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Section 3: Analyzing Oral HistoriesPrimary Source Set C
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
[Roy A. Morse]Scroll Down to view the text of this document. NOTE: This is an excerpt. The full text version of Roy A. Morse is in American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940.
... {excerpt begins} NAME AND ADDRESS OF INFORMANT: Roy A. Morse, Sumner, Nebr. Date and time of interview Oct. 19-20, 1938 MY FIRST AUTOMOBILE I went to town one Saturday and automobiles were a curiosity in those days so one of the first things I heard when I arrived, was that my neighbor had bought a new automobile, so I goes to the garage and sure enough there was Andy-- my nearest neighbor in a new car, ... so I determined not to be outdone by my neighbors and especially Andy, I goes over to another garage to buy a car ... and as Andy had gotten a Ford I wanted some other kind, so he sold me a car and we got on the train to go get the car. We arrived in Kearney and had a few hours to wait before going to Omaha so decided to look around a little, maybe we could get a car like I wanted there and save the time going into Omaha for it. We went to the dealer who had the agency for the [car?] I had planned to buy and of course he didn't have one in stock but he had a second hand car that I could buy for less money and it looked all right so I bought it and we drove it home. I arrived home about 9:30 p.m. a proud owner of a new car. In a few days I could not stand the pressure any longer, so had to take the [car?] to North Platte to show my brother-in-law. I tried to get my wife to go along, but she was too smart for me and stayed home, so I went to ... [?] ... town ... and got the man who sold me the car to go with me. When we started it was in the spring of the year and the roads on the Platte Valley were none too good then, but we got there about dark that night. ([11hrs.?] 80 miles) We stayed the next day and got up early the next morning and ... started home. We had hardly gotten ... started when it began to rain. We worked and drove all day without dinner or [supper?] and we run out of gas near Brady and stopped at a farm house and stayed all night. Next morning we persuaded the farmer to take his team and take us to town for gasoline and we started again and when night overtook us ...[?] ... we ... were five miles west of Lexington and the car would not run so we walked to Lexington and he got on the train and went home and I stayed all night and hired a guy to go out and ... pull me into the garage. He proceeded to try and find what the trouble was, well I don't think now as I look back that the mechanic knew any more about a car than I did, but he was three days finding the trouble and when he found it he had to order the parts from the [factory?] and that would take five or six days to get the parts and about two days to put repair parts in car, so that meant a week before I could get the [car?] to go home, so I rode the train home and in about ten days my wife drove the team and wagon and took me to Lexington and after the car. They had the job done with a bill of [$57.00?] against me when we arrived, so I paid for the repairs and started out for home everything went fine until I got within about a mile from home, and it quit again just like it done before so I had to wait until my wife came alone with a team and wagon to take me home. Within a few weeks I had the car taken apart and hired a mechanic from my dealers garage in town to get needed parts and help me put it together again that time it only cost me $27. I drove the car a few days after that over to see my neighbor Andy, and it broke down again in the same manner, he looked at the car and I told him how it had done the same thing twice before and what it had cost me and you should of seen him laugh. He says "Get into my car with [me?], we are going to town. He went into the garage and bought a little gaget for 45, took it home and put it on the magneto and I never had a minutes trouble with that car after that and I still believe that all the other expense I put on that car was unnecessary if the mechanics had known their stuff. ... {excerpt ends}
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American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
[Yankee Innkeeper]Scroll Down to view the text of this document.
... {excerpt begins}
Mr. Robert E. Gould, for twenty-three years host of the Newport House, Newport, N. H. It can't be denied that the hotel business has been changed a lot by automobiles, by the tourist rooms and the cabins following in their smoke and fishing for their business. They've got a lot of it, no doubt ... scattered it around in little pieces. Some kinds of business, on which hotels used to depend, have almost gone ... permanently, probably. But hotel men aren't taking the threat of this competion lying down; they're hunting new ways of making hotels pay, and finding them. Some of these ways are stop-gaps, to bridge us over this period of low income. For we expect ... yes, that's the word..that, after people have bad their fling with cabins and their like, they will be coming back to hotels again. Cabins are a new thing. They're one of the `anythings' that the American public will try ... once. Already there are many people who tell me they don't like them after they have tried them. They say that in these tourist rooms and cabins they miss the little conveniences-the various gadgets- which hotels provide. They miss the cozy little nooks, with desks, for writing letters, or sending post cards, or places for doing a lot of things ... travellers ... travelers .... like to do. They're more for hotels than ever. They like the sociability of the lobby, the dining room, the chance to make new acquaintances. They like the feel of the crowd around them. I suppose there are some who like to sleep out in the woods; whose tastes are satisfied by the presence of the cold, fresh dew, and the little woods-pussies with white backs. ... Take so simple a thing as hot water. People like plenty of hot water...running from a tap in their rooms, not a measly cupful or two ... but hot water to luxuriate in. The item of hot water is important to the travelling public ... right where and when you want it. Ask the cabin keepers about hot water ... they can't supply it ... not as people prefer it. If we hotel men can stick out this period of people fooling around with cabins, we're going to get a lot of our old trade back. But there's one class of our old trade we'll never get back ... one that hotels depended on considerably ... the old-time drummer ... salesman, to you. Some hotels depended on it more than others, but it was important everywhere. The Hotel Moody, over at Claremont ... probably seventy per cent of their trade was of that class. Some hotels had even more perhaps as high as ninety per cent. ... Here at Newport drummers represented about ... thirty per cent of our business; seventy per cent was non-commercial---tourists, and visitors for various purposes. But that thirty per cent was important. Drummers used to come out from the commercial houses in Boston, New York, even from more distant points. They came by train, and lived in the hotels while on the road. They used to stay out the entire week, going in home, Friday or Saturday. If they came from far points they might be out for weeks ... even months. But since they have taken to automobiles some go back and forth every night ... home. They don't come in from distant places any more. It is the practice of the commercial houses to locate a representative near enough their trade to go back and forth every day. The swifter automobiles are made, and the smoother and straighter the roads, the farther a salesman can reach out, the fewer salesmen are required to cover the territory.
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American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
[Dunnell #13]Scroll Down to view the text of this document. This is an excerpt. The full text version of Dunnell #13 is in American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940.
... {excerpt begins} STATE MASSACHUSETTS NAME OF WORKER ROBERT WILDER ADDRESS NORTHFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS SUBJECT LIVING LORE DATE OF INTERVIEW June 19, 1939 NAME OF INFORMANT G. O. DUNNELL ADDRESS NORTHFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS "Young people these days ain't what they used ter be," said Mr. Dunnell, dealing himself a hand of his favorite solitaire from a worn pack of grimy cards. "When I was young we used to walk. We'd think nothing of an eight or ten mile walk. Although, if we were going that far we generally managed to get hold of a horse. But for walking up the street, and walking down the street, or over to the post office, we never asked anybody to drive us. Even if a team was all hitched up and waiting we wouldn't take it. It would have been right in the way, and might have interfered with what we'd want to do after we got to the place. I'm not sure but the reason we have so many corner loafers and drug store cowboys is on account of the ... automobiles. Young people like to go places and do things. If they are allowed to drive an automobile, why those that haven't any car envy them. They think the young person with the automobile could drive to San Francisco if he wanted to. They forget that his old man buys the gas and keeps a good check up on what's used. That the young feller ain't got no money of his own. And that the drug store is about as far as he dare go. And that about all the fun he gets out of life is standing on the drug store steps, and making believe to a bunch of other fellers in the same fix as himself, that he's been everywhere and seen everything, so that he don't feel like driving no more. Once in a while he hooks somebody that ain't got a car to put up money for the gas and oil. But the chances are that the feller paying wants to go to a liquor place where he can show off to the feller with the automobile. By himself, or with the friends held have if none of their fathers had automobiles, held never go near a liquor place. He'd rather have a nice cream sody, or some candy. But just because he ain't never been taught to use his legs to get places - and I don't suppose it does any good for any one family to try to fix it - he ends up in a booze joint. The young feller that ain't got a car has a tough time, too. He hears the crowd talking about how sick they are of driving around. He ain't never been nowhere. But like all young fellers he's managed to learn how to drive a car. Not being anything but a kid, he listens to the talk, and next thing you know, he's 'borrered' somebody's car. I ain't got no use for 'Goop' Sauter. He's got a nice mother that he's meaner than dirt to at times. But I don't see how he got into jail. And where his car stealing habit come from. 'Course, there must be something wrong in his top story, or he never would leave cars that he's stole where he does. They point right towards him. I guess, though, it's got so that no body could have a car stole 'round this section without 'Goop' getting the blame for it. They've guessed right too many times now. But he never tries to sell the cars. He never hurts 'em none. He just takes 'em for the ride. ... I tell yer, the damned automobiles complicates things all up. ...And, as for the young people, it's fixing 'em so they can't walk, and I vum, I expect to live to see the day when babies is born with no legs at all, but wheels where their legs is supposed to be! It'll happen, too, unless something is done about it. ...{excerpt ends}
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American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
[Transportation]Scroll Down to view the text of this document. This is an excerpt. The full text version of Transportation is in American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940.
... {excerpt begins} TITLE Connecticut Cleckmaker WRITER Francis Denovan DATE 1/5/39 Thomaston, Connecticut TRANSPORTATION ... "I had a lot of fun on that old bicycle . Guess I told you about some of the trips I took didn't I? When I got through with that bike I sat down and figured up my mileage, and I found out that I'd been clear around the world, if I'd gone in a straight line. "Yessir, I'd been over twenty-five thousand miles. Went over three hundred and sixty-five miles one week. Never did a century run, though I could've, easy as not. Some fellers used to see how many of them they could run up. A great trip was up to Springfield and back. That's fifty miles each way. You were supposed to make it same day, of course. "I got out the shop one day at four o'clock. At twenty-six minutes after, I was down in Dexter's drug store in Waterbury, drinkin' a sody. How's that for scorchin'? "Lots of fellers used to try to make Plymouth hill, that used to be an awful steep hill before the new bridge went in. ..."Great times, great times, on the bicycles. Then the automobiles come along. Of course it was a long time before everybody got to ownin' them too. Most any one could have a bicycle. I remember when they was seventy five of them over in the sheds by the Marine shop every day. "But automobiles was a different proposition. Jack Coates used to have a job testin' em for the Pope Hartford Company. He used to ride 'em all over the state. They'd tell him how many miles to go and they didn't care where he went. He'd just rig up an old seat on the chassis and start out, no windshield or or nothin', and come back when he got the mileage made up. "That's how I got my first and fastest auto ride. I was goin' to Springfield and I was hikin' along over towards Terryville to get the trolley and Jack come along and I flagged him. I was late. I says, 'Jack, can we make the trolley,' and he says, 'Sure,' and how we did fly. We made it all right. "The different cars they used to be. I used to keep a list of 'em. There was the Pope Hartford, and the Stevens Duryea, and the Locomobile, and the Peerless and the National, and the Saxon, and the Metz--I can't remember them all. "Billy Gilbert, that used to live next to me here, he had a Stanley Steamer. He was an engineer. He's out in Californy now. Spent all his life on the railroads and he swore by steam. Wouldn't have a gasoline engine. "After he moved to Californy he wrote me a letter. Said there was a big hill out there beyond San Francisco nine miles long. Said ten tow cars was kept busy on that hill all the time. But that steamer of his just ate it up. "You'd ought to be able to remember when they used Plymouth Hill for testin' cars. It was quite a trick for a car to go over there in high. Good many of 'em would start off in high, then shift to second, then low, then they'd get stuck. But it's a damn poor car that won't go over in high these days. Man wouldn't buy a car that wouldn't make it in high. "Well, I got to go down town, but I ain't goin' to give you no lift today. I'm not goin' to take the car out, I feel as though the walk will do me good. So you just wait till I put the cat out and fix my fires and we'll walk down together."
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