Ada Metsopulos

GT:  Okay, so you got married and you moved into--so you were not very far from home then?  

AM:  No.  

AR: [daughter] She was right there at the crossroads.  AM:  We lived in another place before we went to Maxville--just out of town, you know where that Henry Beggs (sp?) place is?  Up above there is an old water tower--well, we lived just above that water tower in a house at first.  That’s where they moved us first.  

GT:  So why did you go--why did they choose the boxcar over one of the houses?  What was that about?  

AM:  Well, there wasn’t very many houses up there.

GT:  Okay.  So who decided who . . .

AM:  Who lived in a boxcar?  I guess you just took whatever there was to live in.  

GT:  So were there any other non-blacks that lived in the boxcars besides you?  

AM:  Yeah, that whole row except the Kalmbach’s [house] and then one at the end of the row.  They were in rows.

GT:  So the winters were really severe. . .

AM:  I don’t think we got out of there in the winter.  

GT:  So you were just pretty much snowed in . . .

AM:  Stuck in the boxcar.  

GT:  So tell me what you remember of that time that really stays with you today? Or maybe just a story that you remember about something that happened.  

AM:  Well, I will tell you the worst thing.  You want the worst?

GT:  Yeah, I want the worst.

AM:  I painted the inside of my boxcar--that’s what I did.  Painted.  I started at the front, okay.  Paint, paint, paint--all the way back, and I had an awful habit of reading when I was eating, because I was by myself.  

AR: [daughter] So you painted from the bedroom?

AM:  I painted from the front part back to the kitchen, see.  Well, I had cornflakes for breakfast and I was eating away, you know, and reading, and when I got down to the bottom, guess what?  Can you guess what was at the bottom . . .

GT:  I can’t even imagine--to the bottom of the bowl?

AM:  The bottom of the bowl.  Bed bugs!  

AR:  (Laughter), [daughter] And was that a problem?

AM:  Was that a problem!  Bed bugs were a terrible problem up there.  I am telling you, they just come out and bite you at night and everything.  

GT:  (Laughter) So you really had a snack of some protein with bed bugs and cornflakes?  

AM:  I don’t think I ate anything, because I bet they tasted nasty.  

GT:  You were reading, so you didn’t really look at the bowl?

AM:  No, I wasn’t looking--I was just eating and reading.  

GT:  (Laughter).  I like that story!  Okay, so tell me a funny story of something that happened while you were up there.

AM:  Well, my folks had this old goat and they didn’t want him.  Nobody wanted it, so Angel said he wanted him.  He took him up there and he couldn’t keep him tied up.  You know, I went out to the outhouse one time and I sat out there a whole half a day--I couldn’t get back to the house--he was a mean goat!  

GT:  (Laughter).  So he would just butt you?

AM:  Oh, yeah.  So I stayed in the outhouse for hours and hours.  Then he got so he went to the store and chased people, so they complained and he had to take him away.

GT:  So you didn’t eat him?

AM:  They took him to town--yes, they ate him.  I didn’t.  

AR: [daughter] Tell them about the wages?  How much did these guys make?  You kept books for them, didn’t you?

AM:  Yeah.  

GT:  So you did more than just read and eat bed bugs?

AM:  Yeah.  My husband made 50 cents an hour--he was the foreman--and the men made 38-1/2 cents an hour.  

GT:  What kind of hours did they work every day?

AM:  Sometimes they were gone two days at a time even.  

GT:  Okay, so you did work that whole time.

AM:  Oh, yeah.  

GT:  That was pretty good money?

AM:  Well, yeah, at that time.  

AR: [daughter] So you could go to the store and what could you buy when you went to the store?

AM:  Well, you could buy a loaf of bread for ten cents.  

GT:  So you didn’t have to bake your own bread there?

AM:  No.  

GT:  So then they had beef at . . .

AM:  At the store--we had to get our stuff at the store.  

AR: [daughter] So you bought beef and what else did you buy at the store--bread and . . .

AM:  Bread, canned milk.  See, we didn’t have any refrigerator.  

GT:  Okay.  So you didn’t have any refrigerator . . .

AM:  No

GT:  Did you have a vegetable patch?

AM:  No.  

AR: [daughter] Where did you keep your stuff?  You said you had a little hole somewhere.

AM:  We had a little hole out in the ground, you know, deep, with a board over the top.  

GT:  I have seen one of those before.  Pretty amazing--for cold storage. 

AM:  Yeah.  

AR: [daughter] So where did you get your water?

AM:  Down the line--had to walk down and pack water.

GT:  So when you wanted water, tell me what the process of what you do--you would grab what?

AM:  Take a bucket and go down there, fill it up and come back.  

GT:  So did you have a pump or what kind of system?

AM:  No, they had a faucet.  

GT:  That was directly out of--in a building, or . . .

AM:  No, no.  It was outside.  And it was for everybody on that row.  Every row had one.

GT:  So that water came from a spring?

AM:  I don’t know where they got it.  

GT:  Someone said they had a really intricate water system.

AR: [daughter] You can still see the pipes.  

GT:  Yeah.

AM:  Could you see the pipes yet?

GT:  Yeah, I took a lot of shots this weekend of the pipes going out.  

AM:  Did you see where they had faucets?

GT:  Yeah, they were four in a row. 

AM:  Had their own water faucets.  

GT:  So they weren’t set up in a line like this then--the faucets.  
AM:  No.

GT:  Because these four came out of the ground like . . .

AM:  Well, maybe some other row had them--our row didn’t have that.  It had one.  

GT:  And then you would have to haul it back to heat it up.   So, how would you bathe?  Did you have a big wash basin or . . .

AM:  A washtub.  

GT:  A big round washtub that you would fill up bucket by bucket?

AM:  Yeah.