By the end of the two-hour shift, Carol and I had become pretty good friends. This was a couple of weeks ago, both of us volunteering at a library book sale right here in Hoboken. Our backgrounds might be a bit different, but it was quickly apparent that we had a shared sensibility.
Carol turns 76 at the end of the month. She’s retired from New York University where she worked 30 years, mostly in the registrar’s office. At the start of that career she earned her master’s degree in education. But Carol’s earliest years were spent in rural Warrenton, Virginia, on four acres of farmland. There were pigs, chickens, a couple of cows, fruit trees, and vegetable gardens.
She was one of 17 siblings: 10 girls and 7 boys. “No twins, no triplets,” Carol says.
I like talking with Carol. She has kindly allowed me to share some of her stories, which I hope to do from time to time.
I was about 12, and you begin to hear the stories about the birds and the bees. I said to my mother one day, “Mommy, did you want all of us?” And my mother, who never went to school—it wasn’t available for her—looked at me for a moment. And then she says, “Each of you were a gift from God.” And I reflected on that so many times, when I thought to myself, any other answer would’ve been the wrong answer. I can’t think of another answer that would’ve been the right answer. If she had said she wanted five, or wanted ten, or whatever. But to say each of us—I always felt, she wanted all of us, she loved each of us. That made such an impression on me, and I still think about that sometimes.
My father was in construction. And when they have a job, they usually build a little house that becomes the office until the construction work is over. Daddy had a habit of buying those little places, and bringing them out to our house, and putting them together, adding to our house. They became additional rooms for us as the family expanded. You would never know that, because he was extremely talented. He knew exactly how to put those houses together.
I used to admire what he did with those houses. He would connect them. This huge long room became our kitchen. That’s where we spent most of our time. It was warmest in the wintertime. He made this real long table, and long benches on either side instead of chairs, because chairs take up a lot of room. That’s where we ate, that’s where we did our homework, that’s where we got together to play games. Up on the wall there was a little shelf, and that’s where we listened to the radio—out of our access so we couldn’t get up there and change the station!
When I was real small, we didn’t have electricity. By the time I went to school—maybe 5, 6—we had electricity. We used to have lanterns when I was real little. One time, someone left a lantern upstairs, and we were sitting on the porch in the summertime, and it got dark. My oldest sister Lucy was telling us ghost stories. And you could see a light shining out of the window upstairs. And no one would go upstairs; they thought a ghost was up there! So we all slept on the porch that night.
There was one office Daddy put together in the back, and he decided he was going to make it into a bathroom. This first one would be the only bathroom in the house. Initially, we had outhouses.
My mother had a stove that my father bought for her not long after they got married. That was a wood stove. Mama would put these big tubs on the back and heat water, because we didn’t have hot water. And on Saturday night, that’s when we had our baths. And they were in the kitchen! That was fun. And then the ones that were little children, babies, our mother would put them in the sink and wash them.
The water came from a well. Daddy eventually had water run into the home from that well.
My father did not believe in having any in-laws in his house. When his mother became ill, he actually built a house for her on the property. He didn’t bring a little office down! And that little house is still there. That’s where she lived until she died. We used to go down and help take care of her.
The original house was four rooms. It was a cottage, or whatever they would call it. Daddy, when they first got married, he built two rooms in the back. So now you had four rooms on the first floor. Eventually he expanded that upstairs part. Then he expanded the downstairs again. He now had ten rooms plus the bathroom.
The girls all slept upstairs. The older ones got grown and left home, and then the younger ones would move in. I would share a room with my sister Jane, and we slept in the same bed. And she loved to feel that somebody else was in bed with her. And I didn’t want anybody touching me while I’m sleeping! So we would get in the bed, and as the night goes by, Jane rolls…. So I would eventually get out of the bed and go around to the other side. And after she got to the end, she’d start moving the other way! We used to fight about that. I would put pillows between us and everything. I just didn’t like her touching me. Then there were times I’d get out of bed and sleep on the floor.
But it wasn’t bad; I never felt crowded, or not having enough. I felt so safe with all these older brothers and sisters. I loved growing up. I loved being in that atmosphere.
—as told to Jack Silbert
I love this — especially picturing all the family members eating, studying, playing etc. around that long table in the kitchen, and your friend Carol and her sister playing cat and mouse in bed at night. Wonderful.
Really touching story. Keep them coming.
You might consider helping her do a POD book of her reminiscences.
You are a wonderful writer and have such a fabulous ear for dialogue, Jack. This is the start of a new book project for you, you know. Thank you to Carol for being so open and sharing these lovely and vivid details.
So interesting! I love hearing stories of way back. We all think we have never have enough money, and then you look at the way people were able to live in families with so many kids, and you realize we’ve lost our ability to survive among the simple things.