Vol. 1-Interview-Feisner

AV inter. GF & HF -16- 7/7/72 Tape 24

GF: about this time of year when the blueberries were ripe especially the swampers are you familiar with swampers, are you from a mining area

AV: No but I know what a swamper bush looks like

GF: Yes it's tall

HF: She was out picking berries, she went out with Bruno Lagonosky one morning

GF: Oh I picked 28 quarts

HF: And she surprised me with how many she got

GF: Oh in Senecsville, I know where that is well in his spare time he took a walk in the woods and he found a nice place (blank) when he came home at noon you see me after George and we'll both go down and pick them swampers and of course my dad always had a little dog, a little beagle, rabbit hound and he said, take the dog along, so when we got down there there was a lady and a fellow in picking the berries and they from #2 Buck Mountain and I would assume judging from their talk that they were maybe 18, 19 years of age and they were having a chat, they were talking incidentally and he said to me, I guess we're a little late but we got to get them out of there, I said, what do you mean, he said sit down there by this tree, it was pretty thick, you know and the little dog was running thru the woods he made a noise like this whoooooooooo and the talking stopped and he went whooooooooooooo and she said, Johnny what's that thing that sounds like a cow, and away they went the bucket banging against the bushes they ran for their life and he started laughing and I said, Dad that was an awful thing to do, and he said, well it's done the berries are ours. That's the way he was and I guess I have inherited some of those traits and I dearly love youngsters, here last year there were 2 little girls see I live on the corner and there is a hedge that high and I have an English Setter, a bird dog, in a wire pen not too far from the sidewalk and

AV inter. GF & HF -17- 7/7/72 Tape 24 2 little girls came down and they had a cat and they stood at the corner of my garage looking at the dog and the dog was barking terribly at the cat and he was jumping up at the fence and what I wanted them to do was to move on but you know there's no point in insulting them so I walked down and instead of saying, ladies move on, move on, and they'd think I was an old crab, but I didn't, my girls that's a lovely cat, where did you get the cat, oh it's a nice cat take it in to my dog there he likes cats he ate 2 yesterday, you ought to seen those girls run, well I had a grape arbor and they were concord grapes and the neighbors youngsters, little Jackie and little Mary used to come over and crawl up and as soon as they would begin to turn and they would pull the off and they would taste them and they were sour and throw grapes all over the place so there's no use in antagonizing those youngsters so I went out one day and I pulled a bunch off and I said, do you like these grapes, I said, I would eat these, do you know what kind of grapes they are, dog grapes, and down they came and they went home that evening Mrs. Machello said to me what kind of grapes do you have, dog grapes, but I love the youngsters why antagnoize them.

HF: Tell her about what your dad did, I was tellin' her here one night Mr. Horvatz had a dog that always followed him around and when he came home from work and he had to go up to the shop to have some tools sharpened so he went up to the shop and our Pete was your dad's helper at that time, and well they were 2 of a kind, and this dog followed them and your dog [dad?] said to Pete, we'll fix him, so somehow or other they got the dog into the shop and Mr. Horvatz [? Horwath] was waiting and your dad was busy but he wasn't too busy that he run a rasp across the dog's behind and then he put turpentine on and the dog came home and he was all over the floor he was riding all around on the floor and they thought he went mad andd then one day Mr. Horvatz came in with the drill and he said that he wanted that done fast, the auger, and so your dad did it fast he was going to teach him a lesson he didn't say anything to him but he takes and sharpened it the

AV inter. GF & HF -18- 7/7/72 Tape 24

HF: opposite way, so Mr. Horvatz [? Horwath] went right down in the mines and tried to use the auger and it wouldn't work so after he found out what was wrong he come up and he was cursin' like everything because he sharpened the auger the wrong way and your dad said, well you wanted it fast so it was real fast.

GF: Your not getting very much to use in your history are you

AV: No but I'm getting good stories, do you remember in town they use to have these wakes

GF: Oh yes, let me tell you a little story maybe you heard this, Pat was very sick very, very sick and he knew that he didn't have long to live and Mary his wife knew that he didn't have long to live now this story will give you some significance of wakes so Mary was cooking ham in the kitchen and of course Pat was upstairs on his death-bed and Mary went up to him and said, Pat is there one last wish that you have before you die, yes Mary there is will you go down and get me just one little slice of the ham you're cookin', oh my God no, that's for your wake Pat, well I'll tell you wakes, they are a thing of the past like when a person dies see, neighbors and friends gathered and they sat up all night and they had cigars and cigarettes, liquor, lots of liquor not too much beer and some times there were sandwiches

HF: Especially the ones that stayed after midnight

GF: Yes that's true, every night until the burial and of course there were many, many stories that were told but let me tell you something, Spongy does he live next door

HF: No he lives up where old man Petro lived, oh yes she knows him

GF: He used to tell some tall stories, he lived right next door here and they were waking Spongy's mother or his father, and it was in the summertime, Spongy and a number of men were sitting out on the porch now this is Spongy's story, and what he was illustrating in this story was how powerful his gun shot, how powerful his gun was, and a rat made an appearance in the yard Spongy said, I went in and I got my shot gun I put a shell in it and I went out and I took aim

AV inter. GF & HF -19- 7/7/72 Tape 24

GF: and I took the shot gun and took it back in the house placed it in the corner and went out and looked around and I'll bet I was looking for 2,3 minutes and couldn't see the rat when all at once pooh down he comes,

HF: He must have gone up into space

AV: These stories they use to tell were there anything spooky

GF: Oh about ghosts, well I was never allowed to attend these wakes my father was a strict disciplinarian, as I said to Helen one time, he used the rod and when he administered it was like a vaccination, it took, but he didn't have to use it very often and we had to be in the house when we were children, youngsters just as soon as it got dusk, we had to be in there, Helen did you tell Angela about the weddings, and the christenings

HF: No I didn't tell her anything about that

GF: Well listen, this was particularly true

HF: Well the weddings used to start on a Friday night

GF: Well the weddings say they were going to take place on Saturday and oh this was a big affair the neighbor women and the relatives were busy cooking, I'll bet they'd cook 50 chickens at least, a lot of cooking, and they would hire this gypsy orchestra there was 2 of them, old Mr. Steffen and his son old Mr. Steffen played the big bass fiddle, now I'll tell you about the big bass fiddle, and his son the violin, now a good many of the boys that were invited to the wedding of course you couldn't go unless you were invited, they use to come up to the shop where I worked and prepare for this wedding because every so often when they played they would go around and you had to reach in your pocket and give 50 cents or a quarter in the bass fiddle, you can anticipate what I'm going to say, you know what a washer is that you put with a bolt, they'd say give me a pocketful of half-inch washers and we used a monell bar on the breaker, a rodlike and it looked like silver and we used to saw off 25 cent pieces off this bar and if there were any rough edges, we'd take the hammer and smooth it well when these fellows

AV inter. GF & HF -20- 7/7/72 Tape 24

GF: went to the wedding they would have a pocketful of washers, some were monell and some of them would take pieces of lead and hammer it out and they'd dance and then they'd go over to the fiddle and put in these and there would be a smile from ear to ear when he got home and opened the fiddle they were full of these washers and these slugs but they served beer oh beer was served like water and then of course after the wedding it would end up in a big fight

HF: We had a pair of knuckle rings that our Peter took away from someone at one of the weddings

GF: Steel knuckles

HF: Yes, because they were in a fight and they had the knuckle rings and he took them away from them and we have 2 billie clubs that were taken away but I don't know what in the world ever happened to those billie clubs nor, the knuckle rings. I know I had showed to Joe Falatko's oldest boy they were, they had to bring things in to school from years ago and I loaned them to him he returned them to me but I do not know where those knuckle rings are.

GF: You know old Pat Sweeney had a son John and John was an educated fellow he was a professor of engineering at Villanova and it was the custom here in the evening especially in the summer time, you couldn't go anywhere, you had no place to go to stand at the corner down here we used to call [Y???] corner right where the store is now so on a certain Saturday evening I walked out of the house and I walked up to this corner was Sweeney and we chatted and you remember Kelley Kistlin, and Joe Kistlin they married sisters they lived in right beside where Litchies used to have, in the house there

HF: Right where the country store is now

GF: Yes where the country store is, both Joe and Kelley drank heavily and on this particular Saturday night the intoxicated, they were drunk and when they got drunk they used to beat their wives and clean house so this Saturday night was no exception so we were standing there talking and the first thing we know we heard a lot of