9

Mary Zurko interviewed by Denis Mercier	2	8/21/72

DM: Yeah, but now this is a different kind of house, because it's one of the
single dwellings...
MZ: Yeah.
DM: And it's a long, narrow structure.
MZ: But that was the original stairway.
DM: Okay, I see. That stairway was always there.
MZ: This was all enclosed here.
DM: Is that the original balustrade?
MZ: What?
DM: Is that the original bannister?
MZ: Oh. Oh, no. Huh-uh. That wall was enclosed, too.
DM: So, there didn't need to be one, o there was ust a handrail...
MZ: No, because that was a good thing to do, because your heat always goes to
the ceiling, you know. And it goes high, and then it brings your heat up-
stairs a litte. Alot of people had registers in the wall, to bring their
heat up into the bedroom.
DM: You mean up in the ceiling.
MZ: Yeah. You know, some had a heating stove. Now, we lived uptown, we had it
in the floor. Pop had it in the floor. It gave some heat but not that
much, you know.
DM: That's how Emory's is right now.
MZ: In the floor?
DM: It's up, on top, yeah. I mean, it's in the ceiling of the second room, and
then it goes right up into the top room.
MZ: Well, we didn't have any uptown. WE lived uptown, we didn't have any. Well,
I said to my husband a couple of times, why don't you put a register in here?
It'll bring heat up into the front bedroom, you know, the master bedroom.
DM: Right.
MZ: Ahh, he said , we don't need that much heat, he said. A little cold air will
do us good!
DM: It must have gotten awful cold in the wintertime.
MZ: Oh! They used to wear -- his mother lived here, you know, and then she re-
married, and then she left him, and then she came bacl, and then she went
back! Ha! HA! Love's great! Ha! Ha! Ha!
DM: Indeed.
MZ: So, then when I came here, I did away with - they had feather beds, you know.
I don't like them feather beds. They put one of them on, Denis.
on a real cold night, they never knew it was cold outside. I mean, you got
out of bed in the morning... ha! ha!
DM: Was this like a feather tick, on top of a regular bed spring, bed mattress?
MZ: Yeah, yeah. A lot of people used them. We never had any.
DM: Um-hmm. But, your husband put this archway because it would get more heat
into that part of the room? He was all worried about the bottom part, but
not about the top, huh?
MZ: Well, he wasn't really for the archway. He said to me, you know, Mary, what
is gonna happen here, he said, you're gonna cave the whole house in. It's
gonna give away. Well, God bless us, it's up, it's up forty years and it
hasn't come down yet.
DM: No, the only rough spot are those two little boards on the bottom that have
turned upwards, they're warped.
MZ: Yeah, they're warping.
DM: But they're not gonna go anywhere.
MZ: I don't think so.
DM: Those pillars aren't gonna go anywhere. Did he do all that himself? Those