Gaston County Rural Women Have Place of Their Own, 1949

By F.H. Jeter, Extension Editor, N.C. State College, Raleigh, as published in the Charlotte Observer on June 9, 1949.

When the farm women of Gaston County come to town on a shopping trip, they have a convenient place of their own in which to rest and store their packages. More than that, they have a place where they may have all of their county-wide meetings, their banquets or their recreational events. It is a place where they meet for appointments; where they find good books to read, or leave the baby until they go to the dentist’s office. It’s a beautiful, restful place with harmonizing colors, comfortable chairs, a refrigerator and an electric stove. It’s easy to keep the milk cool or to warm it if the children need a lunch while mother is in town.

This place was an old garage back of the jail in Gastonia. Now it’s the Home Demonstration Center, or the club home for hundreds of Gaston farm women. The old garage was turned over to the women by the county commissioners three years ago and Miss Lucile Tatum, Gaston home agent, says the home demonstration members have been trying to do something with it since that time. Now it is a credit to any woman’s club in any small town in North Carolina. The garage has been converted into one large assembly room where four centers have been equipped for food preparation, serving, a living room and a reading room. Screens are used to separate the four centers and the equipment in each one is so placed and the color schemes so tied together that the four centers can be thrown into one large space for demonstrations, banquets, or any kind of general gathering.

The center is used for many of the meetings held by the county federation clubs, but the women say it’s greatest value to them is as a headquarters when they come to town. A full-time hostess is on duty at all times being employed jointly by the Gaston County Board of Commissioners and the home demonstration clubwomen. The women pay $360 a year for this service.

Right next to this one big room is a smaller one, 20 by 15 feet in size, which has been converted into a comfortable lounge room. One corner is the nursery, and this nursery opens out into an enclosure equipped as a play area. Here the small children can be kept comfortable and without danger of straying or being hurt in some accident.

Miss Tatum says this nice place did not come of itself. The commissioners gave the old garage to the women after the club members were forced to give up their upstairs headquarters by reason of high rents. High prices, war demands and other things kept them from making the garage over into the place they had planned. But last year, the women were able to go ahead and they received the cordial support of the county commissioners. The color used in the decorations and the fixtures selected with those agreed upon by the women. The old building was insulated and a ceiling added. The concrete floor was covered with rubber tile and the walls were plastered and painted.

The clubwomen raised and used $585 in improvements and equipment in 1947, and another $422 in 1948. They will tell you that raising this $1,000 was no easy task but they did it.

When the new building had been completely renovated and made into a home center for the farmwomen, they all gathered there last November for their annual achievement day. The presidents of the 21 local clubs acted as hostesses. They took charge of the activities. They pointed with price to color harmony in the furnishings, to the two electric stoves, the electric refrigerator, the big freezing unit, the well-equipped kitchen, and the facilities for feeding as many as 50 people at one time. The hostesses carried their visitors back into the comfortable lounging room to see the day bed, the baby bed, the rest rooms. They tried out the piano and the radio record player. The main room is 27 feet by 40 feet and the small room is 5 by 20 feet, and every foot is comfortably utilized. One of the men visitors on that opening day said it was surprising what had been done and he added, “We should have had all this long ago.”

This home center has a parking space for six cars. This convenience is doubly appreciated by farm women who come to town to shop or to visit the doctor. The center is the regular meeting place for the county council and for all committee meetings of the 4-H Club members and the farm women organizations. It contains a storehouse and a file of information. Special Gaston County recipes are kept on file, there is a file of recreational material, a complete set of bulletins and circulars dealing with the farm home, a set of encyclopedias and other good books. Much property accumulated by the county federation is stored there and may be borrowed for special occasions. Some of the popular items much used by the women are the dress patterns, a big punch bowl, the 100 cups and dishes and silver, the card tables, and a dehydrator. The latest item to be used by the women is a little space in the freezer unit.

The women had a grand occasion at this center last Christmas. The whole place was beautifully arranged, both inside and out, as a demonstration in holiday decorations for the rural home. Mantel arrangements, dining room table decorations, and decorations which the children could make for the home were some of the unique ideas expressed. It was used also as a center for pre-Christmas sale, and 75 lunches were served on the day of the sale.

Miss Tatum says the women have been working towards having this center for about 12 years. The first meeting on the subject was held at the first center in May 1937. This temporary place was a small space assigned to the women in a county-owned building. Since then the women have been making their plans for the kind of home they have today. They believe the present results are worth all the time, effort and money that they have put into it.