Hulon Oneal Gibbs

San Antonio, Texas

November 1, 2004

Cindy Morgan

Palo Alto College

History 1302 - FALL 2004

What was it like growing up in a family of six other siblings?
Having to share a lot, we wore hand-me-down clothes. This was back during the depression times. We had a lot of relatives that were better off than we were so we had a lot of hand-me-down clothes that we could wear and then when the one older than you passed on clothes well you didn’t mind wearing them, you know. Some people would laugh at us, but we didn’t care. We just said, “Hey, we’re covered.”

At what age did you have to start working on the family farm, and what was your role?
Well, when we started out early, I guess we were probably four or five years old, before we started school. We were helping them pick cotton and we helped them doing others things that had to be done around the house and around the farm. We had little chores, pick up wood, bring it in for the stove. We didn’t have electricity or gas. We had a wood-burning stove; that’s what Momma cooked on. So we had to go get wood for her to cook, and we had to help get wood for the fireplace so we could have fire in the winter time when it was cold.

Do you remember how many hours in a day you had to work?
Oh yeah, we had from sun up to sun down when we got old enough to work in the fields. Before that well, we would help out with the older kids. They were out in the fields working, we would go take them water or whatever else, you know. But if you were going to school, well, you went to school the first day, we get our books and assignments and wait thirty days and get the cotton in and corn and things like this. And then we’d start back to school and we’d catch up by December, when we had break well we’d be up with the rest of them.

So you didn’t have to miss any school because working on the farm?
No. Nothing except that first 30 days.

Do you know if there were any child labor laws back then?
No. But we were never mistreated. We worked and had a good time. We never had any mistreatment. We had a task, pick all the cotton you can, you know, and do the best you can. Daddy would look after us, keep up with us, you know. We’d weigh the cotton and he’d give us a penny a pound, or whatever, you know, some little compensation to motivate us. But we never did get any whippings, beatings, or anything if we didn’t do what we were told to do. But it was volunteer, more or less.

How much did a person earn in a day?
Back in those days, $5 a day probably was good wage.

And what did you earn in a day?
Maybe .10 cents, .25 cents, or whatever. As a kid, we didn’t get much because Daddy didn’t have much money. He didn’t have any money until he sold cotton or we sold cows, or pigs, or chickens, things like this you know to make extra money. But when we got the cotton in, we took that in to the gin and we got the money for that. But you had to pay for the fertilizer and the seed, so he had expenses coming out of what you got revenue anyway so it wasn’t that much.

Do you recall what the price of gasoline was during the depression era?
Twelve to fourteen cents a gallon, it was cheap. We had an old Model T Ford, and we used to go up to the little store a mile up the road and fill it up. It didn’t hold but about six gallons, but it was real cheap in those days. That was in the early ‘40s that I recall because it was a ’26 model. I didn’t do any driving or buying, Daddy did all that.

What type of equipment did you have to help you in the fields?
We had mules and we had to use them with plows, and hand tools. The mules pulled the plows; we broke the ground and cultivated it. But it was all one row operation, we didn’t have any multi- rows. Like cultivators, we didn’t have anything like that. Georgia stock plows, they call them, one mule pulls it.

Did your family go to any stores to purchase items? Or were most items made at home?
Most of the stuff was made; we had to buy stuff too. We raised vegetables and we raised pigs for the bacon and ham. We had milk cows for milk and butter. We still had to go to the store to buy clothes. Momma had a sewing machine that she used to sew a lot of the dresses for the girls. The boys, well, I don’t remember her ever sewing shirts or pants for us. We would buy those, or else we would get them from Uncles and Aunts that had children that outgrown them. Like I said, hand-me-downs, you know, so it worked out that way. We used to take flour sacks and fertilizer sacks, they came in cotton bags, big old cotton cloth and you take those and rip them up and sew them together and make sheets for the bed. Or they would make dresses for the girls. They did the best they could with it, trying to work out and save some money. But you still had to go to the store and buy some stuff. We had a little store up the road to buy some things, or go to town five miles down the road and buy whatever you needed down there.

What did you do for fun when you were not going to school or doing chores?
Oh well, we had a swimming hole, we had trees that we had swings in, we played games, and we had dogs that chased rabbits. We had all kinds of things. If we had time, you could have a lot of entertainment. The work took up quite a bit of time, but we still managed to work it in.

Can you remember any songs that you sang growing up?
My Daddy used to play a fiddle, and he would get out on the front porch late in the evening after we finished eating supper and he would play a little Turkey in the Straw or some other odds and ends, old country music and things like that. As far as singing songs, we didn’t have any singing songs that we sang, that I recall. We did sing church songs, but I can’t remember any others right now.

Did you play any instruments when you were younger?
No. I tried to play guitar a little bit, but I got in the service and didn’t keep up with practice so I just dropped it. Daddy played the violin, sister played the guitar, and brother played the guitar so we had music around.

When did your family get electricity and indoor plumbing?
Electricity came in 1948. We didn’t have indoor plumbing. I left in December 1950 and we still didn’t have indoor plumbing at that time. We had a little outhouse up the hill.

How did getting electricity change your life?
We had electric lights in the house. We built that new house in ’46, but they didn’t have electricity out there until ’48. We didn’t have to worry about kerosene lamps. Before that we had to have kerosene lamps to read by, and that wasn’t too good. We had an old Philco Radio that had a car battery for power so we could listen to the radio. When we finally got electricity, well, hey we moved up! Then we had electric lights and you could see and then we got a radio instead of having the old battery operated radio. And believe it or not it had a record player/radio combination so we could play the old 78s. We would buy records once in awhile.

Did any of your neighbors have electricity and plumbing before your family?
No. We were all in the same boat, because we had the Rural Electric Association and they didn’t get the electricity out there. And plumbing, we didn’t have water lines out there; we had to draw water out of the wells by hand. We got a rope and a bucket until we got electricity, and then we put electric pumps in the ground so we could pump water up with electricity. Before that we were all the same, you didn’t have it so you didn’t worry about it.

Where did you bathe?
Boys had to wash at the creek or the spring, and the girls bathed in the kitchen after everybody was out. It was a splish-splash bath.

Did you ever get sick when you were young and what did you do?
Did you visit a doctor? No. Home remedies were a laxative. When you got sick it was because you were “backed-up”. When you got sick and told Momma you couldn’t go to school, she had a remedy “black draught” which was a strong laxative. You put a little bit of that with a cup of coffee. About 15-20 minutes later you were heading to the outhouse. And then you were ready to go to school the next morning.

What about childhood illnesses?
We had chicken pox and measles. We didn’t have calamine lotion; we had some other kind of paste that they put on. For coughs and bad colds you had those, but you drink a lot of water and a laxative and you were heading back to school. When I joined the service, they asked me what my family doctor’s name was. I said I didn’t have one. They said, “You didn’t have a family doctor?” “Nope”, I said. They said, “You didn’t have no shots?” “Nope”, I said. They said, “Where are you from?” I said, “Mississippi.” They loaded me up with shots and I got fever. The next day I was in bad shape.

Did you get to see a dentist?
Yes, we had a dentist, but he didn’t believe in Novocain, it took too long.

So why were you able to go to a dentist but not a doctor? Was there a doctor around?
Yes, but we didn’t go to doctors. We didn’t need to because of family home remedies.

Do you have a favorite memory of growing up?
Yeah, we had a lot of them. Family get-togethers, Uncles and Aunts would come to visit us, or we’d go to their houses and things, you know. We had time to visit and talk and as the old saying “chew the fat” with each other because we had nothing else to do. It was close-knit families and fellowship within families and relatives and things like that.

ANALYSIS