Robert Burdette Age: 82 Occupation: Farmer Hometown: Pomeroy Interviewer: Beverly Burdette

        How did you ship the apples?

Interview

We are here today with Robert Burdette.

Q: Would you tell the camera when you were born?

A: October 25, 1915.

Q: What was it like growing up on the farm?

A: Well, it was a lot of hard work and we had time off to go swimming and this and that, enjoy the farm life.

Q: What was it like working in the orchard?

A: Well, it was, we had to have picking bags with ample, ladders, and picking all the fruits by hand and we had a lot of the cherries for use to pick cherries of the cherry trees we had we had several hundred crates of cherries a year and a lot of the school kids picked cherries and a sack and a half and it took four quarts to make a crate and some of the children would make a dollar and a quarter a day sometimes picking cherries and of coarse we had calves and take them to the market just general farm fruit and livestock.

Q: Were there any specific chores you had to do when you were little?

A: Oh yea! Oh, I had to help with the milk and milk some cows and mostly beef cow and one milk cow and there was always something to do on the farm you know that too you had to do that seven days a week, we kept at it, kept paying our taxes and working on the farm and it was an enjoyable life.

Q: What all was grown besides the apple trees?

A: Well we had different varieties of apples so at one time we had twenty different varieties of apples on the hill. We started out with the Early Transparent and in June and July we had the Wealthy and the Maiden Blush and Mid Summer apples and you got to the Primes Golden, Jonathan in the first of September and it went on into the fall apples and then the different red delicious, and then your beauties, you had so many varieties that I can’t recall. Some, they don’t have any more, most of all, the apples are just different brands of apples now they are different we but we averaged over a period of a year, we had about 10,000 bushels a year. And we had two big crops of 35 and 47 but we averaged about 10,000 bushels of apples for a number of years.

Q: Where all did you ship to?

A: Well, we hauled them into Columbus and Cincinnati and Pittsburgh of course we only started out in the early years they put them in barrels and they got the barrels in Pomeroy back in the Salt Works there when they made them for salt. We would put about ¾ of the apples in and we would take them by horse and wagon to the river and put them on the steamer and they would go to Cincinnati and Pittsburgh in barrels and of course we had and along in them years we went to bushel baskets. And when we went to bushel baskets, could have them come into the old depot, where McDonalds is now. There was a big depot there and we moved our apples there and then they were shipped to Chicago and to school lunch program and shipped them everywhere, Charleston to Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Columbus and that’s the way we hauled them.

Q: What was school like when you were growing up?

A: Well, it was a little bit different, we went to Laurel Cliff School down there in grade school and we played games there with cans like hockey or golf and baseball we beat the cans around the field and everyone on teams and we would go out and play on play ground time. But, it was all around different, but some of us went up until our eight grade year there and then we went on to Pomeroy High School, the Senior High. I used to walk over to the back house into Pomeroy to school which for a while, each day, each way eight miles a day. I started at daylight to get to town and back at dark an going to high school. But, school was getting books and learning We had a pretty good school, probably, Back them.

Q: What subjects did you study?

A: Well, we had math, reading, writing, the general subjects the most time. And when we got to high school, we had some Latin and geography and general things you have in school.

Q: Where there any teachers you didn’t like?

A: No, not particularly. I got along with most of them. I had on teacher that did not like for us to look up off of our books, and I couldn’t help looking up once in a while and she stood us up in the corner in front of a round stove and me and a couple girls up there and it got pretty hot and the girls got sick but, she just didn’t want everybody to look at their books at all times.

Q: What was the punishment for misbehaving?

A: You had to stay in at recess and you had to sit there and study. Some of the boys that misbehaved some, the teacher would send another out to cut a little switch out a tree, and we would get a little tanning from that. But, everything worked out alright.

Q: Did you play a lot of baseball when you were young?

A: I think we used to play baseball some at school on the high school team and they had quite a few ball games there.

Q: Where was a good place to can of coke or a bottle back then?

A: Well, they had a little store down across from the Bradshaw store right down on the corner , where you turn up to go up the hill about a quarter mile down there by the little store and they sold some products there and had bread pop and stuff like that they sell not very much things like that at the store, it was the Bradshaw General Store. There wasn’t very many stores around in that area then. They’ve been gone for a few years now, they tore it down four or five years ago the senior high and then back in the late 20’s or the early 30’s they built this high school in Pomeroy and I graduated there in 1933.

Q: Are there any of your classmates still living?

A: Well, I don’t know exactly, there was 80 of us in that graduation class of 1933 and one Sunday, we all graduated and one of then quit about mid term and went to work over in Charleston got a job there and didn’t finish. But, the last I knew of, there was 35 or so still living. And that is quite a lot, under half of them. Most of them should be in their 80’s now.

Q: How did the farm do during the depression?

A: Well, it is kind of hard getting along making the expenses made, but we got along, we sold apples as low as 15 cents a bushel but, it is much different than it is know.

Q: What was your first vehicle?

A: Well, lets see. We had an old model T Ford truck, that’s what he had, it was gonna be mine, but it was his and we use to have a little farm down in Cheshire, it wasn’t mine but it was his, and we drove the cattle up the back roads to the farm and Papa put me in the back to watch the cattle and see if they followed the cows down in back of the hill, our Bulldog followed and we moved them that way on the back roads of the farm.

Q: What did you think when you got your first T.V.?

A: Well, it was kind of different , we had one of the first ones in the area ‘49’ apparently, we always had a house full of people at night they would come up and we were all tired and Mom was tired from working in a auction and the neighbors would watch TV programs that had wrestling and movies. We didn’t see to much of them cause we had a house full of people at most times and we had a little, I think it was a seventeen inch one we had at the house. Always somebody at night wanting to watch TV cause they didn’t have to many around that time.

Q: When you did get to watch TV, what was your favorite show?

A: Well, mostly I was absent and I did not get to watch very much because I was at my baseball games. I liked my baseball.

Q: Who was your favorite team?

A: Well, let me see, Cincinnati Reds was the team we always went down to see.

Q: What was the flood of 37 like?

A: Well, it was a terrible thing to have and we didn’t have that place down in Cheshire. The river was about 2 miles wide down there. And in Pomeroy it was up to the street light on court street where it comes out on about the sixth step or so on the court house. And a lot of houses. We helped move people and help get them out of the water and it came up and started to come up middle of December and it lasted for about 30 days before it began to go down. That is a long period of time and it got into the middle of January and the whole town was full of mud and dirt from the river and it was just an awful mess to clean up. We helped the people to clean up.

Q: How did you get across the river when the bridge wasn’t built?

A: Well, back in the early days we crossing the river they had a fairy boat, Captain Jividen. They ferried people across the river and several cars at a time 10 or 12 and people went across that way before the bridge was built. I think the bridge was built in the 20’s or 30’s or sometime. We even took some cattle across the fairy a time or to. It was a good size boat you could take we had as many as 40 head of cattle on it at one time. Then they got them off and walked them down to the 4-H farm. I remember in 1936 the river froze over, we walked the river then. Some body drove a vehicle across it to at that time. The ice would crack and make noises when we walked it. We walked the river and swam the river in the summer times.

Q: How did the farm affect the rest of the area?

A: Well it helped people the people who were out of work and they used a lot of apples and cherries. We had peaches of course they used all of them. It helped them when we shipped out apples. People would take 10 to 12 bushels and sell them at stores different sections of the area. It helped the community a lot by farms giving people work. They didn’t make much money.

Q: Back in the 20s and 30s did the doctor--did you go see the doctor or did the doctor come and see you?

A: No we generally had the doctor come to us. And we had Dr. Daniels and different doctors. Sometimes if you was able you got to but sometimes they would make calls too, they did both. Then, you didn’t have no hospital but the one Holzer’s down, uh, it was downtown in Gallipolis in the early days. Sometimes we would go down there too. Like we do now, downtown down there now.

Q: How did you court Grandma?

A: Court Grandma? Well we had an old farm and she worked down there at that Millie’s store down by the creek and its back down there by that mailbox on down the road there, she worked at that store and kept house for Millie Jacobs at the time. My mother had an old car that I drove a lot and sometimes we would take the truck and she go with me and we went different things, picnics, or whatever went on over the years. We went together for two years or a little longer then we got married in November 21, 1942, so that’s been a while. Time has moved along.

Q: Where did you get a hair cut back then?

A: Well, we had barbers in town and hair dressers. Pa started started cutting hair a long time ago. He a relation to Nicki. I don’t know about know but he had a barber shop and they had, I can’t think of the first one. In the early years they had a hose hoe place there on Second St. They had stables and then they had horses in town hooked up to the rail. Things like that, you don’t see any more. Things are different. We get along.

Q: How much is Pomeroy changed since then?

A: well, I don’t know. They was at different times a lot more people in Pomeroy then there is now, and stores. But it has kinda leveled out in descent stores know. But this was a pretty busy place especially on Saturday nights. There was a lot of people in town buying stuff for the week ahead.

Q: Is there anything you really miss from the old Pomeroy?

A: No, I enjoyed it . Mentally it’s a lot. But I hope to see things get better and getting more stores and selling stuff in the future.

Q: Is there anything that I should have asked you?

A: No, we got along pretty well, I can’t think of anything, it was a farm life and we worked hard and handled a lot of apples through the years and sold cattle. That was the main thing on the farm was the apples, a lot of farms raise corn and feed for the livestock, we raised the apples and sold the apples and bought corn, it’s just a different situation from the average farm that raised their own feed. I’d trade apples for corn or traded for money. It was a different kind of farming. At one time they did raise corn up on the hill, but it was too damp. It was a good combination to get feed for your cattle.

Q: How did WWII change Pomeroy?

A: Well, a lot of the boys had to go to service and take their exams and make more business for some but it made a lot of people leave the area, we lost several, I don’t know if it changed it a lot.

Q: Did a lot of people have to go?

A: Well, quite a few. They sent me to the farm to raise grapefruit and beans and they sent some boys to do all different things.

Q: So, you were needed at the farm?

A: That’s what they claim, I tried to go but they wouldn’t take me. When they brought it up and said that you go back and keep producing fruit .

Q: Well, I think that’s all. Think you.

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