From Elderly Black Farm Women…As Keepers of the Community and the
Culture by Iris Carlton-LaNey, assistant
professor of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte when
the book was published in 1989. The booklet has photos of the author and the
ten North Carolina women from Warsaw and Magnolia, N.C. You can see the entire
booklet online at
https://library.digitalnc.org/cdm/pageflip/collection/booklets/id/25901/type/compoundobject/filename/print/page/download/start/9/pftype/pdf
Ruth Rebecca Dewitt
Middleton, Interviewed when she was 76. Born April 3, 1912. Mrs. Middleton has
four children. Three of the four died before their 50th birthdays
from heart attacks. She continues to care for those in need and currently
provides the daily care for a frail, elderly, demented in-law.
I've worked on the farm all my life. That's the best way to
say it 'cause when I was four and five, right on up, see we was pickin'
strawberries and cotton and stuff like that tryin' to help Mama. When I was
seven years old I was pickin' over a hundred pounds of cotton a day. I’ve
picked as much as 320 pounds of cotton a day. God just give me that much gift
and see we tried to do everything we could to help Mama because it was hard
along them . . . My daddy died when I was three years old and the youngest was
1 year old.
I loved workin' on the farm. I really loved it. Now if the
conditions hada been some different, I probably woulda went out and got me a
job after I got grown and everything. But, like it was, Mama was still here and
her health was failing and so I just planned to just stay here with her until
she died ... so that's what I done.
Got married August, 1931. It was harder during the Depression
‘cause after the war, way back yonder, people was getting a dollar a day and
then whenever Hoover got in there about '38 or something like that, it come
back down. You didn't get but 40 and 50 cents a day. Was a-many-a-week worked
50 hours for $2. A-many. That's the way it was until Hoover got in. Hoover got
in in '32, I believe it was. When he got in that's when it started pickin' up
again. I don't mean Hoover! I mean Roosevelt. He shut down everything and
started all over, and that's when times started to getting better. 'Cause they
was something before then, I'm telling you. They had been bad before then, like
when Mama was raising us up. She won't gettin' but 30 and 35 cents a day. When
we come up, everything fell in line and we hope her all we could and she would
try to farm. There was a man lived up here and he would do her plying cause she
didn't have nobody to ply, and she'd do his chopping. After we got up, after
Buddy (brother) got up big enough to ply and do, then he would do it. And
around here we got an ole piece of mule and we tended a piece of land across
the woods over there. I'd do the most of the plying ‘cause I loved to ply.
She'd send me and my baby brother over there to pry and I'd tell him to stay
and let me ply. I'd hitch up the mule and ply all day. I'd crop tobacco. I'd
hang tobacco. I've done everything just about on the farm. I’ve cut ditch bank.
Everything on the farm to be done except work with the tractor. I ain't never
worked with the tractor, but I've done all the rest of it. Won't none of it too
hard to me then. It won't. I loved to do it. We'd go in the woods and cut barn
(tobacco barn) wood. Martha's husband would help stack it. And we'd get out
there and cut fireplace wood, heater or whatever we had, stove wood, everything
like that. And we was usta doin' that cause you see Mama had to work all the
time and try to raise us and so, we had to get in the wood and stuff. And we'd
do it. Won't like these old sorry chillun now ‘cause we didn't know nothing
else to do and we wanted to help her. 'Cause in the wintertime she'd walk to
Magnolia a-plenty-of-times by herself and work all day and walk back home. And
so we'd have to have in all the wood and stuff. My oldest sister Mary, you
know, she was the oldest, and she'd do the cooking and everything. The rest of
us, we'd have to get in the water and wood and feed the hogs and feed the
chickens and we'd do it. 'Cause she couldn't do it. It would be night when she
got home and she'd have to leave before day.
She was working to the bulb house in the wintertime and then
in the summer she worked on the farm. At the bulb house they cleaned cannas and
caladiums. You see they growed them in the field and then they house them in
the fall just like you do other fall crops. . . and then you set in there in
the wintertime and cut the roots off and clean um up and then they box them and
sell them. I worked there a-many a-days. I’ve walked from right here
a-many-a-days. . . We'd work until around February cause we didn't work in the
fields. The ones that worked in the field, why they'd work right on. . . but
we'd always stop cause it was getting time for us to start pickin' tobacco beds
and stuff like that. We wouldn't work no more 'til the next fall.
I'd like to be remembered for the life I lived and the
service I give, 'cause I always helped sick peoples in any way I could. Mama
always done that and right on up to now, I think that would be ‘bout the
proudest of myself. . .in caring for other people.
No comments:
Post a Comment