My mom made all my clothes. I was the only girl, and my mother made all my clothes. And she never used a pattern. She never learned to do it that way. She’d start cutting something out, and then have me try it on, and she’d cut a little bit around the neck, or maybe, do this or out of the other.

I wish she had taught me how to do that. I sewed a lot. I sewed for our three girls, but I always had to have a pattern. I wish my mom had taught me a little bit.

In fact, one time when our children were small, my mother called me, and she had taken apart a coat that I had when I was at home, and she washed it. And so she called me, and she asked me to measure my daughter from here to there, neck to here, and measure from here to here and tell me. And she made my eldest daughter Eileen a little coat out of that other coat that I had. She never she didn’t have anybody there to try it on or anything. It was little princess-style coat.

My parents had the family during the depression, and I think if you, I always have said if you grew up, if you had a family, you lived through the depression, you never got over it because my parents were very frugal. My mother and dad were very generous with everybody else, but not to us kids. But they were very frugal and very careful with their things. My mom tells about that she knew how many hens, lay hens, she had, and sometimes hens would steal their nests. But she found every egg. She knew they had to have it, and she traded eggs for groceries. And at six cents a dozen, you needed every egg.  

Diana Dohrman: My mom got so mad she went down to gather the eggs, and there was a big old bull snake coming out the door with some lumps in it. 

The bullsnake, coming out of the hen house with lumps in it, and she killed him. She was determined to get those eggs out. Whatever it takes.

JoAnn Drummond: I could see my mom doing that.