George Waller Interview 6/15/02

Interviewer: James S [JS], grandson
Interviewee: George Waller [GW]
Also present: Lisa S [LS] and Jenn M [JM], daughters;
Becky H [BH], sister

PART 3

[TAPE 2]
[talking about the 1941 diary talking about the war]
[Becky is looking at Dec 7, no mention of the war]

LS: Right the next day she says that they declare war.

BH (reading) "Got up late, sent out laundry, Jane out to store, listened to president speech and declaration of war. bad times. Jane home late, and off to Tullahome to dance. I went to dressmaker and Lucy's till she came home. Bitter cold. B still away."

LS: Oh right and her husband's off somewhere doing some sort of buying or selling so her husband's not even home for the entire week, her daughter's off dancing, her other two kids are off in their own homes, she's sitting home alone ... but she does have these spells where she says she's "blue" - she calls it being "blue" when she's feeling sad - so she says she's "blue blue blue" she spent all day canning, she can't take it any more.

BH: You know depression runs in our family, my mother was saying when she was reading that that she picked up all the times that Mamaw talked about being blue, my mother really dealt with depression, I mean I've sure dealt with it. Blake has some, Bruce does too, I think your dad has a little bit recently, it's interesting.

BH: I'm trying to think of other Mamaw things. I do remember Mom saying that on Sunday they were not allowed to do anything. You couldn't play cards, you just had to sit. you couldn't go out and play, you couldn't do anything, because that was the Lord's Day.

LS: But apparently you were supposed to visit each other because she'll write about being depressed that nobody came over to visit that she just sat alone all day waiting for someone to come see her, but nobody did.

BH: But she didn't go out.

LS: Right, because if she left someone might be coming to see her, and she wouldn't be there to greet them.

BH: Somewhere along the line, and I never got the inside story on this, but Mamaw was supposed to have had a vision of some kind, I don't know what she saw, I don't know if she saw an angel or something, I just remember hearing references to a very spiritual thing for her. Maybe it's something Nancy would know about. She was a big, strong Presbyterian. She could cook. She could cook.

LS: She talks about the farm hands in the summer, I guessing the summer her husband Blake would go out scouting for farm hands when they needed people, and would gather up random guys, and go out and do the corn or cotton or whatever, and then she'd have to feed all of them, so there'd be like 10 guys in the house, and she'd be upset that she didn't have Jane around to help and have to cook for all these people, and she was cooking from her own stock, it's not like she could go to the store and get something so she'd have to dress some chickens and get some potatoes or whatever from her back yard.

BH: Their days were full because they had to ... they had to work so much harder, they had two huge meals, lunch and dinner. Working off a lot of calories. But you're at the time when they're living on the farm. My memories of Mamaw are I don't have any memories of her living on the farm, she was living in town after ... I'm not sure when she moved, but I'm sure it was after Pop Blakely died. And I had always envisioned you know that my dad, your grandfather's father died at the wedding reception. What I heard was that it was at the wedding reception and he had this heart attack and they went back and got him on the bed and had the doctor over there pretty quickly and they thought everything was going to be ok but then he must've had a second heart attack. And mother was talking about remembering that back then that they would bring a big basket to take somebody away and I mean here it's during their wedding reception and they're taking him away in this basket and how difficult it was for my dad and that he carried around with him this kind of idea that he was going to die before something major happened, like he was going to die before George as born or he was going to die before his first grandchild was born or before somebody graduated from something, he always thought some sort of huge event was going to happen and that he was going to die before that. and mother said he carried it all thorough his life, feeling like that precedent was set. But she said it was so difficult, because she had never really been out of the south, and then she had to go up to Chicago for this funeral and everything was so different up there, and in the south part of it was because in the south particularly in the summer because it was so hot, if somebody died you got him in the ground. But up there they didn't get the funeral for about a week and obviously my dad was really upset and emotional and here she was 20 years old and trying to figure out how to comfort him and it was a really stressful time. I'm sure it was hard on dad because here he'd just lost his father and just taken on the responsibility of getting married, which back then wasn't - it was like you took care of the woman, it wasn't like you were in a partnership with someone. She said it was really pretty difficult time, I can imagine. How traumatic.

JM: At least everyone was gathered.

BH: They got married in Tennessee. and so that's what brought it up for me, I had always envisioned them being in the house that Mamaw lived, and then just suddenly as I'm talking I'm like oh no they would have been out of the farmhouse, I was envisioning that maybe they put them in this room, but no. They would have been at the farmhouse.

BH: And you heard about tippy tap? Mom used to have this goat named tippy tap. And backing up a little bit, pop Blake had these - they're either called straight legged Billy goats or they're called nervous Billy goats, and they're these Billy goats that if you startle them, it's part of their reflex thing that they straighten out their leg muscles and they fall over.

JM: Really bad reflex.

BM: The deal is I think that they're really still and whatever predator was after them would leave them alone. So the rumor was that Mom said was this tourist was coming through the countryside and honked his horn and this whole herd just fell over. so he hunted down pop Blake and said "I just killed your whole heard I'm sorry" and pop Blake knew exactly what was going on and said "well, come show me" they went around the corner or whatever and they were all up. Well anyway, I don't know if tippy tap was one of those nervous goats or not but they gave it to her when it was just a little kid and he just followed her everywhere they had a good time and finally he got so big he kept butting out the screen door so he had to go back to the heard - or she actually, and mother said she used to be able to call and he would come up and the last time she called and she was coming up on age too and tippy tap came up and had twin little goats.

BH: Mom said she was also quite a shot, and could shoot pretty accurately and then dad in the Army and all that so they took a 22 out and were shooting a bit and mom just out shot him to smithereens.

LS: So what are some of your earliest memories? Was it Brazil, or before then?

BH: I remember before then. I remember television coming in first, and this guy down the street had it, and it was amazing, can you imagine never having seen something like that, and about that time I remember as it moved on a little bit there were only 3 stations and were only part of the day, I think it was ABC, CBS and NBC for a while. I know later on those were the only things on. Then I remember someone saying "did you know such-and-such has a color television" and this was just like "oh my gosh" I mean this was like four days after someone got the first television and they're saying a color TV? And we went down there, and it was some kids' show where they took a piece of that plastic you know that you can put on something and then peel off and it had a bit of color on it but it was basically clear with some color on it and so on the television set you would put that thing on and then he would draw something and you would draw on the television set with him but that was the color TV set that we saw, so something was lost in the translation by the time it got to me.

BH: But the big scare was that you couldn't sit too close to the television, because it would make you sick or blind you.

LS: You still have that! I remember that when I was little!

BH: Is that true?

JM: I don't think so.

BH: I don't think so, but that was big back then. and my big issue was - now we're going to get into - we only had one TV for years and years and years and I loved Dr Kildare, that was like m favorite show of all shows, it was a doctor show with Richard Chamberlain was like 25 years old and just the best looking thing on the face of the entire earth which then I later find out was he was gay and I lusted after him for years and years and years.

LS: Maybe you could have changed him.

BH: I know. It could have been me.

JM: The reason he was gay was that he never met you.

BH: I'm feeling better now. But anyway it was on Thursday nights at 8:00 on channel 4 on NBC and back then you know Dad kind of ran the world and Dad would come in sometimes and I had waited all week, man that's just what I waited for, and he'd come in and sit down and be like, I don't want to watch this. and there were no remotes. "Change the channel" and I remember just feeling heartsick. Kids just couldn't, they didn't, so anyway. Thus my issues with my father.

BH: So I remember living in Texas, Oak ridge. I remember we had this little dog named Ginger, this little Pekinese, the meanest little ... would nip at my feet all the time and my mother thought it was funny and I was just terrorized so I'd be up on the couch and mom said it was this big (small hand motion) but it scared me but sometimes I would dress it up and put a bonnet on it and put it in a stroller and it would just sit there. I would stroll it around. Where ever we lived in Texas was really dry and all the kids would run around and I remember one day we were playing cowboys and Indians and I was tied to a tree and poor Ginger got hit by a car which was really sad so all the neighborhood kids went running over to see and I'm tied to a tree, you know? And I missed Ginger. I remember that, and I did have a situation with electricicty, when we first got electricity. I think George was like coloring or something and had a little light plugged into a thing right by his coloring and I was pushing the plug and pulling it out by the cord and pushing it in and sure enough I finally pulled the cord one time too many and the electricity just shot out and hit me right here and burned me, nd I think for 2 or 3 years I would not touch anything electrical.

And I remember my dad used to fly a lot, out, and back then you walked out to the plane, it was like chain link, and I remember being really upset, because he was walking towards the sound. And in fact to this day if I'm watching a movie and it gets scary, I always cover my ears. That's my way.

...

They were building Rio de Janeiro when we were there, and Mom at one time said there was this huge city that they were building out in middle of the jungle, where these six-lane highways that would go out, and there was just jungle.

...

[When we were kids] we used to go jump on trampolines.

Lisa: They didn't have trampolines when you were kids?!

Becky: Yeah, they had trampolines, and what they'd do is dig a pit in the ground and the trampoline was level with the ground, and it was 50 cents an hour or something like that. That's where lawyers got really big with the lawsuits.

...

Lisa: So did you guys have Brazilian friends, or were they mostly American friends?

Becky: I do remember when we first came down there, school wasn't in session, and I remember walking down the street and we ran into some Brazilian kids, and we were teaching each other. They were really interested in learning. They'd point at something, and we'd exchange words.

Lisa: Were you fluent in portuguese?

Becky: I could sure get around. Mom was a basket case. Mom could not pick up Portuguese, and we'd go places and she would just butcher it and we were just too cool to say, "Mom". I remember when she went out looking for those paper chickens ...

Becky: [their cat] Princess Anne, do you remember why she was named Princess Anne? It was named after Princess Anne. You didn't know she could be queen or something. She was a true Siamese, she had a kink in her tail. Blue eyes. It used to be a signal that it was pure bread We brought it back from Brazil, we drugged it with like 9000 mg of XXX. We stayed at bars when we got back and it didn't wake up for hours

Dad: And then when it woke up it walked like this (staggers)

Becky: It did and remember the bar had that dog, a cocker spaniel, you have never seen a cat wake up that fast and RAAAR Princess Anne was runnin'!

Becky: That was a cool thing, I remember when we came back from Brazil, since I had left they had invented automatic doors and we went through customs and there's Suzy my friend over there and I can't wait to see her and I dove to push the door open and it opens automatically, and I'm just like (surprised)

Jenn: I remember the first time I found one of those doors, it was in a hotel, and we're both sticking our hand out, it was like magic, you didn't even have to step in front of it.

Becky: Blake could speak no English, and when we came back I remember he was about 5 and was supposed to start school and they recommended he watch a lot of television.

I remember Mom said you could have anything you want to eat. And I'll make each individual person whatever they want. I remember saying I wanted a TV dinner.

Dad: I probably wanted chicken noodle soop.

Becky: I bet you did. And when we were in Brazil I remember Dad's birthday coming up. And they didn't have cake mixes back then, so Mom had to cook the cake from scratch, and she tried it like 3 times and it just fell every time. So Dad comes home, and there is this incredible birthday cake sitting right there, it's just beautiful, and Dad takes a knife to cut it, and Mom had turned a cake pan upside down and frosted them, and it went CLINK! But that's kind of how she was, she was kind of funny sometimes.

Then I remember they told us, oh I know, they were telling us - Blake was 7 years younger than I was - when they announced Blake was going to be born to us, they put out birthday napkins and I said what are these for, and they said well we're going to have another baby. Then in Brazil, Mom was pregnant when she went down, with Bruce in Brazil, and I guess they never told me, so one day she ran out of napkins and she put out birthday napkins because that's all she had, and I said "Oh are we having a baby?" and she's probably out to here (big arms out) and she said, Didn't you know? and I went, (surprise) I can't imagine that they hadn't told me, and she was showing and everything. But she's your mom.

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