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I was borne Lillian Bell Eubanks on May 5th, 1916, to William Barton and Pinky Estella (White) Eubanks on a farm in North Alabama. My family consisted of three brothers and one sister and myself: Lee Arnold, James Ervin, Annie Mae, Lillian Bell, and Marvin Roosevelt Eubanks. My Dad and Mom were farmers at trade. We never owned a home or a farm - just worked other people's land.
We had a good home. Love was there although our Dad was at that time a drunkard every week end as I understand it.
We always had enough food to eat. We raised most of it. My Mother canned and preserved all the food that was available. We always had a vegetable garden plus what we raised in the fields. We raised our meat such as hogs, chickens and cows. We rendered our own lard for cooking, corn for meal and hominy and fresh corn to eat. We milked the cows for fresh milk and butter, chickens for fresh eggs and fried chicken, hogs for sausage and bacon.
We were always busy on the farm. My dad and mom were hard workers and expected their children to work also. It was a busy but happy life.
We only went to town once in a while on Saturdays.

Maw & Paw

Our parents bought our clothes as they felt we needed them, mostly once a year.
We visited our relatives often. The only way to travel was walk or ride in a wagon.
We went to work very early in the mornings, worked until sundown and then we had to feed the hogs and milk the cows. We had to get in wood for the stove as we had a wood burning stove to cook on and a heater or fireplace for heat in the winter.
We didn't have a bathroom for bathing. We had a #3 wash tub that we also used to wash our clothes in to get a bath after dark. We drew water from a well with a rope and bucket on a pulley. We washed our clothes on a rub board and boiled them in a big black wash kettle which we would build a fire under. We didn't have good smelling soap to bathe with. Our Mother made her own soap with lye.
We had flat heating irons to iron the clothes with, as there was no such thing as wash & wear. We had to iron everything by building a fire either outside or in the stove to heat them, using one 'til it got cool then reheating that one while using the other. It could be an all day job. We washed one day and ironed the next.
There were no rugs on the floor. We scrubbed the wood floors with lye soap and a broom. The broom was also home grown and home made.
Our farming was corn, cotton, peas, beans and peanuts, which we worked by hand and with the help of mules to plow with. We used hoes to chop the grass from the cotton as it grew, thin the corn and cut the weeds from the garden.

When I was still a small child, we went out one morning early with very sharp hoes to thin some corn. We worked bare foot - no shoes - when it was warm. I had not cut but a few strokes, skimming it off at the top of the ground, when I hit my big toe, cutting a three corner cut in the top of my toe and hitting a blood vein. I went to the house leaving a trail of blood behind me. My Mother had a bunch of remedies for stopping the flow of blood, but they didn't work all day. At night, it kept bleeding. We lived seven miles from the doctor's office. We had to travel in a one horse buggy. My toe bled all the way there.
The doctor only pressed down on it to stop the bleeding and clamped it together.
I fainted my one and only time in my life.

In winter, when it was too cold to get out, we pieced quilt tops that my mother quilted to keep us warm at night. The houses were not built like today. They were very breezy when the winter winds blew. We worked hard but it was fun and we were happy to be together.

Going to school was something else. We never lived real close as now. It was about two miles of unpaved road so when it froze in the winter, icicles spewed up and made it hard to walk on. Your feet would feel numb and hurt like they would break when you made a step. We had a big round heater in the school room to warm by.
The school consisted of one big room for all grades to meet in. When it rained or snowed, we would manage to get a ride in the wagon. We didn't mind as every one - that is most everyone - was in the same boat so to speak.
We thought it a treat to get to go in the wagon. A few had a car or a surrey with curtains to block to the wind and rain or snow.
When it was warm, we had lots of fun walking home. Most of the time, a bunch would walk together.

We lived at what was called the 7 Mile Post, seven miles from Athens in the 1920's. A family by the name Buchanan lived across the road from us. They were good friends of the family. They had a bunch of boys, one which I fell in love with when I was about twelve or thirteen years old. I married him in 1930. His name was Lloyd Buchanan.
Also down the road for about two years lived a family by the name Chambers. They had lots of boys - one about a year younger than me - and were good friends of the family.
In 1929, we moved to Huntsville, about twenty-five miles southwest. My Dad, brother Ervin, sister Mae and brother Lee worked in the cotton mill. I had always loved to go to school. I went through 5th grade. In moving around, I missed one year. I didn't want to go back. My Dad said yes, so I started in school in a strange place.

Lillian with her first husband, Lloyd Buchanan (c. 1932)

In the mean time, I was really in love. My boy friend (Lloyd) was working in the cotton mill. My Dad didn't like him very well. After starting to school in September, we decided to get married. I was then fourteen years old. I slipped around from my Dad, and my Mother helped me to get ready. She sent my brother Ervin with us to get married. When my Dad and sister came in from work, Maw always had supper on the table.
They sat down to eat (I was told). My sister missed me and wanted to know where I was. No one said anything.
She spoke up again with, "I said, where is Lillian?"
"She is gone," my Mother said.
My Dad had just filled his plate to eat and says, "Gone where?"
"To get married," Maw said.
He shoved his plate away and said, "That's hell, ain't it." He left the table and went outside.
When we got home a little after dark. he wouldn't come in the front door where we were. He went in the back and to bed without saying anything to me.
We left the next morning to go to Lloyd's parents. We were gone several weeks before going back. When we did go back, Dad still wouldn't speak to me. My sister-in-law said, as we were getting ready to leave, "Say something to you Dad."
"No," I said. "He won't talk to me."
"Well tell him bye or something," she said.
I gave in and asked him to go home with us and he said, "No, I can't go."
A week or two later, we went to town on Saturday (Athens, that is). Mama was in town and she said, "Pa said for me to bring you both home with me."
Well, we went and everything was alright again.

In 1934, December 4th, we had a baby girl named Hazel Clarie. Children were born at home in those days. She weighed 10 1/2 pounds. The doctor was filling out papers and asked me my age. I said 14 and he said, "Go get me a paddle."
Things went pretty good for a while, then we moved back to the farm in the winter of 1935. Lloyd went off with his brother-in-law to make whiskey. He did drink. I knew I was expecting another baby. He was gone two weeks. I didn't hear anything from him. One night, we were called out of bed to be told he had drowned that day but they couldn't find his body. They drug the river for his body for several days but couldn't find it. On the 10th day, it was found at Wheeler Dam at the locks. This was March.
In September, I had another baby girl. We named her Annie Lois. She was a pretty little thing. She weighed some over seven pounds.

Hazel and Annie Buchanan c. 1937

When she was about two, we moved back to West Huntsville. In the mean time, my brother Boots and Lloyd's nephew Bob Buchanan, were playing around with music. Hazel could sing real good. I was not a bad singer myself. My brother-in-law, Curtis Bragg, was getting us places to play and sing but decided we needed a fiddler. He had heard of a young man by the name of Ellis Chambers who was a good old-time fiddler and he lived in the country below Athens in a place they called the forks of the river. Curtis, Boots and Bob went to see him about playing with us. I was sitting on the porch rocker with Annie on my lap when they drove out up front. When they got out of the car and came up the walk, he was with them, his fiddle in a pillow case. I said to myself, "That is my man."
He was so bashful he hardly spoke. This was in the spring of 1937. Curtis said we should call the band the Dizzy Ramblers and we played a lot during that summer. We had some great times and lots of hard times, but lots of fun too.

In the fall, my Dad decided to move to Florida. My brother Ervin was living there at the time. On November 27th, Curtis, Boots, Bob and Bud (as we called him now) left for Auburndale, Florida. My Dad sold all his furniture and left for Florida. We arrived on December 1st, 1937, on a sunny morning, as I remember. It was beautiful.
The boys didn't have any work so they all pulled mass to get money to live. We all lived in a house together: my Dad and Mom, my sister and her husband and baby, me and my two girls, Boots, Bob, Bud and one of my cousins. We didn't have any furniture so we put mattresses on the floor to sleep on. They all picked fruit for a while. We applied for a job at the box plant where we made fruit boxes. I worked one night at the fruit plant peeling oranges and grapefruit. I had no more than lay down to sleep when I was called to go to work at the box plant.
I was put to work on the night shift. Bud had not got a job at that time. I had some girls that was after Bud at that time. He was my boy friend by then. They laughed because I had to work nights. It wasn't long before he was put to work too. Then we had it made. We drew $14.32 each a week if we worked a full week.
By May of 1938, I was really in love, but Bud decided he would go home. We were laid off for the summer. He had managed to save some over $30.00, so he and Bob hitched a ride back to Alabama. He told me later he had not intended to come back. He left on May 5th - on my birthday - but by the time the plant opened, he was back. He said that widow woman with two children wouldn't let him alone. He told me his Dad had a long talk with him telling him it wasn't a good idea to marry a widow woman with two children, but that's what happened.

Bud, Lillian, Boots, Annie, Hazel (c. 1940)

A month or so before we were married, we planned to go to a movie one Saturday night. He had a friend that drank a lot. They went to town together. He had some beer and drank some whiskey. Then to try to be a big shot, got him a cigar and smoked it. By the time he got home that evening, he was one more sick man. We had an outside "john". He went out and got his pants down with the door partly open and couldn't get up his pants pulled up. Curtis, my brother-in-law, had to go help him to the house. I got him on a quilt on the floor and bathed his face with cold water. I got some tomato juice down him and finally got him on his feet, but too late to make it to the movie. That was the last time he ever drank any whiskey. He was raised up with a Dad and brothers that drank all the time. He was the best thing that ever happened to me.
On November 5th, 1938, he married that widow woman with two children. He was twenty-one years old, I was twenty-two. We were happy together for we were meant for each other. I loved him as I had never loved anyone.

Carl - 1947

We wanted to have children but didn't have any until December, 1946. We had a baby boy, Carl Ellis - 9 3/4 pounds. He was ugly, but cute as a button and pretty as could be in two or three months.
Bud was out of work except fruit picking, which was not very good. We moved in my brother Ervin's garage til spring of 1947. We moved on Orange Street in front of the church building when Carl was 17 months old. We went to Alabama, as we drew unemployment in the summer. When we returned home, he was offered a job with the American Bakeries Company which we had a problem deciding whether he could do the job or not as it required a lot of paper work and he had only went to the 3rd grade in school. We finally decided to give it a try to which he was a wiz.

We managed to move, in 15 years of our married life, 16 times. In 1952 or '53, we bought two lots in the Prestown subdivision, east of Auburndale. Bud's brother Sears had moved to Auburndale from Athens. He was a block mason by trade. We gave him one lot and he built us a house with my help and what time Bud had to put in - which wasn't much since he went to work about two o'clock in the morning and didn't get home til 5 or 6 in the evening 6 days a week.
Today, we have a beautiful home at 209 Rose Street in Auburndale. We moved in the fall of 1954. It has been a happy home since.
Hazel married in 1950.
Annie in 1958.
Carl in 1968. His first baby, Craig Eric, was born in 1969. Eleven months later, a baby girl, Wendy Erica, was born. She was about 2 1/2 years old when Carl and wife Suzanne parted and divorced. Carl, Craig and Wendy moved back in the house with us and have lived with us ever since.

Bud worked for the bread company 31 years. In 1980, he retired. We were really getting to enjoy some time together.
In 1969, he had had a heart attack and was out of work. He pulled out of that real good until the first of 1980. He still worked but was really getting worn out by September, 1980. He retired and enjoyed about one year at home, then had another attack in May and left us May the 26th, 1981, one of the hardest things I have ever done.

--Lillian Chambers
1989