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A. Varesano interviewing Anne Timko -3- 7/19/72 Tape 22-2

and they'd go through the water, and I;d just watch them. I wouldn't go. They'd say, come in! No, I'm afraid something's gonna bite me at the feet!
AV: Well, these young boys, did they have to clean out the stable, or who? Who had to do that?
AT: No, the mother or the father usually did that, you kno, to clean that out. Maybe some of them did, but as far as I remember, they didn't do that. Usually my mother use to take care of that stuff when she was able to do it. Then afterwards, already when she wasn't able, one time she had an ulcer, her leg was so bad she couldn't even walk, so my brother thirteen years old had to even milk the cow then. See, because he had to do it. There was no one else to do it.
AV: Why didn't you do it?
AT: I was married already, I was in my own home. And my father was gone already by then. So then he was taking care of the cow. We had the touch life around here.
AV: Did both the boys and the girls have to help with the berry-picking?
AT: Oh, yes. Even the youngest children would go berry-picking. That's the only way you raised some money. And you needed the money badly.
AV: Like how young did they make them go out?
AT: Well, my brother was seven years old, and he went a distance, after my father died, and he went a distance of I don't know how many miles that was. It was very far out in the woods, like out on the farms we used to go, picking huckleberries. And he was only seven years old. I was twelve, my brother was nine, and they younger one was seven years old. My mother would go with us. And I used to go with our children, too. And they'd get so angry! They didn't want me to go because I made them pick! When John was there, he even come with an attack of appendis, lucky he didn't die. He had an emergency operation that night, he was rushed to the hospital, and had an emergency operation for appendix. And I didn't even know they performed emergency operations. That was 1930. He was fiftenn years old.
AV: Well, when the boys got to be more teenagers, then what kind of duties did they have? Anything else that they'd do around to help out more?
AT: There usually like, during the summer, huckleberries; after huckleberries it was coal; after coal then you had to pick leaves for, you know, they kept chickens and cows and geese and everything else, well, instead of buying straw they'd go and carry leaves then, you know, to keep that for the bed for the animals. So that kept them busy all the time. They were always busy. And in between they always found a little time for play, just the same like you'uns had in the paper that time when the governor was here, that he was taking over the state - ah, town - and he was saying the way they used to go and ride in the and saw off some lumps of coal and then they'd go and pick their coal, and then they had time yet for sleigh riding. He said they still had time for play!
AV: Your father was a miner, right?
AT: Yes.
AV: He had like a miner's certificate that he was working there?
AT: Yes. Oh, they had to have a miner's certificate. They weren't allowed to, you know..... A laborer wouldn't need it. He'd just help the miner. But the miner had to have a certificate, you know, to be allowed to mine coal.
AV: Well, was he the only source of income in your family, beside the berries?
AT: That's right. And he died, and we were young left, and there was no other income.