Interview with Gus and Betty Dressen

Interview with Gus and Betty Dressen Interviewer: Vaughn Hamilton Transcriber: Vaughn Hamilton Date of Interview: February 25, 1986 Location: Dressen Farm, between Kyle and Uhland, TX Begin Tape 1, Side 1 Vaughn Hamilton: Today I will be conducting the first of two interviews with Gus and Betty Dressen. They are a farming couple of German descent who live on six acres between Kyle and Uhland, Texas. The entire six acres is filled with gardens, barns, old farm equipment, hen houses, pig pens, goat pens, a pond, nearly every possible farm animal, and their present house, which was built in 1926. The first part of the interview takes place in their living room. The interview begins with Mr. Dressen and later on his wife will be joining us. This is Vaughn Hamilton, with the oral history class of Southwest Texas State University. The date is February 25, 1986. I m just going to start asking you about your folks, who was it who came here to the farm, and who first settled it. Sort of along that line. Gus Dressen: That was way back there. I guess my great-grandfather came here first. Hamilton: When was that? G. Dressen: Oh, that was way back there. The 1800s or something. Let s say 1850 or something like that. Hamilton: And where did he come from? G. Dressen: He come from Germany. Hamilton: For what reasons? Did he have any specific reasons to come over here? G. Dressen: To settle down over here. Lots of them came to live over here. Hamilton: Was this the first place that he came to? G. Dressen: I imagine it was. I m sure it was. Hamilton: What did your parents do around here? G. Dressen: They farmed it all the time. All the time they had a farm. Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 1

Hamilton: Betty was telling me there is also a little blacksmith shop. G. Dressen: Yeah, we had our own blacksmith shop. [See photo number one] Hamilton: And your father ran that? G. Dressen: Mostly my brother Pete. He used to do that. Hamilton: And you all used to have mostly everything you have right now? G. Dressen: Cows. And there wasn t no tractor or nothing like that. It was mules. Hamilton: When you were younger did you use mules? G. Dressen: Yeah, I used mules all the time. Hamilton: What was that like? G. Dressen: Oh, it was great. Better than it is now. I d take it back any time. Hamilton: Why is that? G. Dressen: Because there wasn t a whole lots of money, but things weren t as high. And it was a better living. It wasn t all that fancy stuff put on the food. Common food and you lived longer. That s why the old folks lived long. All this stuff they put on foods now, that s why you kick off right away. That s why you get heart attacks and stuff like that. Cancer and food poison. Hamilton: So you all lived pretty good, then. G. Dressen: Oh yeah. We didn t live great, but we lived alright. You didn t have meat every day either. Once a week. Hamilton: What was that, pork? G. Dressen: Pork or beef. You bought it in town. Buy two or three pounds for thirty cents. Hamilton: What are some more things you remember growing up as a child around here? G. Dressen: Well, we usually always raised our own turkeys. You had to farm your own beans. You couldn t hardly buy that. You had your own lard from the hogs you butchered. It was great. Hamilton: You wish you could get back then. G. Dressen: Have you ever been through a depression? I ve been through one. Everything was cheap. You couldn t get a job nowhere. You couldn t find no job. There wasn t any money. So finally, the government started killing the cows. Paid you seven dollars a cow for them. Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 2

Hamilton: Did you all kill your cows here? G. Dressen: No, we didn t kill any of ours. But some of the neighbors did. You had to haul them into town, and they d shoot them. And then you d have to haul them back and get rid of them. We didn t do that. We kept ours. Hamilton: Pretty hard times? G. Dressen: Oh yeah, real hard times. Hamilton: Did you have trouble selling? G. Dressen: Oh yeah, you couldn t get nothing for a cow. If you got nine dollars for a cow, you got a big price for that kind of animal. Hamilton: Did you figure that you all did a little better than the rest of the people around? G. Dressen: No, they all did about the same. Things got real cheap. Plowed with mules. Couldn t plow a whole lot because that was just a one-row deal. Now it s from two to six rows. Hamilton: That must have been interesting. Did you ever have a lot of problems with them? G. Dressen: No, you worked them all day and fed them at night and work them again the next day. Hamilton: How has the area around here changed? We were talking about that yesterday, how some of the things have changed. G. Dressen: Well, used to you didn t have any gravel roads. It was all black roads. It got rainy, you stayed home. You couldn t go out. You walked to school through those muddy roads because you couldn t drive. There wasn t nothing to drive anyway. Mules and wagons. But there wasn t no cars. Hamilton: Where did you go to school here? G. Dressen: Uhland. Betty Dressen: Be sure you put it in there eleven years. (From the kitchen and laughing) That s back when high school was eleven years. That s all they had. G. Dressen: But it was great in school those days. You learnt there. You didn t chunk around like you all do. You made your grades there. Hamilton: Is the school still over there? G. Dressen: It s still there, but it s the community center now. Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 3

Hamilton: Was it a pretty small school for that time? G. Dressen: Four rooms. Had about sixty to eighty students in the whole works. Four teachers and each of them had had three grades except high school, and they only had two grades: tenth and eleventh. Hamilton: You had some brothers and sisters, also? G. Dressen: Yeah. I had one sister. My brothers all went to Uhland School, but I and my sister was the only ones that graduated. Hamilton: And then you started working here on the farm? G. Dressen: Right. You worked when you went to school too. You didn t not work. You worked when you come home after school. (Some laughing from B. Dressen) You know, but those were great days. Let em come back, and the young folks will find out what living really is. Hamilton: What are some of the best things that you remember about growing up here? [B. Dressen whispers something. She is now sitting in the room with us.] Say what? Being mean? G. Dressen: We had great times then. We d go hunting, and every now and then you d get a boy along that was scared all the time. Me and another boy, we got together and figured it out. We went down to the creek and sprung a baling wire across the bottom about so high. I and that one boy who went with us walked up into the pasture. That other boy didn t go. So we got way up in the pasture. This other boy sneaked around and hollered just like a wildcat. And I told that boy, What was that? He said, I don t know. And that boy hollered again, and I told him, That animal hollered again, and I m getting out of here. And we took off and run. He run by the creek and hit that wire and fell in the water. (Laughs) Oh, we were characters. Hamilton: You did a lot of hunting around here? G. Dressen: All the time. You didn t have no coyotes and stuff like that around in those days. They was skinned alive if they were around. B. Dressen: What else? Coon hunting. G. Dressen: Coon hunting, possum, skunk; anything that come around, you hunted. B. Dressen: Sold the skins, the hides, to make the money. Hamilton: Oh, really? How much could you get for a coon hide back then? G. Dressen: Coon hides, those days you got about a quarter. And possum, you got ten cents; skunk, fifteen. Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 4

Hamilton: A few years ago, I know you could get a coon for twenty [dollars] or so. G. Dressen: Now they re high. But in those days, you couldn t hardly find a coon. You couldn t hardly find no possum or nothing no more when we quit hunting. They was all killed out. You could have turkeys running out and nothing ever bother them, but now you have one out and a coyote will pick it up right away. Hamilton: Saw another one stringed up on a fence down there just recently, yesterday. G. Dressen: Coyote? Did you know that one of those coyotes had puppies under that old pickup? Hamilton: That pickup over on the land where I m living? [I live about two miles away from these people in what is known as the old Kampin(?) house, one of the older farmsteads of the area.] G. Dressen: See how she had a hole dug out under there? And I seen her walk over there one day. I didn t go over there, but the next day I went over there and you could see where she had her puppies. She had moved them. I wish I could have found one of those little young ones. I d atook it and brought it home. Hamilton: You ever had a coyote dog before? A puppy? B. Dressen: We have one now. G. Dressen: Little Yogi out there. Hamilton: The one that was barking at me when I came up? B. Dressen: Yeah. Well, did you get through? Did you tell him about the house, the old house, Gus? G. Dressen: We used to have a two-story house here. And when I was little, I liked to always go up in the two-story and slide down that banister. And I was real slick. You couldn t catch a splinter on it. But then in 25 we got that hail storm, and it just knocked it completely out. Knocked the two-story house down. B. Dressen: Go on. You rebuilt. G. Dressen: Got this house. B. Dressen: Then you rebuilt. G. Dressen: Rebuilt it and I was six years old when I moved in this house. That s how old the house is. Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 5

B. Dressen: And then the barn. G. Dressen: And then we had a big barn there. That s where we went when the storm got the house. And then, in 28, it burned down. Hamilton: So when the house got messed up in the storm, you all went and moved into the barn. G. Dressen: We had to go to the barn to get out of the storm. And you know, it beat that tin on the barn just like someone had hit it with a hammer, just solid one by one just straight across. And cows and mules that were in the pasture, they were all killed from hail. The hail was as big as an indoor baseball. Lay three foot deep on the ground. Hamilton: I ve never seen anything like that. G. Dressen: That big. Hamilton: As big as a grapefruit. G. Dressen: Yeaj, and three weeks later, you could still do down to the creek and pick up enough ice to make ice cream from that hail. Hamilton: And so then you all rebuilt this house? [See photo number two] G. Dressen: Yeah, in 25. That storm come through April 28, 1925. B. Dressen: Now, what else about this place? Is that it? What about your uncle s house up there, where Albert Bussey(?) lives? Hamilton: Up there at the dairy farm? B. Dressen: That s where your mother was. Tell him. G. Dressen: But I don t know too much about that man. They were pretty old when I was born, when I was little. I know my grandfather on my mother s side, he remarried. He married some old witch. (Laughs) She was. She was bad. She was bad. I know that woman. B. Dressen: Well, what else do you want to know about the neighborhood? Hamilton: How many acres do you have here? B. Dressen: Six. And then we got quite a bit leased or rented, whichever you want to call it. Rented. We got, I don t know how many. G. Dressen: Ninety-five up yonder and thirty-two over here. Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 6

Hamilton: And then around here you have the smokehouse and what all? Was that part of the original? G. Dressen: That was built when this house was built. But the old car garage there, it s still here from a long time ago. And that other little barn down there. I guess it could be 125 years old. [See photo number two (background) for garage and number four for little barn] B. Dressen: That s a good age. Hamilton: There weren t too many other buildings around here that old, are there? In this area? G. Dressen: Well, up there, Mrs. Anton s and Keen s house, they could be about a hundred years old. B. Dressen: Now their barns are not, just their house. G. Dressen: And then over where Kornstat lives there. B. Dressen: That s another old house. Kornstat, yes, that s an old house. Hamilton: That smokehouse, do you all still use that quite a bit? G. Dressen: Oh yeah. B. Dressen: That s always used. Hamilton: Mostly when? B. Dressen: Butchering time. G. Dressen: When I butcher and I keep my eggs over there. B. Dressen: Okay, what else? Hamilton: Well, you could tell me some more about some of the problems during the Depression and the conditions of the roads. What are some more problems you would have then that people now wouldn t even hardly think of having? B. Dressen: Well, for high water, you never could get across. G. Dressen: There weren t any dips. You just drove through there with your wagon and mules. They got through where a car would never pass. But there wasn t no cars. Hamilton: When did you all first get a car? Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 7

G. Dressen: I guess I was about fifteen or sixteen years old. (Pause) Those days, the cars weren t very high, and a new car cost you fifteen hundred dollars. That was the best. B. Dressen: Tell him how they fixed the country roads back yonder. G. Dressen: They hauled the gravel out there with wagons and mules, this road right here in front of the house. And they shoveled it off the wagons in the road. B. Dressen: And they graded it with mules. G. Dressen: All with mules. Hamilton: So when did they first bring in the gravel? G. Dressen: I guess it was in the thirties. B. Dressen: No electricity. G. Dressen: No electricity until 41. Hamilton: Mostly gas? G. Dressen: There wasn t no gas. Wood stove and lamp. B. Dressen: They cooked on wood stoves, as I did, too. G. Dressen: And you had to have an oil lamp to have light. There wasn t no air condition, nothing like that. Air conditioning was a fan in your hand, and you fanned yourself. (Laughs) Hamilton: [Pointing out the window] Was this the cistern right out here? [Photo number two] G. Dressen: Right, what we drank. Had cold water. Hamilton: Did you all ever have problems with the water? G. Dressen: No. When it went dry, you had to haul it with a wagon and mule. Hamilton: Did that happen very often? G. Dressen: Oh yeah. All the time. B. Dressen: Okay, now tell him where you got the water. He might like to know where you got the water. G. Dressen: We got it over here on the Dreistock(?) place. They had a spring that run out of the ground. And they had a spring that just run out about an inch-and-a-half diameter space. It run all the time. And you just went there by the spring and dipped your water out of the creek. Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 8

B. Dressen: That was their drinking water, also. G. Dressen: I hauled water with mules when water froze on the wagon coming home. (Laughs) B. Dressen: You should have been born sooner. (Laughs) G. Dressen: And then you d be older. Be too old. (Laughs) B. Dressen: I don t remember those days, though. I don t remember any of them like they do. I know it was hard. How did you go to town, Gus? With Mom and Daddy on buggy? G. Dressen: Yeah, horse and buggy or wagon. B. Dressen: How do you like that? Hamilton: Pretty rough with those gravel roads? B. Dressen: No. G. Dressen: When a few of them drove across there, it cut pretty smooth. But when it rained and they cut through those ruts, then it was rough. Some places, the mules and wagons couldn t hardly get through because the mules would stick. B. Dressen: What else? Hamilton: When did you come on the scene here? [To Betty] B. Dressen: I lived out here just about all my life, in this country. But I moved over here in 1955. From right across the road. Right across here, just on the other side of this house right here. Just on the other side, we lived here practically all my life. Actually, my real home is in Lockhart, but I was just a little ole thing then. I was born in Buda. Then we went to Lockhart, and then they came over here, and I went to school at Kyle. I came here in 1955. Thirty-one years, I been right here. Now then, what else? Hamilton: What type of work do you do around here on the farm? Some people might be interested to hear what goes on. B. Dressen: You mean what he does? Hamilton: Yes, with the corn and the chickens G. Dressen: What you do now or what you did then? Hamilton: Well, what you do now, or both. Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 9

G. Dressen: Well, a long time ago, you had to shell your corn with a hand corn sheller. You didn t have it shelled like you do now. It was great because in the evening you shelled off two or three buckets of corn. That was it. Fed the hogs corn. Fed the cows and mules, and your day was over with. But you didn t start on that until sundown and then you had to milk the cows. Hamilton: You all would get up about what time to start? G. Dressen: Around five o clock. Milk the cows. First you fed the mules, and then you milked the cows. Then you ate your breakfast and then try to get out in the fields by sunup. B. Dressen: At that time; now today what do you do? G. Dressen: (Laughs) I go to work at three, two o clock in the morning. [He drives a pastry truck on a route] Hamilton: And then when you get back here you G. Dressen: Work til nine o clock. (Laughs) B. Dressen: Now tell him what your chores are. G. Dressen: Pick up the eggs, feed the chickens. Hamilton: How many chickens do you have? G. Dressen: Right now I have around three hundred. And then I feed my hogs, and then I go feed the cows, and that s already dark when I get in the house. And then I eat, and then I have to check in my paper work, which takes another half an hour. B. Dressen: And then how many hogs you got? G. Dressen: Well, now about twenty-seven or something like that. B. Dressen: And on this farm you have what? G. Dressen: Everything. Peacocks, ducks, turkeys, bantam chickens, regular hens, goats, cows, hogs, dogs, cats [See photo number 9] Hamilton: A lot of cats. B. Dressen: Not too many. We ve lost quite a few. What else? G. Dressen: That s about it. Hamilton: It s a lot easier planting your corn now, I guess. Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 10

B. Dressen: Oh, yes, it is. G. Dressen: You used to plant with mules one row at a time, but you got quite a bit done when you started early and worked all day. It took you about three days to plant fifteen acres. But it come up good, though. B. Dressen: Now tell him what you did when the corn came up this high. G. Dressen: We had to go chop it. Hamilton: When it was just a few inches high? B. Dressen: Then what did you do? G. Dressen: Then you had to take a walking cultivator and cultivate it. You had to walk behind that cultivator because you wouldn t throw your corn up. B. Dressen: And then after that what did you do? How many times did you cultivate it? G. Dressen: About twice. B. Dressen: And then after it made its roasting ears what did you do? G. Dressen: Tied them up and fed them to the animals. Did that every year. B. Dressen: And then when did you gather the corn? G. Dressen: Around September. Mules and wagons. B. Dressen: What did you do with your other crops? Your cotton. G. Dressen: You went out there and picked it. Hamilton: You all grew some cotton? B. Dressen: I didn t. They did. G. Dressen: We did, yes. Hamilton: And you all used it right here? Or did you sell it? G. Dressen: You sold it. Now, then you picked it by hand. You didn t have no cotton puller or stripper. B. Dressen: How did you do your row cane? [This is the same as sugar cane] Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 11

G. Dressen: Well, you had to cut the seed off for next year s seed and mow it down and use it for hay. B. Dressen: And what kind of mower did you use? G. Dressen: A mule mower. Hamilton: They don t use those any more. Do you even have one around here? G. Dressen: Yes, I ve got two of them around here. You want to use it? (Laughs) This is one that hooks up behind a tractor. B. Dressen: Okay. How about this thing you used to cut the row cane down. What did you use with that? G. Dressen: A row binder. They don t have them anymore. We didn t have one; we had to get someone else to do it. B. Dressen: You row-bined your hay. G. Dressen: Then you cut your cane down and let it lay about three days, and then you raked it and shocked it in the field. You didn t bale it. Hamilton: Did you tie it up out there? G. Dressen: No, you shocked, and then you put it on the wagon later on and stacked it in stacks for your mules and cows. Hamilton: And did you throw it up in your barn? G. Dressen: And then you just threw it over the fence where they are. You had a trough there, and you just threw it in the trough. B. Dressen: Although, you can put it in the barn. My daddy did that. He threw it in the barn when he was farming. It was always thrown in the barn when it was dried. And your mule and your cows, that s all we had to feed them at that time. And then corn. G. Dressen: There was no bought feed at that time. You know, back then you couldn t even buy a loaf of bread. You had to bake all your own bread. There was no bread in the store. B. Dressen: Tell him how your mama baked bread, Gus, so that can get on the list, too. G. Dressen: She made it about three times a week. B. Dressen: And she made her own yeast. Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 12

Hamilton: How did she do that? B. Dressen: We don t know. I don t know. G. Dressen: Yes, all the folks always made their own yeast. Everybody around here. B. Dressen: I don t know how you did it. I have no idea. It s something there, but I have no idea. Never have asked anybody. They made their own egg noodles. G. Dressen: And they were good. That chicken gravy on there B. Dressen: Remember she had a wood stove. A cast iron wood stove. I never had one of those. Make your own bread in that; fix your brown beans on that. Gus can tell you about what his mother did. Tell him. G. Dressen: Well, she always had it ready when I come from school. B. Dressen: I know, but brown beans and potatoes and what else? All cooked on a wood stove. That s what they heated this house with. The old wood stove made its own hot water. You poured it in there, and it made its own hot water. I can remember this. Hamilton: Hot water for your bathing? B. Dressen: I guess. Mama s dish washing. G. Dressen: For bathing, you usually had to put a couple big buckets on the stove and get it hot that way. End Side 1, begin Side 2 [Here Gus has left the room and I have continued the interview with his wife] B. Dressen: Back in 1925, when all this working by mules farming and all that, the people, the family here, they went ahead and had their own blacksmith shop. Since there was no blacksmith shop way back in yonder days, so they had to have their own sweeps they sharpened to do their farm work with. So they built their own blacksmith shop. They had the blower back then. They used coal to heat the fire with. You know, black coal. [See photo number one] Hamilton: Where did they bring that in from, though? B. Dressen: Well, it was like everywhere else. Where did we get it when our schools, when we had to have it? Where did we get it then? Remember, years back, you ve heard people had to have it for schools. We had our pot-bellied stove in schools. We had to have coal for that. I can remember that. So that s what they had here. They d go down and get some. They d make their own fire in the blacksmith shop to heat their sweeps real hot. And then they d take these pliers Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 13

and stick them up under this hammering machine outfit, and they d hammer them out. And then they had another outfit over here, and they d smooth them out to sharpen the sweeps to put them back on their equipment, the plows, and they d use those. And also what else did they have in a blacksmith shop a hammering machine Hamilton: When did they quit using the [blacksmith shop]? B. Dressen: They quit using it after their parents got too old and all of that. That would be back in the forties they quit using that, when the tractors came out. So, let s say 45 when they quit using it. Hamilton: Was Gus able to do all that, too? B. Dressen: No, that was his parents, that was his father. Actually, his father did all of this. We had another one. There were several of them around here like that that had their own homemade blacksmith shop. Two or three that I know of. And they did everything themselves because they didn t have the money to go down and have this down in those years. Money wasn t here like it is today. So everyone had to have their own stuff to go by. Hamilton: Did they ever have much help? B. Dressen: No help whatsoever. Oh, in farming back in the twenties, they did. They had their hands on the place. They had two or three families on the place that helped them do their farming out. Hamilton: Oh, really, that lived on the farm? B. Dressen: Lived right here on the farm and they come up and help feed all the animals, what they could do. Because the hands would come in, bring the team in as we called it, a team. It wasn t mules, it was a team. They d bring them in, at noon they d bring them in. They d unhitch them and water them and feed them. Then they d change off to another team. And they d take the new team and go out with them. And they d work until sundown, and then they d come in, unhitch them, feed them, and all of that. The next morning, they d re-hitch the other team up again. So they had maybe four different teams. What I mean by four different teams is what they usually used about two pairs of mules to a team, to a plow. I know Gus didn t tell you that, did he? No. Well, I do know because of Dad. [See photo number four for mule harness shed] And also, when they d do their plowing and they would do harrowing they had to harrow the place, you know well, they used two, only two mules. But plowing, heavy plowing, sometimes they d use four. Hamilton: But you couldn t very much plow with one, could you? Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 14

B. Dressen: Yes. You could plow with one. You sure could. Planted with one, sometimes. It depends on what kind of plow you had. If you had an old turning plow, you plowed with one mule. [See photo number six for plow and hay rake] Hamilton: Do you all still have some of the plows around here? B. Dressen: I believe my daddy has some here. Let s go down and look. We ll walk down and look. Pause in recording [Here we walk outside and she shows me the old buildings and tools. Hamilton s notes follow.] First, we walked out to her garden. Here they used to raise their turkeys. Then we went to the garage, one of the oldest buildings on the whole place. [Photo number two] It was one of the buildings built by Mr. Dressen s grandparents. Behind the garage, I was shown some of the equipment from the old blacksmith shop. Then we went over to the blacksmith shop itself, which is now just one of the henhouses. [Photo number one] Inside the small building [about ten feet by twelve feet], Mrs. Dressen showed me the old vices, blowers, the fan, which kept the workers cool, the big hammer, and even some of the mule harnesses hanging on the wall. Then we walked over to the main henhouse where approximately fifty hens were and a great many eggs. After seeing that and passing by the pond, we came to the hog pens, which contain about twenty-five hogs. After seeing all of the pigs, we went back to the main barnyard where I was shown the last remains of the original barn. All that remains is the concrete foundation marking the perimeter of the large structure [perhaps 50 feet x 150 feet]. Mrs. Dressen described it as a huge, huge barn, which had twelve or fifteen stalls for mules and milk-cows. She told me how much she wished they still had the big double-story barn. It burned down in 1926. Then we walked over to the goat pens and on to the corn barn, which is also one of the original buildings. Inside this small shed [ten feet by ten feet] [Photo number four], she showed me some more of the mule harnesses and bridles still hanging on pegs among cobwebs. The building was also used by the hands when they would bring the teams in. Here they would hang the equipment after working in the fields. When we left the corn barn, we walked over to a great collection of rusty farm equipment. There were all kinds of mowers [estimated to be about one hundred years old], which were pulled behind mules, some harrows, some rollers, plows, and other implements. She also explained how the rollers worked. [Number seven for roller and mule-drawn shovel. Number five for old wagon] Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 15

I was then shown the remains of several old wagons, one which was the cotton wagon and another one which was the family wagon belonging to Mrs. Dressen. Next to the wagons was a small cat cemetery where Mr. Dressen buried his pets. We then looked at hay rakes, which were pulled behind mules. At that time, she briefly explained how they would mow the hay, then rake it up, then shock it up in the field, and then feed it to the animals. [Number six for rake] Next we found a single plow, which she dated as being a billion years of yonder. It was a turning plow, pulled by one mule only and took one row at a time. This was used to flat break the fields, the initial breaking up and loosening of the soil before planting. Some of the wood from the handles was still intact. Beside the plow, she found a single tree, which was used between the plow and the harnesses of the mule. Then there was another explanation of the planting procedures. After the ground was broken up, she explained, they would come along with a two-row planter, wait several days, and then come in with the roller. On the way back to the house, she told me about her father who only owned two mules. He also planted corn, high gear, row cane, which was cut by hand. The cane was then stacked on the ground and left to dry for two or three days until it dried out. Then they would go back and tie it up with string, after which they would shock it. Then after two or three months of continued drying, they would haul it back in. The cane here she was talking about was sugar cane. She also explained that her family never had a car, but instead they always road horseback. Although she enjoys the modern conveniences and automobiles, she still wishes she had a horse to ride. Then we finished up our tour around the compact six-acre farm by Mrs. Dressen giving me an explanation of the hog butchering and about the smokehouse. The first steps in the process, which they still do once a year, is to build fires under two very large black iron kettles filled with water. Then they would tie the hog to a stake and shoot it. Then they would place it up on what looks like a metal rack where they would scrape it and clean it up some. Then they strung the animals up in the air under a large metal tripod where they would cut it open and clean up the insides. Afterwards, they would take the cleaned and gutted hog into the back of the smokehouse where they placed it on a clean table to cut it up. [Here the tape ends, but she continued to explain how they would take the meat once it was cut up and hang it in the front part of the smokehouse where the curing process would begin and continue until they were ready to eat.] End of interview Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 16

[See photo number eight for butchering area. Center of picture, and barely visible, is the stake where they tie the hog. To the right of that is the metal rack for scraping (chicken on top). Center rear is the tripod. To the left rear are the two black pots. And to the far left is the back end of the smokehouse.] Gus and Betty Dressen Interview, February 25, 1986 17