Mary Adams and Julia Taylor

[00:02] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Hello. My name is Mary Taylor Adams. I live in Ozark, Missouri, and I'm 73 years old. I have with me my cousin Julia. Julia.

[00:14] JULIA TAYLOR: And this is Friday, April 22, 2022. I am 75, just a little bit older than Mary, and we are going to talk about the most exciting adventure that we have had in the last 67 years. We've been talking about this for 67 years.

[00:31] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Yes, we have.

[00:32] JULIA TAYLOR: And we probably have most of the details down. It starts in the spring of 1955.

[00:39] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Yes. And this is Julia Taylor. We share a common name, meaning that my mother and her father were brothers and sisters. This is called the Dairy Day in 1955, and it was an exciting time. There's so many dairy farmers around Ozark, Missouri. And so once a year they came to celebrate that with parade banned, the whole works.

[01:11] JULIA TAYLOR: Remembering at this time, Ozark was 1087 people from the west census.

[01:16] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: If we certainly knew everybody, whether they were our relatives or not, we knew everybody during this time. We lived two houses from each other, and Julia and her sister Anita and I were very, very, very close, and.

[01:36] JULIA TAYLOR: Anita is the same age as Mary. So they, at this time for the parade, they were in first grade, and I, of course, was the more mature person, and I was in third grade.

[01:45] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Yes, very mature.

[01:47] JULIA TAYLOR: Thank you.

[01:49] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: We went to school that day, as everybody did, and they were going to dismiss school after lunch. Very good. We had a wonderful lunch that day. I can't remember everything that we ate, but we certainly did have our favorite.

[02:06] JULIA TAYLOR: Potato salad, and it was so good.

[02:08] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Oh, yes. Wonderful potato salad. And then they dismissed school.

[02:14] JULIA TAYLOR: So the younger kids all got on this. Most of the younger kids got on the school buses and went home. So they ate lunch and then went home. The high school kids, meanwhile, were in the band, and they lined up for the parade.

[02:28] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Yes, we were at the city park is where the parade started, and Julia and Anita and myself, we were privileged to be riding on a float, one of those floats that, you know, has the chicken wire and the napkins stuck in it. Yes, it was a wonderful float. And I remember that we were kind of on the back of the float, if I remember correctly.

[02:54] JULIA TAYLOR: And, of course, not everybody our age got to be on the float. The older kids were in the band in March, and most of the younger kids just went home. But we, being privileged, got to be on the float.

[03:05] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: But the parade was interrupted before it even started.

[03:12] JULIA TAYLOR: Really? While we were still waiting.

[03:14] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: While we were still waiting, it started. Is that when it started?

[03:17] JULIA TAYLOR: Don't you remember waiting on the. On the float? And you hear people say, snicker Snicker. Look, he's throwing up.

[03:23] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: No, he's throwing up. I thought we were on. They had stopped it when we were on the square.

[03:29] JULIA TAYLOR: No, they started, but some of the. Some of the band got sick before they even started.

[03:33] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Okay.

[03:34] JULIA TAYLOR: Okay.

[03:34] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: So there were people that were getting. Starting to get sick. And they were kind of fading out and sitting on the sides, sitting on the curbs and things like that.

[03:47] JULIA TAYLOR: And people were laughing at him.

[03:48] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Yeah, of course people were laughing at him.

[03:50] JULIA TAYLOR: How could they?

[03:51] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: How sick was it too hot? What was going on? My brother was the drum major. And he waited as long as he could before he dropped out.

[04:02] JULIA TAYLOR: He was a senior at the time.

[04:04] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Yeah, he was a senior. We were, I think, respectfully, we said first grade and third grade. We were on a float. Well, something was definitely happening in Ozark at that time, so.

[04:17] JULIA TAYLOR: And lots of people were around the square looking at the parade. It was a big thing.

[04:21] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Absolutely.

[04:22] JULIA TAYLOR: It was a wonderful thing.

[04:24] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: It was a wonderful thing. Now, Julia's mother, my aunt, Yvonne Taylor, and found out that people were getting sick. So she was concerned about her children, of course.

[04:35] JULIA TAYLOR: So she came up to the float, and by then, the float, the parade had stopped. And so the floats were just around the square and came up. And Anita and I were sick, throwing up. And she said, girls, come with me. And she turned to Mary and said, mary, you okay? And Mary said, fine, go on. I'm okay. And so mother took us by the hand and started walking away. And then we heard this voice saying.

[05:00] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Auntie Vaughn, wait, wait. I'm sick, too. So she had three little girls trying to carry them, dragging them, whatever she could do, and trying to. We were so violently ill that she had to get us somewhere. Although we only lived about three blocks from where we were. The closest house she could get us to was a woman called Annie Glenn. So we went to Annie Glenn's house. It went downhill from there.

[05:34] JULIA TAYLOR: I could remember laying on the couches in her living room with buckets right next to us, saying, pan pen.

[05:41] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Annie Glenn thought that someone would die. We were sick in her living room.

[05:45] JULIA TAYLOR: Yes.

[05:46] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: She thought someone would die at that time. My father.

[05:51] JULIA TAYLOR: Yeah. Your father came to get you.

[05:52] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: My father came to get me. My mother was in Springfield attending a funeral, I believe. And my father had heard about what happened and came to get us. When he got near our float, a very helpful person said, I saw a strange man take your daughter.

[06:11] JULIA TAYLOR: Now, of course, the strange man was my mother, who was her aunt. But that's okay. Somebody still told Uncle Jack, that his daughter had been taken away by a strange man.

[06:21] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: So that was great cause for concern, let alone all the sickness that was going on. My brother was able, I believe, able to make it to the house, to his home, where he was violently ill. And apparently my father found him violently ill and called my father's physician brother to come from Springfield. Uncle Jean. Uncle Jean Farthing came from Springfield to try to help out what was going.

[06:51] JULIA TAYLOR: On, and he started an iv on John at home.

[06:54] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Yes.

[06:54] JULIA TAYLOR: Yes.

[06:55] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: And I believe that we were able to get home somehow. Somebody got a car and got us home. Got us.

[07:03] JULIA TAYLOR: So Mary was at her house, and we were at our house, which was really close together for a while, but we continued to be really, really sick. And my sister Anita, who couldn't join us today, wanted to make sure that we mentioned that she kept saying, mother, please let me have some water. And she kept saying, no, no, Anita, I can't give it to you.

[07:23] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: You'll throw up.

[07:24] JULIA TAYLOR: No, please. I promise I won't. Please give me some water. I'm so thirsty. So mother finally gave Anita some water, and she immediately threw up.

[07:33] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Of course. Of course. So at that point, I guess there must have been communication between our two families, because we did end up in the hospital. The hospital. At that time, there was a hospital in Ozark, and it was privately owned hospital, and our relative, Stanley Roper, doctor Stanley Roper ran the hospital. So it was very busy. And Julia and Anita were put in one bede. One on one on one end, one the other. And I had my own bed. I feel like we were in the.

[08:07] JULIA TAYLOR: Hallway, in the hallway, in the hallway.

[08:09] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: There just wasn't room. There were just people. So many people.

[08:12] JULIA TAYLOR: And the basketball coach, they put him on the delivery table because there were no more beds in the hospital, so he was there. We were all being treated. I remember my mother came up to me and said, well, you girls need to get well, because we need to leave before midnight or it's going to cost us more money. Whether she was kidding or not, I have no idea.

[08:35] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: We were given iv's.

[08:37] JULIA TAYLOR: Yes, yes.

[08:38] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: And we did quickly, fairly quickly started recovering, as everybody else did.

[08:45] JULIA TAYLOR: Right, right. And so, of course, everybody was like, what happened? How could this happen? Unfortunately, it was before the Centers for Disease Control was established, or they would.

[08:56] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Have been on the.

[08:57] JULIA TAYLOR: They would have been on this.

[08:59] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Yes.

[09:00] JULIA TAYLOR: It was kind of left for Ozark to figure out what was going on. And we had always been told that it was the potato salad.

[09:08] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Yes.

[09:09] JULIA TAYLOR: So. But her mother and Jenny didn't believe that.

[09:12] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: I don't know why.

[09:13] JULIA TAYLOR: Well, no, I know why. She said. She said if it was a potato salad and the mayonnaise, it would have smelled so bad, you wouldn't have eaten it. But we think it was potato salad. I think that's the only thing I ate that day.

[09:26] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Two helpings?

[09:27] JULIA TAYLOR: Yeah, two helpings. Yes. Yes, absolutely. But what we learned later was that the cooks in Ozark, what they had done was they would serve potato salad, and there was some leftover. They'd save it for the next week, whenever they'd serve potato salad again, and then they'd put the new potato salad in with the old, and then another week later, they'd put the new within the old. And so that would maybe make sense that you had bad potato salad, but it didn't. It was diluted enough that it didn't smell that bad. Meanwhile, Mary's sister Jane, who was in 8th grade, was just fine. And we said, jane, why are you not sick?

[10:04] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: She had gone to the drugstore to eat. She was a finicky eater. And she said, I'm not eating at school today. I'll just get dismissed. And she went down to eat at the drugstore.

[10:14] JULIA TAYLOR: So she was all fine. Everybody else in the family was sick, but she was fine. Now, what has happened about the potato salad is Mary's been on the school board for, her father was the president of the school board, and then Mary was the president of the school board, and now her daughter is the president of the Ozark school board. And tell me, Mary, how many times has Ozark public school served potato salad?

[10:35] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Zero.

[10:35] JULIA TAYLOR: They do not serve potato salad.

[10:37] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: And, you know, during that time, I'm sure some of the cooks were grieving.

[10:42] JULIA TAYLOR: Oh, I'd heard some of the cooks were passed out. They were so. They were so unhappy, because I felt responsible. It was obvious it was food poisoning. And. But we thought. We thought that this. This was the major thing in our. For all of us growing up. I mean, my family hates hearing this story. In fact, I asked my daughter if she wanted to come and listen to this, and she goes, are you kidding? And I asked a much younger sister, who wasn't there at the time, said, marianne, we're going to do this. And storycord. What do you think we're going to talk about? She goes, oh, no, you're not talking about potatoes, salad, are you? The dairy day parade? And I said, yes, yes.

[11:21] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: And so our members of the family have grown, of course, over the years. So every time someone new comes into the picture, maybe by marriage or whatever. They have to listen to the story. They have to listen to the story.

[11:34] JULIA TAYLOR: Do you remember when Emily got married and she drugged me over to tell her husband exactly what happened? She goes, if you're going to be in my family, you've got to hear the Dairy day parade story. So he's going, why am I doing this?

[11:49] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: So it has been a part of our lives.

[11:52] JULIA TAYLOR: I mean, we've both had 67 years, pretty exciting lives. But the thing we have talked about for sure the most time is the Dairy day parade.

[12:02] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Absolutely.

[12:02] JULIA TAYLOR: But when it got close to my 50th high school reunion, I thought, oh, we'll talk about the Dairy day parade. But what happened was we were young enough that most of our friends and our grades all went home. They took the school bus home and they. So if they were sick, they were just sick at home. And then they got better. And I think this was on a Friday, so they, you know, come back to school on Monday. So nobody, you know, I asked people my age, what do you think of the Dairy Day She goes, hmm, I think I've heard of that. I said, heard of it. This is the most important thing in our life.

[12:36] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: And joyous searched and did find an.

[12:39] JULIA TAYLOR: Article, an article in the Springfield paper. But, you know, it wasn't the same as a CDC investigation. I think a lot more kids were sick. They were just sick at home.

[12:50] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: I think so, too.

[12:51] JULIA TAYLOR: Yeah. Mary, how many times have you eaten potato salad since then?

[12:55] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: I will. If I make it myself, I will partake a little bit. I would not eat anyone else's.

[13:03] JULIA TAYLOR: Do you serve it at dinner parties or anything? I mean.

[13:05] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: No, but every now and then, for some reason or other, I will make a potato salad to serve with hot dogs.

[13:13] JULIA TAYLOR: Oh, okay.

[13:13] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: So I do serve it to others. Okay. But I will have a small amount and then it is thrown away.

[13:19] JULIA TAYLOR: Of course. We don't save the mayonnaise, do we?

[13:23] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: No. Yeah. Mayonnaise is a point of contention in our.

[13:26] JULIA TAYLOR: You open it once and then you throw the bottle. You take one tablespoon out and then throw the bottle away.

[13:31] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: And how about Anita? How many times?

[13:33] JULIA TAYLOR: My sister Anita has never. She is 74 years old and she has never eaten potato salad since the dairy Day parade.

[13:40] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: And you?

[13:42] JULIA TAYLOR: I will eat it very occasionally. It's low on my list. I'd have to be starving or something, but I would eat it. But Nita, I think Nita would starve to death. I know she would.

[13:51] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Yes, I know she would. So that's pretty much the story. Of the dairy day parade in Ozark, Missouri, in 1955.

[13:59] JULIA TAYLOR: Right. The highlight of our lives. Yes. Wow.

[14:05] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Okay.

[14:06] JULIA TAYLOR: Well, that's really something. Were there other.

[14:09] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: So you all just ate potato salad that day? You didn't eat anything else? Yes, I ate whatever else, but I don't remember what it was. I know, the sandwich, the ham sandwich.

[14:17] JULIA TAYLOR: I don't think I ate anything else. And my mother did say, she goes, if they had potato salad, that's what Julia ate. So I don't think I ate anything. I think I got two helping salads, and that was it. Which may explain why I was so sick. Yes. And everyone recovered, as far as you know? Oh, yes.

[14:31] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: There were no deaths. Oh, yes. There were no deaths.

[14:34] JULIA TAYLOR: It was fine, I think, you know, it was. They were very. Or the ones in town anywhere really very sick. And then got over it fairly fast.

[14:41] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: But with the celebration and the number of people and the embarrassment and to see people just falling down on the courthouse square, you know.

[14:54] JULIA TAYLOR: And as far as we can tell, there was never another dairy day parade that ended it.

[14:59] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Last dairy day parade. Very good. Okay.

[15:04] JULIA TAYLOR: What a story.

[15:06] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: I've never even been to a dairy day parade.

[15:08] JULIA TAYLOR: Well, that was the last one we'd ever been.

[15:12] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Well, thank you all for coming in. Thank you.

[15:15] JULIA TAYLOR: All right. This is fun. This was fun.

[15:17] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: And we got to tell it. She didn't even know. We got to tell.

[15:19] JULIA TAYLOR: I know.

[15:20] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: We got somebody new.

[15:20] JULIA TAYLOR: Got to hear it.

[15:22] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: I'm so happy. I love the audience for this.

[15:25] JULIA TAYLOR: It was funny. Very good. Well, it would have been, actually. It's really more fun if our mothers were still alive. And Anita's here because we're always interrupting each other and saying, oh, no, we had a good time.

[15:37] MARY TAYLOR ADAMS: Yes. Okay.