Age: 62
Occupation: Dispatcher
Hometown: Sharpsburg
Interviewer: Stephanie Curtis
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Ferol Hart Age: 62 Occupation: Dispatcher Hometown: Sharpsburg Interviewer: Stephanie Curtis |
What school did Ferol go to?
Transcript
Q: May I ask your name and age?
A: Yes, I am Ferol Hart and I am soon going to be 62. I was born in 1936.
Q: Who were your parents and grandparents and where were they from?
A: My parents were Ralph C. Frash and Martha J. Frash. My mother was from Cleveland, Ohio. My dad was from Athens County, Ohio, Amesville area.
Q: What did your parents do for a living?
A: My mother was a homemaker and my farther was a farmer and teacher.
Q: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
A: Yes, I did. I have an older brother that lives in Florida, sister who lives in Amesville named Virginia. My youngest brother who is a good bit younger than the rest of us who lives in the Amesville area at the Amesville address.
Q: Where did you grow up ?
A: I grew up at the Rainbow Farm in Athens county.
Q: What school did you go to?
A: I went to Amesville Burn Elementary school. Then on to Amesville Burn middle school which the high school that existed then was the high school when I went to school. I graduated in 1954.
Q: What do you remember about your school days?
A: The were an enjoyable I never thought of it one way or another .They were all good times and most people will admit that that is the best time of their life probably but they didn't like it at times, and I didn't apply myself as much as I liked but I got through with good grades.
Q: What did you do for fun?
A: I enjoyed sewing a lot and spent a lot of time by myself as I think back on it, but for fun we went roller skating up at Chesterhill on Saturday nights. The at was your goal every week to see if we could manipulating up our parent to take us.
Q: Did you have chores?
A: With helping wash dishes and cleaning the house. The unusual things that had to be done. I was the indoor kind of person, my sister was the outdoor kind of person.
Q: What chores did you not like?
A: I didn't like having to go outdoors to do my work because it would be cold out and you would have to out in the nasty weather. During the wintertime’s when you had a part time job.
Q: How do you think life is different and in what way?
A: It is much faster now and young people have a lot more privilege and and grow up faster. The knowledge that they have as they enter school was much more then as I went to school.
Q: Were peoples values different?
A: I don't think so I think there values were about the same as they are today. Now there are a lot of crimes and stuff but I think a lot of it has to do with the times we live in.
Q: Did you have chores on the farm?
A: My older brother and my younger sister were the ones who done most of the outside stuff. They had a lot of chores to do like helping at the barn, milking the cows, cleaning out the barn in the summer, spring ,a lot of helping with the hay, fruit crops. There were just a thousand jobs that need to be done it seemed like all the time. My brother and sister, dad worked on the outdoor stuff. They were always working hard.
Q: What were your means of transportation?
A: We had automobiles but of course they were a lot different then from the way they are now.
Q: Were you married?
A: Yes, I got married when I was 20 years old. I married a man named Herbert Taylor from Columbus, in fact we met in Columbus. I worked at Ohio State University and so did he, that's where we meet.
Q: Did you have any children?
A: Yes, we had five kids. Pat, Andrea, Jeffery, Victoria, and Stephanie.
Q: Did you ever get punished?
A: Yes, I was pretty good at avoiding that scene, but I got whipped a few times. I'll tell you get whipped with a switch from the brushes outside of the house. It hurt and you remembered it well.
Q: What kind of discipline did the schools have?
A: Just general kinds of things probably very similar to the kinds of things you experience today, but I didn't ever think we thought of skipping school or anything like it. It just didn't occur to us to do that but we know we would be in deep trouble with our parents. We didn't mind getting in trouble by the school but our parents would really be the ones that would really make it hard for us.
Q: Is their anything I haven't ask that I should have?
A: I spent many years working, you might find interesting for your interview, because it was necessary for me to work. My husband at the time worked at the Gas Company. And so I got a job I worked many many years working my life. My main job I had was the job at Ohio University and I retired there five years ago and I worked at various offices at the university but my last one was most interesting. I worked for 13 years on the midnight shift in the Ohio University police department and I learned so much about people and it was a very interesting job.
Q: What were some of the things you done?
A: I was the dispatcher for some of the officers and keeping a log every night and it had to be typed out every morning by the officers every morning where they needed to go taking phone calls and talking to them on the radio and just general dispatching duties and it was very interesting.
Q: Do you have anything else to share?
A: I was married to my second husband George Hart, he worked at Ohio University and maintenance department. He worked there for many years unfortunately, he died a few years ago.
Q: Did you have any children with him?
A: No he had two grown sons and one is married the other is not, they live in the Athens Area.
Q: Do you have any grandchildren?
A: Yes, I have nine. A brand new grandson and of course we love children and babies. My oldest grandchild is nineteen and a half and of course the new one is very new one month old. I have three granddaughters and six grandsons.
Q: Do you remember anything about the wars?
A: I remember during the second World War that it seemed as though the parents and people and others we knew lived in a kind of depressed stage because of the World War going on it affected everyone I can remember how certain items were rationed like gasoline, shoes, sugar coffee was also rationed. It seems like it affected a lot of people everyone in fact and I can remember how we had our big bag of sugar in the attic I don't know if we brought it with ration stamps or however they did it, and it would get hard like a 50lb. Bag of sugar and you would have to cut the bag open and broke pieces off. Too get it to unsolidify like put it on your cereal in the morning it would be kind of difficult to do things.
Q: What did you guys eat?
A: We ate well because we lived on a farm so we had plenty to eat because we owned our own beef cows and always had some pigs that we slaughtered once a year. We had lots of fruit and vegetables because we lived on a fruit farm. We had a lot of food that others wasn't able to have I know the people in the big city at that time didn't have the food to eat that we did.
Q: Did you attend church when you were little?
A: Well when I was really little I didn't but when I was ten years old my mother, brother, and sister, always went to the Kingdom Hall in Marietta we were all Jehovah's Witnesses. When I was ten was when we stared going to the meetings. It seemed like those meetings were awful long.
Q: Do you remember anything about high school?
A: High school was a good time I took piano lessons I really like to playing the piano and my mother was also musical she had a beautiful singing voice. So I made the opportunity of taking piano lessons from Jean Mcgaphen, who was the music teacher from the schools system and one of his classes. The thing I enjoyed in high school was home etch because I had an interest in sewing I enjoyed that very much and typing I really loved the typing class.
Q: Do you think the schools then are like the schools today?
A: I think the schools are more complicated now. I think we got a good basic education at that time but I think there is a lot more available for young people to learn vocation even before they are out of high school so they can take care of themselves and there family.
Q: Did your family have any pets?
A: Yes, we also had cats and dogs around. The cats were considered barn cats they weren't supposed to come to the house we always had at least one dog. The one I remember was Shappy. She was very intelligent. She helped my dad with getting the cows in the barn at night she was real intelligent about going and rounding them up and head them up to the barn she really lived a long time. I don't know how old she was when she died.
Q: Did you have dress codes at school?
A: Yes, we always wore dresses, girls wore dresses and boys wore jeans or pants or t- shirts or shirts that buttoned down the front. T- shirts weren't that available then as they are now. Girls always wore dresses and of course we never thought much about it. The first time I ever wore pants or jeans was in high school probably when the weather was super cold we were aloud to once in a while.
Q: How big were your schools?
A: My graduation class was 18 people in it. We had 12 boys and six girls.
Q: What was it like in school?
A: In Elementary school was just like you probably like learning how to read, write, some history, math but it was really exciting when we got the seventh grade and got to go to the high school. It was a big deal to be a high school student, and change classes that was a really big deal because we thought we were really big then.
Q: Did you have gym classes?
A: We had music and chorus just in general .Song then we formed a little group of about eight girls enjoyed singing together in a competition in Athens in spring of one of those years an got an excellent rating.
Q: What was it like in high school?
A: High school was very interesting ,and I don't ever remember studying for a test. I would bring books home but never do nothing with them just caring back to school. I got really good at taking test because I got A's and B's.
Q: How do you get to school?
A: The school bus did come and pick up. There was a school bus to pick us up.
Q: Did you have to get up early?
A: Yes, I think the bus came around seven o'clock so that wasn't to bad .My mother wouldn't let us out of the house until we ate our breakfast. You had to eat breakfast.
Q: How do you think technology has changed?
A :It is extremely advanced with the computers that now exists ,and the systems that are available think we are in a modern age that is better than it is every been for people but they have to take the knowledge they have, and use it wisely.
Q: Did you have electricity when you were growing up?
A: That is a good question because the first twelve or ten years of my life .No, we didn't have electricity or phone ,and it was exciting day when we had the electricity turned on for the first time and we got a refrigerator, and the electric was turned on the same day, and it was something to have a refrigerator that you didn't have to put ice in. We had to buy ice to put in it to keep it cold.
Q: What kind of heat system did you have?
A: Our heating system consisted of a coal or wood stove in the front room, and in the kitchen .It had a cook that was ran by coal or wood .Mainly by coal. So when you got up in the morning it was really cold ,and in the winter time the first thing you had to do was build a fire because you couldn't really do anything before you build a fire ,and put on a tea kettle for some coffee or whatever.
Q: Do you remember any of your punishments, and why you got them?
A: I got in trouble a few times for lying really didn't get in trouble that much. I always tried to be the one who was good .My sister always said I was the prissy one that stayed in the house. I do remember one time my brother and I were left home alone I must have been ten or twelve or something like that .We were told to stay at the house, and I think as soon as they went .You went wading down in the creek over toward the one going toward Bartlett. But we got back before my parents did from where ever they went. Some how I manipulated thing around so Harry got in the trouble. I think he lied but I didn't ,and so he got a whipped ,and I didn't but we should have obeyed them, and stayed in the house like we were told to do.
Q; What did your family do for fun?
A; Not much of anything once in awhile we would go to the movies in Chesterhill .I think the adults fee at that time was twenty-five cents. We didn't have much entertainment take that back to when we .The radios were available. We listened to the radio like most people watch T.V today. On Sunday afternoon and Evening we would turn the radio on and kick back as they say, and listen to all the radio shows until we went to bed that night. About 1950 when T.V started being in existance but we didn't get one until 1953. So that was a step forward for us to have a TV set.
Q: You enjoyed the TV a lot?
A: Yes, we thought it was wonderful. I also remember some of our neighbors had a TV set before we did and we would go to their house once in a while to watch TV, it was a little tiny screen.
Q: Do you know where your grandparents were from?
A: Yes, my mothers parents both came from Athens County in the Sandrock Ridge area, my dads parents were also from the general same area, the were all Athens County people, from way back then.
Q: Did you pick on your brothers or sisters?
A: I did pick on them.
Q: Did you have a favorite?
A: No, I never even thought of it really my brother Harry and I paled around together when we were growing up but then he became a teenager it seemed we grew apart my sister and I weren't that close we had total different personalities but we shared a room and that was quite a thing because I believed in putting everything away and she was the opposite. She will probably kill me for saying these things but it's true.
Q: How big was your house?
A: The house we lived in was the big old brick house that was built in 1865 by the Selbee family. We were one of the first people to have a big farm in this area and we were well known in the state. The big old brick house was bought back during the great depression it had been taken over by the bank because they didn't have the money to pay for it. So he bought it for 10,000 dollars worth silver. Silver was the only thing that had value then. Paper didn't have any value then. So that's the story of the old brick house we lived in. Before that my mother and father lived in a little log cabin with nothing at all and was very hard to live and it was still when they moved in the big brick house because they didn't have any running water, electricity, phone and my mom worked hard really hard at keeping the house comfortable and for giving us the things we needed.
Q: Do you remember anything about the depression?
A: No, only the things I have read about or seen on TV.