school?
Mm hmm.
Now was it unusual for you to go to high school because would most girls your age go to that length to go to high school?
Well, they didn't, but—. I don't know why I did; I did. I guess because Mama and Daddy made us do it.
They wanted you to?
Mm hmm.
Tell me what your first school was like—the one over here that went to the eighth grade.
Well, there were five rooms. They had one room: it was sort of like a closet—today's closet that everybody's coats and boots and what have you were put in that room. Well, we never were there when it got dark, but it was no electricity out there. We had a big—in the middle of the classrooms was a heater.
What kind of heater?
Coal heater.
Coal stove?
Mm hmm. And on the back of the school, I guess the state—. I never
thought about how we got the coals, I just know that they were always
there. I guess the
If they did something wrong?
Mm hmm. But it was very few of them that did wrong because then the parents were real strict on children.
Like your parents were? They were typical, say?
Mm hmm.
What all did you do for your lunchtime?
Mama would fix our lunch. We had a lard bucket and it was tin. We would have biscuits, and we would have a little jar of preserves and ham meat in there.
She'd fix it and you'd carry the pail to school?
Then I would swap mine because I got tired of ham meat. The children that didn't have any, I'd trade.
What would you trade for? What did they have?
Peanut butter or something like that.
Did you ever tell your mama you did that?
I sure didn't.
How about drinking? Did y'all have a water fountain?
We had a pump.
And then outhouses?
Yep.
What was your house like?
The house I grew up in?
Yeah.
Well, our house had five rooms. Wait a minute, let me think. It doesn't seem like there were that many. Were there?
There were.
We had a wood stove that had a—they said it was a reservoir. It was a big cast iron section on that wood stove that you put water in; and when the stove was hot, then the water was hot. The stove had an oven, and it had four burners. And my brothers had to cut stove wood. We always had to have wood. We heated with wood. We cooked with wood. Now, we had no electricity; we had kerosene lamps.
Then you had an outhouse?
Yeah. We had slop jars.
For inside for the evening or whatever?
Mm hmm.
So you had both the outhouse and the slop jars?
Well, you see, when it got day, then we'd have to take the slop jar and take it to the outhouse. Then we'd have to come to the reservoir and get some hot water and put in the slop jar and clean it out.
And that was just how people did? That's how everybody did?
Mm hmm. That's how everybody did. Nobody had a bathroom.
Do you remember when electricity came in—what year?
I sure don't.
Do you remember how it changed people's lives, anyway? How, for instance, your house would be different because it had electricity?
Well, I'll tell you, I was just so glad to see it, I could've eat it if it had been possible. But it was really an experience for us because we had been in the dark for so long. We would go in in the afternoon, and Mama would tell us we had to get our lessons. And we had these lamps—. That was something else I didn't like: we always had to wash the lampshades. We would turn the lamp up so it would be brighter, but it would smoke. She never said anything to us until the next day; then she'd tell some of us—which ever one of us done it—"You got to wash all the lamp shades this evening." And that was what we had to do.
So you didn't have to bother with that any more when electricity came in?
Oh, no, no. No more of that, and I was glad.
Did your parents tell you any about your ancestors, like how long your people have been in this area?
Yeah. My grandmother was a slave.
Here in this area?
No, she come from Mississippi here.
So she was a slave in Mississippi, and she was free here in North Carolina?
I don't remember how she told us that she got here, but I know that they traveled at night somewhere. I don't know how that was done, but that was the way that they got down here in North Carolina.
Did she ever tell you why they decided to come to North Carolina out of Mississippi?
Well, the living was terrible, and there was a lot of people being beat to death and all that sort of thing. Well, you didn't have nothing. You couldn't even call your own name. Your name was whatever your—. What did they call them, Debra—the people that was over them?
The owner of the farm.
Yes, ma'am, that was it: the master.
So, you didn't have anything, including your name? You took the master's name?
Mm hmm.
And they thought things would be better in North Carolina?
Mm hmm. Peoples was always trying to run away.
Did she run away?
Oh, no, I don't think—. Her parents brought her. She don't know why they did it, but she said that her parents brought her.
After freedom?
Mm hmm.
That's interesting. And did she remember things about Mississippi, like to say that North Carolina had better conditions?
If she did, she never told us about it. I don't know.
That's pretty interesting though.
And up until the flood, I had pictures. You should've seen the way that the people—my people—dressed back there. My great-great-grandfather had on a hat that looked like it would hold almost a bushel of corn. I wish—. I had those pictures until the flood.
What else did you have until the flood from back from your family? Pictures of them and—?
Mm hmm. And wash pots and stuff like that.
How old?
I guess there were some of them about fifty, some older.
Did you have things that belonged to your grandparents or going back?
Not very much. I know that I had pictures of my grandparents and my great-grandparents. I had some dishes that was my great-grandmother's, that she brought here from Mississippi.
Wow. What were they like?
They was real thick—real thick and real heavy.
Like pottery dishes?
Mm hmm. My daddy had a shotgun that was my great-grandfather's shotgun that my husband have now.
So you still have it?
Mm hmm.
That's probably a treasured thing. That was one of the things that survived the flood?
Well, not exactly because the water got up about twenty-seven inches in here. [Indicating with hand] Up about like that. And the gun—[Indicating with hand] I guess about as long as from here to here. So it was about halfway up the gun.
So it halfway survived the flood.
Halfway.
It got rusty.
Yeah, right, exactly. Before I ask you more about the flood, I just want to get a picture of what your life was like. Can you tell me what it was like when you were courting, how y'all met, and how you got married and so on?
Well, there weren't very much recreation around.
Yeah, where would you meet a fellow?
You'd meet him at school.
School? Or church, right?
That's it. Those were the only two places: school and church.
So is that where y'all met?
We met at school, yes.
What grade were you in when you met?
I think I was—. I went to school out there. Was it out there that we met, or was I going to school to Ayden at that time?
You was going to Ayden.
Okay. So then I had to have been either in the ninth grade and sixteen years old or—. Oh, that's something else: they didn't have no age limit on children going to school. Whenever you got old enough that you could follow your brothers and sisters, you could go to school.
You could go to school when you're three?
If you could follow your brothers and sisters, you went to school. But that was more or less whatever your parents decided.
So how old were you when you first went to school, then?
I don't know. I never even thought much about that, and I didn't even ask Mama. I sure don't remember.
But you were a teenager—and not a very old teenager—when you met your future husband?
No, no because we was all going to school together. He went to the same school that we did, even though he didn't live on the farm. He lived down there in town.
Well, why did you like him?
I don't know. I have often wondered that myself.
Well, why did you like her?
I don't know. I just took on to her, I guess.
How long did you court before you got married?
Oh, about three or four years.
In those days, what did courting mean? What could you do, given that everybody was so strict?
There wasn't nothing you could do. You could hold hands. After I got seventeen, my daddy would let me have company. The irony of it was, I had a sister that was two years younger than me, and I was supposed to have been taking company, and she was supposed to have been in there watching for Mama and Daddy.
Chaperoning.
Uh huh. But she started taking company too.
That doesn't seem fair.
Well, if it wasn't, you didn't say it. You do, nobody better not hear you.
Yeah, yeah. So when you were seventeen, that was okay? That was old enough to have a man visit you?
Mm hmm. But now, my daddy always enjoyed 9:00. Every boy had to be out of our house by 9:00. Yeah.
When you got married, did you have a special breakfast or dinner, or was there any kind of celebration?
Oh, no. We got married to [sic: at] the preacher's house; and the preacher's wife and two or three more people in the community was witnesses.
So it was kind of low key?
Mm hmm. Well, I never even heard of a black wedding at that time.
How was it instead?
Well, they got married to [sic: by] the justice of the peace or had a preacher to marry them.
You mean that in that time, a couple who married who was black wouldn't have a big celebration at church like people do nowadays?
Unh uh.
Why not?
I don't know. I never thought about that either, but they did not have no weddings. I never remember a wedding being in our church until the 60s.
It was more plain? Not a big celebration like people do these days? Thousands of dollars?
No. Didn't nobody have it.
Did you have a honeymoon?
No. You get married, you go home, and that's it. You be happy if he came.
And you just start setting up house, that kind of thing?
Mm hmm.
Where did you come back to when you did get married?
Well, when we got married—. Walter didn't go to school as long as I did; he went to work. He had built a house—three rooms. There was no bathroom there. We had the parlor; we had the bedroom; and we had the kitchen. I had a wood stove, just like my mother did, and we had the slop jars and the toilet back behind the house. Well, I guess we had been married about eight or ten years when he put in a bathroom, and we got a gas stove. By that time, electricity had come through, and we had lights.
As a matter of fact, Debra, go down there and burn that lamp. I want to show you a lamp that was my grandmother's. I had one of my great-grandmother's—.
Where is it?
Down there in Walter's room.
That would be about late '50s, 1960s—something like that—when you got the bathroom and the electricity and so on?
Mm hmm.
And that must've made life a lot more comfortable.
Oh, it sure did. It sure did.
Did y'all keep farming through this time?
No, he never farmed. It was me. I was on the farm.
So how did you all make your living?
Well, he first went to Newport News—. [Debra brings in Clyda's grandmother's lamp]
Oh, isn't that lovely.
I'm not sure this is the original shade though.
I don't think it is.
But that's the original base?
Mm hmm.
Isn't that gorgeous? That does look very old.
And it's real heavy.
How old is that do you figure?
I know that it's older than me because it was my grandmother's. My mother had it; and then my mother died, and I got it.
How did you save it from the flood?
It was always up, and the flood—. You see, the water in the house—.
[Indicating with hands] Just got up to this level, and so things that were on top of the dressers and things didn't necessarily—especially things that you could wash —.
Yeah, glass—not paper or something.
Mm hmm.
So, you were telling me how you all made a living and raised a family and so on.
That's our family. That's all our family.
So what did you do to raise her? You were in Newport News.
Well, he come back from Newport News, and he started to work at the Camp Lejeune.
Doing?
He was—. [Addressing Walter Coward] What were you doing with them stones, them rocks—making bridges or something?
Rocking the river up.
Rocking the river for a bridge? [Walter gestures affirmatively] That was down at the Camp Lejeune.
And that was in the early days of the base when they were first starting out getting it built.
When they were building it.
Just constructing it and so on.
And that was—what—in the 40s?
Was it before World War II?
Forty-eight.
He was there in '48. So it was after the war.
Just after World War II?
Yeah, but it was when the base was first getting started. I mean, they remember when DuPont first got started.
Well, that was in the late 40s, early 50s.
What was it like to have a big company like that come in here?
Very exciting time.
Really? How come?
Well, you know what? At the end of the World War II, we had Germans over here working.
Did you really? POWs?
Mm hmm.
Doing what?
Working on the farms and working like convicts—you know, cleaning the fences and things like that. Sure did.
That must've been weird.
Well, I was scared of them, and they was scared of us.
Just because you didn't know about each other, the lack of familiarity?
Yeah, that was what it was.
Then they left, I guess?
I guess they did. I don't know what become of them, but I know that they were over here working.
So when DuPont came in, what was it like to have this big new business come into a rural area like this?
Well, it was very exciting for everybody because there was a lot of young peoples that really did not want to farm. But they had to; they didn't have much choice. When DuPont come, I had two brothers that worked at DuPont.
And we came too.
Oh, you did?
Yes, because we didn't want to farm.
But it gave opportunity to black folks—
And white.
—because up until that point, there was no place for black folks to work except on the farm.
Debra, can you come over here so I can get you a little closer? Thanks. Just tell me that again if you would.
What I was saying was that with DuPont and other—the big industries—it gave opportunities for black people to have jobs other than farm work. I guess that was the first equal opportunity employer because they did hire black people.
They surely did.
I don't know what level of jobs they had, but, like with my uncle, he went from farming to DuPont.
Steady salary?
Uh huh. Indoor work. Just a very big change in the lifestyle—
Insurance.
—for the people of the community. A year round job with a good salary— that was security. And that was considered one of the plum jobs to have back then. Camp Lejeune or DuPont were the main employers for black folks in the community. That kind of raised the economic level of folks that made a difference in the people. You know, if you had those kind of jobs, then you had a different lifestyle than if you still worked on the farm.
So it was a way to break out—
Mm hmm.
—of—?
Well, I can't say poverty because even then—. My grandfather owned a farm, so he was a little different than just a regular sharecropper that waited for somebody to give him the money. He always had money in his pocket. And he had a car. It wasn't a new car, but he had a car. So there was just differences in people because of that.
And so, DuPont coming in was a way just—?
As Mama said, it opened up whole new avenues for folks in this community. People commuted from all around—from Greenville and places—to work—
Sixty miles away.
—to work—to DuPont.
Or like, my dad traveled—he left home 5:00 in the morning to go to work—to Camp Lejeune. And did that for thirty-four years.
That's a ways from here.
Yes it is, but he did it every day, rain or shine.
And one part [of] the time we didn't even have a car. He'd walk all the way to Grifton to catch a bus to go.
To commute.
Everyday?
For thirty-four years.
Was it that this was such a great job or was it that the opportunities around here weren't so numerous that if there was something like that, you really had to take advantage?
Well, there wasn't nothing around here for me to do.
Well, you see, I think that at that time there was so many people trying to get jobs to DuPont. That was the only big [Someone says something in the background]—uh huh—that was around here. So instead of him waiting, trying, keeping right on waiting to get on at DuPont, he just went on to Camp Lejeune, where he got a job. But it was a laborer job. But it was a regular job with a regular paycheck.
I think the other thing was my father chose to stay. He didn't hop from job to job. So maybe there would've been the chance to have gotten a different job, but he chose to stay where he was, where he was secure and had that steady income.
And he did get promotions.
And never got laid off.
And we did have the opportunity to send our daughter to college and things like that.
So how was your life different because you had this good job than it would have been if you'd stayed with farming because there was nothing else?
That's right.
How was it better or different?
Well, I guess maybe the security and the fact that we had never—well, I had never—lived in poverty, per se. Daddy always worked us hard, but we lived good.
He had something to eat and something to wear. They had wood in the wintertime because they'd go out in the woods and cut it.
So there was always enough of what you basically needed.
It was not just subsistence. They could eat, and they could even share with somebody else. But the difference is, I was the first in my family to get an undergraduate degree, the first in my family to get a graduate degree. Opportunities presented themselves.
What did you get your degrees in?
In social work.
When Debra was going to school, I started Debra taking music.
I was nine. Piano lessons.
I was paying three dollars and a half, six dollars an hour for Debra to take music, and I was making fifteen dollars a week.
Those music lessons were important to you to give to her.
She was doing housework and not making a dollar an hour.
Who were you doing housework for?
I worked for—. Miss Betty, how would you say that? I worked for Mr. Tom's mama—(Miss Eleanor?).
(Was it Miss Eleanor or?) Gower?
The Gower family.
Various families in the community.
The Barwick family.
So even though you were only making fifteen dollars a week, why did you feel it was so important that you spent six dollars on piano lessons?
I have always known that I didn't want her to ever have to do the things—. She can't do what I can do to live.
But I have done housework.
When the flood came, we didn't have anything. I told my husband—I said, "Now, if you can get us two bricks and a tin pan and something to cook, we can eat." Well, Debra wouldn't know how to start that because she never had to do it.
The survival skills that you had because you didn't have the electricity and what not?
Mm hmm.
But at the same time, I had the mentality to survive. We were going to survive.
Oh, yeah.
Mama never told me that I was too good to do anything. She didn't feel like I had skills to do certain things.
And still doesn't.
Yes, ma'am.
How about the people in the community around here who have spent their whole lives here in this community? Do you think that younger people like yourselves had goals that were different from, say, your parent's generation or your grandparent's generation? Were more of the younger people like you where they said, "Well, I want this opportunity for more education or a better job or what have you"? Did you see that change?
I don't think that a lot of peoples was motivated. People thought that my daddy was silly to have twenty-five or thirty hogs to sell, and they're out in the woods, and he had to catch them. And it was a lot easier not to do it. Well, we had a lot of people in the community and surrounding area like that. We had a lot of people that my dad would turn right around, and he would feed them.
He sounds exceptional.
Well, he did.
Industrious.
Industrious.
He was going to be a survivor too. He was brought up without parents, and he came up the hard way, and he always tried to make a living at whatever he did.
He was brought up without parents?
His mother died when he was—I think he said he was five. He lived with
an older sister. I think by the time he was ten, Mr. Barwick had him by
that time, and he was working every day. My daddy couldn't read and
write, but you know what he could do? He could count money.
So he couldn't read or write, but he made all of you finish high school?
That's right.
In a time when especially girls didn't have to finish high school.
Right.
Nobody had to actually.
All seven of you went to high school?
Well, I had one brother to die when he—.
When he was a toddler—about two or three.
Yeah, because he had colitis.
Oh, dear.
Back in the 30s, that was.
At that time they didn't have no cure for much of nothing really.
And a sister to die at sixteen. But all the rest went to school. They were expected to go to school.
So, there was five out of the seven.
How did your sister die?
She had a heart condition.
She was born with a heart condition.
So two of them really had some medical troubles. And then the rest—y'all went to school? Y'all went to high school?
Mm hmm.
That's really interesting that he knew that was important even though he didn't have it for himself.
Well, he used to tell us stories at night. We started out with a battery radio. Believe it or not, we had a RCA radio, and Daddy would buy one battery a year. When that battery started to going down, he would have us to heat up the wood stove, and he would put the battery in the oven until the juice started to coming out. And do you know, them batteries would last twelve months?
It charged it. I don't know what kind of battery it was.
I don't either.
That's wild. I wonder how he figured that out.
I don't know. But I'll tell you something else: during this time Mr. Barwick figured out how him and Daddy together—they could put down a well of water that would run cool enough to keep milk from spoiling.
Smart. Maybe it was deep in or something?
Well, it seems that in this area they had what they thought was artesian water—almost like a spring, real pure water. It's only been later years that we've polluted our environment. And it was right up there. They had a dairy that they could leave the milk out, and it didn't spoil, and good, clean water.
The water would run right under it, and it would just keep it cool.
It seems Mr. Barwick was a very smart man.
He and my daddy made medicine.
They both sound pretty smart. They made medicine?
I think Mr. Barwick. I don't know. He—.
He read a lot—Mr. Barwick did.
He raised my father, you might say.
Because your father was out working from job to job, and he stayed there at Barwick's?
Mm hmm.
That's kind of interesting.
But I think that people did that—that white people did take in folks.
Took in black folks like this man did?
If they were so impressed with somebody, they'd take them under their wing.
So your dad must've impressed him even as a child?
That he would work hard, he was industrious, and he stuck with him until Mr. Barwick died.
I am impressed with what I am hearing you say because your values and your experiences are so much like the Barwicks' were.
Really?
Yes, very much like the Barwicks' were.
But see, they've been part of my life all my life. I've always—. In fact, Mr. Barwick helped my gr—
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
—that they thought the world of my grandparents.
Well, I'll tell you what: when the flood come, Mr. Sam Barwick's sons—. He's got—let's see, Gene, John, Alan, and Jimmy—four. Two of them is a doctor. But the first time it really hit me was when the first one come up and brought me a check for five thousand dollars. You see, my brother Walter was flooded out too, and he give him a check for five thousand dollars. From there on, every week they were down here.
Doing what?
Whatever needed to be done.
Now, the gentleman who gave the five thousand dollars was the brother of —?
The grandson of the man who took in my grandfather.
Oh, okay. So men who are about, say, your age?
My mama's age.
So the closeness between the families had lasted more than one generation?
Mm hmm.
Tell me what things were like around here before the flood came. How was the community? How was the house?
Well, I'll be honest with you, it was a very pretty place to me. Maybe
it was just me, but it was a lovely area. There was a lot of people.
Even though they were in mobile homes, they had their little nice things
around their mobile homes. It was right
This was more of a middle class area. This wasn't a slum. This was a place where the folks had nice houses. It was a good lifestyle out here. You know, you didn't have shooting on Saturday nights and all that kind of stuff in this area.
No ma'am.
Blacks and whites together? That's the community that was here? People kind of intermixed together?
Mm hmm.
And neighbors know each other and so on?
Mm hmm.
Tell me more about that: what the neighborliness was like.
Well, I need Mary Ann (again?) to tell her that don't I?
Again, the people that lived here back then were folks that had grown up together. Earl Braxton down the street. It was one of those things of, if you had an abundance of squash, then you brought somebody squash.
So it went back a generation or two or three as far as the people? [A number affirmative responses are made]
And if somebody got sick, then everybody visited. It was a concern of everybody.
That must have been a nice place to grow up in?
It was. There was security, and certainly I didn't experience a lot of the problems that people might have in other places because I knew nice people—black and white.
How many people have come back since after the flood would you say— like half or two-thirds or one-third?
Miss Betty, what do you think?
It just depends on where you are.
This particular area, your neighborhood.
Well, on this street—.
More than half.
All except one house or two.
But down in Tick Bite, not even half.
It just depends on where you're talking about.
Closer to the creek, down at Tick Bite?
Oh, down at the end of the road.
Down at the end of the road, not even half.
But they were closer to the creek, and they probably got buy-out money more than people in this neighborhood did.
So does the neighborhood feel the same now?
No.
How is it different?
I don't know. That's something I've been trying to figure out ever since I've come back here. One thing, there's areas where the earth moved. That sounds ridiculous doesn't it? But it's true.
Can you explain more?
Around the curve down there, did you ever see those big piles of white sand?
She might didn't go back in there.
She didn't have to go in there.
You can see them.
I think that the force of the water shifted the earth.
That doesn't explain why we feel different.
I don't know. I feel like I have been invaded.
There's just an uneasiness. It's not as—
It's not as comfortable. It's not as—.
—as secure, if there is such a thing.
The security is gone. You don't know if—.
It's just different. We've been shifted about so much and moved from pillar to post. Whereas before, Mama said she only moved twice from her daddy's house to my father's house; now, she's moved more in the last two years than she moved her whole lifetime.
Tell me where all you went. Like, what happened the night of the flood? Where did you have to go?
Well, we was evacuated on Friday. The flood came on the sixteenth, I think. We was carried by boat. The boat was up over my doorsteps. They took us across the—. No, we didn't go to the Ruritan Club until later that evening.
Well, that was where we ended up. We were in a lady's yard until we went—.
To the Ruritan Club.
You stayed in a lady's yard until they took you to the Ruritan Club?
Well, we had nowhere else to go.
Elizabeth Smith.
What could you take with you?
Well, we didn't have time to take nothing because—. Well, I hadn't got out. Debra had tried to go to work, but the bridge down here had overflowed. Then water cut off over there. So there was no way that she could get by. So she had come back. But we didn't know that it was a flood.
That's stupid isn't it?
No, because you didn't know.
The lights went out here on Wednesday. We didn't have no telephone, no lights. Nobody told us nothing. We didn't know.
We didn't listen to the radio because we were used to sitting out storms. That's what we did in this community. You didn't have to have lights to live. So we didn't listen to the radio.
I could see the flood, and I still didn't know it. You know? It's denial. I could see it out the back door.
Yes ma'am. We could see the water.
I saw it coming. The road was dry just like it is there now, and the sun was shining; and these people come by and told us we had ten minutes.
No, they told us to pack up and leave because the water was going to get higher because it was already in the yard in places.
We could see it coming down the road. Just as far as we could see, there was nothing but water. I still didn't think that it was going to flood our house. I really didn't.
Had you ever seen anything close to this before in your life?
No.
Because in '63 the water came up to the intersection down there. But it never—. This was high ground.
In the past disasters like '63 or Hurricane Hazel or things like that, how did people deal with it then?
Well, it wasn't near as bad as this water. It seems that people could deal with the wind and what damage the wind done a lot better than they could this water.
You mean like from past hurricanes, they could prepare for that a lot easier than this flooding?
Mm hmm.
We didn't have the extent of the destruction. That was the difference because it was just a few houses. Back in the other, wind damage on a house down here, here and there scattered, but not whole communities wiped out.
Never anything close to this?
Unh uh. In their history.
And so, in your lifetime, in past floods or storms or whatever, how did people react? How did the community deal with it then when it wasn't as bad as what happened during Floyd?
Well, the people in this area—and when I say this area, I'm saying from Tick Bite all the way out to Eleven Highway—the people always helped one another. If one person could do one thing, then somebody else could do something else. Everybody got together and done what they could do. It was just like ants carrying a crumb. It was getting done.
It was a rural area. You always had chimneys, so you could have some heat; people would go buy ice; you had a source of water. So you could survive. It was not the most modern way to do it. It was not convenient, but you could survive.
You didn't have to leave home.
No ma'am. You could survive.
And just wait it out like you said?
Mm hmm. Even when we had the destruction from the other storms and you didn't have lights for days, you could still survive.
How was this different?
We were displaced. We had nowhere to go.
What did the community do?
Then the next thing you see this water, it really took away the opportunities that we did have. Because, you see, like I said before, if I could get three bricks and a pot, I could cook. But you see, there was no bricks and no pots.
If there had been, somebody would've stolen them before you got back.
Yes, ma'am.
Now tell me about that because before you said people would've done for each other. Each person would have done one thing—.
Well, you see, this affected so many people. It was so widespread. Really, there's so many people right now I don't know where they are.
Some of your neighbors that you—?
Well, not our neighbors in this area but some people that we knew, that we would go to church with and things like that. They just moved.
They had to leave and haven't come back, and we don't know where they are.
People that you knew for how long?
All my life—sixty-eight years.
And you don't know where they are?
No, but I know that they're all right wherever they are. I know that there's a lot of peoples [that] have located over in Ayden. I don't know where all else.
So what's that like to have these people that you've known all your life and lived nearby and now they're not there?
Well, you see our churches was a central location for so long. And our churches have gotten destroyed.
By the flood?
Uh huh. And our particular church is not built back yet.
Which church is that?
That's the Methodist church down at the end of the street.
The AME Zion?
Mm hmm.
I've seen it.
So the people that we would normally see at the end of the week on Sunday—there's a lot of them, with the church not being there, we just have not seen them. I don't know. I pray for them. I hope everybody is doing well.
But because the building is gone, there's no place for people to gather.
You see, [there were] some people that she would see them in the grocery store up until when she got sick; then they didn't go to the grocery store as much because there was a time you went to the grocery store about everyday, wasn't it? And now, she doesn't go to the grocery store quite as much to see people—the older folks that she would have seen—to the grocery store, to the doctor's office, that kind of thing.
So even though you've been back in your house now—?
It's not the same. [Addressing Clyda] Is it?
No. And it won't ever be. To be honest with you, when we come back in here, it was almost like when we left the shelter and went in an apartment. I never lived in an apartment in my life before.
Never had to pay rent before.
So you went from the Ruritan club to a shelter—?
No, ma'am. We went—.
Yes, it was a shelter. We went to LCC. We had a number over there.
So Ruritan Club to a shelter in Grifton?
In Kinston. They wouldn't let us have a shelter in our community because it wasn't Red Cross approved.
[Whispering] I've heard that before.
What does that mean?
I've never heard the explanation, except it wasn't Red Cross approved.
I can tell you what it is. It has to have certain regulations about a certain number of beds and a certain number of—
Somebody's got to be in charge of it.
—supervisors and got to have cooking facilities—
People willing to—.
—and be sure that sanitation is okay. We ran into the same thing in Grifton.
So we had to move.
Well, we didn't never have no cots—no beds. We had the floor.
Well, even at the shelter where we were—. See, we didn't have a lot of preparation time. It was all I could do to get them to get their medicine and get a couple days worth of change of clothes when we left home. We didn't get pillows and all this kind of stuff; so we didn't have a lot of personal stuff. So I didn't have a lot of conveniences for them and couldn't go buy it. We didn't have a car either. Our cars got flooded.
And the banks were closed.
Well, I had gotten money from the teller machine because I knew—. You know, you hear about that. You go ahead and get your money from the teller machine; so we had cash. But I couldn't get anywhere. Couldn't get a taxi.
We couldn't spend it.
That's the truth. I had cash money.
So you went from the shelter to an apartment building?
From the shelter [to] a family friend.
A family friend took us, and we stayed there about seven or eight days. Then another lady wanted us, and we left there—.
And stayed in a sewing room. Had a big room.
This lady across the highway over there.
The three of you?
The four of us.
We had another man.
Yeah, they got another man.
A family friend who is an amputee that my mama was taking care of. We had to make sure he was all right too. He didn't have a place to go. He got flooded. So we took him too wherever we went.
And he was some kind of happy when he found us. Well, he didn't really find us.
No, we had to send for him.
He had peoples looking for him.
Because he had to be evacuated by boat too because he was in an area where they had gotten warned and been told to leave. But he wouldn't leave. I guess because he didn't know where to go. But when he was told that we were sending for him, then he came.
So it was after all that moving from place to place to place, you stayed then in an apartment for a while?
From October to Dec—. Well, we actually moved January 6 of 2000.
To the apartment?
We moved to a house. We were in the apartment from October until January.
Where was that?
In Grifton.
Then you moved to a house?
In Ayden.
Just to stay for a while until this place was finished?
Well, we actually bought the house. It's on the market now. Are you
interested in a house?
It's a little far from where I live, but thank you. I love Ayden.
Did you think that you would have to spend the rest of your lives in Ayden? Were you planning to resettle there, or you knew it was just temporary?
No, we didn't know. There was one thing that we did know. We knew that
in the condition our house was in, we had lost everything. We didn't
have no appliances. We didn't have nothing. Then slowly our little
savings got gone, and there was no way
How were you able to buy the place in Ayden?
I don't know. I have always been able to ride my daddy's (back?) and get anything in this world I wanted, even if I didn't have enough money to ever even pay it because that was what happened there. I borrowed a hundred thousand dollars and can't work a lick.
So, even though you had that place, why did you want to come back here?
This was home. I was born over there.
It's as simple as that. Who fixed up this house?
The Baptist Men. That's been our lifesavers. They have saved a lot of people, and they saved us.
Tell me what all they did, like what kind of shape your house was in, and how they put it back and all that.
It was completely gutted: no floors, no ceilings, no walls. There was nothing in here.
Nothing.
And they redid it.
You see, we had volunteers that went over and beyond the call of duty. There was about eight days there that—well, you could still drive the boat up there, but the freezers—. Well, most people have deep freezes, and they had a lot of food and stuff in them. Believe it or not, in September and in 1999, it was warm.
It was hot.
Hot. Hot.
So everything was spoiled.
Those people come in, and even though they had to have gloves and masks and boots and what have you—
Because the refrigerator had overturned.
—nobody acted like, Well, this is too nasty for me. Everybody just done what had to be done.
The floor was slick. You couldn't half walk on the floor—
Couldn't stand on the floor.
—because it was slick with slime.
Slime. (And when it got?) hard, you couldn't wash it off.
We had hardwood floors and that
And they had buckled.
They had buckled up.
People gutted the house, and then the Baptist Men's organization redid it.
To where it is now?
Mm hmm.
With new windows and new heating.
Floors and ceilings. We wouldn't have had anything if they hadn't done it because we were not going to invest in fixing the house back.
We couldn't afford to. You see, my husband is seventy-one, and I'm
sixty-eight, and don't neither one of us work, and we certainly don't
have that kind of income.
And then you had a stroke.
Then the big one come along.
When did you have your stroke?
The eleventh of December, 2000.
So about six months ago or five months ago?
Mm hmm. It's not six months yet.
There was about two weeks I was just as blind as a bat. I couldn't even see.
Do you think the stress had something to do with bringing it on?
Mm hmm.
Just because it was so much of a shock finally or what?
Well, I had a lot to do, a lot of things; and I guess maybe I just am the kind of person that (burrows?) things that is just not even going to happen in my mind that they're going to.
Also she was taking care of this elderly man who was an amputee. They feel very responsible for him. Two times a day you were driving from Ayden?
Mm hmm.
To bring him meals.
That's a lot of work.
And still look after him.
So even though you were displaced yourself, you felt like you needed to give some care to this friend?
Well we had to.
We didn't have any choice. He had to be taken care of.
If you didn't do it—?
Nobody else was going to. He was not a person to seek out help.
He wasn't able to access it. Still isn't.
He would sit right there and die (in?) there.
First time I visited them when they were in the apartments and then I saw Clyda, I knew that you were so distressed, so distressed, and I knew that you needed help worse than he did. So we got busy to get him a trailer at his house, and that helped.
It sure did.
Has it made you feel better, has it done you good to be back here even though it's not the same neighborhood? You think it's helped you?
Well, yes because—I don't know—there is a satisfaction out of being here. I think that in time we will eventually get it back to where it will feel like home again.
My daddy's got all this garden. He's out from the time he gets up in the morning until it gets dark.
Hiding.
But he enjoys being outside. Didn't have that in Ayden, didn't have that in the apartment. I think there's some satisfaction when doing what they do.
Well, you see, I didn't know that if you live in an apartment, that you have got a space to park.
This is the second time we've heard about parking spaces.
I have never in my life. I didn't know what you do, really. I really didn't. And I thought it was terrible when the police come out there. Somebody had called the law.
Not on us.
Not on us. I hadn't done nothing. I don't do nothing to nobody.
Not about the parking either. But they were used to space and not used to people being close to them. Having a lot of space.
Do you ever feel afraid of coming back, that it could flood again here, anything like that?
Well, no, I didn't think it would ever flood to begin with. I don't believe we will live to see another one. But I know that with the conditions being like they is, that there is a possibility because all the creeks and things like that, they can't hold the water like they used to. It's filled up. There's too much stuff in there. So when a lot of water comes, it's got to go somewhere. If it can't stay in there, it's got to come out.
I think we'll be more mindful of conditions in the future.
Just watch it.
Not as certain that you can ride it out anymore. I'll always, I think, be a little more attentive when I hear that there's a storm to what I need to do.
Do you want to stay your whole life here?
I think I'd really rather move eventually. Of course, to move again—. But I've got to let them get satisfied that they've stayed here as long as they want to.
I just have a few last questions. And it's very interesting. Thank you
for explaining it.
How do you explain what you've been through for the last year and a half, right? How do you do that? You know how you were saying before the flood came, neighbors would do for each other?
They still do.
How is that now, even though not everybody is back?
One Saturday morning—in fact, I guess it was the Saturday we moved—we were going back and forth; and one of the trips we came back, there was a tin of muffins in the door. No name on them.
Because people had seen that you were moving back?
And one Saturday again, we ran an errand. We came back, my daddy had received this huge pineapple cake that somebody had just chosen to give us.
You don't know who it was?
Yes, ma'am. We finally got that one figured out. But there's generosity. There's people that care. It's just that it isn't the easiness of mind and spirit that it used to be that everything is okay because I guess you just kind of feel like nothing will ever be quite as secure as it was. And it might be that reality's hit; that, yeah, nothing is really certain except that you live until you die, and you do the best you can along the way.
And maybe there's something healing in coming back here. [Affirmative
responses in the background] This is the place that you've known all
your life and so on.
Well, I hope nobody else don't ever have to live through it no more. I really do. I wouldn't wish this on nobody.
I hope that people in communities appreciate each other and respect each other. All the differences that you think you might have, all it takes is something like a flood or a natural disaster, or even maybe not even that, for the humanity to come out in all of us. I know I have a lot to pay back.
What do you mean?
So many wonderful things have happened. So many people have opened their hearts, their pocketbooks, have done things for us that they didn't have to do. We were always pretty much self-sufficient before, and when you don't have a pot to cook in or a window to throw it out, it makes a difference.
Then, you see, we had such a let down because for so long during the time that the water was up when we couldn't get in anywhere, we didn't belong nowhere. This area in here—.
Because it's so close to the county line.
It was deserted. It was absolutely deserted.
But I meant, we didn't belong to Pitt County, and we certainly didn't belong to Lenoir.
Therefore, we weren't getting any help.
So, except for the generosity of individuals who would choose to do things, we would have certainly been left out because governments—we didn't quite fit with anybody.
Officially.
Yeah. But people were good to us anyway.
And the people who would have done for each other were all—?
Scattered and couldn't come together that you would've usually done when there was something to go wrong—that people would've come by and seen what they could do and just do it.
Because they were in the same shape themselves?
Well, you see I had a double portion of it. For two years before the flood, my mother was sick. My mother died on the seventeenth of April in 1999. The flood come the sixteenth of September, 1999. And I think it was on the seventeenth of September that my daddy came up out the grave and—.
I'm sorry, you said your daddy?
Mm hmm.
The family cemetery is down there in Tick Bite.
Because it was flooded.
I just think that I had gotten completely stressed out.
That's a crazy thing to have happen on top of everything else.
But it does when there's water.
In a flood. I know it. I know it.
In fact, we were very fortunate that more of the bodies didn't come up out of the cemetery. That's again what you're kind of used to. And anybody that—. Because I don't remember now who it was that told us they tied down my grandfather, but it was somebody white back there that said that they saw—. And they tied the coffin. I mean, that's what people do.
They had a state agency that came in that's called Mort and tried to find them and—.
Secure.
But it was somebody from Tick— somebody we knew—that tied—.
Oh, somebody from—.
Because that's what you do—you help people.
Lots of heroes.
Lots of heroes. And your daddy's grave is back?
Oh, yeah.
After the water went down.
You have to wait a while because I guess the ground stays saturated with water for a long time.
That must be good to know that he's back where he belongs.
Yeah.
Well, see my mother is an A personality. She wants things done, and she wants them done [snaps her fingers] now. This has been a waiting period. We've grown a lot.
I have always been—I guess it was because of the way I was brought up—if I wanted something done and I couldn't get nobody to do it, I'd do it. But you see, I got to where I can't do it. That really is hard for me.
Frustrating?
Mm hmm.
Because if I wanted my house painted, I'd paint it if I couldn't get my husband to paint it. If the shingle blew off up there, I'd go up there and put them up there.
So, you have to be a little more dependent on other people, and you have to be more patient?
If I can.
And that's hard.
That's a life cycle too. We appreciate—. Now, what are you going to do with all this information?
Well—.
END OF INTERVIEW