76

A. Varesano interviewing Anna Timko
-21-
6/23/72
Tape16-2

965 Them days, you know, they'd just call it a roll, and it was a double roll.
And now already, well they tell you they're selling it to you by the single
roll, but double the price with half the roll, might as well say!

AV: How much was it in the old days?

AT: Well, you could get it different prices, you could get it real cheap, and
you could get it a little more expensive.

AV: How cheap?

AT: Oh, sometimes ten cents a roll, that's a doble roll yu could get. And if
you wanted some, say like for a living room, so maybe it would be twenty-five
cents or thirty-five cents or fifty cents a roll.

AV: Oh, why?

AT: You know what I paid for this? Two dollars and, I don't know was it ten cents
a single roll! Not a double roll like we used to buy one time, that was
four dollars. I think I still have the bill someplace. It was four dollars
something. So this little room here - and then I wanted border for it. This
cost me eleven dollars.

AV: And how much would that room cost in the old time?

AT: Oh, maybe about two dollars or so, I guess.

AV: So, that was quite a bargain, to get your houses clean that way. How else did
you clean your houses? Did you scrub your floors with soap?

AT: Um-hmm.

AV: What kind of soap? That home-made stuff?

AT: Well, home-made stuff, or maybe you even put some lye in the water or some-
thing to make the floors look better.

AV: How would they look better?

AT: Well, they'd be brighter. They'd take some of that dirt out, but it wouldn't
last too long, because, you're going in and out, in and out, well the dirt
gets carried in to it right away again. So, it's the same old way, you always
990 have to be cleaning it.

AV: What did you use for washcloths and things like that?

AT: Rags.

AV: Dress rags?

AT: Any kind of rags, from any kind of old clothing, you know, you make a rag out
of anything. I often said, it costs lots more to live now, because you buy
papers for everything. You buy paper diapers, you buy paper towels, you buy
paper napkins, everything you buy today. Even I often mention, I said, in
our days, we didn't buy that Kotex. We used rags, and made our own pants.
Sure. I don't even know if they sold them then. I says, today you have to buy
everything. You need an awful lot of money. Same thing with babies. We used
to nurse our babies. Today you have to buy the baby food, you have to buy the
formula, you have to buy everything, so it takes a lot more money to live
nowadays, you know with all that stuff that you have to buy. In them days,
it was everything rags, you'd wash them and use them over again. Now you
1006 throw it away and you have to buy other ones again.

AV: Did you make your own clothes?

AT: I did.

AV: How?

AT: What do you think I had a machine for? To look at me? It was my first piece
of furniture that I bought, was the machine after we were married.

AV: My goodness! Where did you get the material?

AT: We could buy them at the stores, they had dry goods stores.

AV: Here in Eckley?

AT: They had some here, but we didn't do too much buying at the company store.
We used to go to Freeland, and buy our stuff in there mostly. Everything was