Life in a small rural town during the early twentieth century
East describes what it was like to grow up in Tyronza, Arkansas, during the 1910s. East talks about how his own family subsisted at work and home. In particular, he talks about how his family lived with no electricity and he describes how ice was brought into towns via railroads and through "swamp country." Overall, his comments offer a revealing portrait of life in a small rural town during the early twentieth century.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Clay East, September 22, 1973. Interview E-0003. 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
Did you grow up in Tyronza.
- CLAY EAST:
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No, I was born in Tyronza and we left Tyronza when I was about three or
four years old and we moved to Greenville, Texas. My Dad went there to
work for his uncle in his wholesale grocery business. And, we lived in
Greenville until either 1910 or 1911 and we moved back to Tyronza. My
Dad built a store and went into business there at the time and up until
the time I left, I lived in Tyronza.
- SUE THRASHER:
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How many brothers and sisters did you have?
- CLAY EAST:
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Well, I had three sisters and four brothers.
- SUE THRASHER:
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And your father was a farmer or a merchant?
- CLAY EAST:
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Both. He had nice grocery store and then he farmed on the side when he
first began. He had the only butcher shop in town. We killed our own
beef, so of course, he bought a lot of cattle, and on Sunday,
we'd get out and a bunch of us on horseback and buy up
cattle. Many…quite a lot of the time, he'd buy a
cow out there, never had seen it. Just ask them about it, what kind of
shape it was in, what it would weigh. And when they told him,
he'd say, well, I'll give you so much for it, and
he'd buy it sight unseen. Then on Sunday, we'd get
out and horseback and round these cattle up he'd bought and
take them down and put them on the pasture on the farm, see, a woodlot
he called it, it was all in timber…it hadn't been
cleared up. Then, generally, over the weekend, we'd send the
butcher and myself out and we'd kill the beef. That would
generally be on Friday and that give the beef time to cool off.
We'd have to kill them late at night to keep the flies off
them, see. So, we'd go out and kill the beef. At that time I
was only about fourteen years old.
- SUE THRASHER:
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Did you have refrigeration or electricity?
- CLAY EAST:
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Ice.
- SUE THRASHER:
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Ice. How about electricity?
- CLAY EAST:
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No, we had gaslights and that was furnished by gasoline that was
underpressure…a hollow-wire () system.
Now, in our home, we had carbide lights and had a big machine out back
that put fifty pounds of carbide in at a time and lasted three or four
months. Electricity, we didn't have any electricity in there
yet, no one had electricity. The first electric light lamps that came
into that country there, as I've told you, my cousin, Eli
East put in the first, that was the Delco light plant, was just a small
affair, was storage batteries and they'd run in there and
build the storage batteries up and even then, they didn't use
their electricity for anything except lights. All the rest of it was
done byhand, such as separaters, a lot of the big farmers had separaters
to separate the cream from out of the milk.
- SUE THRASHER:
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Now, you would kill the beef on when, Sunday night?
- CLAY EAST:
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On Friday. that would give it a chance…we would get it in and
put it under refrigeration. And now, that ice was shipped in there by
rail, see, by or in three hundred pound cakes. And they'd
have an ice plant. At that time, they had an ice plant at Harvard, which
was about two miles from Marion, which was about twenty some odd miles
from home. But they used that ice for cooling and I'd say
along about 1912 or something…that country was called swamp
country and it was.
- SUE THRASHER:
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It was part of the Delta?
- CLAY EAST:
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It was Delta country, but they called it swamp country and they called
the Arkies that lived there in that country" "swamp
angels" and these guys come over there from Tennessee and
around, they called them hillbillies. So, in the wintertime, they had no
roads, they were impassable in the wintertime. They had mules until they
run a dredge ditch in there through Dead Timber Lake, which had sunken
when Real Foot had had an earthquake in that country and Real Foot Lake
sunk and Dead Timber lake sunk. That's where it received its
name, all these trees had sunk, there was a lot of big walnut trees in
there and those stumps. They got out and cut this timber from boats.
They'd get in boats, see, and water was around this big
timber, so they'd get in boats and cut this timber and float
these logs, drag them out …well, the sawmills, that was what
opened up the timber country. Sawmills had what they called tram roads,
which runned manybe five or six miles down through the woods.
That's all that was in there and theyd drag these logs up to
where they could get them loaded on to the carts which was iron-wheeled
carts. And the rails on these tram roads were just wooden timbers and of
course, those were flange-wheeled carts that they put on there and they
was first drawn with oxen.
- SUE THRASHER:
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What's a flange wheel?
- CLAY EAST:
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Well, a flange wheel is like what a railroad has, has a flange on the
side to keep it on the rail and they had the same type of wheel on those
carts. They was drug in there, and these places they would drag them
with those oxen, mules and all couldn't stand up,
they'd just bog down. They couldn't use mules in
there until that country was drained some…but where
they'd drag these logs through, there'd be a
rounded out place and they called those lizard roads. And they was all
over that country, even up in 1914 or 1915, there was still traces of
these lizard roads in the woods up there, where they had drug those logs
out.
- SUE THRASHER:
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What was the town of Tyronza like then, did it have paved streets or
anything like that?
- CLAY EAST:
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No, that was just before we came back from Texas, a mule bogged down
there on main street and they couldn't get him out and he
died in there. And that is approximately where the post office was built
when my Dad had his last store there which was during the time he had
it, which was when the union was in operation.
- SUE THRASHER:
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Now, how big was Tyronza? About how many people lived around there then?
In 1930.
- CLAY EAST:
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I'd say around 500.
- SUE THRASHER:
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Around 500 families? Oh, it was a little community.
- CLAY EAST:
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Yeah, small.