American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project,
1936-1940
Item 19 of 140
[Lula Demry]
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Approximately 4,040 Words
SOUTH CAROLINA WRITERS' PROJECT
Life History
TITLE: LULA DEMRY
Date of First Writing March 7, 1939
Name of Person Interviewed Mrs. Carrie Godbold
Fictitious Name Lula Demry
Address Marion , S.C.
Place Marion County
Occupation Housework and Nurse
Name of Writer Annie Ruth Davis
{Begin handwritten} [?]. 10. S. C. Box, 2. {End
handwritten}
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Project #3613
Annie Ruth Davis
Marion , S.C.
March 7, 1939 LULA DEMRY
(White) MARION SOUTH CAROLINA
Lula Demry was born seventy-eight years ago in the Wahoo section of Marion
County. Her father was a prosperous farmer and in her young days, she knew
neither work nor poverty. Though she worked hard during her married life, she
always had a plenty, but was left a poor widow at the death of her husband
twenty years ago. Since then, she has been able to support herself mainly by
pick-up jobs of nursing now and then. At the present time, too feeble to earn
her living any longer, she is living with her daughter, Maggie Wallace, in the
town of Marion . Maggie, also a dependent widow, works at the W.P.A. Sewing Room
and manages to provide the necessities of life for a family of six in this way.
Feeling the need of helping Maggie in some may, Lula forces herself to attend to
the few house-hold duties and prepare the noonday meal for the family on the
days that Maggie must be off at work. Lula receives an old age pension from the
government, the greater part of which she uses to buy milk and medicine for
herself.
On this blusterous, rainy February morning, it was with unusual hesitancy that
one ventured up the slight hill to the home of Maggie Wallace, which stands
within
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calling distance of Catfish Swamp. The visit was being made in the hope of
securing a life story of Lula Demry, told in her own words, and it was feared
that Lula might be too busy with her household duties to devote a full morning
of her time to talking with an outsider. But on knocking at the door, one was
met by Maggie Wallace herself, who invited her guest into their living room in
her own friendly manner. She explained that this was one of her off days from
the sewing room, which relieved her mother of all household duties for the day.
Then she called to Lula Demry to step to the front of the house that someone
wanted to see her.
In a few moments, stooped and holding her hip as if in pain, Lula Demry bobbled
into the scantily furnished room, dressed in a faded gray and black bathrobe.
She was a tall, thin woman, her skin sallow and badly wrinkled, while her few
strands of straight brown hair were screwed in a tiny knot on the tiptop of her
head. But in her dark brown eyes, there gleamed an expression of intense
interest in life.
"Good morning, child. Well, I never would've known you on this earth, you've
changed up so much of a late. Why, I ain't getting along none the best these
days. I've this here high blood, trouble with my kidneys, and the old malaria
fever - have just about gone to pieces all over. Can't hear, see, nor smell
nothing. Oh, Lord, I'm in a awful fix. Can't go to see my neighbors and I want
to go so bad.
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"I've had the toughest time lately I've ever had in my life. I ain't been able
to work none in two years and I feel like I'm more of a burden than a help
laying off on my daughter, Maggie, here. Cose if it wasn't for me, I don't know
what she'd do 'cause she's obliged to try to keep on that job to the sewing room
to run the family. There's six head of us here to be took care of and ain't a
one bringing in nothing but Maggie. Yes, that sewing room pay check's every
Lord's thing Maggie has to go on, but what few dollars her brother-in-law hands
her now and then. Don't see how she manages good as she does, but she squeeses
along and does on the bare necessities - works regular sick or well. You see,
she has to buy wood, coal, rations, garments, and pay for lights, water and
taxes. Then she's paying so much a month to buy this house and lot, too. Yes,
all them things have to come out of her little dab of money.
"Maggie's next to the foreman at the sewing room, but she don't get much at
that. Think her pay check touches somewhere in the neighborhood of forty dollars
a month. She looks after the patterns, machines, and keeps account of everything
that's used. She's so tired at night, she can't hardly go from racing up and
down them steps to the sewing room all day long. But Maggie gets along mighty
well with them women to the sewing room. Cose she has a little trouble with a
few sometimes, but don't none of them stay out of humor long to a time - 'fraid
she'll report them.
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"I think Maggie's done mighty well with all she's got on her. Sissy and Johnny,
Maggie's two babies, they's still going to school and there's a time here to try
to keep them appearing like other children. Maggie's all the time tearing up and
making Sissy a new dress out of old clothes people hand down to the child. And
Johnny, he picks up little jobs on Saturdays and Sundays at a garage to get
enough to buy him some clothes.
"C.R. and his wife live here, too, but they ain't costing Maggie nothing. That's
Maggie's oldest living boy and he makes a good living on painting jobs. They've
got one child and they do their own housekeeping to theyself in that back room
on the other side of the house.
"Then Happy, Maggie's next boy, he went off and got married Christmas day and
they come right here to live. We was sho' put out 'bout it, too, for Happy's
just nineteen and ain't healthy neither. We've got them nearly everyone on us
here and there's not but five rooms in all this old hollow house. We ain't got
but one bedroom for the four of us 'cause we had to give Johnny's room to Happy
and his wife. This here, it's the company room and we cook and eat in the
kitchen. Under the house is all packed up with things we had to move out, so
C.R. and his wife could have room to put their belongin's. Maggie was talking
the other day that she would have to buy a day bed somehow, if some of them
don't soon move out. But they ain't go move out long as Maggie don't charge them
no rent - says she couldn't do her children that way.
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I'll tell you, if I had a little more pension, I'd get me some rooms and go to
myself.
"But I ain't none but started to tell you the worryation Happy's brought on us.
Why, he ain't not only gone and got hitched up to a wife, but he's not got a
piece of job neither. He was made manager of Rogers' grocery store in another
town and just 'cause he got insulted with the company, he quit and come home.
Wasn't nothing dishonest 'bout what he done, but just bought too much groceries
to have on hand one time. Well, the head man put him down to second place and
he's the kind that's so carefree and rattlebrain, he quit. So he ain't had
nothing to do but pick-up jobs since fall. The manager of Rogers' store here in
Marion wants to try and get him back on the job, but Happy ain't stuck on
working for Rogers no more. Says you have to be on your p's and q's too much -
don't never keep a clerk long.
"Yes, Maggie, she has enough to break her heart with all the trouble her
children give her. There's her daughter, Emma, she's afflicted - can't hear nor
talk plain neither. Yes, she come into the world that way. Emma was here the
other day and she just cried 'cause she can't learn her little boy his lessons.
She tries to learn him, but she don't call the words plain and the child's
little and don't know no better, he {Begin deleted text} learn {End deleted
text} {Begin inserted text} learns/ {End inserted text} them just like he hears
Emma talk. The teacher, not knowing the fix his mamma's in, didn't understand
him and thought he couldn't learn. But somebody told the teacher what ailed him
and she holds more patience
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with him now. The child's proud to learn his lessons right, too, I'll tell you.
Cose his father tries to help him some, but he runs a filling station and that's
a working job. He's a poor boy, but God knows he's good to Emma.
"This here house and lot ain't nothing but a eating sore in Maggie's pocket all
the time. You see, it belongs to the government in a way 'cause that's how she
got the money to buy it - borrowed it from the government. She bought the house
and lot both for something like two thousand dollars, but she's paying for it
little by little. Just one payment cost her $18.50 and that comes every month,
but she ain't never missed no time yet. Cose it ain't no big place - just this
house along with a garden spot and a chicken yard on the back. Still, it's
better than renting and not having nothing to show for it in the end.
"Yes, my Lord, we've sho' been up against many a rough day in the last few
years. Honey, I'm just all wore out. My will's good, but my strength ain't half.
I worked hard many a day before I got sick down. Now, I ain't got no income
'cept that nine dollars pension money the government sends me every month. Cose
that's a help to buy what milk and medicine I need. But hold on there, the
government gives me nine dollars and a few cents over, but I never know - Maggie
uses all the little extra over nine dollars.
"I get them little things called commodities from the government, too, once a
month, but there ain't nothing
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enticing 'bout them. They need me dried things, such as, beans, fruit, milk, and
raisins. And they give me some flour, but no tea, coffee, nor sugar, and we have
to buy lard, salt, and baking powder to go in the flour. Oh, yes, they give me
some butter once or twice and they send this dry milk right regular. They send
me three sacks of milk a month and there's always two messes to a sack. But talk
about this dry milk, I'm right for it. It makes the nicest kind of muffins and
biscuit - just sift it in right along with the flour and mix up the bread with
cold water. Cose I have to buy cow's milk for myself to drink every day, 'cause
my blood goes so high, I just stagger. And it's medicine, medicine, medicine,
all the time.
"But I want to tell you, I've seen a better day, my child. I was born and raised
down on the island in Wahoo Neck Township and I didn't know what work nor worry
was in my young days. My father owned three hundred acres of fertile farming
land along with plenty of fine timber and we made everything we wanted on that
land. Yes, my Lord, we made everything we had to eat in those days but sugar and
white flour. Cose we raised our own wheat and had plenty graham flour - even
raised our own rice then. Oh, we had everything you could wish for in my young
days. Pa didn't think nothing of killing thirty hogs a year to use on the farm
and we had every kind of poultry 'tis in this country from pigeons down to
turkeys and geese. That was a unselfish time, I'll tell you. Pa never sold
nobody nothing in his life, but he'd give it to you. Said the Lord
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give it to him and he'd give it to somebody else.
"Yes, my faith, in my childhood days, we'd eat meat and now it's bread. No, we
don't pretend to have meat but once a day now. People these days say don't eat
much meat, but pa taught us to eat more meat than bread. When we used to cook
vegetables, we didn't think they was fit to eat unless the grease was laying on
the top of them thick as that first joint of my finger. And we wasn't none the
worse off for it neither. I remember, it wasn't no rarity to cook a whole ham
and a shoulder to one pot in them days and have sausage to last all summer. Cose
a heap of our lard went in the making of the soap 'cause it had the sausage
taste sometimes. But Lord have mercy, meat sold for five cents a pound in those
days. If them old people could come home now and see how people's living, they
wouldn't know where to start. Didn't live out of paper bags in olden times;
lived out of barns, smokehouses, and had plenty of cows and chickens. If folks
lived that way now, they'd be better off,- but no, they,ve got to live out of
paper bags.
"Still, I've not known what it is to have to buy meat many years. I had as much
meat accordingly in my married life as before. I raised hogs here and had a milk
cow, too, up till two years ago. But I got to where I couldn't tote slops a
quarter of a mile down to Catfish Swamp and the town don't allow no hogs and
cows kept closer than that to town nowadays. Then I got to the place I wasn't
able to tend my cow neither and don't want no cow I ain't able to tend. Ain't
never
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milked a poor cow in all my life. Another thing, we always had a plenty of
chickens, but I can't raise many of them here. I've got a few shut up out there,
but no more'n nineteen and three of them's roosters. We just ain't able to feed
so many. We have to pay fifty cents for a bushel bag of feed every month to feed
them few chickens on and don't get but four to six eggs a day. We had to cut
their wings to keep them off that man's crop over there and that's against their
laying. Ain't nobody's chickens shut up but ours for there's a man in all these
other houses 'bout here. Lord knows, people take advantage of poor women every
chance they get.
"Like I was speaking to you awhile ago, people eat more bread these days then
meat - eat little old sandwiches and such as that mostly. We use a right smart
of light bread here to the house 'cause we buy our bread right cheap to the
bakery shop. Get the bread that's a little too brown on the top to sell good in
the stores and they let people that ain't particular have it for little or
nothing. Then a cousin of Happy's wife works for the bakery in Florence and when
he comes through here on his way to Myrtle Beach, he brings us the finest kind
of doughnuts. Cose they's some that's stayed in the stores to long to sell, but
they ain't hurt and we's sho' glad to get them. Me and Maggie always get along
with a little bread and coffee for breakfast, but we try to give the children a
egg apiece of a morning to keep their minds sharp.
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"Maggie wants to try and keep the children in shape so they'll keep up in their
school work. If Maggie hadn't gone through public school, she couldn't be next
to the foreman of the sewing room now. And I'll tell you, I'm proud I've got
some education but going to school in my young days was another thing from what
it is now. We didn't have but two and three months of public school running, but
pa always hired a extra teacher to teach we children the year over. I used to
have to walk four miles to school through the woods by myself, but Pa's two big
dogs went along with me and I toted a pistol, too. You see, I was 'fraid of
stray people and wild animals, but I never did have no attack. I come mighty
near it one time though. Ma and me was coming home from visiting in the buggy
one evening 'bout sundown and we got the scare of our lives. We looked up and a
Nigger was making right for us. Well, I put the whip to the horse and we come
home, I'll tell you. That same Nigger 'tacked a man on horseback that night.
He'd been seen lying out in the woods by a good many people and some thought he
was a run-away convict.
"No, I've not got a foot of land to plant nowhere. Mrs. Miles, she give me 'bout
a acre of land back there next Catfish to plant up till I got so I couldn't tend
it two years ago. It wasn't much good and was lying out idle, so she told me to
use it if I could. I just planted a little beans, peas, and mutton corn out
there - never did have no corn to gather more'n a bushel to feed my chickens on.
Yes, every lick of
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work that was put on that garden come by my two hands. Why, I've cut many a
hundred sticks from Catfish Swamp and toted them a quarter of a mile on my back
to stick beans, but I'm not able to do that nowadays.
"I got married when I was twenty years old and I've been working hard ever
since. My husband was a farmer, but didn't own his own farm and had to work hard
to make expenses. He always rented the farm we lived on and paid the rent in so
much cotton. No, child, I never did have no curiosity 'bout none of my husband's
business - don't know how much rent was costing him. But cotton wasn't bringing
but four and five cents a pound at that time and it took near'bout half the crop
to pay the rent. My husband didn't want me to work in the field, but I was
restless to help him and then I was lonesome out in the country. I didn't have
but two children and I kept a nurse, so I went in the field to keep the hoe
hands busy to start with. Then I got to picking cotton and hoeing right along
with the Niggers. I was {Begin deleted text} might {End deleted text} {Begin
inserted text} mighty/ {End inserted text} slow, but one old Nigger man was so
fast, he'd hoe his row out and turn back and hoe mine out in time to keep it
going with the others.
"Cose we had a plenty all our married life, but I worked hard many a day to make
a little extra. I helped on the farm in the daytime and scoured my house at
night. We didn't have but two rooms and we'd cook and eat in one room, while we
all slept and sat in the other. That sleeping room, I scoured it regular to keep
it clean looking for company.
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"When my husband was fifty-eight years old, he decided to give up farming and
took up carpenter's work. He had that work by the job and I couldn't hardly tell
what he made on it, but it was a good living. But I wasn't satisfied not to be
bringing in nothing, so I got the job over at the lumber mill camps to Laughlin
to keep the kitchen for the mill hands. I'd get up way before day and fix
rations for all them people. Would fix breakfast and dinner in buckets for the
Niggers and had 'bout eight white men to feed in the dining room. I'd fix down a
trough and let the Niggers hunt their own buckets on the outside. They'd eat by
daylight and by sunrise, they'd all be gone. I'll tell you, I fed them, too,
while I was running that kitchen - all said they never fed no better. Why, I
give them meat every meal. Oh, the boss man of the mill, he told me what to feed
the Niggers on. Give them beans - what we call 44's - these old big limas,
potatoes, rice, light bread, and bacon. Cose the white men, I had chicken, pork,
beef, and such as that for them. I furnished all the groceries and kept a strict
account of every bucket I fixed and every meal I served a white man. Then at the
end of every two weeks, the boss man looked over my list and paid me up. Yes,
that's where I made my money - cleared from eighty to ninety dollars a month.
But I didn't stay there two years out for my husband got sick and it was so cold
to get up so early in the morning, I give it up.
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"My husband had a ruptured appendix of the worse kind. He was operated on one
March and the next February, he died out right suddenly. When my husband got
sick, we had three hundred dollars ready money and it took it every cent to pay
his hospital expenses and to bury him. It all come on me so quick, I was in so
much trouble, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't live with my son, John,
'cause his family was getting bigger every year that come. So I divided out my
furniture with my children and went to live with Maggie. At that time, Maggie
had three younguns that was almost babies and I found myself more of a help than
a hindrance to her.
"As long as Jim, Maggie's husband lived, he provided mighty good for us. Yes, he
didn't care so much 'bout dressing, but we always had a plenty to eat. I'll tell
you, I made my support while Jim was living. I made all the gardens on the place
and picked peas up till the year Jim died - paid me a dollar a hundred pounds
for picking peas. But Jim died twelve years ago and since then, we've sho' seen
many a hard day.
"Maggie was left a poor widow at Jim's death with six children to make a living
for. Her oldest son, Joe, had just finished college the year his father died and
he was sho' a blessing to Maggie on this earth. If it hadn't been for him, I
don't know how she would've pulled through. Joe was one smart boy and his mind
was sort of unusual - all the professors told Maggie so. He was a school
teacher, but poor boy, his education didn't do him good long enough to pay for
getting it. He hadn't been out of college three years before he took
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down with pneumonia and died. Maggie, poor soul, she was one broke up woman. She
didn't know how she would got along, but she got a little sewing to do now and
then and somebody was all the time sending her something to help out. Then after
a time, she got that job to the sewing room and it's been her salvation, I'll
tell you.
"My principal work since Jim died has been the tending of babies - learned how
to do that kind of nursing from my aunt. Yes, my Lord, I always had a doctor
with me on every case I tended - wasn't no midwife. Just helped in the way of
giving chloroform and helping the doctor around the bed. I always spent nine
days to a case and got ten dollars regular price - didn't do none of the washing
neither but the baby washing. Why, I got a case every month that come and
often-times two a month. Reckon I've tended a hundred cases over Catfish and in
other parts of the county, but many and many a one, I ain't never got a cent
for. You know in all my helping of babies, I never had a baby or a mother to
die. Nor I never had one of them to catch cold 'cause I was particular with
them. I sho' enjoyed my work, too, but when my eyes and my body failed me, I
couldn't help myself. Ain't had nothing to bring me in a cent in the last four
years.
"I belong to Shiloh Methodist Church cross Catfish yonder, but Maggie and the
children belong to the Methodist Church up there on Godbold Street. The children
go regular, but Maggie don't never go - says when she's got one thing, she ain't
got the other. Yes, I've belonged to Shiloh all my life, but they've
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got my church locked up now. Yes, it's all this talk of "Unification" that's
causing the noise of it. The preacher over there is hot for Unification and the
congregation, they's hot against it. The people got so mad with the preacher,
they locked him out the church one Sunday and he stood up on the steps of the
church and preached to one or two anyhow. Then the preacher took the Shiloh
membership and moved it thirteen miles to the Mullins Methodist Church. Now,
how's the people go get to Mullins? The most of them ain't got no oxcart to go
in, much less a automobile. But if Shiloh people ain't got no preacher now,
they's still holding prayer meetings and club meetings over there. No, the
Shiloh people ain't go be outdone by nobody. Let them have a picnic over there
and I bet there ain't no people in South Carolina have more to eat than Shiloh.
I know I own six-foot of land to Shiloh to bury me on and if the Unification
people take that piece of dirt away from me, they'll get it over my dead body.
No, that's my property and ain't nobody got no claim on it but Lula Demry."
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