Working to help provide for the family farm
Like other local children, Ray worked as a child to help support her family's farm. She sold hog's heads, helped plant tobacco, and removed rocks from fields to earn extra money.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Geraldine Ray, September 13, 1997. Interview R-0128. 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
- GERALDINE RAY:
-
But, uh . . . you didn't . . . see, the only thing we
mainly bought from the store back then was . . . cuz we had
chickens, we had cows, we had hogs, we had horses, my father was a
licensed butcher
(K asks if it was her real father and she replies yes)
and like I said they all logged at one time. And my uncle
could kill hogs, my father and him would sometimes kill twenty hogs
within a day for different people and they would bring me the heads
and I would sell them for a dollar. That was my little spending
change.
- KELLY ELAINE NAVIES:
-
Really? The hogheads? How would you carry em around?
- GERALDINE RAY:
-
No, I'd call and tell somebody if they wanted it, I had it
and they'd give me a dollar for it. So, that was my little spending
change.
- KELLY ELAINE NAVIES:
-
And they'd just come and pick it up?
- GERALDINE RAY:
-
Uhhuh . . . And see so you had your meat,
corn&. We lived on a farm, we had a hundred and something
acres. Which some of the whites said we were living better that they
were. But, it still was hard work. You set out tobacco, you raise
tobacco, you raise corn, you raised hay for your livestock, and the
corn for your livestock, well when the field was prepared for your
tobacco, first you burn - back then you could burn your tobacco
beds-that was to keep the weeds up - you sowed it and you covered it
with canvas-when the
plants got big enough to set out, you went and set em out
and usually on the end - within the tobacco bed on one corner they'd
plant cabbage plants, tomato plants and that was for your garden.
You didn't go to a stand and buy your plants, you raised em along
with your tobacco plant and uh then when it become time to set out
your tobacco, you'd prepare your land, you carried and you dropped
them plants and used a stick to put em in the ground until they
invented a tobacco setter which you did with your hand and you
jabbed it down in the ground and you drop it down in there and when
you'd squeezed it and pulled up on it, it would set it in the
ground.
- KELLY ELAINE NAVIES:
-
Really, and that was called a what now?
- GERALDINE RAY:
-
A tobacco setter and it had a little reservoir on it where
you poured the water so when you pulled the lever up the water would
go in with the plant. So, that's the way you'd set em out and then
somebody would come behind you and fill the dirt in around it. So, I
done that when I was little.
- KELLY ELAINE NAVIES:
-
Hmmm, so if you had anything extra, would you sell it?
- GERALDINE RAY:
-
They did. All the children went out and worked. If they had
to go and pick up rocks they would go a certain time of year and
picked up rocks off the field. You go get on that sled and you help
them pull up them rocks. You'd do the best you could.
- KELLY ELAINE NAVIES:
-
You would help the children?
- GERALDINE RAY:
-
You would help your uncle, your daddy, granddaddy or
whoever was doing it.