A Varesano interviewing Anna Timko
-9-
6/23/72
Tape 16-2
404 house, and she was complaining to him, says, You know, I'm craving for
lettuce and I can't get lettuce anywhere. So then, what he done, there was an
agent from Wilkes-Barre coming to this store where he was working for, for
this store. And he asked this agent from Wilkes-Barre if he could find a head
of lettuce somewhere. So he picked up a head of lettuce in Wilkes-Barre at
the market, and he brought it to Freeland to the store, and this worker that
was working for that man that owned the store brought that lettuce to my
mother That's how she got her lettuce! Could you imagine? Well, in them
412 days it was only meat, potatoes, and cabbage. That's all you could have for
winter.
AV: That's all?
AT: Sure, that all! There was nothing else!
AV: What kind of meat did you have?
AT: Well, any kind of meat, just like now. There was all kinds of meat.
(Pause in the interview while Mrs Timko removes screen from her window.)
AV: We were talking about the lettuce.....
AT: So, that's how she got her lettuce, and she satisfied herself then. Because
in the winter, even money wouldn't buy it. If you had the money, you
couldn't. Because, see, she was cravin', she couldn't eat anything - why
she'd have paid any price to get it. So, I don't know what she paid for it,
you know. But, just think, he got the orders from here, and he'd go to Free-
land, from Freeland he have it to an agent from Wilkes-Barre, and that agent
got it at the market, and then he brought it to Freeland, and from Freeland
back here. And, my father was lving yet - my father died in 1911 in February,
so it was two, three years before, maybe, before, I don't know. And, we never
had any fruit during the winter. In the fall, late in the fall after the
425 apples were picked, a farmer would come in, selling apples, and they would buy
a bushel of apples, and then they'd store them in the cellar, put them in the
straw or put them in the hay or something, you know, and you'd have them
little by little, you know, one by one, and after trhey were gone, that was the
end of it.
AV: Well, what cellar did you use to put them it?
AT: Well, not here, my mother's. This was when I was a kid yet. This was at my
mother's place, where my brother's living, on the other street. See, it was
a cellar like Helen has, over there. See, that's what kind of house my
brother lives in, like Helen's place, you know? So then, my father would put
them in there, then. After them apples was gone that was it. We didn't
have nothing all winter.
AV: So you said, during the winter all you had to eat was meat, potatoes, and
435 cabbage?
AT: Right. Sauerkraut. Make a barrel of sauerkraut, some people would even make
two barrels of sauerkraut. That was your diet.
AV: How did you make the sauerkraut?
AT: You mean, to put it up? We used to put it in barrels, and the men would walk
on it, to tamp it.
AV: Whole cabbage?
AT: No, you cut it up, the heads, you know, cabbages, you cut it up. There was a
cutter. Well everybody didn't have a cutter. Maybe one or two people had
them in town. Then you'd borrow it and you'd pay them a couple pennies for
the use of it, and the men would wash their feet good, and they would get into
this barrel, and they'd be walking over it, tamping it down. They couldn't
do it otherwise, because there was an awful lot, you know, so that your hands
or something like that, you couldn't tamp it down. Used to be big barrelsful.
And then they put apples in there, if there was some apples available ye,
EN