Vol. 1-Interview-Falatko

A. Varesano interviewing Bertha Falatko

sisters got married. So then my dad and my mother slept upstairs. With us, we didn't have a bedroom down here then. AV: This was in this house? BF: Yeah. AV: And, what was I going to ask.... Did you use the stairs for anything? Were they closed? With a door? BF: No, huh-uh. AV: That was in the Zahay place. BF: Yeah, oh yeah. AV: And over here, do you remember a door here, too? BF: We had a door here, too. [on the stairs] AV: What was that used for? Why did it have a door on it? BF: I really don't know why. Maybe a lot of times, too, like in the mornings, when my mother had to get up early and get the boys ready for work, well, maybe she didn't want to have all that noise going upstairs, so she could just close the door. That's what I would think it was for. AV: Do you think it was used some times for regulating the heat? BF: Oh, I don't think so. Because you needed the heat up there like you did down here. AV: How were the bedrooms heated? BF: Just with a coal stove and heater downstairs. AV: And it came up through the pipes? BF: Um-hmm. Well, we had a register like this, you see. We had one in there, too, that's we have it shut off upstairs/now. We had a register in there, too. AV: And the hot air would come up through the floor then? BF: Um-hmm. AV: Were the walls papered? BF: No, a long time ago, like I say, they were whitewashed, first. AV: And the ceilings were whitewashed. BF: Some of them were, yeah. But then later on we had cloth. AV: Was that in the Zahay place? BF: Yeah, um-hmm. AV: Did you ever have cloth ceilings here? BF: Yes, we had them here, too. When we first came down here. AV: In which rooms? BF: In, I guess all of those rooms downstairs. AV: Nothing upstairs? BF: That was just whitewashed. AV: And even in the Zahay place, the bedrooms were just whitewashed? BF: Oh, yeah. AV: What did you have in the bedroom floors in the Zahay place? BF: Cloth! That I'll never forget, because I was a Momma's Girl all the time, I never left my mother when I was small. And the girls, xxxx wanted me to go with them this one time for a walk. (That would be O"Donnell's girl), they lived all the way down at that end. And I didn't want to go, and they wanted me to go. in the worst way, and I ran upstairs so they wouldn't get me. And my mother had the carpets on the floor, and they were tacked on. And they still came up to get me, and I just wouldn't, I screamed that I didn't want to go with them. And I hung on to this carpet! That's how I remember so well that we had carpets upstairs! AV: Were those rag carpets? BF: Yeah. Just like that one there. AV: Kind of like runners? Or were they all over the floor? BF: They were runners, but they were put down all over the floor. But they were just runners.

A. Varesano interviewing Bertha Falatko

AV: Right next to each other, and tacked in. BF: Yeah, yeah. AV: What did you have on the windows in the bedroom? BF: Just regular curtain. Just like I say, lace curtains we had. AV: Did you have a shade too? BF: Yeah. AV: Did you have that kind of stuff over here when you moved here? BF: Oh, yeah, uh-huh. AV: Like, lace curtains in the windows, and shades. And on the floor over here, what did you usually have? BF: Um-hmm. Carpets. Well, in the kitchen we only had linoleum, though. We had linoleum in here, but then we had carpet on top of it. AV: Upstairs over in this house, did you have rag carpets on the floor? Were they tacked in? BF: Yeah. Yeah. You see all the fur nails yet! AV: Yeah! And over here, you used the attics to put the boys in in the wintertime... BF: In the summertime. AV: ...for the summer, I mean. What did they have up there when they used it to sleep? BF: They had the regular floor, was no covering at all. They only had the boards and then they had one bed up there, and then the rest of the stuff we only had, we had stored things, like our clothes. AV: And that's all they had to sleep in? BF: Um-hmm.

[Note: this is a handwritten page with four columns. The first column shows dates. The second column has information about who is interviewing whom. The third column is labeled "Page", and the fourth column is labeled "Subject".

8/1/72: A. Varesano interviewing Bertha Falatko. Page 1: Recipe for green tomato stew. Page 2: Recipe for lettuce gravy. Page 3: Recipe for Sunday breakfast. Page 4: Recipe for jelly and preserves. Page 5: Company store and post office. Page 6: Diagram of company store. 7/15/72: Page 7: Uses of parsley and chamomile teas.

7/29/72: A. Varesano interviewing Catherine Falatko. Page 8: Rules for the childrens of Nipsy and buckety-buck

8/[?]/72: W. Brown interviewing Clifford Falatko. Page 9: diagram of country downtown grade school Page 10: diagram and description of smokehouse. Page 11: diagram and description of bake oven

8/4/72: A. Varesano interviewing Bertha Falatko. Page 12: Berry juice recipe

8/19/72: Page 13: Green tomato stew recipe Page 13: Lettuce and gravy recipe Page 13: Sunday breakfast recipe Page 13: Jelly recipe

[Note: This is a handwritten page with four columns. The first column shows a date. In the second column is the phrase "A. Varesano interviewing Bertha Falatko". The third column is labeled "Page" and the the fourth column is labeled "Subject".

8/19/72: A. Varesano interviewing Bertha Falatko. Page 14: Women in other towns Page 14: Dating Page 15: Description of the schoolhouse Page 16: Potbelly stoves in each room Page 16: Mining and Mechanical School (MMI)

[Note: This page is handwritten and has three columns. The number "8" is in a circle in the upper right-hand corner of the page. In the first column is the phrase "A. Varesano interviewing Bertha Falatko". The second column is labeled "Page" and the third column is labeled "Subject".

A. Varesano interviewing Bertha Falatko. Page 17: More contents of the shanty Page 18: Ditto marks under the phrase "More contents of the shanty" Page 19: Description of the shed outside the kitchen Page 19: Uses of the shanty--what was kept in it Page 20: Rag rugs Page 20: Weekends as "dress-up" special times Page 21: Descriptions of bedrooms Page 21: Descriptions of bedrooms in the Zahay house (#6) Page 22: Storage of clothing in the bedrooms Page 23: Location of where everyone in the family slept