Nell Shadinger, Florence Shadinger, and Grace Shadinger Interview 2

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GEORGE STONEY: Now could you pick out your favorite pictures that call up your favorite memories of your life back then?

NELL SHADINGER: Uh-uhm.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: That's a hard question.

STONEY: Why is that your favorite?

GRACE SHADINGER: Well, let's put in this way, putting out flower bulbs.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Let's see.

GRACE SHADINGER: With our mother. You know, my mother.

NELL SHADINGER: This is a great-great aunt.

GRACE SHADINGER: Well, I'll tell you, my favorite fun -- those pictures wasn't in with these.

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NELL SHADINGER: Me in the middle. That's me right there in the middle.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: I guess my favorite of the mill village is growing up there. Mama and Daddy, my sister and brother, and my friends, the love, the caring, the hard work, payday. (laughter) I had to bring in something.

STONEY: Now you know the Rainwater Sisters?

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Uh hum. Yeah. I don't know whether they know me or not, but Maudine worked in the winding room at Number 2 when (inaudible) and I worked in the spinning department.

STONEY: Well, they us –

NELL SHADINGER: That's Grace on one of them. Look at that.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: They tell you what? They tell you what?

NELL SHADINGER: Look at the shoes and the dress.

STONEY: The Rainwater Sisters told us about what they did before they went 00:02:00downtown, how they got ready. Could you describe the same thing?

FLORENCE SHADINGER: When we'd go to town we put on the best we had, which wasn't much. Well, we'd go around and around and walking around the square and your feet hurt you so bad, you -- you just -- you got to limping before you left. Well, we got off at 11 o'clock on Saturday. Well, I gave my money to Mother, my mother and daddy. Of course, they always allowed me when I wanted a dress or whatever I wanted, they got it for me.

GRACE SHADINGER: You mean you didn't keep any of it?

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Oh, yeah, the change. I drawed $9.90 honey, and, ah, so, ah -- but she made our clothes. She was a real good seam -- and she was creative. She could look at something and make it. None of that rubbed off on me, but, ah, I reckon 'cause I had somebody to do it for it. But I think, you 00:03:00know, that were good memories.

STONEY: Now start back and say you, you, got to change from your money, tell how much it was, tell what you put on, did you put on your best shoes so when you got down it made your feet hurt, start back, start it from the beginning.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Well, that's my memory, memory, too, is my feet, ah--

STONEY: Start with uh --

FLORENCE SHADINGER: When we got off, we'd run home. We'd take a bath, eat a bite, put on the best we had. Mama made it at 10 cents a yard. Well, we was just as good as anybody when we got there. We knew that was a fact. And we didn't have any money to spend. I'd save that 90 cents 'cause I found, you know, it accumulate till I could get, you know, what I wanted -- needed. I didn't get all time what I wanted, but I got with it. (inaudible) unless they 00:04:00were real poor, loved the thrill of going to town and have enough money to buy something that you really wanted. Now you miss something in life whenever you can't do that. You have missed so much. I don't know -- I think they can identify with that.

STONEY: Kinda of the thing I'm trying to--

FLORENCE SHADINGER: -- is that going around the square and my feet hurting so bad and showing off this 10 cents a yard dress that my mother made. And I guarantee you it was pretty. And I and my shoes, that they didn't cost -- just about what we give for a pair of shoes was a dollar and ninety-eight cents. Well, if you put that 98 cents out of that dollar, you thought you really, you know, in vogue with, ah, those shoes. But hurt? Y'all never know. If you've 00:05:00never had a corn on your little toe, ever step you take is so painful. And I think that's the reason why now I can take pain so well, because we had -- we come by (inaudible) go and eat. We'd go down to the railroad track and then there's a deep bank there right by the mill. Well, whenever you put your pressure going downhill, it's deep and your toes would go to the end. Well, I'd almost be out of my head by the time I got to where -- and then we got to the back gate of the mill. It wasn't unlocked, but there's another slope. You had to go down that and round the pond. Then I had to get to 20 Berry Avenue. I'll tell you, them shoes was off before I got home. (laughs)

NELL SHADINGER: Well, let me tell you something else that I know. My mother -- there was four or five girls, young girls, and they would run to town after 00:06:0011 o'clock and they'd get little piece goods and come back and she made them dresses for 25 cents apiece.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Yeah, after she got off at 11 o'clock work.

NELL SHADINGER: She'd work till 11 o'clock and she'd made them dresses --

FLORENCE SHADINGER: She'd work till in the night.

NELL SHADINGER: And she could whiz a sewing machine. She had a pedal machine We still got it. I don't know. One of the kids have got it.

STONEY: One of the couples-- one of the couples we've been interviewing over in Cabbagetown, they said that when they got married in 1934, that what they remembered most from '34 is that they got married and it happened that both of their parents had died. And so they didn't have to support their parents and they had no children. So that they were getting -- they could spend all their money. And they said the best time they could remember was they'd take the streetcar from Cabbagetown down to downtown Atlanta. They'd get an ice cream soda. They'd go 00:07:00to a show. They'd come out, pick up a hamburger and another soda and they'd get another show and it'd be too late to get the last streetcar they'd walk home. And they said, "We were rich!" (laughter) That's the kind of story I'm trying to get.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Well, that's it. My husband's niece, she married -- I married in December and she married in March. We'd get together and she had a son and a daughter. I had a son. Well, we were just, we were like old mother hens, you know, with those children. We'd go around. We'd put them in the picture show -- theater. We didn't go in. We was, you know -- we didn't think we could afford all of us to go in. Well, we walked round and round the circle. Now some of 'em off the mill village would get up early that morning that had a car and go park it. They have a parking place and walk back home. And they had 00:08:00a parking place, but we'd drive round and round the square trying to -- praying that somebody would back out and go home. Well, finally we found one and that's when we'd get out and walk round and round the square. Well, it was entertaining. You'd run up on somebody you knew. And if y'all get a chance, there's a book, I think the University of Georgia went back and reprinted it. "Yesterday in the Mill" up here about Ball Ground, Georgia. I don't know. I had one of my son-in-law, they ordered it. I ordered me an' Grace one. And they ordered it -- one of the bookstores there. It's a vanished way of life.

GRACE SHADINGER: But that's farming.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: It's supposed to, but it is --

GRACE SHADINGER: That's farming.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: It is history. It's still history.

JUDITH HELFAND: Grace, can you show us yourself in school?

GRACE SHADINGER: No. I didn't go --

HELFAND: You don't want to show us your school picture?

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GRACE SHADINGER: No. No. No. No.

NELL SHADINGER: Well, this is a school picture and that's her right there.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Well, let's see. I got one.

GRACE SHADINGER: Nell, you hunt 'em up of you.

NELL SHADINGER: Okay. I'm hunting 'em up (inaudible). Let's see on this one now. This is her right here. I think that's the same picture right there.

GRACE SHADINGER: That's the piece I was hunting. No wonder I couldn't find it. You had it.

NELL SHADINGER: And let's see.

STONEY: Are any of you in that picture there?

FLORENCE SHADINGER: I don't believe we have one (inaudible).

NELL SHADINGER: No, they don't have one of me because I don't think we bought -- y'all not in this one, are you?

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Uh uhm.

STONEY: How old are you there?

GRACE SHADINGER: Six.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: First grade. Yeah, here's the one I'm in. Lordy. That little sweater.

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GRACE SHADINGER: I dressed myself. Ain't I beautiful?

FLORENCE SHADINGER: You think I didn't dress myself? (laughter)

GRACE SHADINGER: I'd wait till everybody got off to school when they's going to make pictures, because I knew they wouldn't allow me to do what I was going to do, but I did it.

FLORENCE SHANDINGER: I smiled.

GRACE SHANDINGER: Always.

FLORENCE SHANDINGER: I always (inaudible) a smile.

NELL SHADINGER: That's one of my little cows.

HELFAND: Was that on the farm or was that once (inaudible)?

NELL SHADINGER: That wasn't on the farm, uh uh. That's when we lived here.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: I don't know where that is.

NELL SHADINGER: In a pasture.

FLORENCE SHADINGER: Who was that with?

NELL SHADINGER: Looks like Miss Brooks, but I don't -- no! That's Pearl Stone.

GRACE SHADINGER: No, it's now.

NELL SHADINGER: Yes, it is. You look at that hair and you look at that -- GRACE SHADINGER: Well, that's Miss Smith. That's Miss Smith at Raymond.