Marie Hinton and Donna Gershten

00:07 I'm done a Christian. I'm 56 years old. It's September 9th 2009 and I am in Paonia Colorado. I'm the daughter of Marie Hinton.

00:22 Ann Marie Hinton and I'm 90 years old and it's September the night 2009 and has different Paonia, Colorado and Donna is my daughter.

00:41 Mama

00:43 What's your first memory?

00:46 My first memory, I think my first memory is when Mary.

00:54 Came to be with us after my mother had her gallbladder operation and Mary was a beautiful.

01:07 I would say olive skin.

01:10 Black woman and she was very Indian looking she had a high cheekbones and she has thin lips and she was so proud of her long straight hair and we loved her and very evidently was loved by her relatives because she was named for all of her aunt's her name was Mary Ella and Elijah Rebecca Knight William, and she stayed with us until I went off to college.

01:54 And when I graduated from college, I wrote to her and told her that I was married and that I was expecting and she wrote me back and said that she would come to stay with me. She had married a minister and she was all settled in her life, but I was so glad to have her to come and be with me because she was just like part of a family.

02:31 Mama tell me about in talking about gallbladder. I remember you tell me about when your mother had her gallbladder out. And you said I remember that you thought that that she would had died. Yes, tell me about that was the reason that I thought that she had died was that they didn't let me go to see her. They didn't let children.

02:54 And my my father said I think Maurice going to die herself if she doesn't get to see her mother and see that she's all right, and they kept you in the hospital back then for a very long time with very little wrong with you. But a gallbladder was considered a very major something. So my father took me to the hospital and my mother came to the window.

03:24 And I looked up and saw her and I was completely alright she could see that she really had had an operation and that she was getting well in the hospital.

03:42 Describe your daddy and your mother and your brothers as you remember looking at them when you were small.

03:54 My father

03:57 Was such a gentleman and he ran address shot and he was he was always so kind to us and he called me son because I came a year after the two brothers.

04:20 And my two brothers prayed for me for four years and they wanted a sister.

04:31 And when I was about two years old, I remember my younger brother saying we pray for Marie and

04:45 They had to babysit me or they let me follow them around about 5 yards, but they were good to me and my younger brother.

05:00 Was a charmer always and

05:06 He will when we would visit my grandfather and my grandmother and the summer he would come back. My grandfather was a minister and he would come back and he would get up on the picnic table and pray for 15 minutes, imitating your grandaddy and my older brother.

05:30 I remember of adored my younger brother and my younger than my older brother was not well from the time. He was a little boy, but I loved him. I said that when Mama was in labor at 36 hours and if it were nailed, it would be a cesarean birth, but it wasn't then and when he was about

06:07 2 years old he had or I guess you would yourself did seizure of seizure and he was the doctor said that it was epilepsy and he was treated for epilepsy and he loves books and he didn't go to regular school. He went to Catholic school and they loved him. And it was just the right place and he finished high school and they wrote my mother and father and said that he was the Dearest.

06:48 A child that you ever had

06:53 See, what was his name is famous. People named after my grandfather.

07:03 He was beautiful. I remember how you was.

07:09 He was small and had bright blue eyes, and I did.

07:15 And black high I need used to hunker down. He's to squat when he in talk to you instead of sitting in a chair. I remember that he thought that you were the finest thing in the whole world to write me letters in the third person. He would write letters that would say well Donna left today to return to Colorado and see will misses. Her daddy was so deal. He was and when Mama died I was rude person.

07:51 That he just turned 2 and you know, I was real nervous about it, but it was perfectly natural and my mother.

08:02 Didn't have real good health when I was young, but she would sit on the front porch with our neighbors and they drink lemonade and they chatted and do it. That was mrs. Cyrus and she was a sour Dowell and then that was Miss Watkins and she was very tall and very homely and my mother loved her and she had a hook nose. I remember and they just sat and they chatted and that was Miss Edmore who came from the street over to sit with Mama and they talked about that children and they bragged a little bit they gossiped a little bit and they played all night.

09:02 Reset on Arlington Street. That was Lincoln Street describe that house to me. That house was right across from the Baptist Church. And I remember when my mother was not well one time we sat on the porch and watch the people go in church and Mama knew everyone and she could tell you all about that background and was not it was not an exciting ugly. You know, it was it was nice and mama was pretty and she she always wore starched house dresses and she smells so good and I love the smell of it a starch to clean house and she entertained us she would tell us about when she was a little girl and that she had a black sheep.

10:02 For pit and how much she loved my grandparents.

10:08 I'll talk tell me about some of those stories about about my grandparents are the ones that she would tell you she would tell about how when she was a little girl. She was born 20 years after.

10:23 Her sister. My grandmother didn't think she would ever have any more children. She was in her 20s when she had my Adela.

10:34 And mama said that when they would come to visit the three sisters and two brothers. She said they were all old people.

10:47 And that she never did really feel close to anybody except my aunt Neva. She was the last one before before mama and my aunt Neva went to Washington DC after she finished school and she became a secretary in the White House and she live right on the street that the White House was what was it Pennsylvania? And she wrote my mother as long as as she lives they wrote back and forth and I have I think a couple of those letters but it was just like sitting down talking because and my aunt neighbor Michelle smart and her husband was a guard in the White House.

11:42 But my neighbor was so smart.

11:48 Tell me about your grandparents Mama of my grandparents. I miss Diane is what my grandfather called my grandmother. And so that's what we called her.

12:00 And Miss Cheyenne was 5 feet tall stretching.

12:06 And she was small bone and just a little and she was pretty she had curly white high up when I knew her and

12:17 And she was of course a minister's wife and she kept her shoes parked at The Parlor so that when anybody knocked on the front door, she could step in your bedroom shoes most of the time, you know, something comfortable and my grandfather. She was just wonderful and said stroke and I'm not sure everybody else, but he talks so sweet about her and my grandfather of worship a minister in Washington, North Carolina, and he when I got old enough he would take me with him.

13:06 And he was not allowed loud preacher Hell Fire in that kind of thing. He just was just lovely. I thought and he sang and he did until he was in his eighties he sang with it with with the congregation and he sang to us children and he sang Barbara Allen. I remember and it had about 10 versus and he wrote me.

13:42 I think I remember the first letter I had I must have been about 6 years old and I could read because my brothers were older than I was and he would write a dear daughter and your loving grandfather and he sent each of us a dollar and we thought that that was a fortune. It might have been a lot more than it is now and he was a representative of North Carolina in the end the car and I think for eight years and he was a lovely man. He had a goatee and he wore a derby hat and long tails and when we would go to visit he would come

14:39 In our room, you know because each bedroom had a fireplace and he would stoke the fire.

14:51 And he would be in this long underwear and it's Derby hat and there's Derby hat.

14:59 Tell me more about his house Mama bath hairstyles. Well.

15:04 My way when my grandfather and grandmother were first married, they lived in Washington because that was where he was preaching.

15:18 And their first child died and I don't know what your syphilis is, but it's some kind of skin thing.

15:30 And I still don't know. But anyway, the child died and my grandparents my great-grandparents just had the one child Cheyenne and so they said why don't you come live with us? We've got this big house and we'll live together and we'll be happy and Henry that which my grandfather can help with the farming.

16:01 So they moved to to where they lived and it was a big house before the Civil War. It was built and they stay there until their children were grown.

16:16 Tell me about the kitchen in that house. So the kitchen will when when I didn't remember.

16:28 That old kitchen until I was about 7, we would at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I would go to my grandmother's and

16:40 She would cook in the old kitchen which had the hanging pots have a separate from the house that was separate from the house and she had a modern kitchen is what she called it in the in the real house inside and we just walked across, you know to get to the other kitchen and when I would at my first memory is melon bread that was cooking in the oven in the outside. It was a long long fire stoked wood stove to oven a big ol oven and then a big fireplace with the hanging pots and and when she would do a goose or something like that. It smells so good. You could hardly wait to eat. What did she fix for holidays?

17:35 Well, my mother always care that your shirt because that was what Mama really like the most and though she would carry a chocolate cake. I remember and we were in the car just this close together because I didn't have haters back then and you could hardly get a knife between us and we were covered up to draw a nose after you know, Justin and Mama care the desert and my I remember my my aunt Neva came from Washington DC and I can't remember what she brought but everybody brought something and my my grandfather went hunting and killed the turkey that we had and we always had a a country ham that was baked and my grandmother spread the put the leaves in the table.

18:35 And the dining room and it's stretched all the way across and put twelve chairs around the dining room table and such a feast you have never seen but my grandmother did something that I don't think was coming back in that day. She fed the children first. She said they needed the nurse but we had a choice of the very best dinner from the beginning but I love going we went in the summertime get up with all the fruit and the vegetables everything wear and tear.

19:19 It just has such a lovely lovely memory.

19:24 Tell about when your granddaddy would visit you. Oh quit my grandfather came in and all his regalia.

19:34 That's what we thought I was the derby hat.

19:37 But he did look so nice and my little grandmother when she got a little bit older she would sometimes have a red pump and a black pump shoes on and she didn't notice them. Of course. My mother did Rectify said that but what did you want me to tell you? I just remember you're telling when they used to come and bring they had I guess a Model T Ford. I'm not sure what the name up but it had isinglass windows and my grandfather. I guess he thought that that my father didn't quite give my mother enough to eat. You would have chickens in the crate and vegetables on the street and my father said to him to mr. Henry. He said, you know

20:37 Really do look after Francis. We have it always has honor that he said but I just want to bring her something and he would would come to stay for a week and he would always at at dinner time if we had fried chicken before anybody ate. He picked Miss Ann's favorite piece of chicken and put it on her plate.

21:06 So he would go to bed early for Christmas Ian and next morning. He would come down about 7.

21:17 And he would have on his hat is Derby hat and the Cheyenne was all dressed and he said I guess we'll be going now. He always stayed one day. I think that if he saw that we will all right. That's all he wanted to know. How long did it take him to get there about 2 and it was don't you know, he was a menace on the road to keep I took longer than that mama takes two hours now.

21:49 Well, yeah, but but he had a car and they drove their two children because they were older I said.

22:07 Put digestion mama and when they saw that she was all right and my grandfather I remember saying to my father. He said Robert you are as good in the sun I ever had is just a lovely sweet man. He was in the Civil War. He was the oldest living one died oldest living Confederate.

22:34 And the during the Civil War

22:38 My grandmother and her mother and father had to move out of the house because the general stayed at that was his half court and I had to get out of the Hyandai it her and I hit her in in a cabin in the woods remember stories that he told you about the war, you know, he said very little about it, except I remember he said

23:09 That he care. I am a country I am with him and that he kept it because with food was so scarce.

23:21 And how do you think you did that? I don't know how he did it. But he said that he cut off a little chunk. Can you imagine eating salted ham with without it being cooked and he said that when the gunfire was so Fierce that they would stand on one foot and I don't know why that was but I remember his saying it is the oddest thing. He said that they stood on one foot and he said that when he came home he has lost 20 pounds. How old was he when he went in 16?

24:04 And I remember he said that it was Checkers 200 years to get over.

24:11 The Civil War and he went to college, you know, he was one of the first to go to to Chapel Hill to UNC and to become an ordained minister.

24:25 Times were so different.

24:30 He taught hate his slaves brought him food. You shouldn't grandfather took a slave with him, but they wouldn't let him keep him.

24:46 Because it was with another mouth to feed but they somehow got to him and he said that conditions were so horrible.

25:00 Give anything you want to ask me Mom. What do you want to ask me a question?

25:07 No.

25:12 Tell me about your tea party with k.

25:24 Kayden was my husband's first cousins child. And Katie Hatton was a much bigger child. Then you were Donna and I think her mother thought you were a midget, but we thought she was a giant and she was 9 months old and she really did boss you around and you let her and didn't didn't talk back to over evidently you resented.

26:01 So one day you were out and out and I'm off my porch and I'm off the back of our house and you had your little table and your little dishes Sia and I'm just chatting away and Kay said to you if you don't do this, I'm going home. You said goodbye, and I could have kissed you because I had wanted to smack her something. She took advantage but you got to be friends and she came right back about 15 minutes later. Everything was fine.

26:46 Ha talk to me about your music Mama about my music. I don't remember when I didn't flow YouTube channel.

26:59 My mother played and my my dad is trying and

27:06 I stood at the piano. I remember standing cuz you were too small to sit and I went I went to church of one Sunday to Sunday school. And then I remember they play Jesus loves me and when I got home I hunted the keys until I found the keys that shine Jesus loves me. And then when I was 5, my mother said that we've just got to let me have piano lessons this cuz she's playing by ear. And that's a No-No.

27:48 And so when I was five.

27:55 Let me have a drink or from where.

28:00 My mother and father took me to miss Allen's that she was a friend and she said I've never had a pupil 5 years old before but I'll take her and we'll see and so I had her until I was six years old and Hazel Wesley know I had another teacher of magic made Robin. I never heard about Maggie Maggie May Robbins, and she had me for year, and she said I want Morita have a better teacher

28:45 That I am and she said Hazel where she has just finished college and she's looking for pupils. So I had Hazel for 12 years and she gave me know if there is a theory at all, but she was protectionist and I thank her for that because now I'm not satisfied unless things of pretty good. You know, I am not careful. Like I was when I was in college and I majored in Piana in college and it was hard because I had not had any backgrounds and Siri, but I learned more in one year and because I play by ear and my mother had thought it was so terrible. It got me through college when I bet it did it because I could heal.

29:42 Can't hear in the mobile but music was always important in your family, Of course. I said play the piano and

29:58 She said that one her oldest brother was 10 years old that he asked for a banjo and my grandfather couldn't find one and Washington. So my and my uncle

30:19 Keep going to my uncle got a box and put strings on neck and put strings on it and Plunkett and stuff and everybody in Mama's Family Shang and everybody and dad is family dance. Tell me about that. And one of my first memories is Mama playing the piano and and my father doing the Charleston in the hall and we thought it was so great and my dad played I play a piano.

30:56 And if we sang All the verses to in the baggage coach ahead. What is that? Don't know that song. I can't remember what time does light now, but I remember the 10 versus and did My Blue Heaven just Molly and me and baby makes three happy in My Blue Heaven and it was some older three of us. I'm not brothers and myself for church in other three and my younger brother had the prettiest forest and everybody, you know Sito please sing for us, but when he was a teenager and his voice changed,

31:49 It was no longer beautiful. It was just like everybody else was good boys. And that was a shame. Tell me about Sundays at your house Mama ocean this at my other house.

32:05 We of course went to church and after church, we head out chicken and dumplings or whatever, you know, my mother cooked before she went to church and after lunch. My father would say let's have a card game that we played fetch. What's Finch? I don't know. I can't remember what it was. Like, I just remember that we played Finch and there's no money of course involved, but it was just a good time my brother and my mother and father and then neighbors children came over to play often and my father would would play the player piano.

32:52 And we had a victrola with a great thing, you know horn on that are resistant to that and you didn't you were not supposed to do any work on Sunday, but we went for a ride and I called and we went to the falls which everybody just about did and the Falls was beautiful with the water and he died that furnish the water for Rocky Mount and all the rocks that it went over. And that was why Rocky Mount was called Rocky Mount because of the rocks at The Falls are the only rocks and all of Rocky Mount would carry sometimes we didn't eat it home and we care. It's a picnic lunch and we would just sit on the ground.

33:51 And it was a lot of fun. Did he cook at night? Oh, yes. That is one of my best Memories Back Then

34:01 We didn't have candy and fruit and all the things everyday we had to uproot trees in the backyard, but this was site in the winter time sometimes and my father would go.

34:19 To the bakery and he would buy all the things that we were not supposed to eat, you know all the sweets and he would bring home the Suites and that was a jerk, but he always cook something that we didn't usually I have it was his night. We thought he was the best cook in the whole world, but on Saturday night, sometimes I hate that was Palace of sweets.

34:48 And he went to the went to the store and he would buy Candice and things that we thought were absolutely most wonderful in the whole world. And though I remember daddy cooking.

35:07 Eggs, and I was not crazy about eggs, but they were so good when he cooks and he made waffles and we had a waffle iron that was cast iron that the bottom part kind of about this car and then the the waffle iron with cast iron and it was on top of that and we had to wait for it to to heat up.

35:34 And when it when it is heated up dead, it would put the the battle on and it smells so I did and he whistled while he cooked and we thought that whistle where's the best in the world and our l&c were taught me how to whistle and they put it down on the floor and Dom.

36:00 They said it just like this sister and they did that lips together and I couldn't do it just as they were about to give up give up on me whistle whistle whistle for me of a pretty busy.

36:26 Yeah, your breath is, I ain't part of your stupid tell me about seeing Rachmaninoff all of that Pam when I was a senior in college in a the music Majors usually sit at the doors concave out the programs.

36:50 And I was standing with my roommate and we were able to sit on the stage because we will let you know when he came out on the stage. We were still standing at the doors and he was practicing a little bit and he was about I think it was about six 2 or 3. Maybe he was six feet and he was so slim that he looks like and he was dark and he had a crew cut and of course we had were a Schwinn Myers had some people and

37:31 I said to my roommate I sent you know, he is so good-looking and he's so young and she said what you know, I don't know about that. She said I think that he's he's getting the old Shepard. He looks young and so we sat on the stage and when he came out he was up housing years ago. He was so wrinkled and he was so tall and he sat with the piano bench all the way out and stretch to sarms like this and you just played like it was nothing. It just flowed like it was nothing and he just he just was wonderful and I never have heard an audience North Carolina that still and he played his his a Rachmaninoff C sharp minor in a piece. That was so popular at that time.

38:31 And the Crowds Are schroll because it was familiar and he played a few you know, choose that were familiar that were not classical and he was marvelous how I remember when she said there was a time. I thought Rachmaninoff could be my boyfriend look so young and he died the next year and you were lucky to see him ever lock your door saying and I saw pattern rescue when I was six. I don't remember much about it except that my mother and father told me that he was he has stopped playing the piano because he had arthritis so very bad and his hands and he was his country was in trouble.

39:24 And so he was doing concert the thing that I remembered when he would of course didn't know when you made a mistake, but he was saved by the audience but they listened to him and it was beautiful. But did you see him Richmond? I guess we used to go on the train to Richmond because we didn't have concerts and rock him up and we went, you know about concerts and play. You should not kind of thing. I saw my first opera Madame Butterfly.

40:09 I'm so glad you live with me mama like you Donna. You're my favorite dog.