Madeline McGinty and Kristina Riley

00:05 I'm Christina Riley 31 years old today's date is December 14th. 2009 location is Jacksonville, Florida and I am the granddaughter of my partner.

00:18 And I'm Madeline McKinney. I'm 78. Today's date is December 14th 2009 and we're in hemming Park in Jacksonville, Florida, and I'm the grandmother of Christy is my number one born grandchild.

00:42 Thank you for agreeing to do this for any a really means a lot to me is very special for the whole family to have this recording. I like to start with you telling me the story about bought.

00:53 What is the oldest memory I have it's from when I was maybe three for five years old. I'm not exactly sure.

01:06 But I grew up I was born and grew up on a 2 Horse Farm.

01:11 In Crenshaw County Alabama to horse farm means that it takes two men and two mules or two horses to cultivate the land.

01:24 And so I have

01:28 7 siblings

01:32 Or I had seven siblings and

01:36 At this time

01:39 The answer that with Bots Jackson, he was the tenant Farmer on our farm and he did to work with Daddy to cultivate the crops and raise the crops. We had Patton we had corn we had peanuts sometimes soybeans a lot of vegetables pigs and Cattle.

02:03 And though the sharecropper shared.

02:08 Whatever the cross the farm-raised that Year Daddy paid for this evening fertilizer and you know the expenses of farming.

02:17 It ain't right this incident involving but

02:21 Involved one summer day when

02:24 They were picking cotton. I was not old enough to be in the fields, but I remember being in the house with Mama and my baby, brother.

02:36 And

02:38 A thunderstorm came up

02:42 And Bots wife who lived in the little tenant house down the road came running down with her, baby.

02:50 To be close to Mama because she was afraid of lightning.

02:55 And so we all went in one of the bedrooms and got up in the bed.

03:00 Without not touching the floor you'd be safe from this lightning which was crashing all around us.

03:08 So there we were in the bed waiting for the stunt thunderstorm to pass over in the cotton field which was at the back part of the farm.

03:18 It was a little loud cabin out in the middle of the field that was big enough to hold a bale of cotton. They would go out and pick the cotton and weigh it and put it in my until I got a load to take to the cotton gin.

03:33 So to get away from the rain and the thunder and lightning but and two of my brothers two of my sisters and several of his children. He had a large family to I went and got him a little cotton house and sat on top of this power cotton. It was maybe six feet.

03:54 D. You know, it would fill the house up almost when it was full. So he and all these children were sitting in a circle.

04:04 With him in the center

04:06 And it was an awful storm. I mean heavy thunder and lightning and a bolt of lightning hit the cotton house and shattered the corner post and hit bite in the head and went through his body and it killed him.

04:26 It shocked all the children they were laying all around.

04:30 Some of them unconscious for a while, but

04:35 They were so shocked when they came to and woke up and they couldn't wake my dad up.

04:43 And so when the when the storm stopped, I remember standing at the back door with Mama and bites wife and the baby and we heard the screaming.

04:55 Coming up through the woods.

04:58 I don't remember who it was, but I love them. They were able to run and go to the house. Some of them stayed with bought some came to the house, but just screaming about what had happened and the Box wife just threw her baby to Mama and ran.

05:17 And went over there Daddy had gone to town.

05:22 So he wasn't there was just mama and bites wife and all the children.

05:29 So

05:30 After the rain stopped daddy came back from town. He was on a ride in the wagon with the mules pulling it and what he realized what happened.

05:41 He started yelling and beating them used to make them run.

05:47 And I went this hard as I could.

05:52 To get him or do I save him?

05:56 But they didn't save him he was dead.

05:59 So Daddy and boss wife got him in the wagon.

06:04 And brought him home.

06:10 At night I can remember.

06:14 Going up to the house where they lived.

06:18 They had bought in the bedroom.

06:23 On the bed that bite and his wife slept in.

06:28 They forwarded the mattress back and lay Planks on the springs.

06:36 Put sheets over it and I'm late, but only planks.

06:43 You could smell him.

06:48 The burn hair you can smell it.

06:54 Any other night and reads it seem like a million people came every black person in the county.

07:03 And the Wailing in the scream and went on all night.

07:09 And then the next morning Daddy had to go.

07:12 And find something to bury body and he didn't have a good suit. He didn't have a suit of any kind.

07:21 But he found something I don't remember what for a good enough for him to be buried in and all the men wear out in the yard.

07:31 Building the casket mailing these planks together.

07:38 Enough

07:40 It was something the whole whole Countryside was just scared about what had happened.

07:47 This is

07:50 I don't know how much of this I actually remember how much I remember from everybody in the family. Tell him.

07:57 Because it was such a traumatic thing, but people in that county still talk about it.

08:05 Panda

08:07 In Ohio when I tell people get together that they always say that you remember

08:13 Today bike got hit by lightning.

08:18 But I've had I remember the family stayed with us the rest of the year.

08:25 And then I had to move to town so they could get jobs and

08:30 Make a living.

08:33 And we had you know other tenant Farmers over the years, but this one is this one. I want other family someone loves I remember.

08:45 But that is the earliest thing that I remember.

08:52 Growing up on that farm

08:56 Always a struggle for you know taking care of everything you had to take care of the livestock little children fed the chickens.

09:09 You had to work in the garden and we had the we had to sweep the yard every Saturday.

09:17 Back, then we didn't have long would never planted grass in the yard. That was not pretty so nobody had grass in a yard would get out and hold it and pull all the weeds and get all the grass app.

09:30 And then we would cut Brian's.

09:33 And sweep it.

09:36 And which sleeping in these patterns would get a little carried away with it sometimes but I thought you know later on when I found that the Japanese did it in their Garden so swept pattern somebody yard. It was kind of weird, but that was the way we did it. Yeah. I know we were

09:55 You're an international friend friend anymore.

10:07 Anyhow getting home I'm with it.

10:12 You know grew up there. We worked on the farm all the way through High School.

10:21 When World War II came along Daddy went to Mobile and got a job in the shipyard.

10:27 And though

10:29 So we children ran the farm while he was gone and prices were good. We made more money than daddy at ever made, you know selling the crops, but it was not that we were such better farmers and he was it was just the prices were higher.

10:47 Panda so we might what we thought was a lot of money.

10:53 It ain't right when I'm finished high school.

10:58 My brother Tommy was going to the University of Alabama.

11:03 So I decided that was the thing to do.

11:07 So away I go to the University of Alabama and because I like to draw things I decided I'd be an art major. I didn't know what I was doing or getting into and I didn't realize country girls don't have too many careers and Harley in Woodburn.

11:27 But I love doing it and

11:30 I thrived on it then, you know did well.

11:36 And then after that

11:39 I went to Birmingham and I got a job as an airbrush artist and an airplane Factory.

11:46 And it was

11:51 Not a fascinating job. You just did the illustrations and the flight manual it, you know explain the mechanics of the airplane and how to deal with it. And it was kind of not the heart that I thought I was going in in the world.

12:09 So a friend of mine was in New York and

12:16 I got to thinking about going to New York. And so one of the people that I was working there at the airplane Factory was going up there and I said what can I ride up with you? And she said sure So that is the involvement of the decision to go live in New York. I mean I get up there and

12:42 Spent the first couple of weeks. Just walking around New York looking at things and

12:49 New York is you know, it's an easy place to find your way around then?

12:54 And the logic of the street, you know that numbers and everything. You can tell where you're going and find where you're going. And so I loved that I didn't didn't feel lost it all up there.

13:08 And I wind up getting various jobs one of the jobs with working at Columbia.

13:15 And so tuition went along with the job. So I started taking classes and working on a master's.

13:24 And I certainly enjoyed that.

13:29 You know having a good time there and I

13:32 It was corresponding and calling this boy in Birmingham that I you know gone with before I went up there and convince them that this is the place to be.

13:45 So there's been another age. We thought we had to get married before we live together. So we got married and everybody thought we was crazy to go to New York, but I'd convinced him that is this is what we do, right?

14:06 He was working at the newspaper in Birmingham.

14:10 And so I knew he could get a good job and New York and everything would just be fine.

14:18 So well when he got up there he couldn't find a job because the

14:23 Herald-Tribune had just closed down in New York and they were hundreds of newspaperman unemployed and it was sort of a recession then.

14:34 You know, I couldn't tell that from any other poverty, but it was.

14:40 You know we did all right, but we didn't have anything we rented this apartment.

14:48 It was the same one that I had lived in you know before I married him. There's two bedroom two rooms.

14:56 That we shared in this apartment with this old lady Margaret Marsh who is from Ireland and he has she's a lovely old lady and she had half of the apartment. We had those two rooms. We shared the kitchen in the bath with her.

15:12 So it seems it. Yeah, I wouldn't live like that today, but I thought it was okay different one, but I got a very good job.

15:24 I got a job with the Rockefeller Foundation.

15:28 In the RCA building in New York and

15:33 It was just amazing to me. How was a typist, you know, and I'd had nothing but contempt for people who typed because I really thought I had all this hard time being doubtful, but you know, I thought I had it but

15:53 What I did was type the docket for the board of directors meeting which was once once a month.

16:01 And them

16:04 You had to be accurate. You could not make a mistake at all and looking back. It was remarkable the way we put that thing together. They use two different thickness of paper.

16:18 And the typewriters were set, so they had varying degrees of Darkness.

16:25 And the board of directors were these in a wealthy man who came to this meeting once a month and they voted on the proposals the grants that would be given.

16:38 And so they had to take this little book.

16:41 And understand it like the night before the meeting and so the different thicknesses of paper if you flipped it, it would stop at the thick pages.

16:55 And so by scanning this book without knowing how smart you were you automatically stopped at the heading of each new proposal.

17:04 And then the way we typed it wears key synopsis throughout the

17:10 Their proposal would be darker Inc. So your eyes would go to that.

17:16 And without having to pour over every word you could just scan it and get the gist of what it was all about.

17:27 I don't know why we don't do things that sound anymore, but it worked beautifully and we typed it in such a way that after the meeting.

17:37 We would redo the document and it would be the minutes of the meeting and instead of it is proposed. It is granted that and so we would just change a few phrase through the document and it would be ready to go again.

17:53 Any have where's a really? Nice place to work?

17:58 It was in the RCA building.

18:03 The officers were not luxurious, but they were really nice and they were so nice to us.

18:11 And I remember my supervisor stressed me.

18:15 That everybody not just made it but to everybody that every employee is so valuable that you represent the Rockefeller foundation. So everything you do reflects on the Rockefeller Foundation, you had to always come in looking nice you had to always be polite to each other and to visitors you had to

18:42 Just radiates courtesy to each other have nothing but Perfection and what you did.

18:51 I remember the mount one of my favorite working but he's there was a little black man, who was the messenger boy. He was maybe 50 or 60 years old and his job was to ride around town on a bike taking mail or letters or you know messages to other people.

19:12 He drawer or a black suit and have the shiny shoes. You'll ever see and a little black bowler hat.

19:22 And he had the best manners I have ever seen on a human.

19:26 And he was just

19:29 Also, I mean fun.

19:32 But he took himself so seriously.

19:35 And I don't know why we don't do employees.

19:41 That way anymore.

19:44 You know to let every single one of them know that they're that important, but that was such a good.

19:52 Lesson that I learned from that.

19:55 Did anybody like everything else in my grown-up life during that. Of time? I got pregnant with your daddy Mark. And so that was the end of that job.

20:06 And Ma.

20:10 John D. Rockefeller gave you Daddy his first pair of shoes and a gift. I left the place. Really. Anyhow, we stayed on a New York a good while but it was just too difficult after Mark was born to Coke that Bob wasn't making enough money and it was just a hard time. So we gave it up and move back to Alabama.

20:41 Live first in Montgomery and then moved to Birmingham and he work for the newspaper there and

20:48 You know we were doing okay, but hard time until I got a teaching job.

20:57 At a little

20:59 Elementary junior high school in Birmingham that I didn't think I would ever teach school, but I loved it.

21:08 I am so we were there and and then Along Comes Phoebe and so are there goes that job?

21:15 And I

21:18 So well

21:22 Then I get pregnant again with Wade.

21:25 And Bob wanted to move to Florida. He'd heard the good good money was to be made in, Florida.

21:34 So

21:36 He took all the furniture and loaded it into a U-Haul. How is the transition from coming from New York going back to Montgomery?

21:48 It was a kind person.

21:55 I was disappointed that I didn't stay in New York cuz I hadn't really loved it.

22:01 Bellingham William

22:05 3 weeks before Wade was born. We are going from Birmingham to Florida.

22:10 So Bob comes down with the furniture.

22:14 And starts his new job and I moved in with his mother Mark Phoebe and I waiting for Wade to be born and then I would come on down.

22:24 But it was not to listen to good moving in with a mother-in-law way after you know how it is me after you been independent and dependent right? And so

22:40 We decided to come on to Florida and so well.

22:45 We pack the stuff up and I know you know go to the airport with a children.

22:51 I had a suitcase that I checked we bought one ticket for the airline airplane.

22:58 And here I am 8 months pregnant and I had a rod and reel and a diaper bag and the two children when I got on the plane.

23:11 And I was at the here I don't even know what I was really pregnant. So, well, I have to hold these two children in my lap cuz we only have one seat on the plane. Thank God they were cute and thank God they were behaving and so at first people looked at me with this horrified look when I got on the plane with him and then they settle down when they didn't scream or anyting.

23:37 So then people started talking to them and they were sweet little children. So the lady sitting in the seat next to me, I'll for the whole Phoebe and they were having a good time baby sitting there being so cute and

23:51 You are a little golden ringlets just precious child and Marcus talkin and being so cute. And so everything is going good. And I was about a 2-hour trip.

24:07 Any have baby wets her pants and just wait. Wait, wait Phoebe Howard Wright the designer of the South right? So like that one and the lady was not a mother. She was not a married lady. She was horrified about what happened, but she was very gracious and not slapping me around it. So anyhow, that's how we came to, Florida.

24:37 Bob Mathers, and it was really traumatic getting off that plane because it was at a time on Airport and you had to walk down the steps getting off the plane.

24:50 And so I'm carrying Phoebe and carrying the diaper bag and the fishing rod and holding on to the railing trying to hold on Mark keep him from scampered away. But Bob thank God was there and we made it and then we drove to the beach and what year was that it will you have to look at your daddy's ages. He was about 3, so I 57 so well, I was very disappointed in it. You know, it was kind of dry out there was nothing going on there.

25:34 And it was not anything very impressed. If it's this was not a resort beach. It was just Sandy yards with weeds.

25:47 Sayings for her some things but we learned to you know.

25:52 Pack up in the Baby Buggy every afternoon and go to the beach and we learn to like it a lot.

25:58 And then the next year I was.

26:02 Walking down the beach and met the lady who's our supervisor in the county and she hired me to teach art.

26:11 Christian on the beach and so I started teaching at Andrew Jackson in

26:19 Then got pregnant with David that was sort of the routine with all my working life. I would work a year have another baby work a year have another baby and it just went on and on my family.

26:35 In Alabama would instead of congratulations their reaction was always. Oh God. No not another one.

26:43 And you stayed home with all of them when they were little.

26:49 So that's the way it was. I told Art.

26:54 Piano until

26:58 The divorce came

27:02 I won't go into all that but

27:08 When the marriage was breaking up and everything, I was down at Fletcher one day in the Teachers Lounge.

27:14 And I was so upset over what was happening, but I had to go and read the bulletin board to keep from looking at anybody because I couldn't talk to anybody without crying. So right I saw this thing on the bulletin board about a Federal grant that would pay for a master's degree in Montgomery, Alabama.

27:37 What it was at the black college there?

27:40 But I didn't care because it would pay for a masters, which I had to have to be able to support those children.

27:47 In a race the five children with no child support. So it was all up to me and right. I mean it was a type type thing. That's something that has always been some interesting that you did it on your own and that you managed to not only get by but Prosper financially and I like well at that time there was no prospering it was hard times, but we had a good time, right?

28:16 That was what was so hard to.

28:19 To understand this we were you know, enjoying life while we were doing it going to that school was really kind of funny.

28:29 It.

28:30 I was treated very well, you know and made some good friends. They are in a lot of the neighbors. I had didn't understand why I would do something like that, but it was you know something that paid off better than any education I've ever gotten him because he put me where I can make more money and then when that year was over we move back to Florida and I went back to the same school and instead of teaching art. They hired me as the dean of girl, which was turning a page big time.

29:11 When I was an art teacher I was the most popular teacher in school everybody love the art class. No complaints about the art class. It was just poop to do and then when I moved into the Dean's office, I wish the bitch and that was kind of hard to take those were the stories that we always heard like you couldn't go into Publix cash your new Mister McGinty the word on the street.

29:41 Well, I used to you know, go to the grocery store and get backed up against the can Beans by some mad Mama telling me off in front of everybody. She's an awesome. She didn't do it. So this went on in 04 years.

30:02 Yeah, we used to try to straighten these children out and make them do right and make them achieve and get on with their life. Some of them say they did.

30:13 And

30:15 I know a few that I pulled out of the gutter that did succeed and that would not have made it. I don't think without me helping them when they needed help.

30:28 But anyhow, babe, how much more time do we have?

30:34 Well, I guess we better talk about Rover.

30:38 Please request we had a few request now. He wanted a story about Rover among other things.

30:52 And I didn't know they were feeding her. I thought she was just hanging out with us cuz she likes us but they were throwing food out the window touring, you know, making sure she didn't leave they were taken so she stayed with us.

31:08 And she was the most loyal dog in the world. She had a real arrogance about her, but she love those children and

31:19 She would do anything for the children.

31:22 When we would go to the beach.

31:25 We had a routine. I would pull my beach chair up to the edge of the surf and I would sit there and the children would do whatever they did in the water. The older ones would serve band.

31:37 Young ones would make mud pies and sand castles and play around. So it was just everything but Rover ran up and down the beach just like a frantic mother and if she didn't see him she would go crazy. She had to it was like she was counting them constantly to make sure they were all right at the end of water.

32:02 One day Mark is out with a scuba mask and snorkel.

32:09 And he was floating face down looking at fish. You know, we're over decided he'd been in that water long enough. And so she went after him.

32:21 After the breaker, she couldn't handle it anymore. She couldn't swim good enough. So she's absolutely frantic going out through the water.

32:30 And when she got to him

32:33 She was just a hole worn out and out of breath. So she threw her clothes up over his back.

32:40 And just jumped on him what he thought of shark had him. And so it was just a whirlwind and water him rescue and Rover headed that way around if he had to pick the dog up and sling her over his shoulder and bring her in and she was so humiliated.

33:01 She just sold a coward next to me. Like I didn't know I didn't know but the she was just embarrassed to death that she had done that.

33:12 Funny, but she she used to try to go every way we went she would go outside.

33:19 Do you know it's early in the morning when we're getting ready to go to school and Hyde?

33:24 And she wouldn't come home in time for us to put her back in the house before we left. So it was frantic everyone and rounding up that dog getting her locked up in the house before we left and

33:36 If she were still out when the last one left she would follow us to school and you know Fletcher's about a half a mile away, but she would come down there.

33:49 And I'd hear her coming down the hall and I'll be sitting in my office and his this click click click. Click click of her toenails on the linoleum coming down the hall.

34:00 And she will die slick in the mouth. I mean just as close to the floor. She could get come around a hide behind my desk and beg beg to stay.

34:15 And I'd have to get waiter David out of class and make one of them take her home.

34:22 And she do that over and over if we ever let her out she'd come find us.

34:27 And she just wanted to be part of everything we did.

34:43 But anyway, I don't know.

34:45 All kinds of little things that we did, you know and I Alabama I think looking back I couldn't have picked a better place for the children to grow up.

34:56 Because the beach gave them an independent and a freedom, you know to do what they wanted to do and they did things together and they did things as individuals and they each one of them had their own.

35:11 Personality and set of friends and

35:16 I think we have a few minutes left in one thing. I did want to ask.

35:22 I don't know. I don't want to cry.

35:32 I think it's it's beautiful that all you grandchildren.

35:37 Love the same place.

35:40 And come out there and you're doing your own little beach life.

35:46 But it's been fun spin a good good experience.

35:51 And I'm not trying to sugarcoat my life and say it's not ever had anything tough, but I'm amazed at how much fun we've had.

36:02 And I'm astounded at how well I love you turned out.

36:08 What's good people you are?

36:13 Do you have any words of wisdom for the younger set? It's too late. You just have to do it your way and I think all of you will and you'll do fine.

36:27 Everything you've done so far as in the right direction.

36:34 So country girls can go to town.

36:43 If this great thanks granny. Thank you. Is that okay?

36:49 Been about it. Okay.