Gladys Barnwell

Center for Cultural Preservation

 

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00:00:00 - Gladys Barnwell introduces herself and gives a little background.

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Partial Transcript: My name is Gladys Barnwell. I work at the Apple House. Three days a week I go to Curb Market—Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. I’ve been going ever since my daughter was a baby, and she is sixty-nine years old now. And I enjoy going. It’s a pleasure to meet all the people, and the people—when I was out with my heart—and I broke my neck too—my grandson went. Then my daughter-in-law, Donna, went. But they was always glad to see me when I come back.

00:01:01 - Tell me about where your family came from, a little bit of your family history.

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Partial Transcript: Well, I was raised in Landrum, South Carolina, until I was about fourteen years old. And my daddy moved—well, it was on the St. Paul Road, but it was down by the Waters Road with Grayson Lauder. And then his wife—I went to live with him when I could—I were old enough to help take care of the children. June Lauder right now is—and Anne, Anne’s passed away. And Jerry still has an apple orchard, and he owns quite a bit. I don’t know how much, but—but has the whiniest little boy I ever took care of. One day he—he’d be all right until you stopped holding him. Then you laid him down, he’d just scream. Many a day I told him, I should’ve killed him when he was a baby. (laughing) But Jerry’s a fine boy. And June works at the real estate place out on 64 East.

Subjects: Early years

00:02:48 - Tell me about your daddy and your mom.

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Partial Transcript: My daddy was raised in Madison County. My mother was raised around Inman and Spartanburg. But we, when I was a little girl, we lived on Carl Dorman’s place.

Around Landrum and Inman. But the way we got what we had—my daddy owned nothing, and my mom—well, during the Depression, we raised everything we’d eat, all but—we even had the flour too, and cornmeal. And then we raised your chickens, pigs, fed our cow, milk. All we didn’t have was snuff and tobacco. Well, my daddy chewed tobacco, and my mother dipped snuff. They’d give you a hand, and you’d go to Mr. Ramsey’s store, and you’d take a chicken and stick him under your arm with a paper bag on and hope he wouldn’t poop on you, and hope you’d have a little bit left over so you could get you some bubblegum or something. But they’s not much during then, when—

Mr. Dorman’s girl played basketball or some kind of doings. But she didn’t work. She just stayed around her house. You never seen much of any of them. But they had an apple orchard. They had apple trees. And you’d just hope one would fall on the ground. He wouldn’t let you have one off a tree. You had to have it off the ground. You was just hoping one would fall off of a tree, so you could eat it.

And we raised molassy cane, and wheat. And when the thresher come by to thresh your wheat, that’s when you got your new mattress. They’d change it. So your wheat, that’s what it was. It was straw you had, and that’s when you got your new straw bed.

Subjects: Gladys's parents

00:05:46 - What kind of chores did you have, growing up as a kid? 00:06:16 - What time would you have to wake up in the morning to do your chores?

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Partial Transcript: Well, you’d have to catch a bus at a certain time, and then you’d have to get up and—I had my mother’s old table that she had when I was growing up, when we lived on Grayson Lauder’s place. Many a time I’ve been sent from the table for laughing. That’s one thing my daddy didn’t allow. You’d laugh at the table. If you did, you had to leave. And many a time, I’ve had to leave.

Subjects: Starting the day

00:06:56 - What kind of work did your daddy do?

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Partial Transcript: He just worked for Mr. Lauder. My mother worked on picking apples or whatever there was to do.

Subjects: Glady's daddy

00:07:16 - And where did your clothes come from?

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Partial Transcript: My mother would buy feed—we’d get the sacks, and she’d save them, and she’d sew them up and make you a dress out of the feed sacks.

Subjects: Clothes

00:08:00 - What about your dad?

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Partial Transcript: Well, he wore overalls all the time. And before he died, when he lived up here, he lived over on Clerk—well, I call it Clerk Creek.

And my mother, she kept the prettiest yard you ever saw, with flowers. And then she got sick, and she had cancer, breast cancer. So I’d go by her house, and I was the only one who didn’t have a regular job. My sister worked at GE, and my sister Louise didn’t drive then. So I’d go by and take her to the doctor at Mount Sinai, and when we come back, she says, “Gladys, have you got time to sit down and eat onion and cornbread?” I said, “Time’s all I’ve got.” And we’d sit down, and we’d eat cornbread and onions. That was her favorite, what she wanted, cornbread and onions. And to this day, I still love cornbread and onions.

Subjects: Family

00:09:31 - Fresh onions or cooked onions?

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Partial Transcript: Any kind of onions. They wasn’t cooked. They were raw onions. But then my mother passed away, and my daddy lived by himself. We had to bury her—all the family did. So he had nothing. And he would come by. When he had some money left over, he’d come by and he’d give it to me, and I’d set it down, how much it was. And if I’m not mistaken, when he’d come the last time, he said, “I’m not feeling well. I’m going to go up to Louise’s.” And I said, “Well, Daddy, don’t give me any money. Take some with you, because there might be something you need.” And he took—I don’t—we kept so much of it.

And then he—well, the first thing he—the funniest thing. He chewed tobacco. And at the washer—he wouldn’t let you wash your clothes. He’d take them to the washer. And the woman looked at him. He said, “How do you get this—” He wore white T-shirts. “How do you get this out of this T-shirt?” She said, “You got as much on your mouth as you have on your T-shirt.” He went in there and washed his mouth, face, never chewed any more tobacco since. He just quit his tobacco.

Subjects: Family

00:11:25 - What is your fondest memory of your mom?

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Partial Transcript: My mother was a good mother. My daddy was good, but my mother was a hard, hard worker. When we was in South Carolina, she’d go to the field and take the baby, and somebody would watch her baby. And when it got time to nurse, she’d come and wash her breast off and feed the baby. She’d cool off a little bit and feed the baby, and go back to work. But I always hoed behind my mother, and so I could—I was barefooted—so I could step in the coolness of where she hoed.

Subjects: Mother

00:12:57 - Tell me your fondest memory of your dad.

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Partial Transcript: My dad had a lot of back trouble. But he loved all of us, just like a dad would. But he never worked really hard like my mother, on account of his back.

Subjects: Daddy

00:13:37 - Any stories you want to tell me about your childhood that you remember, that you always think about?

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Partial Transcript: Well, my fondest memory of what I remembered is when Easter would come, you’d wonder how you was going to have extra eggs. So each one of us would hide eggs somewhere, and then when Easter come, we’d go out and get our eggs and bring them in. That’s the way we had extra eggs for Easter. Because we sold eggs. My bus driver, he run a store. And the way you got your pencils and paper was you’d take eggs and get you a pencil and paper. And you didn’t want nobody bothering your pencil and paper either.

Subjects: Childhood stories

00:14:37 - So how did you all get started with Barnwell Apples? How did you start with your orchard?

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Partial Transcript:
0:24:34.0 When Wayne was a little boy, I would go to the field and pick apples, and all of them would watch him for me, because he was too little to be in the field. But he’d ride with them. And when Saturday would come, we’d buy some apples from Mr. William Dalton. And then when Sunday come, we’d go down to Mountain Road, down toward Greensboro, and sold our apples. Then when we’d come back—now, we lived in a house that was so cold that the refrigerator froze up. Now, that’s cold. It snowed between the cracks in the kitchen. And we’d all get into the living room, Nancy and Wayne and me and our daddy would stay in the living room with a wood heater. And that’s the way we kept warm in the wintertime

Subjects: The start of Barnwell apples

00:16:15 - So when did y’all start growing your own apples?

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Partial Transcript: Well, when we bought that first place from Mr. Cleo Waters. We started with fifteen acres. Then where I live now, a boy was going to let it go back, because he’s out of his—he didn’t want it no longer, because he was going to get out of service. And we bought it and just took up payments on it, and paid for that way. Then from then on—and it was in pine trees then. So we cleared them away and put in an apple orchard. And then we just started adding as we could to the land. Mr. John Corn’s place, he owned above my house. And he—I hate to say it, but he hung himself. And I wanted the house to stay like it was, with all the pans and everything in it, but gee, you couldn’t have a thing in there, because somebody went in and ramshackled it. And so we finally just tore the house down.

Subjects: Growing apples

00:17:35 - How many acres do you have right now? 00:18:42 - What’s your favorite part of the business?

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Partial Transcript: Filling up bags. I’m not able to—when a customer comes up and everybody’s busy, I’ll say, “Could I help you?” Then I’ll have to get somebody. I can fill the bags and I can take the money, and then we put it in the money box. But we don’t leave big bills in the money box, because when you’re doing something else, you never know what’s going to happen.

Subjects: Business

00:19:18 - Tell me about getting started with the Curb Market.

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Partial Transcript: Well, we lived on William Dalton’s place, down next to the creek. We even had to—they let us in. Francis Norris and Ida Freeman, my husband’s sister, let me sell off of her table. And Francis Norris let me sell off of hers. And from then on, I just started going. And then I got my own table. And I got two. And now Wayne has two. So we’ve got four tables altogether. And of course you charge more for there than you do at the Apple House, because you’ve got the expense of taxes. When you don’t have to take it in town, you don’t collect tax. But when you go there, if you don’t collect tax, you’ve got to keep up with it, so you pay your own taxes.

Subjects: Starting Curb market

00:20:58 - When I was there, it looks like you were the most popular tables in all of Curb Market—a big line going down the hall, away from your booth.

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Partial Transcript: Well, they gave me a surprise birthday party there, and the cake was—gracious, great big. And I think, if I’m not mistaken, I believe they had 150 hot dogs. And of course, we served the public as well as just me or however. And we had a wonderful time. I was eighty-nine then.

Subjects: Curb market

00:22:21 - Tell me more about the Curb Market itself, the history of it.

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Partial Transcript: Well, like I say now, I just go into my booth and I stay right there, where it is. We get jellies and stuff from the food center, and I’ll just send up there and tell them what I want. Then we’ll bring it on home and put it up. And of course, they have different kinds. They even got frog jelly, toad jam, frog jam, moonshine jelly—and of course, it tells on there what it’s made out of.

Subjects: The history

00:23:13 - How have things changed at the Curb Market since sixty-nine years ago?

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Partial Transcript: Gracious. A lot. There’s people’s not been there in months and months. What we should do if they don’t come, we need to—what’s really wrong with the Curb Market—they should have them to come if they don’t sell nothing. Some days you’d go there, and you won’t sell nothing. But that’s what’s wrong with our Curb Market. Everybody say, “Well, I’ve got to make hundreds of dollars.” Well, if you can’t make ten, make five. The Curb Market really has changed since I left—I first come there.

Subjects: Changes

00:24:48 - The kinds of things that people were selling at the Curb Market. Has that changed over the years?

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Partial Transcript: It’s pretty well the same. But you can’t sell buttermilk. You can’t sell butter. You can’t sell chickens. We had a freezer up there, and you could even take your own pig or cattle and sell it, but you can’t no more. And I believe they say if you—you can’t sell pickled beans unless you do something to them, because I don’t pickle beans, because when I married, they said to me, “Aren’t you going to eat your beans?” I said, “No, they’re soured. I ain’t eating no soured beans.” Of course they was pickled. And to this day, I don’t care for pickled beans.

Subjects: Changes

00:25:49 - When you were a kid, did you do canning? Did you can?

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Partial Transcript: Yes. My mother did. I was too young to can, but she did a lot of canning, because you had to.

Subjects: Canning

00:26:32 - Where did the water come from? How did you get water into the house?

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Partial Transcript: When we first lived on Carl Dorman’s, you went to the spring. And buddy, I would like to get mine before dark, because I hated to hear them owls go “hoo, hoo, hoo!” And we’d get plenty of water so we’d have it.

Subjects: Water

00:27:16 - The home itself, who built that home? The home that you lived in

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Partial Transcript: Well, I don’t know who build it, but William Dalton owned the place. But I never did underst—I don’t know who—I lived first on Clerk Creek. Then I was too close to Clerk Creek for my little girl. I was afraid she was going to get drowned. And to this day I know—I give her swimming lessons, and the man said, “She’ll never to learn to swim unless she swims on her own.” And says, “Somebody has frightened her of the water.” Well, I says, “Yes, it’s me.” Because I thought I seen her circling down there, and that’s when I moved off of that place over on the other place, away from the water.

Subjects: The home

00:28:19 - So for the things that you didn’t grow yourself to eat and stuff like that—well, you had cows and you had chickens, right?

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Partial Transcript: Yes, chickens. I’d get out there—we didn’t do like you do now. I’d just go out there and wring a chicken’s neck, and have him for dinner or supper. And I even skinned the feet, because I always liked the feet, which ain’t nothing on it but a bone.

Subjects: What the raised

00:28:50 - The things that you would buy at the store would be just tobacco? 00:29:37 - What kind of entertainment did you guys have when you were growing up? 00:29:57 - Tell me about church.

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Partial Transcript: Well, I went to New Prospect Church. New Prospect’s around Inman and Landrum, down in that way. And we always—my mother was a good mother, but we never had too much opportunity to go, because you had to have gas to go, when I was young.

Subjects: Church

00:30:52 - Did you guys have a horse or a carriage or anything like that?

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Partial Transcript: No, sir. But he finally bought an A-Model, T-Model or something. That’s when we moved to the mountains. And I remember saying, when we’d go back, I’d say, “Oh, carry me back to the mountains

Subjects: Transportation

00:32:05 - So tell me in terms for the next generation, many of which haven’t had to do all the things you had to do as a child, why is it important to remember the past and the hard times that people had to go through?

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Partial Transcript: Well, see, Wayne, when he was a little boy—that’s my son. He’s taking care of the orchard now. My husband died. He had leukemia. But it was a good kind. He only had the best doctors. But he always had time to sit at the Apple House. When we sold apples, it was hard to get him to quit going down Greenville, because he’d sit and talk to them. And whenever he’d come to the Apple House, he’d say, “Oh, come on and sit down and talk a little while.”

I said, “Maybe they don’t have time.”

He says, “They need to take time.”
He died in ’02. And then Wayne was a little boy. He has a doctor. I said, “What do you call what he had?”

He said, “If it ever comes back, it’ll come back as leukemia.” Which we hope it never will.

And he couldn’t have children around, playing; if he did, he’d get sick. And so he couldn’t have children around. And I’d carry him and wouldn’t let him walk.

And my husband said, “He’s not going to amount to nothing.”

And I’ll tell you what, he’s a hard worker. He’s out picking peaches or something today.

Subjects: The next generation

00:33:54 - In the earlier days, when you ran your orchard, did he bring his food to market in Greenville, or did trucks pick it up? Where did you sell most of your stuff in the early days?

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Partial Transcript: Early days? From the road up here. And I like to never get him to quit going to Green. He’d take a load down there. But he done the same thing. The only thing we didn’t have was the bags. The bags was got later. We’d put them in brown bags.

Subjects: Early days

00:34:34 - What lessons do you think you’ve learned that’s important for youngins to learn today?

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Partial Transcript: Work hard and save your money, and buy you something with it that you’ll remember the rest of your life.

Subjects: Lessons learned

00:34:53 - Why should people remember your story, or the story of elders in this community? Why is that important?

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Partial Transcript: Well, most of the community knows how we growed up. Mr. Marsh Statton lives down the road right here from us. He’s in the tree business. And he gets apples from us, and we trade, and he’ll come and trim my trees, or he’ll trim Wayne’s trees. And he deer hunts a lot. I don’t know how long he’s been here, but he’s been in the tree business a long time.

Subjects: Remember

00:35:47 - What legacy would you like to leave to your family and to this community? What do you want them to remember you by?

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Partial Transcript: Well, I’ll tell you, we’ve got a neighbor that runs an apple stand, Donald Price, and his wife, I think, if I’m not mistaken has a heart problem. And she’s out there making doughnuts at her place. And he told her, “Well, let me tell you. You’re just like Gladys Barnwell.” She said, “Well, I’m glad I am.” So she just works on too.

Subjects: Legacy

00:36:41 - So what would you like people to remember you by? What legacy would you like to leave behind?

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Partial Transcript: Oh. My husband, when he got sick, he said, “Gladys, how we going to make this?” Said, “You’ve made it. You make everything we’ve got.”

I said, “Well, you know I can’t spray.”

He said, “Well, we’re going to leave it this way. If it takes it, I’ll take care of you. If it’ll take it, I’ll take care of you. And then they can have what’s left.”

Other than that, it’s in the LLC’s name. Nancy gets money, but no land. I mean, she gets the money. That’s our daughter who married a minister. First she married Benny Nixon. She has a daughter by—her Kathy. And Kathy’s married and teaches school down toward Columbia. Kathy stayed with Debby Winch’s little girl while Nancy worked.

Nancy worked at Lloyd’s Pontiac and Cadillac for years, but Nancy went to school and they said—to Greensboro. And she said she’s going to make a teacher. Well, the first time I went to get her, well, we’d call her, and you could tell she was unhappy. And she come home. I went to get her the first trip home, and we got about halfway up the mountain. She said, “Well, I’m not going back.”

I said, “Why didn’t you bring your clothes with you?”

She said, “Because you wouldn’t have never let me get in the car if I did.”

But I called and told them. I said, “Well, Nancy’s not coming back.”

Said, “Well, we knew she was unhappy, but—”

And of course, she missed her family. So when she come home, she says, “I’m going to go to work for—” And we got her things. I took down. There ain’t no telling how much miles it would make, an hour of taking her out there and getting her clothes. She went back. She made all straight A’s. I let one, and it was A something. And she went around told them all goodbye, and they said if she ever came back, she could just start the way she left. So when she come home, she stayed around there a few days—well, it was a few months. And she said, “Daddy, can I go to Blanton’s to take business?”

He said, “Well, I lost what money I already sent you.”

She said, “Daddy.”

He said, “Well, just until it opens.” He said, “Well, it’s just a few days.”

She says—he says, “Looks to me like you’d better get him over here.” Called, and he come over. He told what the price was, and if you paid it all, what price—

He said, “No, I’m not going to pay all that. She probably won’t finish.”

And she said, “Daddy, I promise I’ll finish.”

So I said, “You never took business in your life.”

She says, “Well, I’ll take.”

And so he went ahead and paid it all. And she said, “Daddy, I can just drive your car to Hendersonville, get on the bus and go to Blanton’s Business School.”

He said “All right.”

She said, “If it’s bad, you can take me out of there.”

So she went to Blanton’s Business School, and now she’s—she don’t like much being a CPA.

Subjects: Leave behind

00:41:34 - What’s your favorite thing about all of this?

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Partial Transcript: My favorite thing about it all is I love the people. And they enjoy coming around. And if I’m not there, they wonder where I’m at.

Subjects: Favorite thing

00:41:56 - If you could do anything differently, would you change anything?