Mattie Langford Wilfong

GT:  Can you talk specifically about how you met Jessie Langford, and how it was when you were courting and how that happened that you got together.

MW:  Oh, well I met him when I was in my last year of high school.  And I was working and I also was working my way through school because I waited tables for these aristocratic people that was very—you know—very wonderful people, all elderly people, which was just all of them I think around the first black people that moved—that was in Oregon because there wasn’t very many blacks at all—not any hardly.  I met my husband at that time when he was called—when Bowman-Hicks called him to work for them.  

GT:  So how long did you stay—did you talk about—tell me about the move from La Grande to Wallowa, and what made your decide to do that.  

MW:  Oh, to move from La Grande to Wallowa?

GT:  Move from La Grande up to Maxville?  What . . .

MW:  Oh, yeah, well because my husband—that’s where the company moved us, and Maxville was a very, what do you call, unpopulated little town.  Nobody was here hardly.  

GT:  Okay, so tell me some more about how life was in Maxville.  

MW:  In Maxville.  Well, it wasn’t too good.  The living conditions wasn’t very good.  Living conditions was pretty bad and he wanted to, you know, kind of get me to a place where we would have water and I wouldn’t have to pack water because that was hard on me.  I just had my—I mean—I didn’t just have my baby, but I had Jessie, which about killed me. That was my only son. We had to go to use outside bathrooms, and I had to pack my water to do my washing for my babies and for us to cook and bathe with.  I had to pack that and heat everything on the stove—water and everything, and that’s when I had a miscarriage, because the doctor said my body wasn’t strong enough to hold the baby.  So, I had two miscarriages, and if I hadn’t had two miscarriages, I would have had ten children instead of eight.  

GT:  So how was life like for the women in Maxville that you knew?

MW:  Well, it was—I guess all right.  The lady that cooked was very nice, and the people that came—some of them I knew.  It was pretty good.  Some of them was very nice. It was just some that we were closer with each other than others.  Because, really, it was a small place and it was just like little shacks or something to me.  Frankly, about the worst place I ever lived in since I got up to be grown.  It was kind—it was rugged.  Yes, it was, it was rugged.  I had to go out and pack water while my husband went out in the woods to cut logs.  It wasn’t real good.  

GT:  What activities did the women do while the men were working?  What kind of activities did the women do together?  Did you . . . 

MW:  Well, we would embroidery and like that.  Mostly, we had something to do we would bring over, and we would read the Bible.  Most all of us—some of us knitted.  I did embroidery work.  We did little things, you know, like that together.  But, other than that, and you see we would have what we called our little church, because we didn’t go to—there was no church or nothing.  No church there and everything, and so I really don’t remember at all going to church in Wallowa.  We just—we had a little church there, reading the Bible certain days and we called it our Bible week and like that and Sunday ourselves. 

GT:  So, you said there was somebody by the name of Ms. Johnson that cooked out at Maxville.  How did . . .

MW:  Yeah, I can’t call her name right now.  I think—oh, I just can’t remember her name.  She cooked for the crew of men that didn’t have a family.  Some of them didn’t have a family.  There was a few there that didn’t and it was like a boarding house.  They boarded there.  Her and her husband—that’s what they did.  They cooked for those men who didn’t have—you know, who were single, but most of them wasn’t—most of them had families.  

GT:  What kind of foods did she cook?  

MW:  Oh, a lot of food—boiled food, ham hocks, black-eyed peas, red beans.  Real good.  Collard greens, corn bread—all that kind of stuff.  Desserts-she was a very good cook—apple pies, peach cobblers.  They had very, very good meals.  Very good meals.  So, she was very—her and her husband—they was very, very true—well, I guess, Christian people too, they were.  Other than that, it just wasn’t real good living, because any time when you have to heat your water and I had to pump water while my husband was working, because he couldn’t pump enough water—if I had to wash my greens or if I cooked—see, because we—I don’t think there was about two families there that had a house.  The others—I think it was three families who had a place and the others—they boarded out. 

GT:  Do you know of any of the families or the people that lived in the rail cars?  

MW:  Did I know them?  

GT:  Yeah, I have been told that some of the blacks lived in rail cars, so…

MW:  Railroad cars, yes.  I didn’t know them.  Maybe there was, I can’t remember.  All I can remember—maybe some of them did because I know there wasn’t very many houses, because it just seemed like an isolated place to me.  No nothing.  The ones—the lady that did the cooking and her husband—there was a big old shack-like, and they had all this stuff—they prepared wonderful meals.

GT:  So, what did you do—how did you shop?  Where did you shop for food?

MW:  We had to go to Wallowa.  We had to do all our shopping in Wallowa.  No store there.  Nothing.  No hospital.  Nothing.  We had everything—if we had to go to the doctor, we would have to drive into Wallowa.  That wasn’t too far—I don’t remember exactly how far it was, but it wasn’t very far.  That’s how we had to go in and buy anything, like if we needed clothing, we had to buy that.  If we needed food, and when we would get out of food, we knew how low things was getting, well, I am getting low on sugar—I am getting low on flour—well then we would make a list and my husband, we would have to drive to Wallowa.  That’s the way we did that—there was no store there when we was there.  No store, nothing.  

GT:  So, did he have a car?  

MW:  Oh, yeah.  Well, we had to on account we had to drive and get our food.  My husband had a truck.  It wasn’t a car, but you know, it was in good shape.  You bet, that’s right.  He had a truck.  

GT:  Tell me about—you said you stayed in Wallowa for quite awhile.  You lived in Wallowa for quite awhile, is that right?

MW:  Yes.  I sure did.  He logged right there.  I lived in Wallowa for quite awhile, and then we moved from Wallowa—he bought this little house on Madison [La Grande].  And I think your folks was in Hermiston, I think, or somewhere at that time, because they wasn’t there.     

GT:  So how many years did you live in La Grande?  

MW:  Oh, forty-some years.  

GT:  So, did you love La Grande?  

MW:  I liked it very much.  When I came up, no black people—there wasn’t even anyone that I could have a courtship with—a black boyfriend—until my husband came.  I married him after I finished my schooling.  He went back to Warren, Arkansas—not Warren, I mean Arizona [McNary], and worked and then when I finished my last year, he came back.  We were living with my mother.  

GT:  So how long were you married to your first husband?

MW:  Around forty-three years.  

GT:  So, you weren’t done were you?  Being married.  

MW:  No.  

GT:  Tell me about that—how did that happen—when you got married again.

MW:  Well, we courted on the phone.  Right here.  We called up each other a lot and we talked a lot on the phone.  And that’s how it happened.  We corresponded here mostly on the phone.  

GT:  Where did he live?  Ester?

MW:  In Oregon, and I was here in Tacoma.  And when he asked me to marry him, I almost jumped to the ceiling!  I just kept saying yes, yes!  I was acting like I was young.  You talk about an old person acting young, because I really wasn’t.

GT:  What was the most fun you had doing when you were growing up in La Grande?  What did you like to do?

MW:  To me, I didn’t have too much to do.  I would go to this lady’s where we took up sewing.  And I also took sewing in the school and I made all my clothes.  We would go there and we would all have sewing, and we would be singing and we would be reading the Bible.  I can’t call her name—she was a white lady who was very good.  Really, coming up, I really didn’t say that I had a lot of fun because I didn’t.  Because I was kind of a loner—no young people around my 

age—black—to go with, so I was mostly by myself all the time.  But I liked La Grande.