NW: Do you know anything about the hotel? Do you know anything about where people stayed at before there was a hotel?
VW: The hotel was right beside the train depot. Salesmen stayed there, we called them drummers back then. Before there was a boarding house or hotel, Mrs. Anderson had a tent she kept boarders in.
NW: Do you know anything about the theater?
VW: Yes, it was called the Idle Hour. I don't know if any one told you or not, but, there was a silent theater. It was where the Post Office is now. The Post Office was where the library is at.
JH: Were there any businesses in Gideon in those days?
VW: Well, there was a filling station and a machine shop and three different mills, they were the stave mill, the circle saw mill, and the band saw mill.
NW: Were there any wife's tales that anybody went by in Gideon?
VW: There was a rumor that there were "Night Riders" and they would go to people's houses that they had heard were abusing his families, crawl under their houses, listen to the conversations that the families had and if he were abusing the family, they would beat him up. And of course, there were remedies that the people would use like tying a black string around your knee would take care of arthritis. The string HAD to be BLACK, no other color would work. They believed you couldn't eat fish after a baby was born. They also believed that if someone died you had to cover all the mirrors and no cats could be allowed in the house.
JH: What kind of games did the children play when you were little?
VW: We played "Go Sleepy Go", in this game you had two teams, the main player would hide the players on his team. The main player would come back to the front of the other team and draw a map to show hte other team where his team was. He wouldn't draw the map exactly right, he would put little pieces in to throw them off. When it would rain, since there were no drainage systems, the streets would flood. The children would play like they were in church and they would have a preacher and they would play like they were baptizing the people in hte church. A lot of the time when us kids didn't have anything to do, we would make up our own games.
JH: Were there any songs that were popular in Gideon?
VW: Well, everyone liked the songs: "My Blue Heaven", "Red Wing", "Jata", and "Running Wild'. When there was a tragedy people made up songs about it. They were called ballads. Most of the popular songs were played on violin or banjo.
NW: What did you consider the busiest day of the week?
VW: Saturdays were the busiest day of the week. First thing of the day was to take a bath. Everyone in the house used the same tub and the SAME water. You always hoped that you were one of the first people to take a bath because the little ones would us the bathroom in hte tub. We took baths in a #2 wash tubs behind the heating stove because we had no bathrooms or sewage systems. Later we got troughs for tubs and they were just as good as a real bathtub is today. Then everyone would go to town and shop, visit with friends, go to the movies, or just enjoy being in town.
NW: We know that you are one of the family that ran the boarding house. Could you tell us something about it; how it was ran, how many rooms were in it and where it was located?
VW: The boarding house was at the corner of Main Street and Jefferson Street, there were three lots there with a rambling house on it. It had nine rooms. There were three boarder's rooms and we had out houses. We had no certain routine, we just did the same thing day after day. We kept some boarders for a whole week and never got paid a penny! Sometimes we would have to charge groceries to feed everyone. There was a building called the office building that we would get money for the boarders. It was located behind the old IGA building.
NW: What was some sort of entertainment in the boarding house?
VW: THe only thing that they did for entertainment was sit around and see who could tell the biggest lie. Bedtime was 9:30 p.m. for EVERYONE.
NW: Was there any interesting stories that happened at the boarding house?
VW: Yes, there was one guy that stayed at the boarding house, he drank real heavy. He got drunk one night and went outside. It was the dead of winter. He froze before anyone found him. They brought him back to the boarding to the boarding house, put him in front of the heating stove and he unthawed and was still alive! He did it again a few nights later, but by the time that the men found him it was too late, he died. He had always told them that he wanted to be buried in a winding sheet. No one knew what that was but my mom wrapped a sheet around him, opened it at the top, put lace and things to make it pretty, and they buried him in that.
JH: What kind of entertainment did people in Gideon do as a town?
VW: We would have picnics in the summer. There was a bridge, called East Slough, in the big curve going out of town toward Clarkton, in the winter it would freeze over and everyone would go out there and ice skate. If they didn't have skates they skated in their shoes. The adults would build bonfires and sit around and talk while the kids skated.
NW: Was there anything unique about your family that might be interesting to us?
VW: Yes, my mom was the first person to have triplets in Gideon. They would be 87 this year. They were born in 1910.
JH: Was there that people did they don't do know?
VW: We used to sweep the yard until it was hard as a table. We didn't want grass to grow.
NW: Was there a funeral home back then?
VW: No, there was no funeral home. We had the funeral in our homes and there was no such thing as imbombing then either.
NW: You mentioned that they didn't imbomb the deceased, what did you do to keep them from changing colors and smelling?
VW: We put the bodies on some type of board, like an ironing board or something. We would put buckets of ice under the board to keep the body cool, so that it would not change colors as fast. This also helped to keep them from smelling so bad. Since we didn't imbomb them we had to have some way to keep their eyes shut and mouth closed. They would tie a towel under their chin and around the top of their head, to keep their mouths closed. They would also put large coins on the bodies eyes to keep them shut. The way that they had them all wrapped up scared the children really, really bad. Since they had the funeral in the home there was no other place for the children to go, so they had to stay there.
NW: How has a dollar changed?
VW: The only thing that I remember was that you could your kids a quarter for lunch money. My son would waste his lunch money on five bags of popcorn to see if he could win a prize that was in the popcorn. I went to one of my friends house to see if she would ride to Kennett with me and my son was at her house eating lunch with her son. I asked what he was doing there and he replied that he ate lunch over there everyday so that he could buy popcorn for him and his friends, to see if he could win a prize. Also, the off campus places for kids to eat was cheap, too. They could eat lunch for $.15, that included the main course, a candy bar, and soda.
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Last Updated; 4-16-97