Paul- Paul Smith.

Sheila- If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?

Paul- I’m 74.

Sheila- Who were your parents?

Paul- William and Jesse Smith.

Sheila- How many kids did they have?

Paul- Eleven.

Sheila- Who were your grandparents?

Paul- Steve and Susan Smith.

Sheila- How many kids did they have?

Paul- Steven and Susan had about 6 and my other grandma and grandpa had 8.

Sheila- Where were your parents from?

Paul- I think they were from West Virginia, mom was. I really don’t know, but I think some of them were from down around Bartlett.

Sheila- Where did you grow up?

Paul- Sharpsburg.

Sheila- Did you grow up on a farm or what?

Paul- Just down around Sharpsburg, in Sharpsburg. And part of the time, we lived on a farm because Dad worked for the farmers. That’s the way he made his living for years, working for farmers. Lou…uhh…lets see there was Charlie Elliot and Lou Elliot and Howard Gifford, he worked for down around Sharpsburg and we lived in a tenant house, and he worked by the month, too much a month.

Sheila- Did you have any like chores around the house when you were younger?

Paul- Yeah, whatever there was to do we had to get out and do it, chop wood, in the summer time we had to raise a garden, and bug the beans, and the potatoes. Instead of spraying them back then, they picked the bugs off of them. That’s what we had to do.

Sheila-Where did you go to school at?

Paul- Amesville.

Sheila- What was it like?

Paul- Well, it was…uhh…I was always backwards and kind of strange around by myself as much as I could, because I was always backwards. We had to walk a mile to hail the bus when we went to Amesville, from where we lived to where we caught the bus. I went one year down in Sharpsburg in that little school right down below your house that was right across the road from your house, from your grandfather’s house. It was okay. You didn’t play sports too much; you lived too far out because you had to walk back and forth then to play, because the bus didn’t run to take the kids back and forth home.

Sheila- How many kids did you, like were in your classes, at the time?

Paul- Ohh…back then I don’t remember, but uhh…there’s probably 15 to 20 maybe. Maybe more, they had pretty big classes.

Sheila- Did you go to high school?

Paul- Yes.

Sheila- And did you graduate?

Paul- Yes.

Sheila- How big was your graduating class?

Paul- Ohh…that’s been years ago. 10, 12, 15 probably.

Sheila- Did you have any jobs while you were in school besides just chores at home?

Paul- Yeah. Yep, worked for uhh…Lee Glass on the farm and worked for his dad, Leisha Glass and uhh…dad and me worked in the stone quarry up Joy, up on top of Jot hill. We had to walk from Sharpsburg up there, back and forth to work. We worked 10 hours.

Sheila- Did you get paid much?

Paul- No, when I worked for Leisha I started out at 50 cents a day and then he raised me to 75 cents a day and uhh…when I was working in the stone quarry I don’t know, I don’t remember what we got probably $2 dollars a day maybe. Then after I grew up I got paid more.

Sheila- Uhh…did you like any, uhh…when you was growing up did you have a certain type of religion or did you just go to church?

Paul- Just went to church.

Sheila- Okay, umm, did you like doing that? Was it fun?

Paul- Yes, we had fun doing that. Mom would take us. We would walk back there of course. No one had cars in our neighborhoods, in our class anyway, working people.

Sheila- What did you do after you graduated high school? What kind of jobs did you have?

Paul- I went to work on the farm, down at Leisha’s and umm…worked there a while then the war came along, World War II.  I was working there when they were drafting people and Arthur had started up his mine in the meantime, over there where he was at.   So dad was working for him and I was kind of hoping I would get in there, but I was getting ready to get drafted and so the farmer wanted me to work for him and he could get me deferred if I’d work for him. So I said, "No, I don’t want to do that." I said, "If I get drafted, I’m going into the army." Whatever, you know. So they did call me and I went for my screen test up at Nelsonville, and passed it. And they took it to Clarksburg for a physical and failed it there so I didn’t go to the army after all because I didn’t pass it. I went to work for your grandpa and worked there for 14 and a half years at the tipple. He worked some 40 some men there at one time.

Sheila- What did you do for fun?

Paul- I can hardly tell that on that video. (ha,ha) No, umm…when we was kids we played, well me and my 2 older brothers, we played in the fields up around the paw-paw, there was a lot of paw-paw bushes back then, we’d go back in there and gather up those old green paw-paws and hide up in rocks, then when someone stuck their head up, we’d pow them one, with paw-paws. And then uhh…back when we was kids we had to make our own things to play with. You wouldn’t know what it was, but we had one of those wheels and hoops, we’d run them things. I bet we’d run them thing 50 miles a day just running them things around. Back then you didn’t go out and buy toys; you didn’t go out and buy stuff.

Sheila- Umm…did you ever get married?

Paul- Yes, I got married. I got married when I was 23. We were married for 10 years and one son. My wife passed away. She was 42. Then he had a wreck in ’79, got killed. Then in 1982 I married Betty here.

Sheila- And did you have any kids with Betty?

Paul- No, just grandkids.

Sheila- So how many grandchildren do you have?

Paul- I have 1, and we have, she has 5, and we have 5 together.

Sheila- Umm… how was it like going through the Depression?

Paul- I wasn’t old enough to realize there was a Depression. Betty and me were talking about it the other day. Back then people, when the banks crashed and all the stocks and everything went down hill, we didn’t even know there was a bank. We just worked. My dad worked on the farms and whatever he made it took to live and so really it didn’t hurt us. It just hurt the ones that were rich, the ones that had something. The ones that didn’t have anything just kept right on working.

Sheila- How was it different back then than how it is now?

Paul- Ohh…a lot is different. Back then when you went anywhere you walked. Money was scarce, and you could buy a lot for your money, but it was scarce. Then as I kept getting jobs and wages kept going up it seemed like it was hard to make it because prices was going up too. But it probably evened out about the same, as far as that goes, but last 10 years there was more jobs, more ways to travel and more things to buy.

Sheila- Were peoples' values more different back then?

Paul- Yes, I think they were. Back then I think the law meant more. Back then I think you had more respect for the older people, you had more respect for schoolteachers, and school bus drivers. You had as much respect for school bus drivers as you did for schoolteachers. When they told you to do something, you did it. They were just the same as teachers to us. And the law, if you got stopped for anything by the law, it would just scare you to death. Today, now if kids get something like that, it doesn’t bother them, it’s just another day in their life for them.

Sheila- Did you ever get punished for anything when you were younger?

Paul- Yes! In school, about everyday it seemed like I got stood in the corner.

Sheila- What kind of things did you do that was wrong?

Paul- Really, really, I’m going to tell you the truth. Somebody else would be doing something and I’d be the one that got caught because I was always the one making the noise laughing. I was always the one that had to stand in the corner. And Louise, my twin sister, she uhh… was of course was in the same class and she knew, everyday that everyday, just about everyday that I would get punished for something. All the time she was telling me, before we went to school, "Please behave today." She said she hated to see me get stood up in front of the class and everything, of course maybe that same day, there I go again. Just little things, just…

Sheila- Did you ever get punished at home for things?

Paul- We didn’t get punished too much because when dad told us to do something, we done it. Now mom, if dad wasn’t there, if she told us to do something it just seemed like we didn’t notice what she said. If she said when dad comes home she’ll tell him, we’d do whatever she said. But when he told us to something we done it because we knew we’d get the belt and he was a good father and she was a good mother.

Sheila- Okay…umm…is there anything I should have asked you but I didn’t?

Paul- Well, I don’t know, there was 6 boys in our family and 5 girls. We always had an uncle, mom’s brother; he stayed with us most of the time. We lived in a small like house. We slept on the floor and the beds back then just dragged out and lays on the floor, 3 and 4 to a bed when we was little. Some of us slept head one way and others slept with their heads the other way, heads at the foot of the bed.

Sheila- Did you have any pets or anything when you were growing up?

Paul- Well, just a dog. It always seemed like we had a dog around, but nothing that was real, just something that would come there and then would leave. That was the only time we had a pet when we were growing up.

Sheila- Were you born in a hospital or at home?

Paul- I was born at home. Me and Louise, Louise was born 4 hours before I was and uhh… they said we weighed a pound and a half a piece about and uhh…they didn’t think we was going to make it and uhh…mom, she gave up on us about and dad’s mom, my grandmother, she came there to help take care of us and uhh…they got a shoe box. Them old wood cook stoves back then, they had ovens on them and things and they got this shoe box and they said they put us back in there and she’d hold us back in there on her knee kind of. Put us back in there and hold us then feed us oats water and uhh…kept us a going until uhh…we got grown up and now I’m about 6 ft. 2. We got a picture of us when we were babies, Louise and I; we looked like little rats.

Sheila- Did you have electricity when you were growing up?

Paul- In our hair! (Ha, ha) No, we didn’t have electricity. I don’t think until I got married and uhh…moved here. It was 2 years, I think before electricity had come through here. We had oil lamps and then when we moved over on Frank Elliot.  One time we had gas lights and then we got those gas lights they’d almost blind you after using them oil lights.

Sheila- Was it hard living without electricity?

Paul- No, because you didn’t know, you really, really, didn’t know, nobody around had it for years see, and so you just wasn’t used to it because you had gas lights.

Sheila- Umm…how was technology different now than it was back then?

Paul- Well, back then everything was done by hand and uhh…you made your own technology, you had, if you was going to shovel you’d get out there and shovel by hand, now everything is done by some kind of machinery, it’s just altogether different.

Sheila- I guess that’s it, so thank you for letting us interview you.