Interview with Mrs. Lois Tynes
February 8, 2003
Interviewed by Agye Goodman (Hampton University)
Mrs. Tynes attended Ebenezer and Sandy Mount Schools. She explained her early experiences both at home and school and taught her interviewer a lot that he did not know.
Q: This is an interview by Agye Goodman. I'm going to be asking you questions about past education for this oral history project that I'm doing at Hampton University.
A. Is that your school?
Q. Yeah, about the old school. For instance, the area of Isle of Wight, is that where you grew up?
A. Yeah. Isle of Wight... County.
Q. Is it county?
A. Yes. Isle of Wight County.
Q. How many brothers and sisters did you have?
A. I had three sisters and two brothers.
Q. You were the youngest?
A. No I was the third child.
Q. What schools did they attend? Did they attend the same as you?
A. Yeah they attended the same school.
Q. Those were all in the same county right?
A. Right.
Q. What grades were you taught through in school?
A. I was taught from the first to the sixth grade.
Q. How many classrooms were there?
A. Two room school. A small room and a large room.
Q. How many teachers were there?
A. One.
Q. Just one?
A. Yes.
Q. Was she also your Sunday school teacher?
A. No, my Sunday school teacher was another teacher. Our Sunday school teacher
was a church member, of our church. That was Miss Betty Holloway.
Q. Betty Holloway?
A. Yes, Betty Holloway.
Q. How did you get to and from school?
A. We walked. In bad days my daddy carried us in the horse and cart.
Q. How far away was the school from your house?
A. About four or five miles.
Q. So you would walk four or five miles some days?
A. Yeah, yeah, you gotta go.
Q. The horse was yours?
A. Yeah it was my father's.
Q. Did you have any jobs before and after school?
A. Oh yes, plenty of jobs.
Q. Can you elaborate on them?
A. Yes sir I can. Well, we shucked corn for the hogs and the cows. The cows ate the
shucks and the hogs ate the corn- and feeding the chickens; we had to share the corn
with the chickens, and feed them every morning before we’d go to school. We had to carry
out 35 or 40 cows over to the other farm before we'd go to school. And then we'd cut
through the woods and go to school.
Q. So what time would school start?
A. Nine o'clock.
Q. So you'd do all this before nine o'clock?
A. Oh we tried. [Laughter] I'm telling you like it is. We tried. But sometimes those cows would get in the
woods and get jumping around, you know how cows are. Got to go around through the woods to herd them off and make them
go right, to the right place.
Q. What were some of the chores at home or at school that you did?
A. That I did? When we were going to elementary school a deacon taught us how to sing the educational tables: twice one is two, twice two is four, twice three is six. And he taught us that alphabet. After we changed and went to Sandy Mount we didn’t have that.
Q. How did the school days usually start?
A. We had a hymn, prayer.
Q. You would say the church was mixed heavily with school?
A. Oh yes.
Q. What subjects did you cover in school?
A. I covered from the first through sixth.
Q. Specific topics, like English or math. Like, what was your favorite subject?
A. Oh, my favorite subject! Well my favorite subject was Reading, I reckon…
[Laughter]
Q. How long were the school days?
A. 'Til 3:30, 4 o' clock.
Q. How long was the school year?
A. Year? Nine months.
Q. Where did you eat lunch or how long was your lunch break?
A. Lunch break then was a half an hour, and then breaks we would have in the
Morning twix nine and twelve was uh… fifteen minutes.
Q. So you had two breaks?
A. One in the morning, you know. Yeah.
Q. What did you usually eat for lunch?
A. Well, usually whatever my mama packed. Whatever she packed in our bucket,
that's what we ate. If syrup and biscuit and preserves, that's what we had.
Q. What did you do during recess?
A. Recess? We played games.
Q. What specific games?
A. Basket… I started to say basketball. Dodge ball!
Q. I like dodge ball. Did you win?
A. Sometimes.
Q. [Laughter] you did?
A. Yes, sometimes you did and sometimes you didn't. Just like the games are now.
Q. How would you describe your school's classroom and the lighting and such?
A. [Humming] not quite as big as that lobby.
Q. That was the whole school?
A. Yeah that was the whole school, it was a small school.
Q. How was the school heated in the wintertime?
A. A big bellied heater.
Q. Where were the bathrooms, were they inside or outside?A. Outside.
Q. So you had to pump to get water and stuff like that?
A. Yes.
Q. How would you describe the teacher's desk?
A. Well they had some like this, but it was smaller and we’d go up there and work on the side of it.
Q. How would you describe a student's desk?
A. Our desks was two in a seat.
Q. Did they split boys and girls, or did they pair ya'll on purpose?
A. No. It didn’t make any difference.
Q. You sat where you wanted to?
A. Practically.
Q. Were there chalkboards?
A. Oh yes.
Q. What other kinds of school supplies did you use?
A. Well, we had the same uh…we had chalkboards. You know, I reckon what a school is supposed to have… textbooks-books.
Q. Were there teaching aids on the wall? Like in some elementary schools they have
the alphabet, like above the chalkboard. Did you notice any of that?
A. Yes, they had that on the walls.
Q. What were the windows like? Did you have windows?
A. Yeah, we had windows…a whole lot of windows on one side and one on this side.
Q. The lighting in the school, was it good, or was it— ?
A. Well, it was fair. I can't say it was good, I can't say it was bad.
Q. What type of lighting was it?
A. We had the _____?
Q. Was it like the ones we had?
A. No, not like those. We had no electricity.
Q. You had no electricity at all?
A. No.
Q. Was it candlelit sometimes?
A. No. It wasn't candles but it was like hanging down lamps, but they were lanterns.
Q. Was there a certain place to hang your coats?
A. Yes, the closets.
Q. Describe like the closets. Were there nails?
A. Girls closets were more over this side, they put their clothes over there and they put their lunch buckets on the shelf.
Q. Was it just nails in the wall, where you hung your coat?
A. No. There was a piece of two by four where we hung our coats. We hung our coats
on that but that was on a two by four nailed to the wall. How it was nailed to the wall, I
can't tell you that.
Q. At your time of going to school, were teachers allowed to discipline their students...
like spank them?
A. Oh yeah, they would spank you.
Q. Do you have an instance where a student got punished?
A. Oh I got punished myself. It wasn't right. The other person did it and they put me
in it…and I was the one that had______________.
Q. Tell me the story. I want to hear it.
A. Well the story was caused by the girl sitting next to me, I can't remember what she did, but
she did something to me. I must've hit her or something. [Laughter] She must have pulled my hair, and the teacher seen my hand go back, although that wasn't my fault 'cause she had no business messing with my head. But I had to stay in school and she punished me for that.
Q. I’m sorry to hear that. [Laughter] Are there any other school experiences that you’d?
like to talk about that we didn't ask you about?
A. No, that's the only thing I remember, that punishment.
Q. Any childhood memories, outside of school?
A. No, I wasn't a fighter or nothing. [Laughter}
Q. After you were done with school, what kind of jobs did you get?
A. Oh, the first person I worked for was Dr. Massey in Smithfield. I got married at seventeen, then I went to Dr. Bradby of Hardy. After I worked for him awhile, my momma was working at the plant and an opening came up and I left Dr. Bradby and went to the plant.
Q. How many children did you have?
A. How many children? Three.
Q. How long were you married?
A. How long have I been married? To my husband?
Q. Yes.
A. Well, he passed. Fifty something years.
Q. Really? I'm sorry to hear that.
A. Fifty-five years.
Q. Well, it was a pleasure interviewing you. Thank you, Mrs. Tynes. Is there is something else.
A. Well, after school we had to carry about 50 cows back to the farm, everyday. We had to drive them back. We had to milk them too.
Q. All of them?
A. No!
Q. Why not all of them?
A. They didn’t have milk yet. We milked all the ones that needed to be milked. We had our own milk, drank our own milk, skim came on it, we had our own butter, ate clabber all we wanted, too. Now, grubbing up stumps, now feel like it was always my day to take a load of wood to town at 4 o’clock in the morning, when I was a child coming up. We’d cut wood, load that wood over night, and take that wood to Smithfield every morning. That wasn’t “some” mornings –that was every morning.
Q. Did the boys do more work than the girls?
A. He worked his girls just like he worked them boys. The baby boy couldn’t do nothing, he was too little. That’s how we made it.
Q. He made money off of carrying the wood.
A. Oh yes, he got paid for carrying the wood to town.
Q. Do you remember how much he made?
A. For a load, I couldn’t tell you that, he didn’t tell us the price.
Q. Did you get an allowance?
A. He’d give my oldest brother and sister a quarter, give me a nickel or dime, I was the third child of the five or six, and then come two or three more, and that was it.
Q. Did you go to the store or stores and buy sodas and candy had little treats?
A. Yes, sometime we got to the store.
Q. What was your favorite candy?
A. Peppermint.
Q. How much did it cost?
A. Two for a penny.
Q. What about sodas?
A. I didn’t ever drink no sodas.
Q. Just water?
A. Just water,juice, ____________?
Q. Did y’all make that yourselves, do you remember how?
A. It came in packages, you put it in some water, stir it up, and you drink it…stuff in the packages was already sweet.
Q. We have the same thing today. Was there anything else you wanted to say? Was there anything else you remember that we have now that you had then?
A. Oh yes… cars. My Daddy bought a car; he bought it when I was about fourteen.
Q. What was it called?
A. Whippet, it was a Whippet.
Q. A Whippet, what color?
A. It was gray. I know who we bought it from…we bought it from Henry Tynes, he was an undertaker in Smithfield.
Q. I guess you wouldn’t know how much it cost?
A. Oh no, I didn’t know that either.
Q. Did you know how to drive? Did you teach yourself or did you wait to be taught how to drive?
A. Well I didn’t ever drive the buggy because I was too young, but I taught my own self-how to drive.
Q. Is there anything you anything you would like to say to today’s youth?
A. Oh I see a lot of things, children need more chastising would help them a whole lot.
Q. Oh, I have no reason not to believe you, whatsoever.
A. I know it. (laughter)
Q. What about music?
A. Oh, I didn’t ever learn music, my sister learned music but I didn’t.
Q. Did you listen to it?
A. Oh, I listened to it. I listened to most kinds of music, specials, jazz, and my church music. I like to go to church every Sunday that I’m able.
Q. When you were younger did you guys go to church? You and your family? Did you go every Sunday?
A. Oh,yeah! Yeah! I didn’t ever know my Daddy to miss a Sunday, …down the road, I just loved to go…and I still love to go today.
Q. Do you have any childhood memories of going to church?
A. I know one thing, I couldn’t sit in the back. They made you come up to the front. You’re supposed to sit there and listen to what the man’s preaching about.
Q. Anything else?
A. We stayed all day?
Q. From when to when?
A. We went to Sunday school and stayed till after service, at 9 O’clock and stayed to about 2 O’clock.
Q. Anything else?
A. No I can’t remember anything else.
Q. Thank you.