Maxine Rader Age: Unknown Hometown: Parkersburg Occupation: Retired Interviewer: Lee Rader IV
Hear how Maxine's family kept their food cold.

Transcript

Interviewer: Lee Rader

Interviewee: Maxine Rader

Q: Where were you born?

A: In Ravenswood, West Virginia.

Q: What was it like growing up in Ravenswood?

A: Well actually I didn't grow up in Ravenswood. We moved to Parkersburg.

Q: Okay, what was it like growing up in Parkersburg?

A: It was nice. We lived right outside of town and we had a few acres. We grew our own food. We had our own chickens and eggs. Daddy had a hog, across the creek on the other side, and we had a cow, which was in a pasture up the road, which we had to go after night and morning. And, we were in a nice little neighborhood and the people were friendly. And we could walk the mile to town no problem. Although it was during the Depression, we never thought of ourselves as poor, because we always had food, we had clothing. I don't know, it was because we had good parents, and we were in the church, where we had activities. I thought it was great, and I am very thankful for it.

Q: How many brothers and sisters did you have?

A: I had three sisters and one brother.

Q: What were they like?

A: Super. My brother has passed on, but we four girls are still very close. Although we don't all live together, we get together at least 2-3 times a year and go, twice a year we go to our parents' grave in Ravenswood and decorate it.

Q: Where did you go to school?

A: Parkersburg High School.

Q: Did you like it?

A: I loved it.

Q: What was it like?

A: I thought it was wonderful. I was student assistant to the physical education teacher, and I would stay many times after school for extracurricular activities. And I would walk from Parkersburg High School to home, after school, which was approximately 5 miles. [laughs]

Q: What were your parents' names?

A: My father's name was Jess Alvin Sayr and my mother was Elsie Sayr.

Q: What did they do for a living?

A: My father worked at the American Viscose Company.

Q: What were they like? What were your parents like?

A: Well, I thought, really and truly, to this day, can't understand how my parents raised us so that they'd never [???]. I can remember one spanking with a switch, but we never disobeyed them. If they said you did this we did it. If they said you be home at nine o'clock, I'd try to be there at five minutes till. And, to me, to this day it’s a mystery how they managed that. True love, I guess.

Q: What did you do after high school?

A: Well, my first job was in a candy factory. Nice, huh? Then I went to work at the marble factory. Then I worked as a cashier in a dress shop. Then my sister's son was sick in Baltimore and I went to help her. When I came back, I went to work for the telephone company.

Q: What did you do there?

A: I was a long distance operator during the war, the World War II, and a lot of times, I would try to find these soldiers or sailors, they would have a call in for them. Sometimes I would chase them for two weeks at a time and it was really great when I got one someplace. Then we moved down here and I worked at the telephone company here, until I went to work for the bank.

Q: So did you have switchboards back then?

A: Yes, yes. We also had these country numbers where you'd ring three longs and one short or one short and two longs.

Q: So like a Morse code?

A: Uh, well I suppose you could compare it to that, but they were the country. Of course people in town had their own numbers, but the ones out in the country, where maybe there would be ten of them aligned and they would have to answer to their ring. Maybe you would have two shorts and two longs, and that was their ring, and they would answer.

Q: How was technology different now than it was then?

A: What do you mean different? Technology now…. Okay I'll tell you. When I was a child and an airplane went over, everybody went out in the yard to look at it. There just wasn't many planes. Okay you can take it from there, when you ran out to look at a plane. Now they have people on the moon. Telephone was great at that time, and now you have computers where you can get in touch with somebody umpteen zillion miles away in a matter of seconds. So it's unbelievable really.

Q: Did you have running water and electricity?

A: We had electricity, but we did not have running water for several years. And the gas line ran to our community, but my mother did not have a washing machine, refrigerator, sweeper, none of those conveniences.

Q: Where did you guys get the water from?

A: We had a cistern and a pump and that's how we got it.

Q: What electronics did you have?

A: An electric fan, uh, and that's about it, outside of lights.

Q: What electric things do you have now that you wish you'd had then?

A: I wish that my mother had had all of them. Because, you know, when I think how she swept the floors and, now she did finally get a washing machine, but how she scrubbed clothes for our family of, actually nine, because my grandmother and my great-grandmother lived with us. So she had a family of nine to take care of with none of these conveniences, and I wish she'd had all of them.

Q: What was it like washing the clothes then?

A: She used a washboard, actually she had a little hotplate in the basement where she heated her water. We didn't have a hot water heater, and she heated her water on that hotplate and then she had a washtub with a washboard.

Q: What is a washboard?

A: How do I explain a washboard? It's, um, the metal grooves go up and its got a wooden frame and she would take the clothes and rub them on that washboard to wash them.

Q: What was the depression like?

A: Well, now my father made thirteen dollars a week, with a family of nine. But we raised our vegetables, we went out and picked berries, we had apple trees on our property, and plum trees, and we raised strawberries. We had the chickens for eggs, we had the cow for milk and we churned butter. I was never hungry. I never felt poor; this is due to my parents. Because at the time, a lot of our neighbors went on what they called relief then, which is what would be called welfare now. And they would go and get this welfare, relief they called it. But my father was too proud, no way was he going to go and get…let somebody take care of his family. So we raised our food and mother would buy flour and sugar and the necessities that way, but other than that we raised our living. We always had plenty to eat, my mother canned food, there was no freezer. I don't know. To me, because of my parents, I did not suffer; in fact, they kept the bad part of it away from us. We had a family.

Q: Did food spoil really easily because you didn't have a way to keep it cold?

A: Well, we had an icebox. An iceman came and delivered ice two or three times a week, two times a week. And he would carry the ice in, put it in the top, the top of the icebox opened up, put the ice in and we kids thought it was great to run up to the street and he would chip off ice for us. Can you imagine a child today being tickled over a piece of ice? And, uh, she would keep things in that, and then she canned things to keep. But most usually, with a family of nine, there weren't leftovers. What she would cook, we would eat. So keeping the food really wasn't a problem, and there again, I have to tell you that was my parents. For who, to this very day, I just cannot believe that I was blessed enough to have them.

Q: Where you picky about what you ate?

A: Absolutely not. [Laughs] I mean, food was put on the table, you ate or you went hungry. So you ate. You know, I mean she didn't say, do you want this or that. She fixed a meal and we sat down and ate. And that's another thing, we all ate together. Breakfast, of course my father was working, but we would sit down to breakfast, and we would sit down to lunch together, and we would sit down to what was then supper together. And there was no run in and eat, you came to the table and you ate when the meal was ready.

Q: What was World War II like, and how did you feel about it?

A: Devastated, at that time my brother, my sister's husband and my husband were all in the war. My brother was a tail-gunner on a B-29. My oldest sister's husband was in the Army and he was overseas in the invasion of France and Germany. My next sister's husband was in the Navy on a minesweeper in the South Pacific, which something happened, he knows not what, and he ended up in the hospital, unconscious, in San Diego. My husband, whom I married during the war, was in the Navy, and he was in Alaska, he was on the North Atlantic, on guard on the liberty ships. Then he was in the amphibious that saw the invasion of South Africa. He was under attack two days by German planes. As a matter of fact, he got a presidential citation for shooting down three German planes. Then my youngest sister's husband was in the Marines and he was wounded on Iwo Jima. All this taking part while we were all home, and again, here my parents, my father. Two, three of my sisters had small children and my father says, those boys are out fighting, you all come home, I'll take care of you while they're gone. And so we all went home, of course my brother and his wife lived in New Jersey at the time, so his wife wasn't there, but we four girls were. So two of my brother-in-laws were wounded and ended up in the hospital in San Diego. And of course my brother was stationed on Tenyon, where the Enola Gay took off, and at the time didn't know it was the Enola Gay, and thought perhaps he was on that plane dropping the atomic bomb. And it was just day to day, wondering what was going to happen and who was coming back. I lost friends, who were killed during the war, close friends. So it was a time of…but I do have to say this, I will never in my life again feel that the American people are one, like they were during that war. We stood in line for a pound of wieners, which was hard to get at that time. We had coupons for shoes, you could only get two pair of shoes a year. We had coupons for sugar. To find a can of fruit was impossible, but we didn't complain. We were doing this for our boys in the service. I remember when I was working for the telephone company, one of the mottos then was "A slip of the lip could sink a ship." And you didn't talk about where things that were happening during the war, because there were spies here that would take up anything. So to say, its mixed emotions about what it was, it was a time of trouble, it was a time of working together to get something done and everybody at home did just that. We worked together.

Q: What was the Vietnam War?

A: What was the Vietnam War? You probably know as much about it as I do. The Vietnam War was more or less a mystery- it was a war, it wasn't a war, so we were told. But when your people are shooting at each other, to me that's war. To me it was idiotic. Because they would take as hill, lose life taking that hill, and then they would pull back. Maybe a week or so later, up they would go again, and lose more lives, and pull back. And we actually didn't, as far as I can see, win anything by it, but we lost an awful lot.

Q: Do you think we should have been in that war, or so-called war?

A: Well, of course I'm not a…I'm just an ordinary citizen, so I don't know what's going on behind the scenes in Washington or anywhere else, although I do try to keep up on it. But, should we have been in it? Actually I don't know, but I don't think it was handled correctly. And I just don't think anything was gained, but an awful lot was lost from it. Including respect for the government that was putting these people over there. I just don't think that we gained enough to cover the loss we had. Certainly.

Q: Are there any questions that I should have asked but didn't?

A: Actually I don't know. Is there anything else you want to know, anything I could tell you?

Q: It was your life, you tell us.

A: It was my life? Well I would have to say that certainly I have been blessed. I had good parents that could make a bad situation good. I had good family and we were at that time a family. And now, I realize with four children, ten grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and we're still a close family. And to me, what more could you want? It is like some people, they make a million, and they want another one. What good does it do them? If you have the essentials of life and personally I feel that I've been blessed with those, so I'm happy with it.

Q: Did you ever quarrel with your brothers or sisters?

A: Vaguely, vaguely. We had disagreements. As far as fighting no. And that is how I got the one spanking, that I got. My sister did something and um, I don’t really remember what it was. But anyway, I chased her and she went down through the garden and we knocked down some tomato plants. For that we got a switching. As far as fights go, no we didn’t. I don’t know why, I can’t understand it. Uh, it had to be the way our parents raised us. More than that I can’t tell you, but that’s it.

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