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Roger Bissell II Age: Unknown Occupation: Carpenter Hometown: Eagle Ridge, Meigs County Interviewer: Stefani Welsh |
| What was Roger's first car? |   |
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TRANSCRIPT
Q: What jobs did you have to do when you were younger?
A: I had to help milk the cows, feed the livestock, grow corn - every young boy likes to do that, and cut wood. I helped my father, when my father wasn't working, we would cut mine basins, so he would take us to the woods and we'd all help cut mine basins out of the coal mines, to make a living while he was laid off. He was a carpenter and worked construction.
Q: When did you live at first?
A: I was raised not far from here, Meigs County, rural area. Meigs County, Ohio in a place called Eagle Ridge.
Q: What kind of special events happened around here?
A: I don't know, depends on what counts as a special event. Once, I was a year old, and we had the old cook-stoves that used coal and wood. I learned to walk when I was eight months old, and a couple months later I was climbing up on a chair in front of that stove and I fell forward. That's what these scars are about. That's one event, it's not a happy event. I don't remember that, I just have known the scars since. I suppose Christmas time, and those special occasions. Then we got gifts once a year at Christmas time. We didn't get many toys. We were more innovative, I think, we made our toys. We had a big tree and the dirt under it, I remember playing there and taking red clay and shaping it and making a little truck and a little tractor, and we'd make a barn and so on, and little raids.
Q: What was it like in the war, in the Army?
A: It was okay for the Army. I went in the Army three years. I went in the Army and I failed my test on that hand, so they sent me through another recruiting place and they didn't even look at it. I went airborne in the one hundred and first airborne division. I made seventeen jumps from airplanes. I got through it and was discharged with three years service. It was different than today, there were no women mixed with the men.
*Q: What was your first automobile?
A: 49 Chevrolet. Got a 49 Chevrolet with the motor burnt-out and we bought it for $75.00, and I bought a 48 Chevrolet with a good engine in it for $40.00. We took the engine out of the 48 and put it in the 49. I thought I was really something with that 49 Chevrolet.
Q: Do you have a TV when you were younger?
A: TV? We didn't have TV. They started getting TVs when I was teenager. My grandparents had TV and a lot of our neighbors had TVs but my mother didn't believe in having a TV in the house. We were religious people and the preachers preached against the evil of it. But later we knew it's not that way at all. It all depends on what you watch. Today it brings back memories though, turns out they were right. Not a lot of TV programming suits me.
Q: Do you remember where you went to school?
A: Yes, I went to Chester, Ohio right down the road here about two miles….I went eleven years there. They had all twelve grades in the same school. I went eleven years and decided I was too smart for the twelfth year. I went into the service and got a GED. Later, I completed three years of college. I've never finished, I'd like to have the Bachelor's. I was leaning towards history the last year - the last quarter I was in school.
Q: What was it like in school? Did you have any punishments or certain things you had to do?
A: Of course we had to behave, the teacher was in charge and teachers had the liberty to spank as was needed. My first teacher in first and second grade was a nice teacher, Mrs. Barn. She's still living. She'd read us stories and was very nice. I don't recall she was spanking any body, she may have. She slapped me once, because I was in second grade and my younger sister was in first grade and we were in the same room. I don't know why I did it, we were getting our coats and getting ready to go home, and she irritated me some way, so I gave her a slap. Of course, she started crying, so Mrs. Barn, she gave me a slap. (Laughs)
Q: How long were the school days?
A: Too long, of course. I believe we started maybe 8.00 in the morning until 3.00 in the afternoon. I just forget.
Q: Did you have any particular role models during your school years?
A: I can't think of any, maybe superman. We didn't have so much of that then.
Q: When you got older, like in the college, did you ever go any special parties?
A: No, but I went one graduation party.
Q: How would you say the schools are different from back then?
A: I suppose in a lot of ways they're not a whole lot different. Of course, you have the computerization. Teachers graded the papers by hand, maybe they still do. Sometimes they would pass the test out and everyone graded somebody else's paper.
Q: Did you have to wear uniforms?
A: No, not in our school, it was independent. Wasn't a parish's school or anything like that.
Q: Did you have any class bullies?
A: Oh, there's usually one around, probably a couple. There was always a kid that had been a little pushy maybe.
Q: You quit school for a year, then you got your GED. What kind of job did you have?
A: Well, it started out I was going to be a carpenter, like my father was a carpenter. You wasn't as oriented on going to college in those days. As you are now. It wasn't as necessary. You need it today because there are jobs, fields, you need some schooling other than your high school. I was going to be a carpenter like my dad. Growing up we learned to work, so already I was pretty handy in a lot of different things. I was ready for a job. Ready to take off. I was raised on a farm and we done a lot of different things there. My dad was a carpenter and I worked with him. You could go off to Columbus - a big city, 100 miles away and you could get a job. If you was a good worker you'd get the job. If you wasn't you didn't get to stay. My father saw to it that we were good workers.
Q: Do you remember anything you got in trouble for at home?
A: Probably fighting with my one brother Delbert the most. He was the brother next to me. I got in trouble for that.
Q: Would you say the house rules back then were the same as they are now?
A: I don't know, I guess families vary today. My father and mother, their authority was more absolute than it is today. They were fair with us. If they asked you to do something and you'd do it that was fine, but you wound up doing it. You were forced. They were more absolute in the authority. They didn't bargain with us.
Q: Do you think that kids now get away with more stuff that what you did?
A: Yes, I think so. A lot of times, and I don't think its for the best. There's a lot of compromising and parents bring the children up on their level. You're not the same level, parent and child. There should be a distinction there, 'cause that child is lookin' to you for guidance and learning. There's depths to it, and you can go too far. I wouldn't be as absolute in authority today, with children, as some old timers would.
Q: What were the clothes like?
A: The best we could get to wear. They made clothes last longer. If there was a good coat you were outgrowing, the next younger one would get it. If it needed altered, they did a lot more of their own sewing and so forth. My mother sewed. There were thirteen kids in our family, so maybe you can catch on why they had to have pretty good authority, pretty good control over the household.
Q: Would you call your brothers and sisters kind of a pest when they bothered you?
A: Oh, not too bad. A lot of times we'd go with cousins and their friends, we'd go for walks in the woods and play, different things like that. Sometimes, maybe a couple of the older boys would sneak off from the younger ones, and play a little trick on them. Make them think they were lost. I remember once, we put a pole over on a rock. We jumped up and got on this big square rock, it was a lot of fun up there and a couple of the younger brothers wanted up there. We didn't resent them coming along at that particular time, so we got down and let them climb up on the rock. Then we took the pole down and pretended to leave and not come back. I thought that was pretty ornery of us. Nobody got hurt.
Q: Would you say that families are closer now than what they used to be?
A: I don't know. Some is close, maybe closer; others may be further apart. In my own family, my children don't visit me as much as I visited my parents. I used to love to go to my grandparents, and we would go quite often. My grandchildren come to see me, they did pretty good, but they could come to see me more than they do.
Q: What kind of stories did you like to read?
A: I liked Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Black Beauty,????, all those, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, The Jim Thorpe Story. We had a library at the school and in study hall, instead of doing homework I would go back and get a book and read it.
Q: Moving on to when you were older, how old were you allowed to be when you got married?
A: The young man, he had to be twenty-one years old to get married. I was twenty-two the first time I got married, and too young. A girl could marry at 18; this was in the 50's and 60's. I have my grandfather Singer's marriage license, a copy of it, and he was like 21, and she was 17, not quite 18. It has were consent had to be signed, and their parents marked their X, and then someone that could write signatured it. It said…"and being of no closer relation than second cousin." I believe you weren't allowed to marry if you were closer than second cousins. Second cousins could marry. Those are some of the things I found in family research.
Q: Why don't you tell me about that family history research?
A: I don’t know. The second volume of the Meigs County History, they asked a few people to write articles about their family history, so I wrote a few articles. Before that I did some research on family history, I was interested in those things. Where we came from and so on, and you just start getting information from the immediate family, especially the older ones. There's things I wished I'd been interested in younger. There's questions I'd like to ask my grandparents that I didn't. That you might do a lot of searching before you find. Most of documents in the courthouse, museums, library, they got a lot of information. I found the book on the Bissells about the east wing in Connecticut. They had a family history on the Bissell's back to my great, great, great grandfather, who came to Meigs County in 1818. So I just had to fill in a little bit there. And the Spencer's, there was a Spencer, I may have it here somewhere, a journal, Spencer Genealogical and Historical Society. There are a lot of information there in those books, on those sides of the family. They go back, the Spencer's to…comes from the word dispenser. The first one we know is dispenser to William the Conqueror.
That's where the name Spencer comes from, so lady Diana was a very, very distance cousin. On my mother's side, the Singer's, the Dean's, there is another family history that is pretty good on the Deans. The Singer, it was harder because my grandmother was his second wife. But on that family, I took the female side back further than the males.
Q: Would you call family history important?
A: Yes, I think so. There are something to do with family ties also. I believe in the family union. Blood is thicker than water. It's good to be close in a family. You can have friends that are close too but still not related. Something about a family, when it comes down to it, be there and support you if you needed it. It's family that you could draw from and you have so many things in common, sharing that history. Today they find out through genetics and all these studies that there's links to diseases and stuff can be helpful. So good knowledge of your background and sicknesses they had can be helpful.
Q: Is there anything you'd like to add to that?
A: I guess not.
Q: Anything like closing thoughts, maybe she forgot to ask, but you just like to say?
A: I could say hundreds of things I supposed to but I can't think of it right now. I think family is important. A little knowledge of history is important. Getting along well with others, good attitude, sometimes called myself a slow learner. It's important to realize this young, thinking of the other person is beneficial to you too. A lot of things just take time to learn, and experiences, still some people seem to become aware of this younger. Sometimes I make a statement "I know some things this year I didn't know last year, and next year I probably know some things I didn't know this year."